People seem to have forgotten how utterly toxic the game used to be

"All the seasons before S6 were all better balanced than this stupid awful S8"

No, they weren't.

Pre-rework Fiora was a utter cancer that could literally win a 1v5 "teamfight" by pressing one button if she was fed enough. Not even kidding, I've done that in the past.

Ekko could build full tank, match a Darius in damage output, assassinate squishies almost as effectively as reworked Evelynn, all while being extremely hard to kill because he was a hyper mobile high damage tank with a large AoE CC, and his ult healed him a ton without having to build any AP. In other words, imagine a harder to kill, harder to escape from, more mobile pre-nerfs Ornn in your toplane.

Kassadin, Talon, and Leblanc all had higher burst than they do now and they all had point and click silences that fit perfectly into their combo without trading off any damage for it. Imagine Draven if every 6 seconds his autoattacks CC'd you on hit.

Feral Flare, Devourer were basically slightly less bursty Dark Harvests that proc'd on every hit. As you can probably tell, it made playing vs Trundle, Shyvy, Xin, Jax, Yi, and even Aatrox feel like playing vs a tanky fed marksman that didn't need any support to protect them from assassins.

Vayne and Kog'maw were pretty much the only two marksmen that were consistently viable.

Rengar deleted anything that wasn't a tank in as little as 0.01 seconds while being invisible so he could walk up next to you and murder you without you ever getting to see him until you were dead.

Sion, Rammus, and several others could kill a full build marksman while completely ignoring their existence, just off thornmail return damage.

Shaco was far stronger than he is now, and had a lot more cheeses available (though I do admit, he was hella fun to play) to him.

Tanks in general were either overbearing and just miserable to play against, or they were just there to contribute CC. Sounds like pre-nerfs and post nerfs Ornn in the mid-late, doesn't it?

Enchanters were still heal/shield/ward bots, with the exception of Lulu, who was more anti-fun for toplaners than Ornn was when at his strongest.

Akali and Annie still powerspiked hard as soon as they hit 6.

Riven was a much worse experience to play against.

Dodge being a stat.

Evelynn went through several iterations of being cancerous simply due to bad design, resulting in her getting nerfed literally every time she became in any way decent for anyone who didn't main her.

Rek'sai being **THE **jungler.

Sword of the Divine, which made any AD that built it a crit burst machine.

Atma's impaler, which gave AD scaling tanks/fighters, especially Sion, a huge amount of offensive power while still being tanky.

Deathfire grasp.

And so much more.

There were also a ton of horrendous bugs, so many that even Mordekaiser looks relatively debugged. For example, areas that you could place a ward and stand behind it to make you invisible to anyone who's not positioned at a specific angle. Shaco getting permanently stealthed by some strange interaction. Ryze and Sivir bug-oneshotting things.

Healers sometimes killing their teammates by healing them. Tahm and Tryndamere also sometimes damaging/killing teammates.

Thresh and Blitzcrank hooks catching you in toplane, or the jungle, or midlane, or anywhere really, when they're used in botlane. The Darius teleport pull cheese that allowed him to level 1 penta by pulling people into his fountain.

Azir.