User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Problem Behind Balance/@comment-13944607-20131211174748/@comment-8267817-20131212134254

The raw DPS boost of Bloodrazor was good for a few reasons, yes, it dealt magic damage, which meant that people that built 300 armor but only 80 MR weren't blocking all of your damage (keep in mind, this was before the changes to armor pen/shred) and the %max health damage meant that tanks and squishies alike were in danger of your sustained DPS not just insta burst a squishy and run, it let assassins get in duels and still have a fair shot to kill them no matter who they were.

As for seeming to be obsessed with Shaco, he has some of the most obvious issues in his balance, he is good for the first 15-20 minutes, then he drops off hard, he doesn't even get the first 15 minutes if the enemy team knows how he works and wards properly. His kit is designed to play mind games with the enemy, while other assassins are designed to kill anyone they run into, compared to other assassins he is simply lackluster. Late game he because the equivalent of a very sneaky large minion.

Also as an after note, in a fight, Deceive is your engage if you know you are about to fight someone, a free 120% damage crit (170% with infinity edge) from behind with the 10% boost from backstab is some of the highest achievable auto attack damage in the game. Keep in mind I also use crit damage and flat AD runes, boosting the damage even more.

Assassins should remain a threat throughout the game, and most of them do until extremely late in the game, however once mid game rolls around Shaco can only safely push lanes and farm the jungle if the enemy team is intellligent and has placed wards.

Anyway, moving on, all of my points in a way are relevant to balance, it was simply easiest to show the imblance in a kit like Shaco's, and I have a lot of experience playing Shaco over the past few years. Poppy is another champion that I know fairly well and based on her abilities she is also an assassin style champion, but because of her passive she is quite resilient, and even more so thanks to her ultimate. Her Q converts all AD into magic damage for a hit, and does a percentage of her opponents maximum (I'm fairly sure it is maximum) health. This makes her deal a surprising amount of hybrid damage when built AD, which means that itemization against her is harder than most other champions. Her W is a boost to her AD and armor that can be actively accessed on command, and when activated also gives her a movement speed buff. E is basically Vayne's condemn except she follows her target and can even activate her other abilities in mid air, meaning that as she stuns you against the wall her W has already been activated giving her AD to convert into more damage with her Q and movement speed to disengage making her an extremely powerful trader after level 3. If she gets ganked because she has pushed her laer back to their turret consistently and she is level 6 or higher and has her ult, she can ult the opposing laner who is already low on health to scare them into backing away while Poppy either kills their jungler or simply walks away.

On paper her abilities are nothing special except for her ult and passive, but her other abilities in conjunction lead to insane potential damage, this is a champion that no one plays, and this is the other side of imbalance. Her passive is simply the icing on the cake, any damage over 10% of her current health is reduced by half, it doesn't work against damage over time, so ignite will still work, but against burst damage abilities it will block a very significant amount of damage throughout a game, and is worth an insane amout of armor and MR, and if you buy a GA then you will be as tanky as you would ever need to be and the rest can just be built as straight damage.

To sum up, or if you didn't decide to read the entire thing, which is understandable, I tend to be a bit long winded, Imbalance works both ways, even in the middle grey area that is between over powered and under powered there is imbalance, simply not as severe. I understand that if everything was balanced then the game might get dull, but think about something else. Chess is perfectly balanced, it takes wit, it takes innovation, and mostly it takes skill and thinking.