The difference of three years of League
**Three years ago: **Games take too long, tanks are impossible to kill, towers make non-tank divers irrelevant, trying to defeat a tank as anything that's not a tank is like trying to stop an angry bull with a wet noodle, buff adcs, buff mages, buff assassins, buff everything that's not a tank because tanks are broken!
Now: Damage is too high, games are too short, tanks die too easily, buff towers, nerf all damage, give everyone more resistances!
If anything resembling balance was to be achieved, I'd beg Riot not to listen to the community in the current state that it's in. There's plenty of valid points being made about balance, but they're by far drowned out by hyperbole, nonsense, and circlejerking.
Nerfing all damage solves nothing. Instead, skirmishers and tanks just dominate everything, the majority of mages, assassins, and marksmen, as well as half of fighters, just get nerfed out of relevancy by said change. Flatly buffing towers is a nerf to squishier divers, while being an indirect buff to tanks and skirmishers. And doesn't actually make them last much longer. Tanks just start commonly taking demolish again and trample down turrets with impunity.
Reverting runes reforged also doesn't fix the problem. Skirmishers stay strong, weak champions stay weak, turrets either stay weak or invalidate squishy divers completely. Runes do need to be tweaked though, since a few are a bit too strong early on. Same story with items, some need to be tweaked or reworked.
And the only way to truely solve the current champion issues is to just give the top tier champions love taps/small nerfs, not just damage numbers changes, and give champions that just simply aren't up to par micro-reworks/kit adjustments to address aging problems until they're around the same relative power level as other champions.
A number of good nerfs are not damage numbers nerfs, but cooldown nerfs. An example nerf that'd go a long way without directly touching damage numbers: A 5 second flat per champion cooldown that cannot be reduced on Kai'sa's passive.
