While I will not mention the name of the game, there was once a dev named Scott. Scott was in charge of balance. Scott paid no attention to usage statistics. Scott paid no attention to outcries on the forums. One time when he did nerf a character class, he nerfed it from the most OP one in the game (seriously, we're talking about press one button and win the level, broken-OP) down to the weakest where it remained for months after. Eventually it was buffed and then nerfed again. Sometimes equipment was buffed or nerfed. All for nonsensical reasons that could never be justified by math. For a while, the game was effectively P2W despite that being the opposite of the desires they professed. He also had a serious addiction to power creep. *That *is the worst balance experience I have ever had and that is also one of the primary reasons I no longer play that game. Eventually I posted a thread asking if Scott needed help. From the sounds of it, the entire balance team was him and three other people, two of which were were on his level in the company, yet he was expected to be able to enforce balance. Restructuring it so that the other devs in other divisions didn't have power to fiddle with balance and giving him underlings would have been ideal. Merely adding more cooks to the kitchen wouldn't have helped.
A similar rule likely applies here. Adding more balance people is likely to generate an excess of ideas. You need to have one autocrat at the top enforcing their vision or it won't work. The problems that arise of course are those that arise whenever an autocrat is involved in anything.
At one point in time, I was a dev for an FPS (I'm still actually listed as such on the forums). Before that, I was a modder for that game. As a modder, I would constantly crank out mods however I saw fit and would frequently discuss balance. The moment I was brought on board though, things changed because they had to. Like it or not, the communities of games hang on the words of their devs, so if you say something you'd best be prepared to explain a dozen different ways that it's your opinion or you'd better be ready to speak for the group. Since the team seemed to want to appear monolithic and in agreement and I had superiors, I was not the one speaking for the group so I didn't speak except on rare occasions. Even within the devs, I seldom felt fully enabled to talk.
Perhaps Riot has a similar situation to mine or to Scott's. I would suspect that there likely is a problem with too many people working together on equal playing fields and not enough autocracy. That said, those at the top likely need to focus more on listening to those below them. If the balance team was restructured in that way, maybe then you could add in a couple new people, but it'd just depend.
It has always struck me as odd how slowly some people make changes. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm obsessed with spreadsheeting, but eh...
