User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Problem Behind Balance/@comment-13944607-20131211174748/@comment-1330314-20131212175044

The thing is, balance isn't just about being overpowered or underpowered, some things can just be balanced wrong. Poppy's Q is her biggest source of damage, and compared to most other abilities isn't that spectacular, but has the advantage of sidestepping the armor and health an opponent might be building against you if you're going AD Poppy. It's the same problem as Madred's Bloodrazor, in that it makes it confusing for players to properly build against a Poppy. Her passive and ultimate have similar problems: if you're against a DPS or true damage champ like or, Poppy's passive useless, but in most situations it gives Poppy a deceptive amount of tankiness, i.e. it makes her tougher in a way her opponents can't gauge accurately. Her ultimate is meant to duel priority champions one-on-one, but instead it's much more valuable if Poppy ults the support, then goes straight for the marksman, which is also confusing (Poppy ulted this person; why is she attacking someone else?) and provides little counterplay (her actual victim can do literally nothing against her for up to 8 seconds). She doesn't have the most powerful nor the weakest abilities, she just has a terribly old and toxic kit.

The same goes for Shaco: there is no counterplay to any of his mechanics (his escape is instant, he can stealth-CC and perma-slow enemies, and his ultimate can kill people even if they target the real Shaco with AoE abilities) and his early game is incredibly strong, which is why he was nerfed so hard. Again, he's not the weakest champ around, but he has a lot of unhealthiness to his kit that's forcing Riot to impose greater limitations on him. Having him dominate the early game and fall off hard in the late game sort of balances him (he's either fed or useless), but does so in a way that is bad for proper gameplay.