RPS-styled matchups are not fun

TL;DR: Safe picks are healthy for the game and there should be more of them

It's pretty obvious that some champions will naturally perform better against others due to the nature of the kit. However, it seems like Riot seemingly designs champions to have polarizing match-ups against one another (for example, Kassadin's passive that lets him do well against many AP assassins but perform poorly against AD ones). I'm not talking about classes having advantages vs one another; that's fine for a team game, I'm referring more to things like lane matchups, where one champion might have a 55% win-rate against another just by virtue of being a counterpick. This somewhat baffles me; as a game balancer myself, matchup even-ness is one of the things I actively strive for (as in, character-picking shouldn't be a game of rock-paper-scissors). While I do my work with fighting games, I would imagine that the same principle would apply with MOBAs as well.

Almost everyone I worked with believes that polarized match-ups are a balancing problem. To avoid this, they give characters well-rounded kits which ensure that they can perform consistently no matter who their opponent is. In essence, character/champion select, if done with competence, should have minimal impact on the likelihood to win. This is to ensure fair and fun matches. Riot seems to hold no such design philosophy. While safe picks exist, Riot isn't actively trying to make more characters become safe picks. Character bans are a superficial fix for the problem, but do not address the root cause of character design.

Here are a few examples of (intentionally or unintentionally) polarizing character kits that no one really seems to be addressing. Once again, I personally believe polarizing match-ups to be bad game balance because they skew the odds at champion select, so I will be talking about them as problems. I also give what I think would be helpful solutions to de-polarize their character kits.

- , as a laner, generally counters many squishies, but is countered by many tanky Supports. One way to make his performance more consistent is to change R to %Health based damage, so that he does worse vs squishies but better vs tanks. Of course, he'd still want to grab squishies, but not as much as before.

-In lane, performs well against tanks but struggles vs. ranged champions. One possible fix might be to make his E have longer range, but less angular spread and more wind-up. This would allow him more chances to engage vs. ranged opponents that stay far away. At mid-range, however, the added delay and lower width makes it harder to hook in melee opponents hanging around the front of the creep wave. The slight delay also offers more room for skill expression.

-As previously mentioned, struggles vs AD assassins but oppresses other AP assassins. To even out the match-ups, his passive could be changed from taking 15% reduced magic damage to taking 15% reduced damage from non-AA projectiles. Not only does make his passive less of a blatant and heavy-handed anti-mage mechanism, it also gives a chance for AD opponents to re-strategize their playstyles meaningfully.