For what's it worth, the Big 6 updates feel underwhelming and disappointing for most parts

I'm going to get some hate for this. But some of the Big 6 updates were severely disappointing, and I feel like I've been cheated/misled throughout the discussion of immobile mages. When I first saw the whole (insert Champion's name) Update/Scope, I was excited and thought Riot is really pushing for a better update with the mage classes.

Threads were created, different update designers wrote long posts detailing what and how they would change a character, how they're going to go about the changes and everything seemed so promising. And when the update came out today, their words couldn't be anymore wrong. I feel like, even though half of the Big 6 now have more damage, they also have a slews of mechanics that weren't creative (3 hit stuffs all over the place).

When I look at Zyra, I recalled how they wanted to not leave a lane behind and somehow mentioned her damage was consistently bananas. But Zyra's update out of the big 6 was probably the most disappointing one. For the amount of words wrote on the thread, it would have been easier if 20thCenturyFaux said her Passive was the only thing that was getting changed, and the rest would stay the same, with only utilities/damage shifted around. One of the hopes I had for Zyra's update was to take away seeds as a part of a her active kit, and allow room for more interaction on her W with a different spell (meaning to say seed plantings in W is not an active part of her kit, the whole thing should be moved towards her Passive, where she periodically spawns seeds and give W a new spell so that the entire kit has ways of interacting with the passive and plants). The previous talk about we're balancing her for the support role, but want to ensure her mid lane stays fertile ground hasn't changed much, what has changed was the wording but the intended changes are still putting Support Zyra players at priority. New W damage spell = Support Zyra being too OP I guess. The only thing I'll say now is, kudos to buffing Zyra's MS back to 340... for now.

Cassiopeia's thread discussion was the same thing. Although I do not speak for any Cassie fans, but I think the long thread discussion about her could have been easily summarized down to a few things - Move Speed, Grounded on W, E interactions. DoT is not a major part of Cass' kit, but is so as a part of utility/crowd control. Poisons are now an integral part of Cass because she needs to land it for the utility it brings, not because players wanted to see a combination of DoT damage and E-spamming. At best, E-spamming is still where the majority of her damage goes, and the DoT on Q/W is moderately satisfying. Nothing venomous/debilitating about her poisons, really.

Brand is the newest example of the overrated 3 hit/stack passive. Nothing to see here. Give him more damage on the 3 stack mechanics and call it an update.

Vel Koz/Vladimir - more damage, shift of utility in abilities.

Annie - Mostly clarity issues, skillcap increasing, giving more power to Tibs.

Anivia - Just some adjustment to zoning strength via ability damage reduction, scaling all cc duration to compensate.

Syndra - Comparable to Zyra update, Q is the only thing that changed. Nothing transcendent about it after all.

The rest - waiting for details to roll in.

TL;DR - The Big 6 update felt more like a Mid 6. For all the discussions we've had, the changes weren't really that big, they were medium ranged changes. Some of small updates were similar to the big 6 updates, all you need to do is make a tiny little change in a champion's passive and call it update, when I think half of us were expecting updates in the form of more one new spell/new passive that caters towards each champion's fantasy and their thematic/cohesive/unique aspects of their design. Zyra is the biggest disappointment of the update, especially after reading what 20thCenturyFaux had to say, followed by Cass. Not gonna comment if Riot did another failed attempt at the update, but I will say they made the entire update look bigger than it seemed, which is why why they were able to fulfill the Mage Update by 6.9 too, because the work isn't that major. If you think receiving texture updates or new base splash arts are a part of what makes the Big 6 update bigger than the rest, then I beg to differ. Just cause a champion receives model updates or new visuals, doesn't make them a bigger update than the rest, since their gameplay update is still minor, because afterall, the entire mage update was centered around gameplay, not visual/texture. Pretty much, the team put more effort in to constructing beautifully written sentences to convince us all the update is awesome, it's all just euphemism.