User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Problem Behind Balance/@comment-24242333-20131211145617/@comment-1330314-20131211222553

But that's the thing: now that its range is nerfed, you can simply lay back and farm outside of his poke range. If he goes in to throw a barrel, you're much more at leisure to punish him and have your minion wave attack him. If you're melee, you may have a harder time, but most melee mid champs are better in a fight than Gragas. It's something you're going to have to adapt to.

To repeat myself, a lot of the changes Riot makes to balance out competitive play have little to no effect at low elos. Lee Sin himself is getting a nerf on the PBE where he can only shield allied champions with. For casual players, this makes no difference. For pro players, this mean they can no longer deny an opponent farm by Safeguarding to a minion. Similarly, a lot of Zed's recent nerfs affect higher elos more than any other tier. Riot is more subtle at balancing things than you think: if a particular bit of balancing affects all elos, it's likely it was meant to in the first place. It's difficult to see what you mean, as you haven't really provided any concrete example of Riot harming a champ's effectiveness for casual players when targeting competitive play.