I don't think Riot's balance team made up of Silver support Lux mains have ever played Mid Lane

The changes to Doran's Ring in patch 8.9 and the reasoning behind them - that it's too easy to waveclear with spells - just shows how little Riot knows about mid lane dynamics.

Mages choose to focus on farming and clear waves because they can't kill the enemy laner. In a mage vs assassin match-up, the lane simply boils down to this: the assassin trades his health for the mage's mana pool in order to farm. Mages will poke assassins the best they can. But mages cannot burn through Zed's (Longsword +) 3 pots, or Akali and Kat's (Boots +) 4 pots, or Yasuo's Doran's Blade, or Fizz's Corrupting Pot, etc. At the same time, unlike mages these same assassins have no resource management issues or problems CSing under tower. So why on earth would mages even bother trying to kill them without jungler assistance? It's clearly optimal to just farm and waveclear with spells.

If you think this is unhealthy gameplay then how about giving these assassins some resources to manage? Or reduce the effectiveness of health pots, life steal, or health regen, or cough delete Yasuo cough? All the Doran Ring changes have done is force mages to back earlier because guess what, they still can't kill assassins so they won't even bother trying. You think mages are going to autoattack minions under their turret once they go oom when Zed can just W E Q proc TLD and kill them?

Or perhaps these changes were made because frankly no one likes watching Bjergson AFK farm with Ryze in the LCS.