Champion Diversity Dev Discussion

Riot, you don't think that...given what you've said...versus what you did...that this doesn't add up?

Like, pro play is limited to champs that aren't too risky or too unable to make plays, right? Some champs, like Annie, may have good parts and components, but she can't get in to make a play without someone handing her an opportunity. Then there's champs like Yasuo or Riven, who are very capable of single-handedly running away with a game, but they're extremely risky, right?

Here's the thing: This has been long established information. So why is it that you take some champs like, say, Sona, Morde, Garen, Kog'Maw...just to name a few, and give them small "touch up" changes that don't really address core problems that keep them from being viable competitive picks without being straight up obnoxious in solo queue? Like, let's take Sona for example. Her poke's auto-targeted, her W's auto-targeted, her E's an aoe, and her R's fat. Very low margin of error here and it's heavily dependent on numbers over actual player input or reaction, which is easily something Riot struggles with balancing. To boot, she's incredibly squishy, but plays at the closest ranges in comparison to nearly any other enchanter in the game (unless you want your potency to be similar to that of a wet noodle). So why give her a "mini-rework" that doesn't fix any of her problems? You instead give her the "identity" of a "late-game scaling support", when in reality you guys were probably just out of good ideas to give her without giving her a full makeover, so you just tied her power to later stages of the game, which makes no sense for a support (like who's getting to level 16 to use the entirety of Sona's power budget?). It's so bad that when she was running through the queues on a huge win rate for just having stupidly strong numbers, she had like a 30% win rate in pro play because her core issues as a champ that make her plain lousy in comparison to anyone else you could pick weren't fixed.

So now you guys are making this article...and I'm sitting here like "are you guys really about it, though?" Like, if you were, why give Garen this armor shredding gimmick in a kit that obviously didn't age well? Why leave Annie the way she is when she's basically "lousy Syndra"? This all comes off as talking the talk and not walking the walk, and I don't like it.