Originally Posted by daBigLOL

I think you guys should have more faith in some of your older designs; they have their own merritts. Many of your older champions can be played in a variety of ways, or took a little bit for people to realize their potential and power. Nowadays, the new characters just seem to scream OP BBQ WTF, and rather than being played multiple ways, are just given so many tools that they are just too powerful (like Graves). This is all happening while you guys tend to nerf some of the older champions which seems to really making accepting the nerfs and seeing the new champions rampage a lot more noticeable

That said, I think the focus should be to get more counters, or have a different approach to the way you guys go about your buffs and nerfs. For example, I think nerfing Soraka AP ratios was not the right thing to do if you want more aggressive lanes; rather than that make her bases worse, but give her maybe better ratios. This gives more options as to what items she should be building (auras vs AP) and also lessens her strength during the laning phases for both solo and duo. While I feel like you guys did probably test this, you guys may have come to conclusions that only the actual player base can determine, because there is such a larger sample size.

Originally Posted by Arcus2658

HoT = heal over time. Pretty sure he means Sona. I'm not sure why he's lumping the two together under "shaky design foundations", or why he's comparing Sona's W active to a HoT. I'm sort of at a loss as to how to respond to that whole post; I don't really understand his viewpoint as he put it there but it sounds scarily dissimilar to the what and why of the mindset and enjoyment of a (voluntary) sustain/poke support player.

The enjoyment of being a support class isn't the same as for a DPS. DPS players tend to go for "epic" - they're looking to get fat loot, big damage, multi kills. Real Supports aren't looking for "epic" saves or "epic" anything; they're looking to be just enough removed from the front lines to be able to pay much more attention to how both allies and enemies are moving so they can be wherever they are needed and make sure everyone is as informed as possible and to be the backbone of a team.

If big heal bombs were fun for supports then Soraka would be considered the most fun support in the game. I don't know if I'm speaking for every support player out there, but for me personally, I want to feel like I'm making a difference in every little moment with heals/buffs/pings/wards/etc. at all the right times so the team morale is high. Right now Soraka doesn't feel like that - she feeds health and mana to the carry on longish cooldowns, then spends the rest of the time being a brush deterrent. Right now Sona does feel like that - but only if she has enough gold to max her CDR and stack so much mana regen it'd make a Swain main shed a single, manly tear.

Originally Posted by Morello

The problem is you're talking about 4 different issues and lumping them into the same conclusion. I'm not talking about varied build paths, or ability to balance or design philosophies, I'm talking about the difference between fun and balanced.

These designs are bad for the game if they're strong, but when they're balanced they really have the satisfaction ripped out of them. A character who's job it is to slowly heal people up and provide sustain only makes the game more weak - and the gain is that healer archetype players get to have the character they're used to in other games (the TF2 medic is the most shining example of this problem in action).

Originally Posted by Slyverius

At this rate, everything will be nerfed to a-notch-above-eve tier at the end of Season 2. Because that's how you see something as balanced Morello? The amount of nerfs and buffs are clearly outbalanced. Every patch.

Originally Posted by Siriner

I don't get it, are you saying that Sona W should be changed to a burst heal like Soraka?

Because that will make a her little bit more useful apart from having to rely on her ult just to do "something".

Originally Posted by Morello

Are you trying -really hard- to hate on that post, because I think you'd have to :P

Am I wrong?

Originally Posted by Manozi

what about chasers, like vayne? is that also a design philosophy that is unbalanced? or you didnt care
because her last nerfs sure ripped her uniqueness and feel.