Ghostcrawler:"When you start League pick 1 or 2 champs you feel excited about"(until we rework them)

That is exactly what I did. When I joined League during season 3 I was really excited about Malzahar. I loved his purple cape with the runes and he had something mysterious about him because you couldn't see his face and he was a Prophet of the Void who once used to be human. So I tried him and I loved his kit as well. I loved how his kit had synergy and it turned out his entire kit was a big combo when played right to kill an enemy. He could do so many fun things like controlling the pace of a teamfight with his zoning and silence and mechanically he still had a lot of things going on and he was all about decisionmaking, correct positioning and timing your spells.

Same goes with Taric. His kit had a ton of synergy and I loved his personality. He was so casual and flamboyant people underestimated him. I bought his pink skin witht he fluffy boots because it looked hilarious on him. I legit mained him toplane as a tanky fighter. Every champ select I would get flamed for picking him but ended up surprising everyone.

I started to main both champions and 2 years later I was a OTP midlaner Malzahar and OTP toplaner Taric and peaked at diamond 2 100lp. It felt satisfying maining unpopular champs and performing well with them. I had over 500k mastery points on them before they got reworked. Back then it was considered a huge amount. It has been almost 3 years since their reworks and I have played less than 5 games with both of them ever since. I hate their reworks. Both champs that got me into this game no longer exist.

You said: We owe it to players to fix champions who aren’t interesting to play, who lack counterplay, or who just feel outdated", and " this isn’t a single player game where it’s okay to let someone have an overpowered character just because it’s fun for them."

Don't you owe it to keep your hands of champs who people actually enjoy and aren't ruining the game? Both champs were very fun to play and had their dedicated playerbase. I even teached people to play both champs and we had discussions about their builds and when to pick etc and from the Malzahar group everyone has quit the game and the Taric people have moved on to other toplaners. Both had a lot of counterplay. The fact they didn't get nerfed for 3 years and even got some buffs says enough. In any case especially compared to today's standard from the likes of Zoe, Camille, Pyke, Orn, Aatrox, Xayah, Rakan, Fiora, Irelia and more they can't be considered overpowered. Then why did you released those champs but took away Malzahar and Taric from us? Because it seriously contradicts your design philosophy.

In any case Malzahar is now in many ways a problematic toxic champ for both pro play and soloQ. His rework has been an utter failure with only costs and no gains but everything about him as been said in multiple threads already I am not going to repeat. While other champs who's reworks weren't near as bad got reverted he has not. Even though I hate Taric's rework because he is super boring to play (1 out of 5 abilities actually interact with the enemy and he is super predicatable at everything he does) I acknowledge that probably more people play him now than back in the day but still, if you wanted this support Taric 2.0 you could have released him as his brother and leave Taric as he was because for me and many others back then he was very fun to play and he wasn't problematic for the game at all so his coexistence wouldn't come with any costs and we would all have gained.

TLDR: And wait until Riot reworks them into something completey different and you lose all excitement from playing them.