Hashinshin's points are correct. The reasoning behind those points is flawed, though. For example, it is true that laning phase has mattered less and less over the years and matches usually go 10-15 minutes laning and then 5-man deathballing. The reason for that isn't meta though. The reason for that is that people have learned that the easiest way to push the advantage of a taken turret is to move lanes and pressure others instead of splitpushing.
On the point of reworks - they are necessary. Champions like Mordekaiser will never find a place in the meta simply because there is nothing that the champion offers that cannot be found somewhere else. There are two options here:
- Leave that champion as it is at which point it becomes useless and could as well be deleted;
- Rework it into something more modern and hopefully it becomes something that can be played;
I for one would much rather see the old champions reworked as then we can at least see some new and fun mechanics that couldn't be seen in newer champions. The problem with Snowballs, Shrouds and Irelia mechanics is that it's overtuned. It has nothing to do with the mechanic itself and all to do with numbers. That brings us to the competency of Riot's Live Design (RLD) team which, as well all know, fucking blows at their job.
There are few popular theories on how the balance the game. Some say they solely balance it around the pro play but then we see stuff like "Reduce Karthus's mana cost on W by 30" which is clearly a soloq nerf. Some say that they only balance it around soloq which is foolish as on patch 8.19 Darius was buffed which was a clear target buff to pro-play. My theory? They have people on the balance team that solely buff / nerf champions that THEY find problematic. There is no logic, no strategy - only "I played Darius today, he seemed pretty weak, let's buff him" or "I saw Aurelion Sol destroy me in lane so let's nerf him". There are some really, really good patches but I can count them on the fingers of my right hand.
Conclusion: Releasing new champions is fine. I love new champ releases as they change the game up quite a lot. The problem that I have is with the balance of those champions and how they stay underpowered / overpowered for way too long. They also get changed up before people can realiably conclude whether the champion is good or weak as they throw a hotfix on it before that happens (a trend that has creeped up during this season).
