We're also forgetting a crucial step:
- After the buffs inevitably render the champion overpowered, and expose whichever serious gameplay issues they have (assuming they have them, which has been the case most of the time with recent designs), the fault is placed squarely upon the playerbase, many among whom explicitly opposed said changes. The whole "Gameplay knows balance" meme prevails, and we all move on to the next champion, blissfully ignorant of what actually happened.
I remember when the Juggernaut Update launched, and players gave feedback on the different champions: initially, several of the reworked juggernauts were legitimately weak, and the players on PBE had made that known. As a result of this, RiotReperoir buffed Garen and Skarner, and for a time things were fine, as noted by those same testers. Very shortly before the patch cycle ended, however, another series of buffs followed, this time going way overboard, and those champions ended up getting released in a severely overpowered state. Meanwhile, CertainlyT absolutely did not communicate with players at any stage during the PBE cycle, and released Mordekaiser's rework with a similar degree of gross overtuning. When players pointed out how these champions were ridiculously unbalanced, some to the point of severely affecting Worlds 2015, Riot chose to blame the PBE testers for misjudging balance, rather than themselves for a) implementing those balance changes in the first place, and b) for buffing those champions at a point where literally no-one had asked for more. Effectively, the entire meme of player feedback being useless on balance is founded upon a lie, one specifically designed to divert blame.
So let's not make that same mistake again either. For sure, not everyone on here or the PBE forums is an expert at balance, but cases like these now routine hotfix-buffs are the kind of balance changes that many of the players here expressly do not want, in large part because they tend to have a pretty bad impact on the game for the next few weeks. Even with our lack of expertise or direct access to data, we know that champions take time to learn, and so shouldn't be balanced around having a 50+ win rate from the get-go, especially if the champion in question is meant to be especially difficult. Gameplay did not want champions like Kai'Sa, Aatrox or Irelia getting hotfix-buffed, nor do most people here want the same to happen to Akali either. When Riot inevitably goes with the above and hotfix-buffs Akali, let's remember this and not blame the people who made themselves heard specifically to prevent that from happening.
