Baron's problem isn't that it's too strong/weak it's that it's like fighting a tower
What baron needs is to actually feel like a boss fight. That doesn't mean you just throw a bunch of damage and debuffs on it and call it a day. At the very least there should be skillshots players have to dodge in order to complete the objective without dying. Taking the baron shouldn't be as binary as "are we strong enough or are we too weak?" The baron should make teams dance while they take it so that both the repositioning and preoccupation the baron forces from them is what makes the objective risky to take and gives the enemy opportunities to capitalize on.
Right now the baron is a weaker version of a tower that a team can completely ignore up until the smite fight. The baron should have some agency in when a team can reliably kill and secure a last hit on it, again giving a team that's behind windows for plays if they're performing their due diligence with wards/vision.
Some ideas off the top of my head:
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The baron has some kind of point of vulnerability that opens up at one of its sides at random for a period of time and attacks that hit this spot do increased damage.
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The baron has a defensive curl ability that massively decreases all damage while it's active.
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The baron rains down toxic globs of acid from the skies that come down like xerath ults and are imperative for anything but a tank to dodge.
As I'm writing this I'm reminded of the star guardian game mode's final boss with the buffed-up rift herald. While I think that difficulty would be too high for the rift I think it would be a step in the right direction to move more towards that kind of interaction for the baron. Because right now that's what's ultimately missing from the objective; interaction. It needs to evolve beyond a glorified turret.
