Why your champion got Olaf'd
For newer players, to Olaf a champion is to deliberately nerf the champion into low viability for the sake of minimizing the overwhelmingly negative impact of that champion on the game. The champion is assumed to be placed in this deliberate state until such a time they can be reworked.
Gnar
Having little control on your mega form can be a burden to players, but it's a burden to the balance team as well. Gnar suffers from seasaw balancing. His chaotic kit forces the developers to over buff Gnar's stats to keep him competitive. But that same kit can be too good when mega-gnar lines up perfectly making the enemy team feel somewhat helpless against Gnar when he is a meta pick.
Kalista
Kal is a weird champ who is too good in too many ways. Simply put, Kalista checks too many boxes.
Objective control, check. One of the best engages check. A lot of champion synergies, check. Pretty insane kite ability, check.
This non-damage aspects of her kit overrulled her damage aspects granting her the status of pick/ban for professional players. So when Riot decided her damage should be her weak point, soloqueue was not kind.
Tahm Kench
Two words, mechanic negation. Too many champions in league are entirely dependent on their ability to lock down a target and allow their team to initiate. Something Tahm Kench totally negates with ease. Giving a tanky support this ability was a mistake. Tahm himself is a difficult target to focus due to his tanky kit, leaving the enemy team with few options to engage on a single target.
Nunu
Gold funneling. NEXT.
Zac
Riot learned a hard lesson with Zac. zero-indication off-screen ganks are pretty cancerous. There you are top lane being nice and safe. You're not over extended at all, you're playing back because you know their jg is out there and can strike at any moment. Next thing you know, Zac's on you anyway and you're in the middle of a cc combo that gives your bruiser enemy top laner enough time to sort his mail before he walks over and casually collects his gold.
Syndra
It's one thing to go against a high dps laner. The lane phase can have its challenges, but Syndra's ultimately a very manageable champion to go against when balanced correctly. Her point-and-click nuke ult is frustrating, but not game ruining.
The problem is while Syndra's in lane, no one touching her tower. High wave clear was a serious problem in midlane. With proper vision and jungle support Syndra shoving most enemy's champion's back to the tower was not healthy.
On the same note buffing Syndra's damage would make her already high damage kit too oppressive to be healthy.
Irelia
Where to start with this pick. Irelia's original identity was a complicated thing. She was absolutely devastating to ranged opponents and somewhat competitive against melee opponents.
However when Irelia starts going mid, we know we have a problem. It means the two sides of this power imbalance between ranged and melee minions have gone off the rails.
Tact on the high skill ceiling on Irelia and what you end up with is a bunch of Irelia mains going on a tear whenever her winrate gets even close to 50%. Riot must have learned some things from Yasou, but clearly not a lot.
Ryze
The rework champ himself. Riot has an ultimately unsustainable goal for Ryze's identity. The machine-gun mage. No gap closers, no disengages. Just a lot of tank and even more spank. I honestly don't know why they're insisting on this design. All you end up with whenever Ryze is even remotely fed is an unkillable monster with no mana and infinite damage.
Here's to rework number six finally ditching the goku-esk power fantasy that is Meta-Ryze.
Orn
Orn suffers from the Kalista problem. Too many check boxes, not enough weaknesses. Riot anticpated this problem from the start and release Orn with some pathetically weak base stats.
Theeeeeeen buffed him over and over until he was an oppressive laner with powerful clear, massive tank stats, cc and one of the most impactful engage ults in the game.
Here's to you fuzzy, apparently there's such a thing to being designed too well.
Karma
karma's the anti-Orn and anti-Kalista. She in a sense checks a lot of boxes, but does nothing overly well. Having a single damage ability means that Karma lives or dies based on the vaibility of that ability doing damage.
The final verdict? It doesn't. Here's hoping her upcoming mini-rework will de-specialize some of her abilities.
Azir
Raising soldiers from the ground sounds like an extremely cool concept, until you realize the amount of mechanical skill that goes into doing anything with this.
Contrast that with the ease of something like Ahri's Q and you can start to see why Azir will probably remain in the gutter for years to come.
The only way to reward the mechanical challenge of playing Azir is to convert difficulty to damage. But when experience removes difficulty, all you have left is a kit with some pretty insane potential for doing damage.
Frankly Azir looks like a champion who belongs in another game. New Azir players are not going to have fun until they crank out a lot of Azir games, and experienced Azir players can't be properly rewarded for the challenge of their champion's kit without also imposing some Xin-Xhao on release tyranny on soloqueue.
