Balls of Stats (summary at the bottom)

Like, I understand that not every champion in the game is going to be seen in the LCS. I understand that certain champs will be seen in top tier play rather consistently. It's just like any other competitive game where the strongest characters will be seen far more often. However, this isn't necessarily my gripe with some of the decisions made in regards to champ kits, reworks, in general balancing, and so on. My main gripe is that some champs are currently designed with no real way to move up in competitive value without being toxic to the game experience as a whole, and THAT is what I don't like. This can all be attributed to champs that I would consider "balls of stats". Basically champs you don't out-play more than you shut down early or out-scale and keep there. These champs are huge problems to the game's health in my opinion. It's a long post, so just skip to the bottom if you don't want to read it all.

First case in point here would be the juggernaut patch. Basically boiled down to four reworks all in one exciting new release that ended up turning the whole community on its head and having the opposite effect of the ap itemization rework that came just before that everyone was really fond of. Before now, they were extremely powerful, horrifically toxic, and 24/7 insta-banned. Now they're all low-elo stomper tier. Why? Cause even from the get-go, Riot's plans for these champs was "You're gonna run into the enemy 1v5 and be so strong they just can't deal with you". It sounds really cool on paper, but in hindsight, that was a TERRIBLE decision. Is this fine for a few champs? Sure. For a whole sub-class of champs? Hell no. Basically, the whole sub-class is the "ball of stats" class. If they aren't tanky enough to live and powerful enough to kill, they offer very little to the team and become worthless. The game play of most of these champs is also extremely linear...I mean it's not like Morde and Garen have a plethora of strats and maneuvers to utilize. So now all of them are in the same boat, and a chance to update the likes of Garen n' pals into something greater for their fans and the game was sort of thrown away for something so much more...lack-luster.

Second case in point here would be Devourer junglers. How many people here think Yi and Xin are fun, healthy additions to the meta right now? Basically, Devourer takes extremely linear AA-mashing melee champs and says "You're bad now, but build this and now you just win the game". Or rather...it's that way now because Devourer has so much synergy with Rage Blade, probably the biggest ball of offensive stats in the game after stacking it. So you use those two items, rack up melee hits extremely fast, and now you have so much extra damage on hit that you can beef up champs that should be pretty squishy to be efficient with a ton of defensive stats that most likely wouldn't be there otherwise, making them even more toxic because the main counter-play against these guys (cc them and blow them up before they do anything) is now null and void, so the NEW main counter-play against them is "just keep them from stacking".

Then you have champs that are similar, but aren't usually seen with Devourer, like Kayle, Rengar, and Tryndamere, possibly Annie. Low to no counter-play walking stat-checks (and in Trynd's case, "Do I get a crit" Roulette) that terrorize when they win, but do jack when they don't. I'm honestly extremely surprised that Trynd and Kayle have been left in this state for so damn long at this point. Sure, Taric and Yorick were good choices for reworking too, but Kayle and Tryndamere are just as deserving. They're horribly out-dated and their game play is atrocious. Kayle just spams E on groups and either auto-wins from the insane amount of damage she pours out or auto-loses because she doesn't have enough damage pouring out. Trynd just runs down top lane all game bucking at everyone that comes near him because for some reason he literally can not die for five seconds, no matter how bad you beat his ass. If he isn't doing well, however, he just runs down top lane all game while the enemy just runs into his Nexus unopposed by him. Rengar's more like that pop quiz your math teacher loves to throw out at random so she can feel like she's catching bad students that don't study their shit at home or something. If he gets fed, EVERYONE'S gonna fail that test. If he can't get fed, he becomes useless by mid-game (hell, even when he gets fed he can become useless by mid-late or so if the enemy plays it right). Changes have made him less toxic, but they severely cut his overall value as a champ, which is a problem basically anyone mentioned in this thread faces. Annie's got a stun, so that's...something...I guess, but everything outside of her passive is simply damage. Due to that, they can't change how Tibbers works because that stun adds up to A LOT of overall value in Annie's kit, and adding counter-play to Tibbers would make it too easy to null and void Annie's value in team fights, even if Tibbers popping out of absolutely nowhere with no warning is the most frustrating thing to get 1-combo'd by ever.

Summary: There's like three categories of champs I take major issue with in this game, and this is just the first one. These are basically champs that win if you did well early or found a way to scale, but do absolutely terribly otherwise. There's not much room for using them in high levels of play because the risk of their failure case is so detrimental to their team as a whole that it's not worth it, and if they are seeing extensive use, they're probably pretty broken. It's not necessarily the fact that they start strong or scale up that's an issue, especially considering how most adcs are like this, but in the case of adcs (that aren't Lucian and Ezreal), there's a back-up plan even if they get strong. Vayne needs to be shut down early, but if she does start hitting spikes you group and stay away from walls. Jinx is the same, but if she starts getting gold you focus her down harder in fights since she can't peel herself well. The problem with these champs mentioned here is that, if they're strong enough for solid competitive use...they're probably toxic as shit for solo-queue play. They're also designed in a way that makes it hard to change them for better or worse because all they amount to are damage stats. Thus they have to be kept in a state where better designed champs are more appealing to use than these champs as you climb elo. Sure, you stomp people in low elo with Trynd, but you're probably using someone else in Plat+ (coming from a Sona main that felt weird to type).

That's my two cents anyway.