Let's talk Poppy, let's talk Riot balance

This is honestly a discussion we should not need to have, but here we are. Poppy now currently sits at at number 46 out of 48 for plat+ winrate. Now, this isn't a raw discussion about her being in a rough spot, (though yes, I am a Poppy main, and I am salty about it) this is more to address how Riot has handled this situation. Poppy was previously at spot number 40 until 8.9 when Riot for some reason decided that she didn't need a buff but rather an "adjustment". This is the same patch where Dr.Mundo was buffed so hard he shot up an astounding 34 places, now currently sitting at number 2. The fact that they figured they should outright buff that ball of stats while adjusting a champion who was then doing WORSE is concerning at best. The reason this has me so worked up is because it is just another example in a long line that shows that Riot's balance team has absolutely no idea what they are doing and are hurting the game.

The only two champs doing worse than Poppy top lane at this moment are Galio and Gnar, both very fun and interesting champs that Riot also has clearly no idea how to balance because the moment they become even somewhat strong they plague all levels of play and need to be nerfed to oblivion again. While Poppy doesn't share this issue of outright oppression when she is strong, one has to look at those other two as well and wonder if Riot only knows how to balance one role at a time. This is the same team who greenlit oneshot Galio, despite every stage of PBE warning them not to go through with it. They even made an official statement saying that change was completely intentional and then had to hotfix it NO MORE THAN A DAY after it's release.

These kinds of decisions hurt the game, they hurt players who want to be able to enjoy their champs that are so much harder to get than ever before. What's probably the worst though, is that no matter how vocal their playerbase gets the balance team seems to prioritize ignoring them and then refusing to own up for the mistakes that should have never happened in the first place. In the case of Poppy, while some where optimistic about her changes, the majority of players that I saw who knew what her strengths where easily recognized this change as a straight up nerf. Though I think neither I nor them could have anticipated just how much it was going to hurt her. It is absolute insanity that a champion could drop from 40 to 46 without any changes to the champs beneath them. The top tiers can be volatile, and it's easy to observe frequent drops and climbs as both playrate and minor changes to items and runes can mean the difference of a percent between patches, which can be a decent rank displacement. At the bottom however, global changes are less significant and playrates are low, which makes it hard for champions to change even a few places without major changes. In Riot's words however, Poppy received "changes last patch" that "where intended to be power neutral"

What an absolute joke.

You don't drop that hard from neutral changes, you drop that hard from outright nerfs. You can't pretend this is anything short of an absolute embarrassment. The fact that you are trying to claim they where intended to be neutral just shows that you have no idea how to go about those kinds of changes on top of the fact that the very idea that you thought a champ in that position deserves anything less than a buff is insulting to the players who actually care about this game's balance. Your attempt at a "neutral power" adjustment changed one of the worst champions at their role to one of the worst champions in the game period. That is a serious problem and you owe better to the players, not only for this, but for the many horrendous examples of "balance" that you have churned out without a care in the world.

And yes, I am mad