Is it possible for a League of Legends where all champions have an actual place in the meta?

No. Its a huge mistake to think that there is a "meta" applicable to all elos. For example, TF vs Talia, A player is trash at skillshots, TF is the better pick. Only has to deal with Q, can cast Q after the gold card where its easy to land and will consistently out play a Talia who consistently wiffes with her QWER's

The problem with diversity is that as a community theres a real bias to copy and paste what ever the top 0.01% play at. as if some how the rest of the player base can imitate their mechanics, communicate and cooperate with the same synergy.

Volibear is a fairly straightforward champion but his skill cap is so low that after a point there's no discernible difference in player skill, which makes him fall off in higher elos as other champions whos best case out class him. Its not bad for the game to have champions of variable diversity, but there's no healthy way to enforce 100% viability across all MMR's.

Hmm yes and no. Could everyone be VIABLE? Absolutely. Could everyone be META? Unfortunately no. This is due to one thing. Who defines the meta. See, if someone has high success with a champion, people naturally flock to it. Remember support MF? Remember how even without nerfs, people quickly stopped doing it? They only stopped when they realized they couldn't make it work too well. So why did they start? Because a pro did it. It really doesn't matter how equal and balanced everyone is, if certain champs see the spotlight, that's what people will turn their heads to. Just my opinion, anyone can feel free to disagree, but that's just what I think.

Design flaws probably, since champions are added faster than older ones are adjusted, which means each new addition can inadvertently make an older pick useless purely because of the changing metas

Yes.

But anytime a champion with a unique kit becomes viable, people cry until it gets nerfed into the ground. Then they just claim it is a useless champ.

See: Old Urgot Teemo Anivia Singed Nasus

All of these champions have kits that require thinking outside of the normal ways of league. I considered adding Kayne and Rek'Sai to the list, but there are two of them.

Yasuo also does not qualify. His wall is unique but doesn't really add thought to his own gameplay; it rather takes away from it especially with the low cooldowns on his other abilities. Yasuo's passive takes away the need to think for the enemy it's all just trigger, position, damage, trigger....the low cooldowns turn playing against him into endless repetition only interrupted (moderately) by ganks.

Yes.

It was called Dominion.

Well, okay, not ALL the champions. Thresh was absolute garbage there.

There was this one point in season 5 where almost any champ was useable. But Riot had to nerf and force the meta to become boring because LC$

No. There's simply too many champions. You can get close, with different champion types in a role being very close in terms of performance, but just due to the nature of a balance system with so many levers, at any given time some champions will just be slightly stronger than their role counterparts. That's just how it is. LCS makes this situation worse by financially incentivizing skilled, knowledgeable players to highlight for the entire playerbase what those stronger picks are. Since people want to win, they often opt for those champions since the champions represent a definitive (however small) advantage.

That's why off-meta picks aren't guaranteed to fail; non-meta doesn't mean useless, it just (usually) means "slight disadvantage compared to counterparts in that role". The slightness of that disadvantage means that your individual skill and/or playstyle could affect your performance far more, meaning that an off-meta pick would work better for you. Great with timing? Take Nami. Not very good with skillshots but good at resource management? Take Sona. Have no skill at skillshots, playing supports, or LoL in general? Pick Janna. In this example, Sona might not be as "meta" as Nami, but if you are horrible at getting additional bounces with Nami W to the point of only rarely getting a second bounce, Sona would give you better results per mana expended.

Not until this balance team is replaced with one that is attempting to reach that point otherwise it's favoritism and skin based buffs all the way.

Rito has a hard on for adc, as long as adc exist in the game(which is like the smallest pool of champion out of any role) the meta will only be revolving around adc.

I don't think so. Not for league. Not trying to suck DoTA's dick, but it'd work better there. Many of their champs are more niche, and it's more around 'who do we need for what', whereas in league it's more like 'who is the best at what'. Because none of leagues champs are really "niche", most people end up playing the "best" tanks/adcs/mages/etc. In a world where there are always a handful of "best" champs, instead of niche champs, everyone being viable cannot be achieved.

Doubt it. Between YouTube and meta sheep that isn't happening anytime soon because it's a smaller portion of the community willing to experiment on their own and play things that aren't deemed OP or broken.

Nope, no matter how hard you try people will always flock to the easiest strongest champs, then a meta is formed, when a meta is formed some champs will be left out (not unviable but left out). When a champ is left out the community labels him "unviable".

This will always happen, there are too many levers to pull, from individual skill to champ kit to team comps to items, maps, objectives etc etc etc...

Every champ is viable, but not all are equal this will always be the case in EVERY pvp game.

No. Unless riot rebuilds the game from the ground up, there will ALWAYS be a riot-directed meta consisting of "limelight" champions who are allowed to be strong and "dumpster" champions who, by way of compound nerfs, will always be weak.

When riot nerfs a champion on an item, and then nerfs the item without buffing a champion nerfed because of it its a compound nerf. In most cases, the champion actually RELIED on that item to function.

Sure remove flash gut tank damage ratios and remove the percent penetration items and add counter crit items and more ap options.

With a roster so big I don't think it is possible to create a complete inclusive meta.

If they balanced the game around the pro scene then yeah everyone would be viable

Yes, but it'd require the introduction of even more hard counters to facilitate the diversity people want and hard counters are pretty unfun most of the time. Think of any assassin vs a squishy mage but the assassin gets a free Hexdrinker at level 1 and you'd have a pretty good idea of just how much some champs would need to shit on/get shit on by others in order to be fully inclusive.

Then you have to differentiate the champions a little more to give them clear cut roles in their team so that you pick champions based on what your team wishes to accomplish. You can already do this, but some champions are just lackluster in comparison to others when it comes to this without more power at a specific point in the game, essentially making them a bad pick because of it.

If I can assume the way you're suggesting "meta" then the answer is no. The meta is essentially the champs with the most consistent performance. I'm glad that changes, but I'm not convinced this is bad. Those champs with consistent performance are still countered by off-meta champs.

The balance then becomes which is better, potential gaps in play, or hard-countering the laning phase. I see Kat picked a lot because she can roam, she gets fed, and she carries. I do not see Heim picked a lot. But a wise Heimerdinger will eat Kat for lunch. He's not meta, but it doesn't matter.

To me, this game is about looking at the problems on the ground and adjusting accordingly. Did their Yas get fed? Congrats, you're running a guerrilla campaign against their base and baiting him to throw. That's more fun to me than sticking to the plan and winning. Investing a solution from your problem is why I'm here and not still throwing bails of money at Blizzard.

Short answer is no.

I see it more as, every champion should have a lot that works. It's impossible for everyone to be meta at once, but champions with poor kits are never meta. Examples would be Voli and Skarner. They struggle light hell with their kits and so even when they should be good they aren't. While not every champ can he strong at once, I think making all champions viable at all is a very good place to start.

There will always be tiers in a game's characters, and with that, it means some Champions/Roles will be bottom tier.

This isn't isolated to League, it's said that Street Fighter 1 was the only true balanced game, because both players could only play as Ryu/Ken (before they actually had differences). Any game that has a rooster of characters with different traits will always have some imbalance, which is only further accentuated by this game's huge gallery.

In a perfect world this would be ideal, but when it comes down to it it's not so simple, especially when pro play is factored in. I think that Riot should make the meta more broad than 3-4 champs per lane + niche picks, but overall the easiest way to manage a game with 130+ champions is to just move the spotlight around. If you want me to elaborate further on parts I can.

Plus, to be fair, where are all our memes going to come from if urgot and yorick get buffed into relevance?

There's just too many champions

Possibly but unlikely; there's been times were the majority have been viable, but there's always some handful that struggles to be relevant for a variety of reasons.

It's hard with the constant changes. Riot has embraced game with a constantly changing meta, and it's really hard to pin every champion to a particular skill set when the meta is constantly changing.

It's my personal opinion that this has been getting better all the time. Yorick and Warwick reworks are probably some of the best examples of this: they are now both played some without really being considered popular. I don't know what the limit of that is; I doubt we'll ever reach a place where all champs are equally viable. But I do think we'll see a time when all champs have a place in the game, with definite times that they are a good pick.

It's a slow move, of course. Let's get real, Riot didn't even really understand their own game for at least 2-3 seasons, imo. But I think they've started to figure out what League is and what League can be, and that is bearing out in their recent design decisions. I'm excited for the next couple years of this; to me, new runes is proof that they aren't afraid to innovate based on what they've learned in the past 7 years, and that's going to keep the game healthy for awhile.

All champs balanced to be all meta and balanaced? Quite possible I would say for the game

Doing so while Riot takes care of the balancing? No f*cking way

If you want a game that is designed so even the bench warmers have something they're best at and a niche then play Dota.

You play league for animu, and 30 viable champions at any given time so the pros don't have the expand their skillset.

Yes, but balance team refuses to try and instead push against it.

For any given meta, no, not every champion should be equally valuable. One of the defining characteristics of any meta is that certain characteristics are featured over others, which means that champions with those assets will become more popular, and champions without them less so.

However, to a larger degree, every champion in League should be viable in a certain meta, and that meta should have a reasonable chance of evolving spontaneously from another, without requiring any changes from Riot. We're obviously very far from this ideal still, but that's the general idea. In a balanced League, for example, the answer to the current hypercarry-centric meta should be assassins, burst mages, and other anti-hypercarry champions, which would then spawn a meta of anti-burst champions like tanks and fighters, which could then lead to a kite-heavy meta, and so on, and in each of those metas different champions would rise to the forefront.

Aside from balance problems, however, the current main issue preventing every champion from having a place is that many champions are still competing for the same niche. Marksmen are the clearest example of this, as they all often contribute the same thing (i.e. raw autoattacking power), so the difference tends to boil down to whoever is statistically stronger than the other. Besides that, there are still quite a few divers, tanks, mages, and assassins that tend to do many of the same things, and who need to have their own niche carved out better. Aside from a handful of do-everything champions, supports tend to be pretty diverse and good at their own individual things, as long as they're not overshadowed by their own itemization. Effectively, in order for every champion in League to have their own place in the game, they all need their own niche, which means quite a few champions need to be differentiated more.

As for the TF versus Taliyah comparison, I think it's actually a pretty good demonstration of how the two champions have really different, distinct niches that afford them good spots in different metas and comps. Taliyah has better roaming and waveclear, but TF has significantly better gank potential and global utility, so the two really do shine in their respective areas. If you want a roam-centric utility mage who can cut off escapes while your allies supplement damage, Taliyah is definitely the superior choice, but if you need more damage in the mid lane, yet still want a champion who can provide vision and snap-gank a lane for a kill, TF works far better.

While I don't think it's ever possible to have a meta where all champs are included, I would like to see a meta which makes picking certain champs makes sense instead of being treated like some kind of joke to LCS Casters.

... basically, this guy: