Seriously, god forbid you don't play a champion to their maximum possible strengths, because even a terrible player building a champion correctly has a massive power floor above your power ceiling.
There are a hand full still, but over the past year or so, a couple of the really big names have just been gutted.
Oh, but those ekko builds almost as bad as AP yi, yeah, that's fine.
[zombie-brand-clap]
Sexy Jack Rabbit1 votesIt's kind of hard to figure out what you're referring to here?
?
These Champions have been dumpstered due to being too good at too many things.
It's better they stay in this state until they can receive enough work, to not make them too oppressive.
They kits are overwhelmingly unbalanced atm, I'd rather they be trash tier temporarily as opposed to god-tier permanently.
?
Ekko was dumpstered due to an unbalanced kit that is able to abuse a non-counterable playstyle.
He's receiving an update soon.
deadlychuck3 votesNo, i'm talking about not doing the most optimal builds on champions. There are a few champions that can still pull off these builds, but the vast majority have just been massively nerfed, or reworked with less mixed scaling, by riot, while they continue to let power creep with the optimal scalings, and mono-scaling champions.
AP 
(he's still really good though)
AD 
AD/AP 
AP 
AP 
AP 
AP 
AP 
(though, honestly he's probably still better than AD or tank lol)
There's really only a few AD variants of champions which have fallen behind, like 
, but i'd mainly attribute that to AD objectively being a more powerful stat than AP.
It use to be that you could have reasonable fun and solid games on these kinds of champions, but it's basically become impossible now, if the enemy are playing on a full keyboard with a build that they probably are copying from mobafire or probuilds.
RavenMagus2 votesAP Varus still works fine.
The rest... maybe not so much.
I agree though. I wish they'd quit nerfing offbuilds so hard. I guess it's only a matter of time before AP Ezreal dies as well...
Sexy Jack Rabbit1 votesThe objective in balancing is to have the champions play viably when built correctly, it's not to push you away from playing a troll build (yes, that is exactly what it is). These builds aren't 'unplayable' they just suck. But that being said there are a lot of discrepancies. AP Varus is 100% viable and works fine. AD Malz works for split pushing, but is objectively worse then AP because he is an AP champion and therefore balanced around that. AP Kog is coming back into meta right now, as is Hybrid Corki. As for the Rest they are pure troll builds, Poppy has one AP scaling on her W, so I don't know in what world you would build her AP for.
As for AD Variants; AD Soraka is a troll build made popular by that joke of a youtuber, it's not actually viable neither is AD Ahri, which came from a break-the-meta video. AD TF and Kennen still work fine (infact AD kennen was played in worlds), and AD Nidalee caused a lot of balancing issues in regards to bruiser and tank builds so it's only natural it was canned.
You're complaining about not doing well when you're building your champion wrong. It's like building full AP Nautilus and wondering why you're not tanky.
I'm not saying don't build your champions this way, but don't complain when they don't do well in comparison to others who are building their champions correctly.
None of these builds were ever viable, they were just cheesy and worked as a result.
deadlychuck2 votesI think you're miss representing and misunderstanding what i'm saying. Obviously these builds aren't expected to be at a 50% win rate on average, like riot tries to enforce with the champions as a whole. However, I don't think there is any reason for a champion who has a off optimal build, to be substantially worse (say sub-25% win rate on an experienced player) than the optimal built versions of basically all champions. The fact that variants have consistently been dropping in power, in many cases not even due to direct nerfs, is very telling of power and synergy creep in the game.
Also, as an Ex-Malzahar main, and very proficient at both the AP and AD play styles, AD malzahar is just objectively worthless now. His voidling are useless for killing towers now, and his damage is far too low and inconsistent now to be able to even protect himself against any lane opponent. The rework is an abomination of the AD and AP playstyles, yet because of the new voidling mechanics, the champion is far too dependent on scaling his damage, which his voidlings alone (in terms of AD) don't provide enough of.
dunder kill1 votesAP is the only way to play him atm. ADC Kog is Kalista level trash
deadlychuck1 votesOh, I understand, but it's the fact that they nerfed the living shit out of AP kog, despite having a fairly low win rate, during the marksmen update, then when they reverted the changes they left it in it's nerfed state. Specifically it's the changes to the R, which hurt it disproportionately to AD kog.