Mage changes are confirmed to be a result (in part, at least) of mage dominance in pro play. Really?

From RiotMadnessHeroo himself: "I'm personally very in favor of the mana changes. Mages have been dominant Mid lane in competitive for multiple seasons now, and their ability to successfully farm out the wave via PvE wave clearing has been a huge component. I think this is a necessary step if we are going to get other classes back into Mid in competitive, which is clearly a win to me (no single class should dominate a position for multiple years)."

Are you kidding me Riot? I've been playing this game since season 1 and from season 1 to season 6 or so I played with the same group of friends. As of season 6 they started departing and by Worlds of season 7, most of them are gone. Stupid changes like this drive people who don't care about pro play away. Sure you can chalk some of them up to have burned out or lost interest over the years, but the same points were brought up by most of them when they quit or started playing significantly less (from 10s of games a night to a couple games every few months).

1. I don't give a shit about pro play and stuff I like doing keeps getting hit as a result of what pros do

2. Interesting champions with unique mechanics keep getting sledgehammered.

3. Off meta strategies are becoming increasingly difficult (tied to 3)

4. I can't single handedly pop off anymore/ I can't fall back on my fed teammates as a safety net if I did really bad this game.

Each and every one of these bullet points has continued to be exacerbated over the last three or so years and the mage update further continues this trend.

1. Ruining (or in kinder words, nerfing the shit out of) an entire class of champions simply because they've been in pro play for years is absolutely stupid. ADCs have been in pro play since the meta of League stabilized, support champions and tanks have also been staples for that long. Why mages? Artificially making it so assassins can be taken mid in pro just to spice things up for the viewerbase doesn't outweight the millions of players who genuinely do not care about LCS. Even if this was done for the Worlds final I would still say hell no.

2. Lots of mages have some of the more interesting kits. While some of my friends quit because other unique champions like Kalista, Kindred, Aurelion Sol, and Azir kept getting hit (again, due to pro play...) lots of mages definitely fall in that category. Generally they all have unique ways of bursting and unique mechanics to play around with independent of each other, and are a lot less samey than the right click class or the damage sponge class. Not to say ADCs or tanks can't be interesting, but there is a lot less variance in what their kits do. Why mages?

3. This bullet point may not be hit as much by the mage changes but it's still affected, and even if it wasn't it's worth putting here for visibility's sake. The mage jungles in particular (Fiddle for example) are being hit with these changes when they already have the most garbage jungle item of the and mid lane mages like Ziggs can't rely on just shoving towers early instead of fighting if they can't waveclear as much. Mages traditionally don't have many off builds but those who do are still getting hit and when a champion's power is decreased overall, off-meta strategies tend to be the first things that disappear because their viability was hanging on by a thread to start with.

4. Say waveclear is boring, sure, but you know what is waveclear does? It helps mages farm and get back into the game to fall back on their teammates. If a mage gets who is behind is trying to come back but run out of mana because they are down on items they have no kill pressure either. People on the boards who complain that the game is too team-oriented and that there is no way to stop the snowball are going to be even more pissed by these changes, especially if they're mid mains. It's just another stupid change to make the game more snowbally, because those who are behind will run out of mana faster.

Ultimately, I just don't get what Riot is doing. I usually jump to their defense and if I am critical of what they do it's usually when they rework a champion I love or let the game stagnate for months because of pro play, like when the Ardent Censor meta was forced on us for months and months because of Worlds (a timeframe a bunch of my friends quit in by the way). The changes to the game the last few patches from the mage items update to the Statikk nerf have started moving the game in a positive direction and given me hope Riot is finally listening to the playerbase, but I just cannot agree with these mage changes. I'm not even a mage main, I main jungle in ranked and even though I play almost every role equally in normal games (99% of what I play) I see no benefit for the health of the game in artificially nerfing a class just because of pro play. Call waveclearing frustrating all you want, but there's about a million more frustrating things about this game than mages cockblocking tower pushes and the most annoying parts of all are being exacerbated as a result of these changes. If you're not going to make pro balance separate from the game the other 99.9% of players play, you can't keep making changes that make the game so unfun for the vast majority of us.