User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Problem Behind Balance/@comment-5605969-20131211161837/@comment-8267817-20131212164944

Well to clarify the article wasn't meant to focus on Shaco, I just know his kit well and can explain him better than others.

But at heart yes, I understand why they do it to an extent, but Shaco used to be in almost every game and now everyone just outclasses him, slight buffs here and there wouldn't make that big of a difference as to make him OP, just viable again. Half of the frustration of fighting Shaco isn't really the damage, he is annoying to fight against because the whole time he is playing mind games with the enemy, run towards them then decieve away if you are low health, they will panic thinking that you are going to backstab them and kill them and then you just never show back up until later in the game. You have to mess with their heads, otherwise you are just a squishy target late game, you must make them afraid, you must create chaos. As his kit is you can't really do that, the range nerf on decieve, the JitB idle time nerf, both of those nerfs hit him hard, and he still hasn't recovered. Shaco used to be banned or picked in every single game, and now you are lucky to see him once a month, there is almost no reason to play him when compared to other assassins, and I say that as someone who absolutely loves Shaco, I own almost every skin he has except Nutcrako which I am getting for christmas.

Anyway, enough about Shaco. As for the state of the game, some champions seem to just synergize too well with particular items, for Jax it is Gunblade, Rageblade, and Triforce, For Vayne it is BotRK, Rammus with thornmail, etc, etc. I understand that they can't fix everything to be balanced, but sometimes things are just a little too imbalanced.