User blog comment:Fffffff7f/Mikhail, the Relentless Slaughterer/@comment-7709681-20171222164928/@comment-7709681-20171228173805

Countering highers size target is nice because is unexplored, but as you said is problematic because of how few do so, with those that do so more frequently being Cho, Zac and Nunu, so the interaction is small enough to be inefficient.

Unit targeted silence, in on itself, isn't bad, the problem was that League had most if not all its instances on Burst Mages and Assassins (or both, the case of AP Assassins), which rely on getting rid of opponents in short windows of time, so the Silence (or any form of ability-inhibiting CC for that matter) was an overkill, so it got controversial once removed from them and now is threated like leprosy.

There's a reason why Fiddlesticks, Malzahar, Soraka, Blitzcrank and Garen (and now doubt why Cho'Gath has it since his E's rework and the release of Stoneplate, now is more like a "burst tank" than a battlemage) still have theirs: They're champions that rely on DPS and/or telegraphed abilities, and are immobile, so in them the Silence exists to allow them to have a free window in which deal securely a portion of damage, and in ideal cases go for the kill safely.

That was the main problem with other users, that they were always in their ideal case.

And R is... odd, to say the least. It's just a stat ball (with AP for some reason, because the kit has not AP scalings) that can be reset, so is like you said, ends up being just a long neutral buff, so meh. :p