Reworks Should Not Just Balance...They Should Make Champs Fun!

Riot's reworks don't see to take into account how much fun it is to play a character, how viscerally good or bad it feels to press the buttons.

Some of the recent reworks have been great.

As much as I enjoyed old Galio, new Galio is terribly fun to play, even if you aren't good at him, and hopefully even after the inevitable nerf he will get. Every one of his abilities feel good, like driving in a smooth riding luxury sedan.

Some reworks have been so-so

The Maokai changes, I don't feel like made the character any more or less fun to play. The new ult is pretty satisfying to use.

Yorick: The old Yorick was kind of fun, but brutally underpowered. The new Yorick is actually much stronger, but unless you put some effort into the champ, the grave system is not at all intuitive. So he got buffed, but he seems less fun to play.

And others have been crappy:

Warwick..yuck. The new Warwick Q is one of the clunkiest abilities Riot has designed in a while. New WW is actually really strong, but my memories of playing him are always of hammering the Q key and cursing at the screen.

Rammus: I can't imagine these changes were made by anyone who played much Rammus. Even if the new changes are balanced, he doesn't feel nearly as good to play now.

The point here is that balance is what it is and champs get nerfed and buffed all the time, but the focus should never be off designing a champ to be fun to play. Sometimes, I feel like Riot loses the plot on this. Some of the new champ's abilities require you to read tool tips multiple times like a lawyer to determine what it does. Balance isn't everything; it's important that champs feel good to play.