Just tuning in to draw attention on the fact that...

... both Ashe and Riven were buffed, and have upcoming skins, a legendary and pResTiGE one, respectively.

Those buffs are quite suspicious, for they are directed towards champions that undeniably need no buffs. That said, said changes sadly don't stand out enough in a patch with so many unecessary buffs for many other champions.

The Riven case is pretty exemplar: after an astonishing long period of her having all-over-the-top stats, and non-stop bitching for the whole time by the community, she was finally modestly, but meaningfully, nerfed; roughly a month later, Riot responded by implementing and testing two different rounds of super gigabuffs that were both met with immense community backlash; nonetheless, not even that was enough and some buff just had to make it through.

The Ashe changes skyrocketed her playrate and winrate to unacceptable numbers. This is, to me, enough evidence that the above-mentioned buffs were unnecessary.

Now, straight to the point of my post:

Is it acceptable that we, as a community, must endure an unbalanced gameplay experience for unspecified amounts of time, because of Riot sacrificing their integrity in balancing the game in order to advertise their products (or promote esports)?

Because changes implemented with the intention of making a champion so broken it will force itself into the spotlight sometimes tend to require a long amount of time to be reverted, and sometimes they become permanent (just like that 50% CDR on Vayne Q during ult, gimme a big yikes for counterplay).

I obviously believe balancing gameplay should be completely independent from skin releases.

Lately though, I'm witnessing this trend, which is worrisome... and I wish for it to be only some kind of cognitive bias. I know Riot doesn't buff every champion with upcoming skins, and I know that not all buffs are for champion getting skins. That said, I'm starting to think it is maybe necessary for the community to start gathering and listing suspicious events like those, in order to determine out of the line statistic and reveal those shady marketing tactics.