User blog comment:ClariS/Why Not Buff Instead of Nerf?/@comment-50.53.139.17-20120831081734/@comment-134.3.114.177-20120831133829

1) So what you're saying is that Riot shouldn't care for balance unless their face would get torn off by an angry mob otherwise. Of course "balance in all things" is an aim not even ninjas are able to reach. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth a try. So they shouldn't upgrade technical perfomance because lag will never disappear? They shouldn't make the graphics better because it will never look perfect? Also, balancing is obviously not an easy job. Thus, you can't expect a company to do everything right every patch. It is nearly impossible for the relatively small number of "balancers" to foresee every strategy one of millions of people might come up with that is broken.

2) All those players purchasing a champ with RP are (hopefully) completely aware that the bunch of code they have purchased access to is compeletely subject to changes. The players who are suggesting reworks are usually those who own these certain champs. Also balancing should have priority over some guys that either want their champs to stay broken (which is the majority of people complaining over nerfs), or are just scared that they have to alter their playstyle. Riot tries to always keep the unique feeling of each champ, since otherwise they might as well delete all heroes except one. And if there are still some players that can't live with certain changes, Riot is looking into adding a refund option.

3) The original post explains why your point isn't valid. Now, to the Evelynn argument. All of these suggestions wouldn't work early game or are already in the game, i.e. Vision Wards, Lee Sin etc. . Also, increasing the towers' sight range would either change nothing since she usually unstealths when she's that near. If you increased tower sight range too much for that to work, stealth would be fairly useless. As you can see, buffing things only makes balance harder.

4) Riot almost never removes unique mechanics for balance reasons unless they are completely broken. Dodge was removed due to Riot's attempt to make luck less a factor in this game. Heals were nerfed to encourage fast-paced, aggressive gameplay. Hybrids didn't disappear, the problem was that most champions that could be built hybrid were just as good as other champs while being less counterable, so they made hybrids weaker to compromise for that. Also, while you say Riot removes mechanics, only one of the examples you gave was actually removed, and for an entirely different reason.

5) Riot probably won't add these game modes because they are impossible to balance. Imagine Singed has the flag. Have fun chasing. King of the Hill leaves no room for squishies, especially not ranged ones. New maps can't be properly balanced, as TT, CS and PG show. Throwing new stuff out all the time without actually balancing it would be a waste of resources, since nobody would like them and they can't be used competitively. Balancing one map is hard enough already. They keep adding new champs beause that is the easiest way to introduce new unique mechanics that can actually be balanced by tinkering around with stats and ratios. Now to the meta. It's nothing but an easily understandable concept that is mostly superior to other such concepts, thus nearly everybody follows it. There are loads of possibilities to break the meta and they have been shown mostly in tournaments because it is easier to pull such things off in a coordinated team than in the infamous SoloQ and because pros have a better understanding of the game mechanics, whereas for newer players it is just easier to follow a common setup which is known to work well. Also, the meta has already been changed. Some time ago, there would be an AD carry mid, AP top, jungler and tank+support bot (In NA, that was. EU brought in the new meta by winning tournaments with it against NA Teams repeatedly).

6) There have been found niches that Riot has encouraged, for example AP Gragas and AP Ezreal. However, they did limit certain niches beause they were imbalanced. I don't see that as hindering the "evolution" of the game, whatever that phrase exactly means, rather than adding to it. Niches also keep being discovered and tested, like double-jungling, unusual support champs like Fiddlesticks or sending two bruisers bot to deny the enemy AD carry.

Also, to the point of "new champs are better than old ones". Ashe is one of the oldest champs and is still a strong pick, especially with the right team. There are countless other examples like this. In no possible cirumstance does the release date (or, in fact, the price) have anything to do with the champion's power. You will even notice that a lot of the newer champions are rarely seen in the competitive scene, like Hecarim, Draven or Fiora. Everything Riot does to make new champs attractive is giving them new or at least interesting mechanics, making them more fun to play than older champions like, say, Soraka. This doesn't mean older champions aren't fun as well or don't have unique mechanics, but the most interesting about new champs is that they are new, it's as simple as that. They are neither better nor worse, but simply different.

TL:DR;

Balancing by carefully adjusting the power of each hero isn't a "waste of resources", but rather an imprtant process to keep LoL fair and fun to play while only rarely limiting the creativity of the playerbase.