I've been meaning to make this case for a while @ Riot

So, I'ma put it pretty simply, so everyone can follow: I don't like Sona's mini-rework. I don't like how her current kit plays out, period, and her mini-rework actually made it worse. However, I've made more than enough threads regarding that topic in particular, and said I won't be making any more elongated posts on that topic, so this isn't really about that.

This is about Riot's champion favoritism. Not for solo queue, but for LCS-tier play. My point revolves around two champions, and . Now, lets back-track this to Worlds 2017.

: Worlds meta revolves around not fighting and shoveling gold onto Ardent Censer abusers as fast as possible and applying that abuse to hyper-carries, who should then eat their way through tanks and carries alike to victory, yeah? We saw Vayne, Xayah, Varus, Caitlyn, Trist, Kog, a bit of Twitch I believe...we actually saw a decent few marksmen for the Worlds patch, but Jinx had one showing all tourney long and lost rather miserably. Jinxylord eventually comes out saying "We're coming in to change Jinx so she performs better in pro. She should have done better in a pro meta that favors her type of champion so heavily". I agree with this logic 100%. If the stage is set where a champ should be good, they should do good.

: Worlds meta revolves around not fighting and shoveling gold onto Ardent Censer abusers as fast as possible so they can apply that to hyper-carries, right? Sona can pretty much perma-apply Censer to an entire team. Sona hates early altercations because she's insanely squishy and dies way too easily. Sona's insanely gold dependent as a support and heavily appreciated that meta of "Build Coin and wait for your spikes" since she outscales nearly everyone when it comes to easily pumping out raw numbers. You'd think this would be the time people would be falling over themselves for a Sona pick, but she only got picked once, and lost, just like Jinx.

Here's where my issue now lies:

https://youtu.be/SNwzrto2UGI?t=28m20s

Like, I don't think you guys at Riot get it: Sure, rooting for teams is fine and dandy, but when it comes to pro gaming that involves characters, like Street Fighter and Pokemon and, well, League, people like rooting for players and the characters, too. You guys HAVE to know this. Whenever a fringe pick so much as gets hovered for a bit too long, the crowd can be heard ramping up...until Ryze shows on the screen and the hype dies again.

Now, sure, Phreak isn't "the entire company" and doesn't speak for the entire company, but what I've noticed is that you guys have some champions you try to either keep in pro play or in a position that they can easily make their way back into it even if they fall out. Then there's other champs that are OBVIOUSLY too one-dimensional or exploitable to truly be competitive picks...but there's literally 0 interest to change that. I don't necessarily enjoy looking at the LCS and literally seeing the same 20 to 30 champs over and over. Yeah, pros gravitate to the best picks, but you guys seem way too complacent in making the best picks way too obvious, and this notion of "Eh, it's one of THOSE champions." really screams "This champ was not designed with the competitive mind set we constantly dish out to you guys through editorials".

Seriously, if I'm trying to truly better myself as a League player, given you guys are working on that new game mode where this will ACTUALLY matter, why on Earth would I play something like Sona? Why on Earth should ANYONE play Sona? Apply that question to a ton of other champs. Why have this mentality that some champs are just solo queue cheese or training wheels for "the real champs"? Isn't that blatant favoritism?