Decision making and why it impacts balancing

Disclaimer: I haven't played in lower elos in a while. However thanks to issues with decay and a smurf around mid-Plat I've played frequently around P3 to D1 MMR.

When I get on Boards, I see a plethora of people saying, "Riot should balance around 99% of the game, not the 1%. That's just not fair."

And that sounds like it's fair, right? Balance the game for 99 players and one fellow just has to shove off and deal with it. This is where decision making comes into play. Let's say I'm playing vs. a Ziggs. If he's Master/Challenger he will throw his bombs when he knows I'm distracted, when I get too close to the minions, or just to waveclear and pressure me to do the same. The lower you fall the less likely he'll throw bombs at the minions. Maybe he's too distracted farming to take free damage. Maybe he's just tilted or doesn't know how to zone.

This might sound harsh, but that constitutes not knowing how to play a champion. It means not knowing the extent of how to abuse their kit's potential. This is really the only thing that separates a Challenger tier player on a high-skill champion like Azir from your prodigy Azir buddy in D5.

By buffing a champion in low elo that is fully functional in the highest elos, you get champion who will walk all over even the most skilled players because higher rank + time spent on a champion = more power via the buff, and even a small buff like 10 mana off an important, spammy skill means saving 100-150 mana a minute, simply because these guys know how to abuse the characters harder than anyone else.

Likewise, some champions just punish mistakes way too hard and Riot understand that and the mistakes that low elo players make more commonly, and will help with that, because it's equally frustrating to play against a champion that is autowin under a certain elo threshold as one in high elos. But, with the exception of abominations that slaughter Bronze/Silver like Yi and Tryndamere because they require the utmost coordination to shut them down, champions need to be tuned around the D3-Challenger tier of gameplay.