"counterplay"

Nope, counterplay is gone sadly. Especially when you try to counter play tanks. Most assassins with lethality, arm pen, cdr, will not even be able to hurt a tank with 2 armor items. So why bother getting items like that. Your only option then is to pick an ADC with armor shred.

Only certain "meta" champs have counterplay at all, like Vayne, she can shred a tank, but you compare her to someone like MF, and good luck killing a tank, you will never even hurt them.

I think this game has tossed out counterplay, for RNG/Luck based matches. You either have the superior team Composition and win from the beginning, or you have the shitty team composition that can't do shit from the start, and you lose.

Matches are won or lost in the champ selection now. Items are irrelevant and only help certain champs counter certain other champs. Items were at first intended to give you builds to counter other builds, but now, you can try to counter certain builds all you want, and it will never have an effect.

Riot designed it like this the last few seasons in an attempt to make LCS more enjoyable and fast paced to watch. Hence why they nerfed the fuck out of turrets a long as time ago. Now we have level 2 turret dives. Riot does not care for average player game balance, like you or me, or your average streamer. They purely base the game on LCS now. The 1% of pro players.

The only "balance and counterplay" left in this game only applies to the 1% LCS Pro player "Meta". Everything else is a clown show.

The premise of counter play is meaning to counter something ( example rock beats scissors ), but right now in the League of Legends matches threw away the definition and put in RNG and Luck Based Events to "Strategically plan things" when really the only strategy is how the lose with a waifu midget and her Whomper sticking in my face, ADCs getting no assistance what-so-ever, and the current meta of this game.

RNG and Luck does not promote anything good unless if it deemed wanted like Tryndamere needing the critical hits, Riots first idea of RNG was the Dodge mechanic until the Jax and 50% Dodge Crisis happened and the removal of Dodge was on its way. With the current meta of ever changing dragons, plants that really can serve little to no real tactics, and finally the First Tower Blood implement it makes things ever so challenging each match.

Speaking which of challenging, the ADCs are down right terrible in this current meta heavily enforcing pushing and junglers who can use CofC as well as camp bot. Ever since the removal of pink wards, the beat down on Assassins, and finally the resurgence of the Tanks in its way it has made games focus on a lesser time frame, giving it a feel of the LCS that ruins games. League has been known for its once fun matches that was just pure medium levels of warfare in its MOBA, that was until particular decisions were made and thus making it a ghost of its former self. The personal strive for me playing a match right now is making it consistently up with three things...

1.) Who is the poor guy/girl getting auto-filled

2.) Will I see another CofC User

3.) Ask the jungler is he/she is going bottom side of the jungle for camping

As a person who mainly picks Lucian and Ashe when given the ADC role, it makes me feel like a person in the Horror Genre if I'm gonna be first blood or who is gonna be first blood. The main part about ADCs right now is that the game is heavily decided by winning the ten minute mark since of Riot's Idea of giving early game champions a snowballing lead when really its an avalanche, unless the snowballing team throws the match (8/10 times it does not happen) making it more LCS orientated and not the whole thing I once knew. This will come back to counter playing now.

Counterplaying use to be real in the game like for instance Darius winning over Nasus, but ever since of nerfs and reworking champs to make the game less deciding on who is gonna win the lane and carry, but right now more of a game of holding hands together and hoping your Sivir doesn't solo Baron then toss the match (A reason I hate duoing with someone). League lacks right now three main elements for me which are Entertainment, Replayabliliy, and Logical Reasoning Decisions.

So sorry on making this huge rant but to answer your question, Counterplay has ended up in horrific reworks, unwanted ideas (plants and dragons), and finally entire class mess-ups (Assassins Rework and ADCs in the Meta). Thank you for reading this, hopefully you read all of that.