My thoughts on balance thus far

So, I stopped playing League for a few months and now I'm back. After playing several matches, I want to give my opinion on balance concerning specific champions. I don't pretend to be a professional players or to know every champion or every variable, but here's my personal feedback concerning certain champions, specifically champions which I feel have some issues.

First and foremost, Rengar.

The current state of Rengar is baffling to me. I have jungled with a lot of different champions since I came back. Rengar is one, but so are Volibear, Nautilus, Kha'Zix, Pantheon, Aatrox, Dr. Mundo, Fiddlesticks, Nunu, Warwick, Malphite, Nocturne, Rek'sai, Tryndamere, Wukong and even Zed and Malzahar. Of all those that I tried, the only champion which is meant to be capable of jungling and does it as bad as Rengar is Kha'zix, and none do it worse. Though the damage he does is decent and he can clear camps relatively fast, even with using his ferocity exclusively to heal I'm finding myself extremely low on health by the time I finish the second buff camp, to the point where a gank at that moment is guaranteed to land a kill on me. The worst part is that it remains this bad for a large portion of the match, at least until I can complete a hydra.

This would all be fine if that was Rengar's only issue (which is obscene considering he's supposed to be a hunter, a jungling specialist), but it isn't. Rengar is so easy to kite it's a joke. The E is awkward to land, not to say impossible if there are any minions around you because the hitbox is funky as hell. Your only gap closers are your ult and relying on brush. Once you're on a target, you also have no way out. This means that Rengar is usually at a massive disadvantage in team fights; if he tries to attack the enemy tanks, he'll get mowed down by the enemy carry before he can finish the job. If he jumps on the enemy carry, he'll get knocked around and CC'd to hell and die unless he can pretty much one shot his target, which he can't achieve unless he's fed.

IMHO, Rengar needs to be revisited. His theme implies that he should be much better at jungling and he needs to be able to either stay alive longer or have better mobility during fights.

And one last thing: I've noticed that all abilities go on cooldown for about half a second when you reach full ferocity. I assume this is meant to prevent accidentally using the wrong ability, but more often than not it gives my target the time window it needs to juke my E.

Mordekaiser

I haven't played him that much and with good reason: He's pretty much unplayable right now. His health costs are obscenely high early on, even if you rush some spell vamp. The nerfs to his shield generation also mean that it's much easier to poke him. So, what we have right now is a low mobility, low damage, low range champion who hurts himself to do damage and is completely useless if he builds tanky. The removal of DFG wasn't what made him unviable, it was just the cherry on top. Saying Morde needs love does a disservice to his current state. It's like saying a corpse needs medicine. I'm at a loss as to what should be done as, to me at least, it seems the devs don't want to buff him, which is what he would need. So if he won't be buffed, he needs to be redone entirely.

Malzahar and Vel'koz

I'm putting these two in the same entry because they're facing the same issue. We've entered what I feel is a "mobility meta", and it's no surprise. Being able to dodge skill shots, juke or just catch your target or escape it with the press of a button are immensely helpful attributes. However, this means that low mobility characters suffer a lot. Malzahar and Vel'koz are the two which come to mind because they're squishy champions with no reliable escapes and I play them, but there may be others. They both have immense damage but that is all useless when the enemy can completely shut you down by just manmoding you. At least Vel'Koz has his E to knock people up when they try to catch him, as well as a slow. Malzahar only has his R, which also stuns him for the duration. On the other hand, Malz has two point target spells while everything Vel has is a skillshot.

Mobility champions counter those two so hard it's not even funny. And what happens when a high mobility jungler with decent damage or CC ganks one of them is simply obscene.

To me, it seems that the devs aren't taking mobility into account when balancing champions. A highly mobile champion such as Ahri will be allowed to do as much (or nearly as much) damage as a Malz who's pretty much limited to right click movement. It also seems to be part of the "arms race" we've seen in the last few years, where new champions get progressively better and better kits. It's easy to note how the more time passes since LoL's initial release, the higher the odds that a new champion will have high mobility. 0 mobility champions need something to compensate and raw power is no longer enough when new champions can completely bypass your tanks and CC you from 100 to 0.

Teemo

Why do you hate Teemo? I know it's an inside joke that Teemo is the devil incarnate, but did you really need to make the scuttler blow up his shrooms? He used to be one of your mascots for god's sake, so why are you treating him like this? And this is the worst part: He's still perfectly viable. He's still good. But his shrooms, which should be the central part of his kit, which should define him, are pretty much negligible nowadays. Permanent pink wards, sweeping trinkets, scuttlers, etc... Never mind that the damage on his shrooms seems negligible now for some reason, so I don't know if you nerfed that too.

So please change this. When you see a Teemo, you shouldn't think "Oh man, he'll blind me and do a lot of damage with his poison", you should think "This guy is impossible to catch and there's shrooms everywhere and they keep melting my champion". His mushrooms aren't "anti-fun", they're the polar opposite. They completely change a match's dynamics, they shake things up and they set up some hilarious kills. Bring back Teemo shrooms.

Aatrox

I came back to find out Aatrox has been pretty much untouched since you nerfed him right out of the box then proceeded to forget you had a line up of Darkin champions coming. The guy is nigh unplayable top lane, but I've found a surprisingly comfortable new home for him: The jungle. As jungle monsters don't burst, he can safely let himself fall down below half health and gain full benefit from the healing on his W, allowing him to farm in relative safety. When ganking, as his opponents don't see him, he can easily initiate with his Q, then follow up with his E to slow them. As he scales very well into late game because of his kit, jungling allows him to bypass his greatest weak point (his terrible laning phase) entirely. I still think he's far too squishy for late game as he needs far too many stats to be as good as other fighters and the health costs on his abilities are absurd, but he's in a far better position than I originally believed him to be.

Viktor

I haven't played Viktor much since I came back but I plan to, and with good reason. I wasn't aware he had been reworked when I tried him again and I was pleasantly surprised with the result. So this is just to say: Good job.

Jinx

The only character on the list I haven't played, but I feel I have to mention her because she exemplifies power creep like no other champion. The variety of her kit, her mobility, her CC, her immense damage potential, her burst... She has everything a marksman could ever hope to get. You could say that having to rely on skill shots and learning to alternate between her minigun and her rocket launcher while managing mana usage means she deserves this kind of power, but I disagree. Yes, it's okay to have certain champions which are harder to play. No, they shouldn't be stronger because of that. I can't help but draw parallels to Invoker in DotA; an extremely complex hero, yet by no means is he stronger than others. Right now, it feels like Jinx is outright superior to other carries if played properly, which isn't how it should be: She should be equal to other carries when played properly. Maybe I just haven't figured out her weakness yet, but I doubt it. It looks like she's just plain old superior. Kalista has the same issue, albeit in a less egregious fashion.

Cho'gath

Last on the list, this guy exemplifies the issues with mobility in the current meta. Against any low mobility champion, Cho'gath is disgustingly overpowered. He's extremely tanky, can do immense damage and has an aoe knockup/slow and an AoE silence. Against a high mobility champion though, he becomes almost useless. His only long range ability (and consequently his only way to catch opponents) is his Q, which is extremely easy to dodge if your champion has any mobility. Once that's dodged, you can safely kite him to death. Hell, if you're killing a tower or inhibitor, once it's dodged you can just dance around him while he impotently tries to stop you.

Cho is definitely a sleeper OP champion. If mobility champions finally get the nerfs they need, he'll shoot up in the picks and bans like a goddam rocket.

This is all I can think of off the top of my head. As said, I'm not a LoL authority, these are based merely on my experiences, yet I do think I'm presenting an accurate portrait of the situation concerning these champions.