This patch missed the mark

This reflects my personal opinion about the patch, I am just a everyday player (who has probably spent more time playing the game than the balancing team, balancing the game)

So! Happy new year everyone, welcome to League of Legends and the first patch for this year! This patch will surely have fixed all the balancing issues we had last year, right? Well...let's talk about this

So, patch 10.1, let's take a look at the changes First of all, Sett is just live, please do not play him at Ranked without any experience but other than that, he is fine. Maybe a bit too strong on the true damage but he is alright.

Then, second in line, Aphelios! Finally a nerf! Now will this keep him at a lower winrate? Well...no. Aphelios has been strong for multiple reasons like how his kit has a way to counter every Adc (Range vs Close ranged ADC, Burst damage vs dps ADC's (Like Ashe) etc) and how he does that while having no mana to keep him down nor being weak early on to be counterable by early game ADC's. However, these nerfs are not bad. His reduced health is alright, his reduced movement speed is also alright and his 1 click pentakill Infernum ultimate is also a very welcome change. However, as I said, the ideal would be either a increase in mana costs to make him easier to fight earlier on, or an overall reduce in every gun other than the rooting one.

After Aphelios, next nerf comes to Aurelion Sol. Alright, now you are just straight up bad at balancing. Aurelion Sol, before his mini-rework, was a quite weak champion (mostly due to the burst meta) but who at the right hands was also extremely good. Then to make him better at the burst meta, you turned him into a long range burst damage mage and from a champion that had minimal balancing issues, he became a balancing nightmare who you just had to nerf (and you still do because this is not the changes he needed). If you wanted to make him better to play against and make him feel better to play as, you would just revert him (just like the playerbase wanted) and give him a increase in base armor.

Things not going too well right now for the balancing team huh..Ok, keep your hopes up people, maybe the next will be good. And...its Azir. Riot, you are playing with fire right here. "He was not so good at pro play so we are buffing him"...you never learn do you? So, Azir, a champion created almost exclusively for Pro Play and he did quite well there if well means, destroyed everything in Midlane for very long time. So, you are buffing his ult which is a extremely good buff at Pro Play. Why you ask? So, usually, at high elo competitions (Lcs, worlds etc), usual midlane picks are mages. Azir does very well against mages due to his ability to outlane most of them with his poke and his range. However, at lower elo, he is non existent due to the high presence of Assassins. So, these buffs will again, give him a lot of strength at Pro Play, just like you wanted, however, they keep him still weak at lower elos and even in high elos, with Katarina, Fizz and Akali being very powerful he will again, be easily counterpicked. All in all, if your intention, balance team, was to make him a stronger Pro Play pick, you failed.

After Azir, we have Corki. This might honestly be the only reasonable (for me at least) buff in this patch so...congrats..I guess

(Jax is excluded due to that being a damned bug fix, not a buff)

And Jayce...oh boy. So, You are straight up buffing his Q damage....oh boy. You wanted him to be stronger, right? So, you just give him more damage while the entire point League has caused the playerbase outrage is the burst damage being so damned strong! Wanted to reasonably buff him? Good, first you need to give him an identity (add him to the list with Sona and Karma), want him to be someone who can fight tanks like you have intended him to, or you want him to be a anti fighter champion? If it is the first, you would give him less damage in his Q than you gave him now and reduce his overall mana cost on Q, by 5 and increase his mana regain on auto attack from W by 2. Boom, there you got a reasonable buff that will still give him counter potential and increase his presence. So, another fail

And Kalista....you guys have no idea what to do with her do you? Frankly, neither do I but I am not so sure the Kalista mains will be happy with this buff and will have many better suggestions on what you could have done than your balance team geniuses have.

Kassadin. Riot, come on! Do you really think that a -5 speed nerf will do anything to keep him down? "Nerfing his roaming and escape potential to target players that are all over the place and go unpunished" and you do this with -5 speed? So, instead of nerfing his damage, which is the biggest reason why he has such a big winrate and banrate. Damage, mana, sustain, mana regain on W, everything, would have been way better than this! A tiny nerf that will not do anything to keep him down. Another fail

(Kog'maw excluded because it is just a display update, not a buff)

Oh my...this is bad. So, Mordekaiser. A Juggernaut that made his way midlane while at the same time being a dominant Toplane pick. This is indeed a good nerf for Midlane where we will see his winrates going down soon (at least vs mages). However, he will STILL dominate Toplane because most Toplane champions do NOT poke! Every, single, Melee champion will still lose to him because you did nothing to nerf his damage or his insane sustain! With these changes you might have targeted his smallest problem of all because as I said, not a single melee champion could trade vs him and they won't be able to do so now.

Nami is just helping the damned burst meta with this changes and hey, ADC's good luck vs Heimerdinger Nami botlane because Riot doesn't know what they are doing.

They are overbuffing Sejuani which a good balancing decision to counter the AD picks at Jungle but you know....Ekko...Shaco...Ivern..Elise...yeah..

Shyvana will still be irrelevant and if she is picked she will still be picked for full AP so she still has no identity (another one for the list)

Sylas.. You guys do not learn from your mini reworks, do you...this is just sad. Alright, I first looked at these changes from Twitter and guess what the community's opinion on this rework is when everyone hated it while it was on pbe...yeah. A failure of a rework removing most of his skill expression and his originality and turning him into something that will be played more Toplane than midlane and unless this was your intention from the beggining, then you failed again.

Those are the champions I personaly had comments on because I had played them before (except Kalista but I want to hear people opinion on this one) and for me, this patch has been a failure just like most other recent patches.