Problem with reworks and such

So, I'm not gonna write this whole thing in formal language. Excuse me for that. TL;DR-ish at the end.

I'm mostly gonna talk about bad stuff that happened this patch, but don't get me wrong, overall this changes were better than average, some were bad, but most were good.

Boards is filled with negative feedback. Players are complaining about unnecessary changes, that have ruined champions, (Viktor is a great example) and overpowered buffs (Malzahar represents this category). Items are messed up... stuff like these.

Bla... Bla... Bla...

Classic new patch, right?

NOPE

First of all, we can all agree that REWORKS are great stuff. We've seen Sion, Poppy, Karma, Taric brought to the daylight. Imagine League right now, if none of those champions were updated. You'd have a green dude running around getting kited to death, little midget having as much power for first 20 minutes as a Cannon Minion, Old Karma (Everything is said right there) and gem guy with feet bigger than body and visuals and abilities not matching the personality players wanted. I'm not gonna go too deep in explaining why reworks are necessary, let's just agree on that.

Now who can judge a game balance and stuff like that better: Group of professional game designers or huge playerbase? Debatable... Debatable because looking in numbers, stuff might seem fine, but in-game it's a different story. X is balanced because he can't do Y and is counterable by Z. Only to realize that in-game Y isn't even important and Z is very hard to pull of (A.K.A. just cc Master Yi and he will die, or just dodge skillshots and Lux won't be able to kill you... it's not that simple). Balance team will have better understanding of numbers, while players have advantage at in-game stuff. Now I'm nowhere near competent enough to make a decisive conclusion, so I'm just gonna live that up to Riot.

Back to the topic: Why fix something that's not broken? this has been one of the most asked question on boards since forever and Riot seems to keep doing it. Let's take Viktor and say... Cassiopeia and talk about these ones. Viktor was a pretty balanced champion. moderate burst (yea MODERATE, nowhere close to Leblank or Syndra, but more than Twisted Fate or Orianna), huge AOE and zone control, little to no mobility who was... you know... fun to play as and against (not as one dimensional as someone like Master Yi or as complicated as Azir). We also had Cassiopeia. Champion intended to be a late-game beast, who, after the first rework, turned out to be super strong at every stage of the game. She was kind of complicated, but rewarding at the same time. Problem was, there was no balanced state for her. Either she was basically a better version of ADC, same if not more DPS, in addition to CC and zone control, or not much other than annoying snake derping around the map poisoning people. This was due to her kit being too "unique" to balance just by changing numbers, so they decided to give her another rework.

Now, Was Cassiopeia rework a good idea? Absolutely Were Viktor Changes a good idea? Not really.

See, problem here is that, Cassiopeia needed some changes, as she was never gonna be a champion like Janna, Sivir, Renekton, Rek'Sai, Lissandra... champion who is always a viable choice for high or low level solo or team play. But Viktor surely was in that state.

Approach of "if most of the champions need changes, let's change EVERYONE so that no one stays outdated" is wrong, but sadly that was the case for both class reworks.

Exactly what happened during Marksman update. Miss Fortune, Quinn and Ashe, who clearly needed to be updated, were made better (well... kind of... you get the point). We can all agree that Tristana, Caitlyn, Corki and Kog'Maw changes were good. here's where is started to get little weird. Urgot was untouched (like... why?), Varus, Ezreal and Sivir were untouched (Yea, I guess these guys weren't that bad after all, but I wouldn't consider the good either). Jinx... Change to her rockets was awful. Champion, being one of the strongest for last couple of months was just gone. Phshew!.. Classic example of something "has" to be changed, so let's just press some buttons and hope it works out. Nothing had to be changed there (yea, don't tell me that she was OP and that was just a small nerf and meta was changed, which played big part in her case, and stuff, she never needed that. Now she took the place of Caitlyn on the island of WhyWhouldAnyonePickTheseChampions). And then we had Graves. What... Who... When... Why... He was a cool dude, who was a pretty damn fun to play, with some unnecessary abilities (Such as passive that made no freaking sense), definitely playable champion. Riot could've just changed the passive and tweaked the numbers little bit. But, they reworked him, everyone was excited, a month passed, everyone was angry, because he was too strong. Now he's very popular and very weird in terms of balance state. He's considered balanced because no matter how good or bad you are there's cap to both "Suckage" and "Ownage" a player can pull of with this champ. Nowhere are complicated as Azir, nowhere are simple as Master Yi, nowhere as something as someone. You can't be like Lux and miss every skillshot and deal total of 57 damage to an enemy (by accidentally auto-attacking, just because you didn't click anything and champion did that on her own), neither can you outplay the crap out of everyone like DABURIFTUUUU... Weird and unique champion and classic example of unnecessary rework, which turned out to be better than I expected. I guess...

Viktor became the mage version of Jinx (seemingly small changes, that affected the "feeling of smoothness" (I really don't know how to explain that in words, but those Viktor and Jinx mains out there will understand this), Cassiopeia -- Quinn (much needed and not so bad one), Kennen -- Caitlyn (minor buffish changes, that should bring the champion back to the daylight) and Malzahar - Miss Fortune (from trash to op who's gonna get trashed soon). Thankfully we didn't really have Graves in mage rework, so that's a step forward (that's just my opinion, OKAY? I liked old Graves more...).

TL;DR Some Champions didn't even need to be changed, while some were changed/buffed too much and this was said during the PBE testing, but for some reason no one listened. But don't get me wrong, most of the champions are better than they were in patch 6.8 and that's Great. Just like the Marksman Update.

Problem isn't the fact that mistakes were made, this will always happen. Problem is, SAME mistakes were made. Please, take some screenshots of boards before you release another class update, Riot.