I Think Someone Needs To Say This....

This post will cover quite a few points: Lucian (particularly why he doesn't need to be nerfed at this moment), dark harvest, and the increase in mage supports / mages bot lane.

So first off, I am really tired of seeing the "omg, why has Riot not nerfed Lucian yet?! 54 percent win rate 34 percent play rate, so op," or something along those lines. The reasons Lucian is as strong as he his has nothing to do with the champion, it has everything to do with the fact that riot practically gutted crit and hard nerfed fleet footwork at the same time. Lucian, is a champion that does not depend on crit to get the job done, nor does he need ffw because he usually gets lifesteal on his first back plus he can reliably proc pta unlike most adcs.

See, before the Stormrazor and IE changes, Lucian only had a brief period where he was quite stronger than his laner. This was at the first item buy. Purchasing bork provides more dps and burst then purchasing IE first item, but that's okay as lucian is supposed to be a strong early-mid game adc. HOWEVER, once the enemy adc had both IE and Zeal, they were already outscaling lucian (assuming they didn't hard feed in lane). Now, it takes 3 items just to start to outscale lucian: storm, attk spd crit, and ie. This is the reason why adcs are in a bad spot right now, is because it takes them 3 items to actually start scaling and even whey do, their damage isn't even comparable to what it was when they spiked at 2 items. In other words, mid-late game as actually been hard nerfed.

Another reason as to why Lucians stats are what they are, is because this is the first meta in a loooong time, where all-in champs are the way to go. I'm talking Leona, pyke, braum, blitz, thresh, zyra, brand, and nautilus, are all hyper-aggressive supports that work really really well with lucian and make it that much easier for him to get fed. The only reason draven doesn't see similar results is catching axes is harder for the general LoL population, he is crit dependent as well, and Lucian has a bit more mobility to make it easier to escape ganks/ chase kills...plus Luc is flashier.

Something else i forgot to mention to about him, Lucian is generally perceived as a fun champion, even when his win rate is bad, his play rate is always relatively high. So when he is actually in a good spot, it just gets higher. Tl;dr, Lucian's current state is not because he is an overpowered champion, it's because so many changes happened at once that hard benefited him. These changes being a nerf to passive enchanter supports allowing aggressive supports to shine, hard nerfs to crit, and hard nerfs to fleetwork. Riot is working on changes to crit and other ad items, so lucian will probably see a drop in win rate once that happens.

Now, my second point, Dark Harvest Dark Harvest used to be a niche rune that only the likes of Shaco, MF, Rengar, and the occasional Kha'Zix took. By going this rune you were saying that you were going to powerfarm or that you were going to try and snowball as hard as possible. It was weaker earlier than electrocute but you were hoping to scale. The scaling on it might have needed to be reduced a little bit, but it was a fair rune imo.

Current Dark Harvest on the other hand, became what Old Thunderlord's Decree used to be, a rune that everyone took on every champion (with the obvious exception of a few), and honestly, even more champions were taking this in comparison to old TLD. So of course, Riot gutted it, like hard gutted it. Reduced the stacks you can earn almost in half, and cut the base down by 60. Now, it's a rune that no one really takes because in order for it be effective you have to be hard snowballing, so it's much more of a gamble then old DH even was. If people were able to get some stacks from jg monsters or big creeps, then I could see it being okay, but as it is now, it either needs to be reworked entirely or reverted to its older form with some slight nerfs.

Tl;dr Allow players to get some stacks off of jg monsters and minions, maybe not the full amount but like 3. If not that, rework DH entirely or revert with some nerfs.

Now, for my last point, I will be talking about the increase of Mages and Mage supports bot lane. So, in seasons past, people still took the occasional Brand, Zyra, or Vel'koz to support, but if you did that, you left your adc with less peels, heals, and shields, so it wasn't something that was seen that much. However, all enchanter supports have been nerfed so those peels, heals, and shields, are much less than they used to be, so the tradeoff for picking a mage support was lowered. Something else that needs to be taken into consideration, is the fact that because game time has steadily been dropping, the laning phase is much more important then it ever was and this is probably the biggest reason as to why have their has been both an increase in mages in the adc role and mages in the support role.

Mages are much more dominant in the laning phase than adcs or other types of supports, so it's a lot easier to get kills, zone off cs, poke, etc with mages. And currently most mages actually outscale a lot of the ad roster due to the crit changes and nerfs, while having a much stronger-early mid game, AND, due to the increase in damage they got to turrets awhile ago, they siege almost as good as adcs. This is why, if you watch high-elo streams (d3+), you will see a startling amount of mages being played bot lane.

I still believe, even after the nerfs to enchanter supports, they are still better late game as the amount of stuff they can provide for their adc is crazy, it's just that, we seldom get to that late game point. Even if we do, the gold deficit is so large that the game has already been decided.

Tl;dr I do not think mage bot or mage supports, are op, I just think nerfs to other things and buffs to them, have put them in too good of a position. I do not think they need nerfs, I think adc's need changes and enchanter supports need tweaks in their items and kits to help the adc a bit more early in the lane.