It was the Best of Time It was the Worst of Times

Right now, the league Meta is in a very interesting place. As always there are a few champions that just are a little too good for their own good and often feel a bit oppressive, but that's ok. Riot is working on it. The Meta as a whole however, has reached an Incredibly weird form of balance, so let's break it down.

First of all, balance as a whole is not an absolute measure, instead it is entirely relative from one point of balance to the next. Secondly, there is a lot (and I'm not kidding, it's a lot) of stuff in this game that feels REALLY strong. There are now so many new ways for tanks to hybridize and offer more to their team, so many strong 1v1 chanpions, there is an actual place for high micro play champs in the Meta, and there is appropriate counterplay to them. Riot has gone full committal to "here is the bar, let's raise everything up to it" philosophy of balance that very quickly absolutely everything is becoming so mind bogglingly game changing.

It's like every patch Riot has taken something or someone and looked at it saying "what stands between this champion/item and being absolutely OP" and just changed that about them. But here's the catch, if everything is OP, then nothing is. So, let's investigate

Start with tanks: Before the Season 7 tank item changes started coming out, tanks were boring. They kind of did there job and that was it. They either got ahead and become unkillable monsters CC locking your whole team or they became immobile flimsy champions who just died every fight. It was actually miserable, but now. Not so much.

With new tank items, there is simultaneously so much diversity and power in so many different paths. Tanks can become more team oriented, sticking close to and providing peel for ADCs or be more chaos oriented, flying into the middle of Team fights doing everything they can to cause mayhem and split up the teams. The best part though, is that Riot has given tanks the tools they need to choose something during the game to compliment or amplify parts of a kit to allow them to do what they choose. Now, a Garen can choose to stick to the Carries or charge in and itemize appropriately for the utility needed to do so.

That really is the heart of the issue "Utility". Riot has flooded the market with Utility for so many champion pools that need it. It has provided itemization diversity that allows creative use of passive and actives to give Champions drastically amplified strengths. As a result, the game flourishes.

Assassins are the best example of the "amplification" concept. Items such as Duskblade and Yommus (while until just recently were a bit strong numerically) amplify so heavily the needs and strengths of Assassins. They both provide mechanics to get them into and out of fights, to give them advantages in the first few moments of combat then fall off. It provides them a mechanic which allows them to become more effective against Squishies and reduced efficiency against tanks. While sure, a Riven with full lethality just one shotting the immobile Jhin feels real bad to Jhin, this is where the game gets real. Jhin can't power down the Riven. The Assassins exist to counter squishy high damage champs like Jhin who can sustain a fight, Bruisers and 1 v 1 based champs exist as a counter to the pressure and roaming of assassins, tanks exist as a counter to those Bruisers and divers, high sustained damage champs are the counter to tanks. They all exist like a giant game of rock paper scissors, the new items and tweaks serve as major amplifications of those strengths make the game far more clear cut BASED ON THE DECISIONS MADE IN CHAMP SELECT AND IN THE ITEM SHOP.

League is quickly approaching what is very much similar to something from DnD 5e called "Bounded Accuracy" everything is very quickly being limited with the numbers. Linearity is being eliminated with all haste and as a result the entire game is quickly becoming dependent on mechanics, utility, and CC. It's why so frequently, there are things where people shout "OP OP pls Nerf" as the Meta improves by all measures. The closer to perfect Riot gets, the more things will feel just dumb and nothing you can do about it but that's good. Because your teammates can. You can't fight the Jhin, but Camille can. You can't fight the Nautilus but Tristan can. Also, the more everything feels stupid strong at times, the more you get to feel stupid strong. Every role now has something about them where they can just feel insanely powerful in certain circumstances and the game is rapidly evolving towards being far more team reliant, fresh, and just in general, more fun.