"We buffed Lee Sin because even though he was good in pro play, beginners suck at him."

[{quoted}](name=Aych Pii,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=6o9xz2va,comment-id=0003000100000001000400000000,timestamp=2015-09-14T12:20:31.184+0000)

He's only as strong as you make him sound for the first twenty minutes of a game or so. He has a lot of gameplay that revolves around player skill, which gives him the potential to be outplayed in a lot of ways; and in return he gets mobility.

It might be because I wasn't around for most of the lee sin meta and never really got tired of him, or it might be because I still pick him when forced onto the jungle role just because he's so fun, but I just can't understand why people don't like him. He may be frustrating in the early game but there's always something you could have done about it, he's not like a Fizz or Riven that makes you feel like they can just ignore anything you try to do against them. He's a very solid, well designed champion.

Let me get into some detail on why Lee is absolutely NOT a well designed champion, at least not when there hasn't been a rework of some sort.

Before the coming of S5 (and later part of S4), he was in every single competitive match with a 90% pick/ban, while sporting a 50+% win rate in all of them.

What that means is that he is so strong he has to be picked or outright banned every single match, and when he was in a match, he was more likely to win the said round. Hence, whenever a team got Lee on their team, they had an guaranteed edge over the opponent from the very get go by default. Every pro scene match was completely reduced to netting him to their own team or banning him out of the game entirely, and that lasted for almost 3 years straight.

We can also extend it from there and notice that his competitive presence and win rate did in fact not get influenced at all by the item tweaks and the constant buffing/nerfing cycle Riot had done over the span of 3 years. It means he is pretty much immune to any meta shifts, because his kit is just too useful there is no way he as a champ can be replaced by someone else, unless by someone who has blatantly OP stats.

He was also almost always picked up as first pick if not already banned. The reason behind it is that he can not be counterpicked by default due to the sheer amount of utility he offers. Everyone could just pick him without the worry of being countered, which also contributed to his immunity to meta shifts.

This is how broken Lee's design philosophy is, only until S5 comes which makes his stat so inferior by comparison he is sent directly to the trash bin. Because he is a champ who has to be either OP or garbage, it's definitely not anywhere close to being balanced or healthy.

Your argument of "He has a lot of gameplay that revolves around player skill, which gives him the potential to be outplayed in a lot of ways" is frankly completely wrong.

Why?

First of all, you can not outplay someone who has more stuff than you do by default unless the opponent is just vastly inferior than you in terms of skill. It's not fair to expect that you need to have utter superiority over the opponent to play against him, that's just dumb.

Also it's not somehow the ones who play Lee is suddenly better but because the champ himself is outright better which allows the players to do superior things in the first place. One should NOT mistake broken design for player skill. Lee's kit produces the so called "skill", not the other way around, you have it completely backwards.

If every class in a game is allowed to have 3 weapons while one class has access to 6. Indeed yes you certainly need skill to use all 6 weapons to their fullest but that does not mean that class should even exist in the first place, nor should you be rewarded more solely because you get to juggle around 6 weapons at your leisure, it's completely and utterly illogical. There is no way to balance the 6 weapon class because if the weapons are even remotely useful the class is effectively broken as you would have 0 weakness and a solution for any given situation. However if you nerf the weapons to the point of being water guns, the class is practically useless.

That is Lee's design in a nutshell.

The 6 weapon class might just work IF the class has also double the amount of weakness everybody else has, but the problem is, Lee does not have more fundamental weaknesses. The only ways to play against a viable Lee is to somehow hide from him for a total 20-30 min which is downright impossible, especially given his supreme mobility. And the other method is just sitting there praying that his player is garbage, but what they don't realise is that any champ is garbage when misused, having that as Lee's sole weakness is unjustifiable and hilarious. Not to mention even if he is somehow behind, his kit is so massive it's incredibly forgiving to when you mess up because again, his utility factor is way too high and there is always a solution for any situation unless the player himself is practically braindead.

There is no way he's balanced, fun or well designed, he just isn't. A champ built on the sole idea of being unfair to everyone else can not be tuned to a fine champ one day without extensive reworks. He will ALWAYS be the broken piece of shat who ruins it for everyone or that piece of shat who everyone forgets, as long as he still keeps his current kit.

Riot seems to be slowing moving him to a better position but this buff really is just going back to square one.