Ah yes, then you have a look at Katarina:
Problems with pre-rework Katarina:
-mediocre laning
-over reliance on dream situations
-garbage when behind
-long cooldown on Shunpo
-had very few powerspikes after Luden's and Void Staff
-no means of CC
-awful at duelling
-extremely squishy at all stages of the game following the 5.2 HP nerf
-doesn't contribute to her team unless she's selfish or a distraction
-pretty shit scaling past 3 items and level 13
-Has a pretty useless ult. compared to a standard rotation
Problems with pre-rework Kat from the community's POV:
-snowballed out of control if lane dominance was established
-great at roaming and "fucking up my lane"
-extremely quick and fluent burst rotations which one shot when ahead
-could clean up entire teams for making too many mistakes
-amazing at objective play when one team overextends
-a semi reliable escape, wardhop
-extremely high mobility upon getting resets
What pre-rework Kat did right:
-Fluent kit
-Had an assassin-like feel to her
-Rewarded players for fully mastering her
-Had a good splash art which didn't look like a cocaine addict :]
-Properly showed just how ahead an assassin could get if you made no effort to learn counterplay
-Healthy in terms of a balance sense. Simply nerf one ratio and that's that.
-Passive felt natural on her kit
Now then, the problems with Kat post-rework and nerfs:
-mediocre laning
-long waits for daggers to drop
-absolute garbage when behind
-long cooldown on Shunpo when daggers are not consumed
-clunky feel to her following the Shunpo cast time change
-has very few powerspikes past Gunblade and Void Staff
-no means of CC
-better at duelling, worse at teamfights
-extremely squishy, despite the HP changes
-doesn't contribute to her team unless she's selfish or a distraction
-awful scaling past levels 11 and 16
-atrocious teamfighting ability
-a nightmare to balance due to over reliance on daggers
-no reliable escape
-Makes some matchups better, and some matchups borderline unwinnable
-Opponents can literally just right click to escape daggers
-Has a pretty useless ult. compared to a standard rotation
-Passive doesn't feel natural on her kit
What post-rework Kat does right:
-Increased mobility outside of resets
-Rewards players for properly picking her up
-Properly shows what happens when you turn an assassin into a semi-duellist (along with Rengar)
-Made her laning somewhat better
-Made more items accessible to her
-Looks more stylish and complicated for newer players
-Removes her assassin-like burst, replacing it with windows of huge damage once daggers drop
You see, Riot really did not make Kat any better. Instead, they took it upon themselves to remove many of Kat's key traits and make her harder for newer players, and easier for experienced players. Additionally, her identity as the janitor of teamfights is almost non-existent now, since how can she do that when it takes 10 years for a single dagger to drop. Sure, you might have got your first pentakill down in Silver V, but believe me, a lot of players in higher elos are not stupid, they know to move out of the way of daggers, or, better yet, stay out of Kat's ability ranges for the entire time. "But post rework Kat can outplay her opponents more!", that she can, but pre-rework Kat could also do this, no surprises.
Lack of ward hopping means Kat is now more susceptible to ganks in a meta based around aggressive junglers. Furthermore, she just got clunkier all for the sake of "counterplay". Ironically enough this did not actually lessen the hate players feel towards Katarina, it made it worse. Now players hate how sticky she is, and how annoying she is post-Gunblade. You see, she still has a majority of her core problems intact. Most of these issues are not inherent weaknesses, they are problems in her design compared to other champions.
Also, really think about, what reasons are there to pick Katarina now over every other assassin? More AOE? Sure, but honestly you can achieve similar amounts of AOE with most other assassins, and most of the other meta assassins are more reliable. More mobility? Nope, hardly at all, Talon has more mobility outside of combat, Zed's mobility is better than Kat's, Fizz's is better than Kat's and LB's is arguably better than Kat's. Insane ability to snowball? Ehhhh, not really, every other meta assassin can snowball better than Kat, and they're much harder to shut down. Even Akali has more reasons to be picked than Kat.
I think the real question is, why does Riot feel the need to remove "unfair" traits from every champion in the game, and yet remain so bias against "well-designed" champions. It's funny, since Riot is perfectly ok with Syndra having a point and click burst tool, and yet they're not ok with assassins having burst in general. Burst damage in LoL as a whole is a flawed concept from Riot. There will always be burst damage once someone gets ahead, there will never NOT be burst damage. What I don't understand is why they felt the need to remove burst from SOME assassins and not all of them. If you're trying to go for an assassin identity change, change them all. Fizz, Zed, Talon, Ekko and Akali should all be changed in the same way Kat and LB were.
(Don't even get me started on what they did to Rengar)
However, from my POV, I actually think pre-rework Kat was fine. Honestly at this point I think it's the legions of complainers who wanted her changed. She was always a mediocre champ who rewarded proper mastery, there's no problem in that. She wasn't like pre-rework Urgot, with a small playerbase and borderline useless kit, she actually was quite popular compared to a lot of champs; with a kit that flowed well.
In a general sense I have an issue with reworks now. Riot is looking too far to add concepts to champs to "increase" their skill level. This will never work the way they intend it to, since often these concepts are easier to understand. Additionally, they're reworking champions that do not even need reworks, like Katarina, Rengar, Zac and Maokai. Those 4 mentioned champions were fine pre-rework. Maokai only became an issue when Riot nerfed every other meta top laner and emphasised the importance of tanks. Rengar only ever became an issue when he got fed out of his mind, same to Kat. As for Zac, he was fine, Riot just felt like they needed to make his ult. stronger, for some strange reason (because his old ult. definitely wasn't good enough already).
I'm fine with Riot reworks champs that require reworks, such as Warwick, Yorick and Galio, however I'm not fine when Riot reworks champions simply for the purpose of potentially making them "healthier". When has this ever properly worked? Class updates have never worked the way intended. I'd argue the only champ which was a success would probably be LB after her rework nerfs, however even then it's a stretch since her initial rework state was 100% pick or ban on every server in both competitive and solo q.
Riot should just stop class updates and focus on individual champions. They should also stop releasing new champions, we do not need 300 champions thank you very much.
how does this change anything????
none of her old issues have actually been fixed
why was this rework even necessary?
why even rework leblanc????
i swear to god this better be the last Ryze rework
