Player agency and itemization; the "Paper, Rock, Scissors" problem

I think that the purpose of any game is to provide the human being with the means to be entertained by interacting with a computer / other human beings / himself. Interactions are most engaging when there is a large variety of non-trivial choices. Non trivial choices are those which require pause to think about, the various options in that choice must be valued according to risk and reward. If that is correct, then any item in the game should ideally provide an increase in the number of options available to the players playing the game.

If it so happens that an item actually removes choice, then it is a bad item a priori. An online game of "Paper, Rock, Scissors" may technically be fair from a balance point of view, but it isn't fun at all-- it might as well be a game of "winner selected at random". When league of legends suffers from PRS syndrome, it means that items or champions counter eachother so hard they remove other interesting interactions that would otherwise exist in a more moderate system. There are quite a few examples, but I'm just going to touch on two in order to keep this post short: thorns, grievous wounds.

RIOT has stated that currently grievous wounds exists in its current state to keep XYZ champions in check. How much sense does that really make though?

Either those XYZ champions are going to be average power when grievous wounds isn't being used, and weak when it is-- or they are going to be average power when grievous wounds is being used and overpowered when it isn't. The "middle number where there is balance" dichotomy only concerns itself with balance over the average for a large sample number of games, not fun and not singular games. Its not fun knowing that your enemy can build an item that will completely ruin a core element of your kit, and your "compensation" for that weakness is that this element of your kit is so damn powerful that if they don't build that item they are forced into building it or they will simply lose, which simply provides more incentive for them to build that item which will deny you the central element of your kit! Of course they are going to build it, they don't have an option! Its a self defeating and totally backwards way of game design. Players should have options, and any thing that reduces the number of options that players have without also increasing the fun-value of each remaining option, should be eliminated from the game from a purely philosophical point of view, whether it be an item, a concept or even an idea.

Another example is thornmail. One 2300 gold item shouldn't both give more armor than any other item in the game and provide a higher sustained damage increase than any other single item in the game, even if it is only against just a single specific target and only when being attacked. It is too effective in its very specific niche.

I hate hyper-effective niche items. They collapse the game into a rock-paper-scissors interaction that exists between these exaggerated item effects/numbers and snuff out the weaker but more interesting and varied interactions that exist innately between champions. That is a simple matter of course because there are just far more champions in the game than there are items, and champions are generally more interesting and deeper. Thornmail shouldn't be this thing that is absolutely crappy in all circumstances except for that one circumstance, and in that one circumstance its worth over 9000 gold. Thats boring for everyone.

If it so happens that these items exists to keep XYZ in check, then for gods sake nerf the edge cases of XYZ. Stop taking the indirect approach to balance, it doesn't work well and even when it does it usually introduces unnecessary complications and interdependencies that you have to keep track of. I'm sure the web of balance dependencies is already complicated enough for the live team, and there is no reason to intentionally make their job any more difficult than it is.

If lifesteal and other means of sustained healing is a problem in the rare few scenarios for which you can fully out heal the enemy dps for the purposes of game health and fun, then put diminishing returns of sustained healing from a systems point of view, rather than "duct tape" the problem with grievous wounds or thornmail. Make it so that receiving a heal, any heal, will apply a special debuff that will reduce any subsequent healing for X seconds by Y% stacking Z times or something.