Riot needs to stop balancing in tiny bursts

That sounds like a terrible idea. The reason they do small patches is to try out new stuff, and see if it is broken or not. What they really need to do is figure out what needs balancing.

And then people have to wait longer for anything to be done, and keep feeling miserable because of lopsided, overpowered, or otherwise frustrating champions/items/etc?

No thanks, I'll take my step at a time patches and the knowledge that Riot intends to do something over waiting months for anything to be fixed.

Besides, patches are more than just balance changes; they're new skins, new champions, and on some occasions new events. Frequent patches keep the game fresh and closer to balanced, compare other games that can go months for something to be nerfed, buffed, or fixed.

Let's put it this way. Riot balance is like an emergency manager. League balance is Hurricane Katrina and Riot's balance team is Bush's FEMA.

Then it takes them longer to fix all my crazy broken freelo! Wonderful idea!

Alright, pack up the Boards! That's it everybody!

We've officially found the dumbest post you can make. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

With the initial mocking out of the way.... let's continue. It is so terribly, terribly obvious you have no clue how active game development and balancing works.

They can do all their calculations and balancing, but they (the Live Balance and Champ Design Teams) can never be sure just how their changes will effect the game health until it goes to the LIVE Servers. PBE is -much- too small of an environment. Even combined with their internal QA and expert analysts it's just way to tiny of a percentage of the playerbase to get adequate feedback. This is the major reason why even when the Boards exclaim in unison that a change on the PBE will making something truly OP or Borked, they put it out anyway in many cases. People play with a different mindset on Live, and the different Regions have their own metas that may easily counter a new OP or make a borked champ shine.

So, that alone makes this really dumb. But there's more!

Full multiplayer games, like MOBAs, FPS games like CS/BF/MW/Halo, and MMOs require massive playerbases to keep matchmaking active (or in the case of MMOs, the internal market and team availability). People play the most when there's either an event or patch, and we can actually call patches events in and of themselves. If Riot spent the next say, 6 months buckling down and grinding out everything they need to do to make a Mega-Patch, LoL would -die-.

Straight. Die.

The MOBA market is cutthroat. LoL is the best of the bunch, but a large part of that is that pretty much everyone is or has played it at this point. People continue to play it for many reasons, but a very common one is that their friends do so. All it takes is say, 5-8% of the playerbase moving on to another MOBA in those 6 months to start a chain reaction. MOBAs are social games. They require a very large core of active players to sustain Play. LoL (or any game, for that matter, just take a gander at MMO active players in the months between expansions) would bleed its playerbase away if they didn't keep the patch tempo.

So, not only would a longer-larger game patch be WORSE for the game balance health (as the game would also be stagnant during those months, everything that is broken/OP right now would be for months with no changes), but it'd be worse for the game and Riot's revenue.

There, dumb suggestion explained. Have a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w