Talk:VPBE/@comment-3463132-20150114024533/@comment-1330314-20150117080718

Again, issues of balance or viability are irrelevant to the existence of underlying mechanics and concepts, particularly since often the viability of these "untouched" champions and items have little to do with their core design: 's unviability comes from his crippling mana issues, for example, not from his design as an anti-mage. It also makes little sense to compare League's meta problems to Dota's, since you could just as well bring up Spirit Breaker being overwhelmingly dominant, or champions like Invoker, Io and Meepo being literally too difficult to be played adequately by a vast portion of the playerbase.

While this may be more of a philosophical debate, I don't really think it's the purpose of itemization to really alter your champion's playstyle. Every champion you pick has a playstyle, or a set of playstyles, and the items you pick cater to that playstyle by playing to your champion's strengths, covering their weaknesses or reacting to the enemy team. If you had to rely on itemization to establish your playstyle, and not just flesh it out, then the very purpose of champions loses relevance. Even Dota 2's items, which can do things League's items cannot, like turn people into sheep or trap them in a cyclone, do not significantly detract from a champion's core playstyle.

This is something that's been mentioned before on the forums, but mobility in League is a complete red herring. Yes, pretty much every recently released champion has a gapcloser, but mobility is not mandatory to win. Just last season, we saw low-mobility champions like, and  dominate matches both on the casual and competitive level, and even now ,  and  rank among the most successful champions in the game. This is a case of seeing the grass as being greener on the other side: League definitely has a couple of problems, and mobility creep still has a negative impact on the viability of some older champions, but Dota 2 also has major issues, and as a game still in its infancy those issues are often far larger than League's (see the Shifting Snow's laundry list of changes). If I knew Dota 2 better, I could give you a more detailed description, but just a cursory look at the forums or the pick rates of champions says the game's far from having a perfect meta.