ChampUp and #uniqueplaystyles
When ChampUp started I was under the impression that the primary goal of the project was to update kits that were lacking or missed the mark of what they were supposed to do. To put it simply, I thought the goal was to help champs do what they were known for better, or give champs that didn't have a clear direction something based on what the few people playing the champ enjoyed about them. Recently I have had to reassess this conclusion, as I have seen time and time again that a large portion of the reworks are basically aimed at giving champs a #uniqueplaystyle.Most of these "updates" often ending up leaving the champions in question with the same problems, but one or two abilities with so much frontloaded power that it forces you and your opponents to play entirely around said abilities. Kog's w, Morde's q/w passive/dragon on release, Fiora's passive and ult, Darius's q and noxian might, Skarner's passive on release, Gangplank's barrels, and Ryze's passive all come to mind. Even old updates had this happen (the Cass update comes to mind) but they were universally considered a failure and it was my hope that mistakes like them would be learned from and avoided. I'm not saying that champions shouldn't be updated, or that all recent updates are terrible. I'm a giant fan of the Poppy, Sion, and Quinn updates(which avoid this trope), but many of the bad updates are simply taking a champ and tacking on an abusive ability that feels #unique. Arguably Morde, GP, Fiora, Skarner, and Ryze needed work on a similar scale to what they got, 2 of which will be worked on again because the fact that the tacked on power needed to be nerfed, two who are just generally not fun to play against because you can't effectively build against them, and one who is basically in the spot he began in but with a minigame. The main problem with these updates is that you have to balance a champ around unbalanced abilities, leaving them fluctuating between too strong and too weak depending entirely on one ability. The updates that have been successful overall generally avoid this and instead focus on the synergy of the kit. Honestly, it wouldn't bother me that much is it were just horribly unbalanced champs getting this treatment, but a large portion of the champs being updated needed numbers buffs or a single ability being changed to synergize better with the kit. This is the reason why nobody wants Vel'Koz touched, nobody trusts that a champion in a good state with great kit synergy can be improved by ChampUp given the previous decisions of the team.
TL;DR
Making a champion unique shouldn't take precedence over keeping them balanced and their identity intact.
