@Pwyff & Scarizard: I'm sorry, but the INTRO to the 5.4 patch notes is rage inducing...

There have been some doozies written in recent patch notes before but this one just takes the cake as far as spitting in the face of your customers goes.

Let me explain the gamut of emotions that I went though when the front page got updated.

First I looked at the Bard reveal, expecting him to be incredibly OP like all new champions are (he has potential to be) but as I read on, I thought, hey, as a support main, I might actually like this guy at the very least he's very unique and different. Good job Riot, I went from skeptical to happy and optimistic.

Then I read the patch notes, and the intro alone sent me into an instant fit of rage because of some of the crap Pwyff and Scarizard (though I'm mostly guessing Pwyff cause he's usually the one who writes them) had to say. Like literally I think my blood pressure skyrocketed instantly. Let's take a look at some of the crap they had the audacity to say:

"balance isn't a question of number tuning; rather, it's all about finding a healthy direction where that champ can prosper without getting paranoid about fame. Can you imagine a world where Veigar is the best - and most popular - champion in the game? That's a tough vision to sell for his opponents, and we want to make sure his success is warranted."

What? Like, I don't even understand this but I'll break it down every possible way I can to talk about how this is possibly the least appropriate thing to say to your paying customers.

#1 - "balance...is about finding a healthy direction where a champ can prosper without getting paranoid about fame." ~ I can only image that this means Riot thinks it's unhealthy for a champion to "get picked to the point where they crowd out other options." Seriously what else could "being paranoid about fame." Even mean here? Thing is, I patently refuse to believe that Riot actually thinks this is true when there's tons of "problem" champions like and among others that literally do crowd out other options that people have been complaining about endlessly. Sorry but I don't think you as a company are even remotely "paranoid about fame." I don't believe that at all.

Then we have to remember that this was being said about and .

I don't have to tell you that these champions have never been in danger of being "popular" or "crowding out" anything. They aren't gonna "get famous," especially when one of their biggest tools was just removed.

In fact, I don't have to look up pick rates to guess that if you added and 's pick rates together they probably aren't even in the top 50 most played champions. But I did anyway, and I'm right.

According to loldb, for the past month, if you add both of these champions together, they're collectively the 51st most popular champion coming in at a whopping 2.5% of all games across all regions. In fact they're barely above Rek'Sai, which they almost surely wouldn't be, if Rek'Sai wasn't the 5th most banned champion in that same time frame. (If you reduce the stat to ONLY mid-laners, then they're 13th out of 39 options, or at the last slot of the top 33%, and keep in mind we're talking about TWO champions combined here.) These champions weren't a problem. But you'd sure never know that coming from Pwyff and Scarizard.

#2 - "Can you imagine a world where Veigar is the best - and most popular - champion in the game? That's a tough vision to sell for his opponents, and we want to make sure his success is warranted."

~ Um...How is this statement ANYTHING other than a blatant insult to Veigar players? Hell even sometime Veigar players should be insulted by this. I'm pretty mad about this but I'll attempt to explain how this statement is completely misplaced and should never have been said, no matter what.

What if I can imagine a world where Veigar is the best and most popular champion in the game? (News flash, as I've already pointed out above, he isn't, nor is he even close.) Why am I wrong for imagining that?

You're telling me that if I could imagine this, or if I actually do imagine that Veigar is the best (i.e. if Veigar is my favorite champ, or even if I just happen to like playing him) that I'm wrong to think that? There is nothing else that can be implied by this. Literally there is nothing else I'm supposed to imply from this at all. A paraphrase of "Can you imagine a world where Veigar is the best - and most popular - champion in the game?" is "Thank God we nerfed Veigar, I hate that guy, you're welcome, everyone who isn't a Veigar player, we got your back, cause Veigar sucks and we hate him and the people who like him."

Now I'll admit it I main Veigar and I'm salty about the changes yes, but that doesn't change the fact that you should NEVER rub the fact that you just did something that some of your customers are unhappy about in their faces. It literally doesn't matter which champion you did this to or which changes you made. The patch notes are literally bragging about nerfing a character. That is ONLY going to be interpreted as a direct insult to the people who disagree with those changes, no matter how much of a minority those people may be.

And there's no other way to interpret that sentence. This would be like if McDonald's announced "So, we're gonna remove special sauce on Big Mac's for xyz reasons" then a month later when everyone who liked special sauce had time to adjust to it, McDonald's sent out a press release that said "Can you image a world where special sauce is the best and most popular sauce in the store? -- We sure can't!"

They might as well just come out and say: "God that would be awful, we'd have to put in on other sandwiches, people would ask for it all the time. Thank God we had the foresight to get rid of that awful trash a portion of our customers liked. Jesus, can you imagine if those people still liked special sauce? Goddamn that would suck for us. Thanks for shopping at McDonald's."

I'm OK with you making changes I don't agree with, I'm NOT OK with you rubbing it in my face and saying "here's some salt for that wound, buddy. Thanks for shopping at Riot Games." It is one hundred percent not OK to say this at all.

Oh but hang on, there's more.

What if I can't imagine a world "where Veigar is the best and most popular champion in the game?" Because he literally isn't.

Like, I can imagine a world where Veigar isn't the best and most popular champion in the game, it's called, the real, actual world, it doesn't take imagination to perceive reality.

So what does this change and why even say it? What if I am simply someone who likes Veigar just the way he is and I have no delusions about him being the best of the most powerful? (I postulate that this would put me in a group known as "the majority of players.") Then not only are you telling people they're wrong for liking Veigar (the people who can imagine,) but you're also telling people that they're wrong for accepting the status quo (the people who can't imagine.) Literally the only people who you're NOT insulting are people who have a huge hate-boner for Veigar, like you appear to have. And then you're completely appealing to those people because "nobody likes laning against Veigar amirite? This Zed/Kat/Akali player over here knows what I'm talkin' 'bout ;)"

What about the changes you made would even slightly push me toward the "imagining him to be the best champion in the game." You didn't buff him. He didn't get better, everyone already knew that before we read the patch notes. There was nothing to set up the "paranoid fantasy" about him being "the best champion in the game" so WHY EVEN BRING IT UP? Seriously, most people aren't emotionally invested in the state of Veigar. Your job is to give us a patch rundown, if you have to address the changes to him and Morde, just ADDRESS THE CHANGES don't brag about castrating a champion that almost nobody thought was OP to begin with, and then insinuate that your customer's who happen to disagree with you are wrong. Or maybe I should say: "Can you imagine a world where this type of customer relations interaction is the norm? - That's a pretty tough sell for our customers, at least, it is if we want to keep them."

....aaaand then there's this nugget at the end.

"As a random tip for success in your solo (or duo!) queue adventures, remember that sometimes it's better for everyone to do the wrong thing in perfect harmony than for one guy to do the right thing in angry isolation."

Once again: What!?

No really, what does this even mean? I can only guess and all my guesses add up to you guys sounding like strategically and tactically inept doofuses who don't know what you're talking about.

~ Possible things I can interpret this sentence to mean, because I've tried and this is all I got.

"The game is so much more fun when it's random! Just press buttons and see what happens!"

"Strategy is overrated, that one guy who's over there tryhard split-pushing when it's almost a certain loss is really being a negative nancy and you should just ignore him because he's wrong. Besides, who knows what might happen if he were to join you in the teamfight?"

"This game is all about luck anyway, at least it is now that everyone's hyper-mobile and everything's a skillshot, so start getting used to it, bitches!"

I started playing this game in 2012 and back then Riot was all "There's no such thing as the meta." Now 3 years later their customer interaction (at least in the patch notes) is all "Here's the new meta, you'll eat it and you'll LIKE IT you ungrateful bastards, who coincidentally, are wrong about everything."