"It's easier to nerf than it is to buff"
Apparently, it's ok to completely destroy a champion with nerfs (ex: olaf) but the game will fall into complete chaos if we give weak champions buffs.
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Giving weak champions buffs is easy. Riot does it all the time.
So long as there are OP champions, giving weak champions buffs will not change the meta unless you overbuff them. That's the basic problem.
If a champion is really weak they're probably left that way since they're cancer and need a rework.
...Well, yeah. Literally what you said, but without the sarcasm.
If you completely destroy, say, Yorick (because when he's too strong he's literally unbeatable), then you still have 120 or so other champions available.
If you took Urgot and buffed him a little more than was sensible - if you "overtuned" him, as they like to say - then you'd have Urgot who's strong and everyone else who you can basically score based on how well they match up against Urgot.
One situation, you lose a tiny fragment of the game's playability. The other situation, you warp the entire playing field to the point where nothing matters but the champion in question.
If they just did the opposite of that Zed love tap. Small buffs every patch to lower tier champs till they see stat changes.
There are two separate issues when discussing Riot's balance tendencies
- Whether you nerf/buff the outlier to the rest of the pack or nerf/buff everyone to the outlier
- Whether you spend your time balancing the strongest champions or the weaker ones
Riot addresses #1 all the time when they talk about avoiding power creep, but this only suggests Riot should nerf OP outliers and buff UP ones, not that you can only use nerfs. Riot's tendency to do that comes about because of #2 - your balance changes are more effective if they affect the stuff that actually sees play. Nerfing Zed (if you can call that lovetap a nerf) is a lot more impactful than buffing Urgot because Zed is in a lot more games.
Now beyond the obvious conclusions of those 2, Riot also saves themselves a lot of work by keeping the top tiers of champions small, as they then have fewer of these champs they need to balance relative to one another (they're less pressured to balance the Urgots of the game against their tier). Riot's solution for Urgot and his friends is to remake them, and introduce them to the game in the same fashion that all new champs are introduced: OP. From there, Riot can tweak the champion to have them fall in line with the rest of the top tier, and so on... One obvious benefit of building the top tier in this way is that it nets them more revenue (contrast that with just buffing Urgot a bit).
I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying I would do it the same way, I'm just saying it's probably why Riot does it this way.
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Apparently, it's ok to completely destroy a champion with nerfs (ex: olaf) but the game will fall into complete chaos if we give weak champions buffs.
In terms of game health. Champions who don't have enough levers to fine tune champs can't be good. Considering that the difference between the Sona QQ threads and the Save Sona threads, was over a slight damage nerf on her passive, and an MS nerf.