Bring back Underused Champions.

As a disclaimer, this is not meant to be a QQ thread or a "Rito pls", even if it may come off that way. I can sympathize with the developers on the matters of balancing; we, as the players, see things from in-game standpoints and can often be loud about those imbalances (though the imbalances one player sees are different than those another one sees, because of different champions and playstyles). Riot's developers and programmers are able to see things from a more global standpoint, resulting in fixes and changes they make without being asked to because they see things we don't, which also results in a loud player outcry.

As many of us have noted, Riot has generally focused on tweaking the champions that are played a lot, or who are at least seen every now and then. They're focusing the balances there in order to make it so that the people who main them, of which there are many, do not feel so cheated (although many still do) when their champion falls behind in strength as compared to most others in the same position.

The problem with this constant tweaking is that it means more tweaking. When you make a change to a champion and it gets stronger, others see that and jump aboard that train. Which makes it very difficult to keep things balanced.

Obviously, with each change, Riot is attempting to reach a temporary equilibrium, with which they can find other champions' outlying strengths and weaknesses in their matchups and work on those. The problem with this is, every champion is different, as was intended. In fact, Riot has been cranking out more champions with unique mechanics, which I view as a good thing. But it's hard to balance mechanics, which are less about numbers and more about application.

One of the biggest balancing factors, though, is counters. These exist because champions have different strengths, weaknesses, and mechanics. And as long as counters can be overcome with a change in strategy, either by the individual player or by the whole team, they are a healthy part of the game. They force team members to support each other and adapt to situations.

Unfortunately, many champions have fallen by the wayside at this point. There are champions you might see only once a week, or even once a month. This is because, for one reason or another, they have been deemed weaker, or suffer in more matchups than other champions. "Bringing back" these champions likely seems like a daunting task to Riot, because many, like Galio and Anivia, suffer not only from their stats but also from their situational usefulness. Why pick Galio and not have a high-burst mage late-game, even if he is a solid tank with good CC and support? That's one less walking nuke on the team, and the tank role is often taken by someone in another lane. Similarly, Anivia suffers from high mana costs and difficulty in escaping from more than one opponent, but her CC is also very good, and she has a lot of situational usefulness, as well as the ability to pick off opponents. But she can be difficult to use, ganks shut her down, and if blue is stolen she has to play defensively for an unfortunate few minutes. She's great in teamfights, if she makes it that far, but other mages simply do her job better. There are many more champions like this.

The issue in fixing these problems is that these champions are rather fragile, in a way; by putting too much focus in "fixing" the champion, Riot could easily accidentally undermine their individual strengths and playstyles, and make them less unique. And I feel like that is what Riot wants to avoid; many players believe Riot is only after Big Plays (and I see how they get that impression) but if that's what they wanted, they could have made every champion basically the same, and they're not. Especially with the recent champion releases.

But I think that if the time and thought were put in to fix these champions, ultimately it would make the game more balanced. Many of these champions, if allowed to see the light of day again, would prove to be adequate counters to a lot of the common picks. Bringing unique but underplayed champions back into the game would also add a lot more variety to gameplay, and would likely make the game more fun and satisfying to play. It would likely see the use of a wider variety of items and strategies, and less cookie-cutter builds.

TLDR; Making underplayed champions viable again would probably help the balance of the game.