TL;DL: Still long but it's not an hour [slayer-jinx-wink]
-Overall, the team is happy with the Mid-Season update and how it helped shift power around with mages and mage items, but there may be some outliers that need changes.
-Neutral Objectives (3:30): Dragons are in a good spot after some of the buffs and nerfs, they are impactful and exciting, except for maybe Cloud Drake. Herald has a much better niche than before and feels more useful than a mini Baron. Baron itself is a bit low in power and focused on less. May see changes, as it gives temporary strategic power for against objectives and for sieging, something Ocean and Mountain Drake are now doing permanently. More teamfights around Dragons somewhat removes the need to take Baron, teams can just end after a Dragon fight. Risk/reward of Dragon may be too shallow, losing a Dragon doesn't mean much, losing Baron is game changing.
-Mage Reworks (12:10): Measured in two ways: distinctiveness vs. healthiness. Vlad was already distinct, but needed changes to be healthier. Succeeded somewhat, but still not in the best spot. How is distinctiveness measured? How a champion changes the game, i.e. focus on early game or late game, what objectives, what powerspikes, playstyles, etc. Old Darius and Garen, Diana and Akali, old Graves and Lucian etc. are good examples of too much similarity. MYMU tried to make a champions more distinct, succeeded pretty much (except Vel'Koz).
-Itemization Changes (17:50): New items were aimed at just giving more options and facilitating differences (give tanky mages more options than just ROA, etc). Eliminate issues of Athene's vs. Morello's stat checking and focus more on variety. Hextech line was an experiment to see if certain items could be given clear strengths and distinctiveness, a lot like Zeal crit items.
-Supports (23:00): Support gold and exp. Stronger catch up exp. Supports and Junglers are "low income classes," but this is not healthy currently. Kill gold vs. minion gold, minions are worth so much gold and denying minions through killing is worth more than kills. Junglers and supports are not as impactful as laners, and this needs to be fixed. How to balance support items' low cost with its impactfulness so laners don't abuse it? Gold has too much of an impact in the game for two classes to have low incomes and still remain healthy. Create more options to give supports better and healthier choices (Aegis is too necessary, AP support items are simply outclassed by regular AP items). Support champs are not the problem, it's the systems around them.
-Assassins (35:40): Why assassins? Too many similarities between assassins, not distinct enough. Kept assassins weak because they are too toxic when strong. Assassins are supposed to kill, but to make them less frustrating they are made to kill less effectively. This doesn't feel good for the assassin player. Want to bring more utility to assassins (more vision contributions, objectives, and out of combat movespeed for flanking). Want more assassins that are less focused on mechanical skill and more on game understanding and mind games. Give counterplay to assassins and give those fighting against them a way to outplay them to survive, rather than relying on the assassin messing up to survive.
-Game Predictions (49:40): Assassin update will counterbalance the mage update changes and cause midlaners to think about picks. Preseason will be exciting. Teams playing more strategically around dragons (we have three Mountain Drakes so let's push objectives). Games will get faster as people learn the importance of objectives.
Thanks for reading guys! [slayer-jinx-catface]