Skillful Item Usage
There seems to be a buried grudge against skill-based items at Riot Games. In recent memory, they refused to make Duskblade of Draktharr an active item, then stripped the active away from Muramana, and now are seeking to dumb down the active of Quicksilver Sash (QSS). This steady decrease of skill and knowledge required to play the game at a high level is the beginning of a worrying downward trend.
Let's start with the most recent and relevant change-to-be: QSS. In its current incarnation, QSS removes all debuffs and crowd control (CC) in the game. However, Riot is seeking to make the item remove only CC and not affect debuffs.
Just to give some perspective on how gargantuan of a change this is, the following is a non-exhaustive list of things that would no longer be affected by QSS: Anivia Frost debuff, Brand passive, Corki E, Braum passive, Cassiopeia poison, Darius passive, Diana Moonlight, Ekko passive, Fiora ult, Fizz ult, Gnar W passive, Jhin Caught Out debuff, Kalista Rend passive, Kennen passive, Kindred E, Kog'maw Q, LeBlanc Q, Lee Sin Q and E, Leona passive, Lucian W mark, Lux passive, Malphite E, Malzahar E, Mordekaiser ult, Nidalee passive, Nocturne's ult's vision denial, Quinn Q, Singed Q, Sona W Power Chord, Tahm Kench passive, Talon Q bleed, Teemo E, Tristana E, Trundle ult, Twisted Fate ult reveal, Twitch passive, Urgot E, Varus W, Vayne W, Vel'koz passive, Vi W, Vladimir ult, Warwick E, Zed ult, and Zilean Q.
Removing QSS's ability to cleanse off all those debuffs heavily removes from skillful use of the item in clutch situations. Imagine being the last one alive on your team after a teamfight and dueling a Lux, the sole survivor of the enemy team. It takes a very level head and good game knowledge to know that you can use QSS to cleanse Lux's passive, almost guaranteeing that you win the fight. Imagine being chased by Nidalee and denying her long-range pounce reset by QSS'ing her passive mark at the last second. As it is, there are so many options for high-level play with QSS, and Riot is seeking to strip away every aspect of it.
From a game design standpoint, it destroys QSS's unique identity and the special decision paradigm that it presents to players who buy it. Do I hold my QSS for an important debuff, like Zed ult? Do I need to instantly QSS the first CC that hits me? These are questions that a player has to ask themselves when and only when they purchase a QSS, and there's no reason to take away from the item's identity.
This brings us to the larger issue of skill-based items. As the game is currently designed, items are stat bundles first and skill-based items second. Every single item in the game grants stats, and the number of passive items exceeds the number of active items by far. For those who think that it's only natural for an item to give stats, see DoTA 2's Blink Dagger, an item that is literally nothing but an active and entirely reliant on skill to be impactful. Turning items into buy-and-forget passive or stat-only items detracts a huge amount from high-level (ie professional) play while not really helping bottom-tier, unskilled players improve their gameplay in any conceivable measure. Subtracting skill from the game is literally bad for everyone at every level of play.
Pros have fewer options and can do less and figure out fewer plays.
Middle-tier players have nothing to look up to, since pros no longer have options.
Low-tier players have no room for growth or learning beyond basic mechanics and game flow, since extra skill doesn't exist in items.
Riot needs to understand that removal of active items, and consequently skill, from the game is immensely damaging to gameplay at every level. Simplifying a game that is good purely by merit of its complexity is absolutely the wrong path to take, and if the current trend of simplification and pendulum-based balancing is to continue, League of Legends will soon begin to decline with alarming rapidity—if not in playerbase and viewership, then in quality and merit.