User blog:ClariS/Why Not Buff Instead of Nerf?

I know for a fact that you have either said or seen people say, "Why can't you just buff this champion instead of nerfing that champion?"

Seeing how the patch just came out, I think those type of comments will be appearing a lot.

Will, I was searching through the forums and I came across something that Phreak wrote himself explaining why they prefer to nerf over buffing. Also, it's just very informative and helpful to know.

Here is the link and below is the quote.

"There are a lot of issues with constantly buffing.

First, the explanation of Power Creep:

Power Creep makes you buff everything else when you keep buffing everything and the game no longer looks the same. What if we buffed every carry that wasn't the current #1 carry? Suddenly AD Carries are the best role by far, and pretty much every lane wants to be an AD carry because they're just the best champions in the game.

Then let's say we buff all mages to stack up with AD carries. Now no one plays any melee champions in the game. Why play Taric when you can just play Support Annie and rock everyone?

Now we have to buff the other 60 champions to deal with that. Now turrets die in 12 seconds because now all the champions are OP. Jungling is a joke. Split pushing is all out of whack because everyone deals so much damage.

Now we have to buff movement speed so that champions can react to split pushing. Now the melee vs ranged dynamic is completely thrown off. It's so easy for melee to close into the ranged champions that skillshots are all useless and being melee is just better. Better buff AD carries and mages again.

So that's why we don't just buff everything. The game snowballs out of control and a lot of things fall apart.

Second, let's actually look at what's happened here with our game:

1. Ashe: She's almost been untouched for almost two. Every since she gained Hawkshot, she's gained some base armor and gotten slightly longer cooldowns on her ultimate. 100% a tournament viable pick, totally an acceptable pick in general online play. All around a balanced champion. We don't need to do anything to Ashe. She's a great diamond standard for balanced AD carry.

As we saw from the EU Regional, it was only three carries that really got repeat picks. It was big bursty in-your-face carries that naturally synergize with offensive supports (Taric/Leona/Nunu) that got all the play. Now, I think picking offensive-oriented lanes is cool. But this is caused more by how supremely powerful Taric/Corki/Ezreal are. And they happen to be super offensive in lane as well. This isn't so much a conscious thought of, "Hey guys, I want to run an aggro bottom lane." This is a conscious thought of, "Here's the best AD carry in the game. So here's the naturally synergizing support."

2. Anivia: Had a brief stint as FotM, causing us to change around mana costs on her ultimate: R->E combo was too dominant in lane. Since then she's been pretty much untouched. Players who master her (Froggen) cause her to be a perma-ban. Totally viable tournament and general online pick. Not a "OMG ban this or you're bad" pick. A great standard for balanced mage. We don't have to buff her to have her catch up with Zyra/Diana. We just maintain that Anivia is balanced and make sure all mage picks are appreciable.

As we've seen from recent tournaments with Anivia as well, she's performing quite well as a balanced champion. Can be amazing if players know her, but doesn't define tournaments like Rumble recently has." ~Phreak

I hope you guys enjoyed this little bit of information and I hope this helps you understand the balance process it a bit more.

Do you think this is a good way of balancing the champions and do you think is a justifiable reason why to see a lot more nerfs than buffs? Thoughts, opinions, or suggestions?