Finding the Bucket Instead of Fixing the Leak; What Can We Do to Change This?
Recently over the past 3 seasons or so, I've very much noticed that balance choices tend to hinder on nerfing or buffing the effect, instead of looking to change the root of the issue. Especially with items and problems that arise from them.
For example, both 
and 
were huge problems with 
and 
. Riot decided the best course of action was to nerf and by preventing you from building both with a unique passive, much like 
and 
, while also nerfing and to stop them from going crazy.
and still cause a tremendous amount of problems though, and basically just moved over for the next abuser to come in and smash with it.
The proper solution would be to nerf/remove the two items entirely, which would fix the vast majority of abusers, then buff anyone who overly relied on it. Admittedly, buffs would be in order for SOME.
The problem I have is when riot takes this path, they buff TOO MUCH to get them to the point where they were before without the item.
For example, when got nerfed, 
received compensation buffs/nerf tweaks. The buffs were too much, and they removed the nerf portion. Now is going crazy again but this time its not because of .
The poor feedback they receive leads me to believe that when they do this, they are met with backlash. Not because of the path they took, but because of the overbuffs, which riot perceived as backlash to the path instead.
My question is, what can we and riot do to solve this? Our feedback seems to be taken in a way its not meant to, while riot seems to take paths to avoid solutions in response to negative feedback. Buffs receive less negative feedback, so when A and B need to be taken to equal levels, instead of nerfing B and getting backlash, they buff A.
I can understand their viewpoint, but this just leads to bigger problems. What if, later, B gets nerfed because they were too strong against C, well now A is just too strong. Buffing leads to more problems than it solves unless absolutely necessary.
This question is to both Riot and us, What can we do to further clarify negative feedback while also still trying to retain a correct path?
or 
or 
Actually I don't even know where to stop, I could probably list all items....
And so on. The problem isn't people abusing items, its items made with the intent to be abused to a huge extent. Kha'zix was a huge proponent of this, getting 600+ damage from Duskblade passive through multiple uses.
uses Stormrazor on his barrels. Riot added Stormrazor to fill the shoes of the old infinity edge. IE no longer has a 25% chance to deal 250% damage. Instead, Stormrazor has a 100% chance to deal 160 to 200% damage. Theoretically, Stormrazor is healthier than the old IE since it takes out the RNG.
but due to meta and counterpick effectiveness they just simply arent that strong.
item. The energize bonus would be called WIND SCARS and it would make your next 3 basic attacks deal some bonus magic damage, maybe 20-60 per hit for 60-180 total. This way is has a better build path for champions, it is more focused on DPS, and it cannot be spammed every couple seconds. This would still accomplish the goal of the item empowering you when you first enter combat, and it gives the item better and more fair windows of power.
