I like to call this damage meta "the pure",

Because we can finally see what League become, with no Ardent Censer, no overtuned tank items, no unbearable lethality items or any of those meta-changing bullshits to distract us: League has become a pile of power creep, full of unnecessary and indirect buffs, mistakes leading to more mistakes.

That's the result of years of negligence, years of releasing and reworking champions, runes and items without caring about how much damage there was, is and will be in the game.

Why does every champion needs to have big damage, knock ups or slows? Why do a tank needs to be able to kill someone with one rotation? Why effects like 's essence flare needs to be so strong, to the point people can straight ignore the item's gold efficiency? Why does almost all keystones needs to deal damage? Why there's a champion who can deal more than 100% of a champion's Maximum Health as True Damage in less than 3 seconds? Is all of this really necessary? Why there are champions who can shutdown entire teams and even entire classes alone? Could those aspects be less extreme? Probably. Did the development team cared about it?

Whatever happened to simplicity? Does every champion needs to have a new mechanic that eventually breaks the game? Why we can't have a simple but well balanced, themed and executed champion or item instead of a flashy and never-seen one?

You see, there's a reason other than nostalgia people say that League as more balanced in older seasons. Back there, the limitations, both in terms of coding and manpower, was a relevant matter; champions like Yasuo, Ornn and Neeko were not even possible to build, I imagine. That context lead to the creation of many champions who usually are very beloved by the community and are usually less frustrating to deal with it, champions with simpler but solid kits. Maybe Riot should look back to those days and learn something about it, specially when more and more people say "I miss season x". I may sound like a old man, but I can't help it:

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

• Orson Welles.