User blog comment:BIA-Kaboose/The Problem Behind Balance/@comment-13944607-20131211174748/@comment-8267817-20131211181222

Wow, where to start, uh........

Well, I guess following my own order will work fine.

Point one was not saying it was bad or good, it was simply stating that it makes it hard to balance a game when there is a near infinite number of things you can do, I say near infinite because no single player will ever try every single champion with every sngle possible item combination in the game.

Point two, Madred's being subsituted in a way did leave certain assassins out to dry, what made assassins popular in season three primarily was the change to defensive stats and armor/magic pen. Blade of the Ruined king on assassins is not nearly as good as the old bloodrazor used to be except for the healing component, bloodrazor did %max health, while BotRK gets less effective the more you hit them, and against squishy target you are basically just  getting the AD and attackspeed of the item, the % health damage is nearly nonexistant to start with, not to menton when they hit low health levels. The main thing that I missed was Shaco with 4 Tiamats and an infinity edge dealing 200% damage of 170% damage crit strikes and killing the whole enemy team in a single blow by backstabbing the enemy support. Broken, but funny.

Point three, Shaco in team fights late game is roughly as useful as a critting minion, he dies in a few hits and does fairly lackluster damage when compared to a ranged ADC after the first decieve crit, boxes are a one shot for basically anything, sure, Two-Shiv is still a decent slow, but it doesnt matter when you die in 3 hits. Some champions ARE weaker than others, being able to push minion waves and drop turrets can be achieved by any champion building AD and attack speed. Yes, Shaco has good presence early game, assuming there are basically no wards and the enemy jungler is just as squishy as he is, otherwise he will practically be forced to farm in the jungle to even be able to take on minions later in the game.

Continuing point three, I never said unpopular champions were all weak, I said that they are ignored for the most part. Poppy is not weak, but is in the top 10 least played in the world for solo queue, despite Morello himself saying that if she was played more then she would get nerfed into the ground. They are ignored, not all weak, but shaco compared to other assassins in the game doesn't bring anything to the table that someone else doesn't already have, but better. Decieve: gap closer. Jack in the Box: CC. Two-Shiv Poison: soft CC and ranged poke. Hallucinate: might as well call it a meat shield, because if you are lucky they will take 2 hits to kill it before they turn on you. Now look at other assasins, CD reseting gap closers, spammable slows, auto attack resets, stealth, self healing. He is simply outclassed at being an assassin.

You are free to have your own opinion, but it must be based in some form of logic, I have not seen a team with a shaco win a game since season 2 in a serious 5v5 game. I personally have won 3 or 4 games as Shaco vs troll teams in that time, stuff like all ADCs, all supports, all melee champions, etc, etc.