The problems I have with League's balancing.

(I realize that some of these opinions are pretty unpopular around here. I'm just going to say what I am here to say and then get back to my regularly scheduled memeing).

• Targeted Balancing

Ok, Riot.

You have tried to balance about 50/50 between normal play and competitive play.

That... just doesn't work. I am sorry to say that, I know your intentions are good, but it doesn't work.

Balancing for the "Average player" is just not a good idea. The average player is mid-silver, and don't take this personally, but balancing a competitive game around the lowest brackets is a horrible plan.

Balancing for the highest level of play may irritate the average player, and might chase away a few, but will overall force them to grow as players.

Balancing with both in mind leaves us with the current state of affairs, which is a compromise that no one really likes.

If the original designers of chess had designed the rules with low level play in mind, it wouldn't be the deep game we know.

If the NFL made rule changes to football based on the performance of the Cleveland Browns, they wouldn't be taken seriously.

In the same way, if you balance your game around low levels of play, the competitive scene will be a joke.

For example, take Stealth champions; particularly, Evelynn. Her stealth is a very powerful mechanic, and she used to be a fairly scary stealth assassin. However, you balanced her around solo queue instead of competitive. Nerf after nerf after nerf, until her ONLY redeeming factor was her stealth (and URF), Half the time, she isn't even played as an assassin anymore.

You could have balanced her around competitive play; nerf Evelynn slightly, but mostly balance her out by buffing COUNTERSTEALTH mechanics. Lower the cost of pinks, add reveals to some champion abilities, borrow the concept of DUST from DOTA.

"But that isn't good gameplay! You're saying that I HAVE to buy that item or pick certain champions against that champion? That's restrictive."

Yeah, it's called strategy in your picks and builds, and it's nothing new.

You build MR against Leblanc, Tenacity against Morgana, Heal Reduction against Swain.

You need to pick a safe mid against Zac. You need to pick at least 2 AP threats if the enemy has a Malphite or Rammus. You CANNOT try to run a composition to outscale Vayne.

In the same way, you buy detection against stealth.

But no, instead of having more ways to play around stealth on the receiving end, you appealed to the masses and just nerfed the stealth champions.

• Enforced Meta

Two things here.

First, Off builds have been slowly removed from the game; some because they were hard to balance for all levels (AP Tristana), some because they were innately toxic in all levels (Old Soraka Mid), some out of sheer negligence (AP Kog).

Second, innovation has been shut down quite a bit. The 1-1-2/1 lane configuration with a marksman and support has been the ONLY serious strategy we have seen since season one. There have been only two exceptions; lane swaps and Mordekaiser. Lane Swaps have recently been shut down entirely, and we all know how Mordekaiser went. While a part of me enjoys the streamlined nature of the new champion select, another part of me is sad that I can no longer innovate outside of blind pick.

There is no position in the queue for Rivershen.

Teambuilder preserved this freedom; you could say that you were seeking 5 mids and surprise the enemy with ARAM on rift. You could seek 2 tops and 3 mids, convince one of your tops to 2v1 bot, and then roam around the map with a pack consisting of Nautilus, Blitz, and Thresh.

• Rotation based balancing.

I don't need 3 paragraphs to say why this is bullshit.

"Sej had her time in the spotlight" isn't a reason to let her rot.

"Ashe has been shit for a while now" isn't a reason to make her OP as shit.