User blog comment:TehAnonymous/TehAnonymous AMA/@comment-8506165-20150224043127/@comment-1990160-20150225025721

Disclaimer: I don't know much about champion design. I don't really consider individual champions particularly well/poorly designed.

Tangent / Rant: Try reading this first. The game field has changed a ton; fundamentally, the game has changed. "In my day, went mid, built  into, every game, killed people with nothing but , and goddamnit we liked it. None of this goshdarned  , or  nonsense." Then, the mid meta moved to mage vs mage, right? You had matchups with, , , , , etc. etc. Later on, they started making , with  and stuff. And worse, champions that didn't use mana. Not being gated by mana, not being forced into consideration of longterm resource management, is such a completely different paradigm of gameplay. Cases of this are strong laners like, , , (pre-nerfs) - they can go super aggressive at early levels, and not worry about the fact that their mana bar is completely empty from the trade. If you follow the patch notes, you'll notice that a ton of the buffs to older champions were "reduced ultimate ability mana cost to 100" to bring them into line with newer champions. Pre-rework, Sion's Q/W mana costs were obscene compared to his mana pool. In the old days, champions used abilities more sparingly, so these mana costs were acceptable, but now we have skillshots and things flying all over the place, so they buff up champions like by cutting mana costs (referencing Q changes). Old mages built into. Mana regen items like and the old  weren't in existence yet / a fringe CDR only item (in that order). One could even argue that Athene's was created in order for mana-based mages to combat manaless champions in the mid lane arms race, given that no upgrade existed prior. So, my opinion of champion design is that resource / mobility / knockup /CC creep have warped the game's power in a way that I don't enjoy.

Answer: Uh, ? He's a tree.