I'm super disappointed, Riot.

I watched the most recent EU lcs matches. They were an impressive display of strategy. Nevertheless, after the Yorick CAssiopeia combo came out for the win against fnatic, you guys appear to have decided to nerf Cass.

The beautiful thing about strategic diversity, my friends, is that it is going to provide opportunities for champions to be played in roles that are beyond the scope you had originally intended, and in ways that you don't seem to be supportive of. That is what we do, as players. I'm all for the evolution of the game, and the development can be a very positive experience, most of the the time. I find it particularly frustrating, however, when you punish teams for being creative and finding ways to win games by insta-nerfing a person who plays on the professional scene outside of the narrow box you seem to think each champion should play in. What I mean, is that playing a veigar support makes your lane weak to a sustain bot lane. there is a significant trade off there. Similarly, taking cass + yorick means you are without a strong tank (I should say moderately strong tank, because there are no strong items in the tank build) and dependent on both yorick and cassieopia to successfully execute an engage to win a game.

perhaps I'm not correct in my analysis, but it seems like an over-reaction on your part, and one that isn't embracing strategic diversity, but rather limiting it. I don't know, because you're not the most transparent company when it comes to your development process. Such a tiny change (and one justified by citing masteries, available to everyone offering the full potential for counterplay) seems thinly-veiled as an attempt to punish players and teams for finding creative and interesting (not to mention entertaining) ways to play the game.

I know that there are some resources out there for things like which champions you are working on, and things like that. I'd like to make two suggestions, before I go continue to Q_Q about this: first, place your support section closer to the top page of the league of legends site; second, Put a six month hold on any buffs or nerfs to a champion from the time of its iteration.

Suggestion one is to help build some of the transparency in the design process that I was talking about. its frustrating to see a change come up and there is only a brief forecast of such a change available on the support section of the website, buried under piles upon piles of information that is largely irrelevant to the game play ([sarcasm]all chat, anyone? har har har [/sarcasm]). Some transparency in what's going on might help us as players feel less disapointed in you for being reactive about things that are outside you're perceived playstyle for a champion, while, admittedly, driving you to be more accountable to the problems and schedules that you deal with as developers. If you provide an opportunity for feedback, however, it might give you many insights into different aspects of a development that you didn't have before (that is like the BArd Q&A where that one guy had a list of situations about the magical journey and how it interacts with things like anivia walls, or azir ults).

Suggestion two is to help your sanity, and ease your work load. There is a thing called too much, and sometimes (and especially in the cass and veigar cases, and any other similar cases) you guys seem to be executing "too much" with zeal. To see one specific playstyle and that it works does not mean it is without counter-play (just look at the C9 games, with their consistent Maokai top lane and how Vlad, a lifestealing top laner, manages to make that often op pick irrelevant). Perhaps vlad needs a nerf. or perhaps maokai needs a buff. If you put the six month delay between the time you suggest a change, however, it gives you time to see if a thing is indeed without counter play (zed, or Kallista, [or thankfully no longer, Azir]) and worth your efforts to change. Couple that with the first suggestion (something like a virtual bulletin board with suggested balance changes, and an opportunity for the community to provide feedback and suggestions about those changes in a seperate bbs system (not trying to be confusing)) and you'd vastly improve your ability to forsee problems with upcoming changes, improve your image with the NA community, at least, and you might even foster discussion across language barriers and regions, while simultaneously making your workload less stressful because the zeal of immediacy that seems to drive these changes (while admirable) would become a zeal for targeted and intentional game design.

As I'm now in the suggesting mood, I'll throw out three more thoughts, because I don't want to make a seperate iteration of discussion for them. if you had a forum for people to interact across regions, that'd be really dope. I don't want to have separate accounts for each region just to join in the conversation of the meta in a specific region. The success of the world championships proves that this game is stronger than just regional play. I would like for your borads infrastructure to reflect that.

Second, given the nature of the game as an individual gold grind, champion identity is far less important to a player than the item builds. There are six roles in the game, Tank, assassin (which almost exclusively means AD caster), mage (which includes AP assassin), support, ADC/marksman, and the ill defined hybrid fighter (this is essentially a non-utility support). Each roles has a desirable item build associated with it. The abilities of a champ are far less important than the items they build and the order that they build them in. Each champion can be built according to any of these builds. champ design seems to synchronize one champ with a specific build, but given the wide pool of champions for most positions (barring the vastly under-represented support diversity, both in items and champions), nerfs for specific champions will be far less effective than modifying the item builds that make a specific role OP (the DFG thing is a good example, though you probably didn't need to buff every AP assassin in the game as a result of its removal). The tank build needs serious work, have you considered items that increase defense while providing debuff stats to attack and AP? it would be a way to increase a tanks peel without also giving them the ability to scale late game into monster carries that no one can kill.

Third thought, I'd like to suggest some items to develop more item diversity. Things like a super narrow skill shot that, if landed, gimps your targets gold gain for a duration, and an item with an active (maybe a 30 second active, 60 second cooldown) that counter's that item, either providing problems in the form of a backfire on the original caster (gimping the caster's gold earned) or providing you with an increase in attack damage or move speed for a short duration. I'd like to see the ability to set a tax on your gold earned each minion that goes to an item pool (perhaps only in the premade team que) that each person can use (between 0 and 5 percent), perhaps to be set at the start of the game (or in the champ select) and with the potential to be modified once. it would help solidify the team aspect to the game, and make farming/objective control a more viable strategy for winning a game. I'd like to see items that provide very strong stats at the cost of other stats (like i mentioned above) and things to offer unique gameplay changes, like a cross bow (perhaps with ammo, even) that provides a melee champ with a degree of ranged damage (or like a 10 second cool down (after the max reduction for item activation) while simultaneously providing less damage (you activate it and your next basic attack gains range and there is a bolt fire animation). I'd like the option to get a shield like you do for seraphs embrace, or the oportunity to get an item that provides very small stats and a short period of activation that provides a significant percent damage reduction instead (the theory is to provide an option to players who find themselves in poor situations because their teammates fed to reduce the blow-up potential of the enemy team). The trade off, of course, is that in having the item to use it, you cannot have a larger, more powerful item with perhaps a longer cooldown for an active. (think 4 tiers of item, tier 1 is defined by weak stats and weak actives but short cooldowns, tier 2 is medium stats, medium strength active, medium cool down, tier 3 is strong stats, strong actives, very long cooldowns, tier 4 is epic items with significant debuffs, legendary actives, and oppressive cooldown (think karthus ult * 1.5). A spell that casts spell shield would be nice, or an item that does the same thing. An item to provide mobility (at a significantly shorter cooldown than flash), and an item to cripple a champ making their mobility ineffective. items that allow for interesting manipulation of vision (like a decoy grenade, that you throw it and it shows a team charge down lane on the mini map, or provides a clone on the mini map, or even a decoy for use in the lane). I say item, and not champ becuase I"m of the philosophy that champ design is far inferior to item design in this game, but gold manipulation items and vision manipulation items might make that much less of an issue.

This turned into a thinking thread, for me, which is cool, but I'm still disapointed at the apparent over-reaction you made to this week's LCS play, and the lack of transparency behind the game design direction. its ok to trust us as players to provide feedback to you in a timely and effective manner, but we can only do so if the avenues of communication exist. I"m probably not gonna return to the forums for a while, (hopefully not even after next patch notes, with the now expected over-zealous nerf bat) because the forums, for the msot part, are as oppressively toxic as the community is as a whole in the game. I just wanted you to know that the play I saw in the LCS this week was engaging, and entertaining. The players deserve much credit for their strategic theory. I'm just disappointed that you who claim to be interested in strategic diversity fail to respect it when it rears its head and reactively insta-nerf the champions that made the strategic theory successful. If you want to embrace strategic diversity, please start to do so. I know you guys are passionate about this game and its development, and that shows in how you work. just don't over-do it, like you seem to be doing now because you have so refined your expectation of this game and its playstyle. (walker percy wrote a short essay entitled "the loss of the creature" that explains, albeit allegorically, the disconnect between us as players, or new players, and the designers, and why that frustration occurs. look into it, if you can, it will help you understand that the game has to live and be interpreted by each player, you as designers cannot interpret it for us).

ciao