Who set the standard that "inconsisent, but average" was good design?
Seriously League and numerous other games have moved this direction with their development philosophy over the past few years, where they seem to think that the probability of something can be considered a viable mitigation mechanism for power.
A few examples. (As an ability) If an ability lands, let's say, 20% of the time while dealing 200 damage = An ability landing 100% of the time, dealing 40 damage
(As a champion) If a champion wins, let's say, 50% of the time, by either a massive margin or a massive deficit = A champion which wins 50% of the time by a narrow margin of victory/loss.
I don't know what game, which dev, or even exactly when, this started to be considered good game design, but it needs to stop. I get that you can abuse that inconsistency to create simple dopamine rush similar to a big win in gambling, but it's not good game design.
A game can have a lot of variance, with minimal inconsistency. What matters is having a large variety of game states.
in his inventory deals the same amount of dps as champions with just more flat ad. but they do so inconsistently. they will deal significantly less damage most of the time, until all of a sudden they deal a massive amount of damage and win the same fight that they lost 4 times just by random chance of getting two crits in a row. its one of the reasons why people hate laning against tryndamere. it feels more like you get beaten by RNG because he randomly crit you 3 times in a row on a level 2 trade, than that you got beaten by the enemy player.
is an entire champion who is designed around this concept of being average with massive variance with his passive. he either decisively wins and destroys entire games, or hes a complete trash can because he never gets to cash in on his passive and just keeps losing his stacks. on average he might have a 50% winrate, but that winrate is a result of half the time stomping to the point where you can do little to stop him or getting stomped to the point where hes never relevant throughout an entire game.
Either, he's going to get ahead, and will easily go 15+ kills rolling over anyone he passes, or he will not get ahead and would struggle to break even on kills to deaths.
Q, it's a very small skillshot which has a very long travel time, meaning it's probability of landing is low, so to compensate this they approached the design as it being necessary to make it hit like an absolute truck.