Balance vanishing

[TL;DR: different personal experiences with balance feeling like it's disappeared]

Through the years of League, there's been changes in balance for all things, from assassin meta in season 3, to tank meta in season 5, we've seen it all. We all know Riot works hard to keep things as balanced as possible while still keeping the game interesting, but a few things have been brought to my attention recently that should be addressed.

I've noticed, personally, that "MMR" has taken a turn again. For a while in season 5/6 (the highlight of my time playing League), matchmaking seemed balanced: you win some, and you lose some. Recently, however, it feels that you have a significantly higher chance of getting a troll/afk on your team than before. Maybe RNG just doesn't like me this 2017, but I've gotten a spike of players that just leave, give up, or just feed.

Now I know there's a simple solution to this: Bad players in games? Just queue with friends and carry. Sounds simple enough, right? The issue I've found (again, personally) with that is, if I queue with say some silvers, being currently s4 myself, but g5 last season, why is it when I op.gg my games, there seems to always been someone that's currently diamond or plat in my game either on my team, theirs, or both?

Sure, I'm not complaining about not being in elo hell anymore, but it would be nice to have other people in silver to play with/against while I currently am silver myself. This would feel like less of a problem if I was high silver currently, but again, silver 4 here (currently).

Also, just want to take a stab at current meta: Why is it that the assassin rework, said to increase difficulty in assassins, and increase the window of their damage so they don't just one shot, feel like just a giant buff to all assassins touched? And what's up with Ziggs having the highest current win rate for bot lane? Wasn't the goal of the adc reword to make marksman bot lane more fun to play and increase play in bot lane? It seems counterproductive to attempt to make a role more desirable, then turn around and ruin it to the point where mages are better at the role, but that might just be me.

Now this may just be myself complaining, or maybe I'm just getting bad at this game again, but it really feels (personally) that the game is falling off the illusion of balance that it once felt like it had.

Sorry for the long read, but thank you for reading this far. Good luck in your future games, and may RNG not screw you over the way it has to me in the future. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]