A Reminder: Aurelion Sol Is Poorly Balanced

Let's set this on the table: I love Aurelion Sol. I enjoy his kit, his playstyle, and his sassy personality. I've earned Mastery 7 and climbed out of bronze with him- but having played him that much, there's a glaring issue with his balance. He's not necessarily too weak or too strong, but he leans on the 'feast or famine' dynamic that Riot has been slowly pulling from the game. While no, he does not have to be FED to contribute to a game, his success is utterly binary and often frustrating for either or his opponent. When you 'feast', you perfectly kite your opponent and take practically no damage, then use your Q to make sure they can't run. If they run inside your stars, you just ult them out and start kiting them while whatever got them close to you is on cooldown. When you suffer 'famine', it doesn't really matter what you do- your kiting can be on-point, but the opposing champion has a targeted gapcloser on a short cooldown, immunity to slows, hard CC, or the rest of their team also focusing you. They get inside your inner limit, blow your ult or flash, then get inside again. Your Q cannot hit them, your E resets on taking damage, and there are no options left to you whatsoever.

With Riot's stance on champion design STRONGLY entailing counterplay, I've got to say I'm heavily disappointed. Yes, Sol has counterplay- but it's binary counterplay. One set of champions is practically helpless against him, while he is helpless against another set. There's no such thing as a 'duel' with Sol- one of you is going to utterly destroy the other in a 1v1. In teamfights, Sol is similarly unengaging- you delete him first, or he sows havoc for your entire team with his W and Q.

The problem here is the balance of his kit. The team that designed it made the poor decision of piling too much of his power on his W and passive so that they didn't feel weak- but honestly, halving their base damage and doubling the minion execute threshold would do wonders for him because it would open the way to fix other parts of his kit that only work in optimal situations- again, poor balance/design. For example, Sol's Q has a delay that keeps him from double-tapping it like Anivia's, and that cuts out a bunch of cool flash plays in addition to making his ability to contest someone in melee range extremely unreliable. For another example, Sol's E loses stacks and drops him out of the air when he takes ANY damage from towers or champions, which bars him from plays that pass him over towers (which is a fair tradeoff, as he'll soak 1-2 shots for this) and again leave him with no options if the water gets too hot on him. Oh- and there's another example, for the last part of his kit; Sol's ult has been balanced to take a backseat to and support his W. It's a cool, simple ability- but a lacklustre one, because it too is balanced around his stars.

As a Sol player, I think all of his abilities are equally important to his theme, not just his passive/W. I would love to see it weaker, relegated to a low damage source primarily valuable for its ability to apply spell effects, while his other abilities got some love in return- double-tap and damage on his Q, E stacks only dropping when CC'd (or at least having a delay before it happens), R damage (and scaling) actually being relevant OR cooldown being much shorter. Having so much power stacked on his W simply does not match up with Riot's design philosophies OR Sol's character- getting past one barrier and being able to casually put the smackdown on him really breaks the fantasy of an untouchable, eternally graceful creator of the cosmos.

In conclusion, I think re-evaluating the power balance in Sol's kit is important to the long-term health of the champion, both to bring him in line with Riot's design philosophies and to fulfill the champion fantasy presented by his character- sure, 'boop.. Boop.. Boop!" is a real part of it, but being completely shut down the second 'boop' stops really doesn't deliver on that eternal, casual cosmic power that he totes around, whereas his stars being weaker and his other abilities resting more in line with them does- Sol has been around forever, waited millennia for Targon to so much as falter. His stars hitting someone means he has them right where he wants them, and Sol is definitely the personality to patiently chip an opponent down so long as that's the case, even deriving entertainment from it. What doesn't make sense is that the righteous fury for someone daring to touch him entails.. Dying, usually.