"Cancer" should imply game warping

This is gonna sound odd, but here's my perspective on the most popular buzzword on Gameplay and Balance.

Everyone claims "x y z champ that's meta is cancer" "their mechanics are cancerous to play against" "they're cancer".

Cancer (in it's normal form) means a cell mutation that can spread and create more cell mutations which are all problematic and chain upon each other if not contained to form tumors and eventually take over the body, killing the host in the process.

In league, the term for that is "game warping." It's not "annoying", it's not "broken", it's not "strong." It's "game warping" because it causes other players to have to adopt a cancerous playstyle to deal with it, and will eventually kill the host (the game you're in) if left unchecked.

Rengar is a good example of proper usage. (warning: I'm a Rengar main, no triggerino plserino )

His kit revolves around entering stealth and instantly killing you if you happen to be alone. That's it. The issue with this playstyle is that it forces you to play in pairs (or usually the entire team as a group) 24/7 or be so tanky he can't/won't take the time to kill you. It warps the game into a deathball playstyle for the opponent because that's the only way you can win efficiently unless you have an overly fed Maokai or Riven who can kill him instantly when he has hopes and aspirations of killing you.

Evelynn is the same thing, to the exact letter (except for pronouns and names.)

I see Yasuo and Ekko and such are "cancer" and I'm like - "wait, they're not game warping, they're just ridiculously overtuned in the incorrect areas."

You can play against a Yasuo in the same fashion as any duelist top who's overly tanky (like Jax, Irelia, old Fiora, etc.) - either be fed enough to duel them or a champion designed to duel them, or simply group and out utility him while he split pushes with his hybrid build. Much like any other bruiser-fighter top, he has a ton of (relatively unnecessary) damage while being ridiculously hard to kill with some form of mobility.

And Ekko is a case of "assassins gone bruiser" - but in the end, he plays like one. He's kind of like old AD Nidalee. Was ridiculously obnoxious to catch with mobility, had a lot of stickiness so he could easily choose fights, had options to continue fighting, and abuses an item ridiculously well. The issue here is, much like old AP (or AD) Nidalee, is that they have too much power in the wrong spells which entices them to build in that specific way. Numerical fixes work here, but the champion isn't inherently damaged to play against because you can still play in a sort of traditional, strategic way.

A top laner who has a "cancerous" play style is Tryndamere, for example. He may not be good (frankly, he's kind of bad) but his playstyle revolves around only split pushing and being capable of dueling anything that tries to stop him at some point. This is inherently problematic because you can't out rotate or outduel a Tryndamere 90% of the time - you need either a ridiculously strong duelist who scales harder (so... basically... Jax.) or you need to 2v1 him constantly. If you leave him alone and try and counter-push, he will knock down your inhibitors. There is no secondary playstyle - the game turns to revolving around him very quickly - and that is game warping.

Also, Old Poppy was a great example of this - it became "keep her shut down the entire game" or else it became "she shut down your backline for the rest of the game." Give her any breathing room and she'll become a carry murderer who's literally unstoppable. Seems legit, right?

Pantheon is a character with a "cancerous" playstyle, but not necessarily imbalanced. The lane itself (and later, the game) warps around Top (or mid!) as Pantheon gains such insane control in lane (since you can't do anything to him until six minimum) and high snowball potential that every single lane has to basically pray to god Top plays safe and that they aren't the victim of a Pantheon dunking, or else they will lose the game before 20 minutes or relatively close to that time. That's game warping gameplay - but after changes, he has his weaknesses in lane that mitigate this and strengths that amplify this - essentially signaling he's not imbalanced.

I'm not here to cry about balance or whatever. This is from a purely objective standpoint, assuming each description was perfectly balanced. But I just want to say that people on Gameplay like to abuse buzzwords a lot - but you guys can be more accurate in your arguments, which would make debating them and/or trying to refute them much easier and intuitive.

Also, something can be "cancer" and "imbalanced" at the same time, or "cancer" and "balanced." Like "cancerous and imbalanced" is Evelynn in high elo (apparently. not sure about the validity of this, but i hear this thrown around a lot) since (apparently) she can just control the game while instantly killing whoever she pleases and snowballing out of control. "Cancerous and balanced" is Tryndamere, since he has his weak lanes and strong lanes, but will always become a severe problem if you don't have something that can handle him the entire game. "Not cancerous but imbalanced" is Triforce Ekko top. That's just item abuse, but he doesn't warp the game around himself - you still need to actually play the game (and you can, in fact, play the game) to win.

This may seem totally arbitrary, but I would just like to address this one thing. It burns my soul when I read people describe some characters as "cancerous" because they don't warp the game to the extent some characters do.

TL;DR (holy shit it ended up being long as hell): Cancer isn't broken with numbers. Cancer is broken in the fundamental kit. Something that can't be fixed with numbers, but rather kit changes.