@Riot, can we talk about "fun?"

So, I've been trying to write this pretty much ever since Patch 4.20 was put out on the PBE... I've been really frustrated about this, and it was hard to write without blaming, accusing, swearing, etc, and I honestly just gave up a few times. Earlier on, it honestly didn't feel like Riot was reading the forums (Save me Repertoir Senpai QQ) and after Athene's buffs it didn't feel as necessary and I just let it fade away a bit. Now Pre-season 6 is rolling around, and Mages are being nerfed. Again. What a completely surprising turn of events that I definitely didn't see coming. /end30minutemonologue,actualpoststartshere

You want to know what's not fun? Laning against Yasugi, feeling absolutely hopeless because he's just going to infinitely shove the wave with all of these resources he doesn't have to manage, not really able to do anything because Riot decided Yasugi's counterplay "isn't fun." And this goes on until I inevitably run out of mana, and am forced to back as Yasugi takes my turret while I choke myself on all of this irony. And now, I'm pretty sure many of you are assuming I want Yasuo to be nerfed. Except I don't. If you payed attention, my problem isn't that I feel Yasuo is 'broken' or 'OP' or even unfun. My problem is that Riot nerfed his counterplay, and now playing against him makes me want to dig my fingernails out. Kind of like what happened to Zed.

That's how counterplay works. I get it, I hate splitpushing. It's boring as hell having to babysit one of the side lanes because one person decided they don't want to play the game. But I don't come onto the forum's complaining for it to be nerfed. Why? Because I understand that, while I don't like it at all, counterplay is a huge balancing point that stops my favorite champions from becoming overpowered to the point that they require nerfs. Splitpushing serves a very healthy role. It allows early game champions to skillfully bypass their late game weaknesses if they fail to gain an early lead. It's the reason why the game isn't completely won the moment my Orianna makes it through a laning phase against Zed. It helps Champions that fell behind early farm their way back into the game. Asking you to remove it from the game because "I don't like it" and "it counters my champions" would be a load of crap.

I get why. It makes sense that early champions wouldn't enjoy playing against an opponent smart enough to not feed them. But passive laning was the reason why we were able to have strong lane bullies and strong late game hypercarries succeed in the same game state. Trying to remove it has made Early and Late game mid laners too difficult to balance, to a point that a formerly healthy (albiet, somewhat frustrating) champion became extremely unhealthy and had to be nerfed tremendously. The idea of removing Passive laning means setting the game up so that the ability to 1v1 the best duelists in the game becomes required. That's completely unfair, and destroys Strategic Diversity. Basically what happened after patch 4.20: , hell even the other roles were counter picking mid. (top)

At the end of the day, None of these things are worse the being told you can't play your favorite champion because of poor balancing decisions. It's not worth getting rid of passive laning if you end up ruining several champions by doing it. It's not worth getting rid of passive laning if you end up having to nerf the early game champions you were trying to promote by getting rid of passive laning. Speaking as someone who has HATED Zed ever since he was released, especially his ult... Riot, if you actually want Strategic Diversity, the best way to get it is to Buff mana regen... And then revert the nerf to Zed's ult. And Balance the jungle items. And I have no idea what the hell to make of bot lane with all of these item changes. But please, do it for the Diversity. Because you should get your favorite champion! You get your favorite champion! https://media.giphy.com/media/O8YLhqcVt8DZK/giphy.gif (But please leave Leblanc where she's at... She legit needs a rework...)