First, thanks for taking the time to actually read what I posted. It is amazing how many people respond without actually giving thought to what was said. You obviously read it. Thanks!
Though I'd still say you aren't thinking it through ... I'll answer all of your points as well ... again, last point first.
I find this really, really funny, because attempting to make things balanced by making all the options players have similar is actually much more FPS-like.
I don't know what FPS games you play, but the ones I've played have a lot of variation between characters ... though it is done not so much with varying the "champion" but with varying the equipment they carry. Going from carrying a sniper rifle and being slow in reload to fast-fire quick reload (assassin vs. DOT champion the way things have been playing out more recently in LOL). There is a lot of variation in player equipment, and it does the same as what league has recently been doing. LOL is feeling more and more like a FPS all the time.
And my point is, you're ignoring that ARAM is fundamentally unbalanced because the Howling Abyss map systematically favors certain types of champions.
Currently the top win rate champions on HA are Galio, Sona, Tarric, Lux, Sion, Heimer, Ziggs, Mundo, Naut, and Teemo. Hmmm, tanks, support, ap carry, and marksman are all represented. Is there a champion type that isn't represented? Well, perhaps AD marksman ... Teemo is an AP marksman (his secondary role is ap)
On the rift the top are Brand, Rammus, Amumu, Malz, Mundo, Tryn, Voli, Miss Fortune, Skarner, and Tarric. AP carry, tank, AD marksman, You might say there is a little more variance because there is an AD marksman, but there isn't an ap marksman.
Seems the best champions might be different, but there isn't any class of champion that isn't represented in both.
Just so we're clear, you do realize that if assassins were going to be balanced based on Howling Abyss, we'd need to massively buff all of them, right?
No. You are thinking only of one way to balance. The idea of balance can be achieved by either raising one, or lowering the other. The other thing that I think you are missing is that assassins are NOT under-performing on HA any more than they are on the rift. The worst performers on the rift Nidalee, Ryze, Kha, Urgot, Riven, Rumble, Azir, Rek, Bard and Gragas. At lesat 5 of those are assassins. For HA the worst performing are Bard (useless in both locations), LaBlanc, Evelynn, Kha, Akali, Lee Sin, Rek, Rengar, Riven, and Kassadin (which I find hard to believe, I haven't lost a game with him yet). While HA seems to find a couple more assassins less playable, I would think that is more due to a problem between the chair and keyboard (like I said, I have yet to lose when I'm playing Kassadin ... he rocks on HA ... too much if you ask me). But I do admit, there is one (or two, depending on how you classify them) more assassins in the bottom on HA than the rift.
But the assumption that balancing them means they need a massive buff is NOT the only way to balance. Assassins are particularly vulnerable to hard cc ... so if you nerf hard cc, it isn't a massive buff to them, but they can do their job and not be the worst on both maps ... nerf the world of cc, and you buff assassins everywhere. But be careful ... yi on HA is way op if there isn't a hard cc to counter him (and that means he needs some attention in the nerf department as well).
You can't make a champion have the same winrate against every other champion, so the entire idea of this getting rid of counterpicking by balancing around Howling Abyss can't work.
This is so frustrating ... I don't believe that you can't make it happen. If an engineer doesn't believe he can do something, the chance of him actually trying and doing it is very small indeed. But people used to think that getting men to land on the moon was impossible. Those that did not accept that as true made it happen. In a sense, I give the engineers at riot more credit than that. If they were told that they had to do it, I fully believe they could do it. Because nobody thinks it can be done, and nobody says it must be done, then it certainly won't even be attempted. You can't do what you don't try to do ... that is for sure.
On top of that, picking and counter picking is a fundamental part of the design of a MOBA game.
Blind pick works on the rift as does team builder. Neither have the mechanics of pick/counter pick, yet it is also MOBA (at least it used to be). It isn't an all or none situation, and balance is NOT going to change the draft pick as some players do exceedingly well with really difficult champions (for example, my not losing on HA with Kassadin seems to be an anomaly from what I can tell).
So again, thanks for reading. THAT I appreciate more than you can possibly tell. And while I see what you are saying, I'd say it involves two major things that I find not necessary.
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Balance is achieved by buffing low win rate champions. That is only one way to balance, though it is the simplest (the mentality is throughout riot ... "we felt that ______ needed a little love...." has always been met with a buff instead of analyzing what they have been failing against, and nerfing that mechanic ... simple fix for yi would be nerf his attack, and make it so a single champion cannot be cc'd for more than "X" amount of time every "Y" seconds.
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If you can't see how something is done, it isn't possible to do it. I worked as an engineer for a company that had an order entry system that limited the size of they order that could be entered ... nobody could see a way to do it any differently than what had been done in the past, so they didn't try. My VP came to me and told me to find a different way, to come up with a different method. Engineer that I am, I didn't accept "it can't be done" and so I invented what had not been done before. What had been the limit on size (the time to figure out how to enter the order) was removed ... the largest order they had done in the past took 3 days to figure out how to enter it (from the paper sales order). The system that I invented took 15 minutes to enter, and found an unresolved error in the order while it was doing it. End result was $100 million increase in revenue. I don't easily take "it can't be done" just because nobody has tried to do it.
It may be that riot doesn't have engineers that can solve these problems, but I doubt that. I'm not the smartest engineer in the world, but given a task, I at least knew that you don't accomplish great things by doing the same thing again and again. You have to do something differently. If you expect a different result after doing the same thing ... well, isn't that one definition of insanity? :-D
Thanks again for reading.
