Burst damage design flaw I keep thinking about.

So hear me out on this one. This is not about any specific champion, but about a philosophy which I think took a wrong turn.

So here is a basic idea about burst champions. They are reliant on getting big part of targets health in a combo, with ussualy bad sustained damage, or not sufficient reliability in inflicting sustained damage unless target does not use tools available to avoid it.

I classify burst into 2 types of damage:

1. All in burst. This type has to have enough damage to overkill a target even from full hp while landing full combo, but this said combo has to have certain conditions be met( range, cooldowns, item active abilities beeing up etc.)
2. Activation burst. The said archetype has to meet certain skill activations to pull off a burst which does not have to overkill, but ussualy this type of champions needs some sort of poke or some sort of HP treshold where it becomes available( examples are nidalee has to hit spear or trap to burst more easily, Diana needs lvl 6 and to hit Q to burst reliably and so on).

So where does the problem come from.

Well runes and items,either boost their strenght or eliminate some weaknesses, and this is not a bad thing. Bad thing is multiplication of these things, and some things covering both departments which at some point stacks up to unhealthy levels.

Here is an AP example. LB is meant to poke all in burst and overkill the target. But ludens helps her poke, helps her all in and helps her with reducing cooldown at the same time. This not only amplifies her strengths but removes some of her weaknesses all in one. This results in an ability to all in burst someone while having sustained damage, and good enough cooldowns to try more often then intended, expecially after few items.

In cases of AD, it is mostly kha double dipping into runes and items. With dusk blade allowing extra damage twice or 3 times with kha invisibility and cooldown reduction on dusk blade and certain other items, he gains highter burst which was conditional before, turning it into all in burst damage coupled with electrocute. This leaves windows to counter play kha smaller, and his conditions to burst you down easier to meet, AND in cases he is ahead non required anymore.

Now design intended this, and it goes with every champion, but at current point in the game, item passives and rune passive effects overlap too much making damage way too high, while cooldown reduction more easily available then before makes windows for counter play smaller.

The problem is as it stands, either reduce availability of CDR giving more windows for counterplay, and more chances to safely execute your plans, if you managed to dodge or saw your oponent waste important skills. This approach is more skill based and while keeping the burst in the game, allows for more skillful aproach in the game rather then cheesing the kills. Classes that benefit from this are sustained damage dealers, and diving tanky champions who need more windows to do their job in team fights but are not tanky enough to face tank it, and haven't got the kit of assasins to escape after going in.

The 2nd option is to nerf damage, by either reducing damage from items runes,or all of the above. This allows champions to poke more safely while also making shielding and defending your allies more meaningful, as full combo of a burst champion with interruptions would not be enough to go over a shield from support, a tank taking some of the damage from that combo.

This benefits ADCS the most as only upfront damage is nerfed while sustained damage is relatively unchanged due to its multiplicative scaling. This also benefits tanks and supports a little bit more as protecting someone becomes meaningful, rather than dodging the skillshot you could with enough preparations tank through it. I personally think this approach is less based on personal skill and more on teamwork, and if we go too far with the nerfs we will arrive at 'protect the kogmaw' meta again which is honestly too focused about 1-2 members of your team and other team members if they want to be relevant need to adjust to a certain teamcomp, invalidating a lot of champions, and playstyles. This is the better way to change current situation but it is the more risky one as well

And the 3rd way is lowering both damage and cdr a a little, or changing the scaling on a lot of champions so they scale better lategame. That would increase the lengths of games somewhat, as with lower early damage you would not snowball as hard and would not get your weakness windows covered by CDR early into the game, or if you did you would have to sacrifice optimal damage builds to do it early into the game. This would lead to more windows for farming and scaling and would benefit champions who cannot survive early game now due to bad laning phase and snowball that happens if you die once or twice during laning phase. I would consider this to be a no skill meta. If it is harder to snowball and punish enemies for their mistakes, winning a lane becomes harder and relatively pointless, as there is too much safety netting to make sure champions make it safely to midgame at least.

And there is another way which I consider, stalling. By reducing gold income to everyone, you would still have 1 shoting people possible, but lower gold availability would mean that deaths aren't as punished, as enemy gained less gold from it than right now, the farm you missed would be worth less as well, meaning you could still come back into the game based on how good your kit is. If you screw up early and enemy is not strong enough to take objectives yet, you could have chances to turn it around more then right now I'd your kit is suited for it. This change would benefit champions with overloaded kits the most, who scale more from levels rather than items, as you could still function on low economy gold, while getting the job done.

Please tell me your opinions which approach you think is right and why.

Thanks for reading