I feel like Riot's balance team is lagging a few patches behind actual game play

In the past, at least it seemed to be just not wanting to react too quickly. Tank Ekko is OP for two full patches rather than 1, because they don't want to overreact and nerf something right away before giving people time to find a chance to counterplay. Fine, I get that.

Now it feels like the balance team is looking at making a lot of balance changes that are no longer necessary.

I haven't seen a complaint about Sterak's Gage or Maw of Malmortius or Mercurial Scimitar in a while. All 3 have been nerfed in the last couple patches and all 3 seem to be in a good spot now. Most/all of their users aren't in the OP category. Yet now we're seeing rather large nerfs to all 3 items on the PBE: Mercurial/QSS now only removes CC debuffs (so it won't remove Zed's death mark for example). Maw and Sterak's passives are being given the same name, so they can't be used together.

Why are we nerfing these items further? Last I checked we got Graves top to under a 51% win rate, and the meta shifted back to tank tops early enough for Immortals to lose to TSM in the semifinals. That was several patches ago. Same goes with anyone else that may want to build both Maw and Steraks - they're in line and the nerf is unnecessary.

Last I checked Zed was insanely strong. Why are we removing healthy counterplay to him?

We're also starting to see devourer junglers be finally brought in line, only to replace the item. Don't get me wrong, I actually REALLY LIKE this idea and believe devourer wasn't health, but shouldn't this have happened like 4-5 patches ago when Devourer + Rageblade was just making everyone go mad?

I'm worried this apparent Lag is going to result in champions being overnerfed and never compensated, like we see all to often. I don't want to ever see anyone get sejuani'd again, and yet it's looking that way for a lot of champions through all of the direct and indirect nerfs being handed out.

Rant over...