It is NOT the balance designs creating stagnation. Its the bland item choices at all stages of the games, and the simplicity of the champions as well.

The problem is they base round play rates and win rates.

Taric is becoming the next janna, as she keeps getting nerfed. Next we'll have taric nerfs because he is seeing too much play.

Support is the hardest role to "carry" from. basing nerfs on their win rates is preposterous because there are so few to choose from.

People like to play support casters, how many support casters do we have?

Soraka
Janna
Lulu
Sona
Zilean

How many of those are overnerfed?
Lulu
Sona
Zilean
and now janna

So what's becoming more popular?
Taric
Alistar

The days of caster supports are dying because riot uses the nerf bat too hard, and too often.

The point is riot doesn't give enough time, nor encourage players to adapt.


I say official policy should be to let solo queue play whatever champion they want, in whatever lane they want. No reporting for trolling, or not following the meta. only player ingenuity. Let someones ELO figure it out.

I say this could all be mitigated by forcing the premades to be the one who have to follow the meta.
Not forcing someone to support when they don't want to. Why? Because then they will use one of the 2 cheapest supports. Soraka or Janna. and you know what? they'll probably beat the team that doesn't use a proper support, creating high win rates.

Nerfing in general needs to stop. The OP is right. too many nerfs are FORCING choices upon players, not letting them adapt on their own.

I think there are two things contributing to the staleness of the current game.

First, just because changes in a computer game can be made quickly doesn't mean that they should be. I think a model sort of like the one ccg's (collectable card games) use would be better. The cards in a set, once printed, are hard to change. Bans and such are sometimes handed out, but only in the most drastic situations. Luckly, in lol, teams are given 3 bans to issue each match so the urgency to nerf is lessened. Changes should be made less frequently, and on a set schedule - perhaps once at the start of a season, and one in the middle to shake things up and correct balance issues. Currently, things change so fast that the players don't have time to adapt. When a champ becomes popular because of how it works against the current meta, Riot runs in quickly saying, "Don't worry guys, you don't need to come up with a strategy to counter this, or even use one of the bans you're given. We got this." Like in ccg's, the idea should be, "This is the current environment, adapt. If there is an immediate need, we'll deal with it, but other than that, use the tools we've given you to deal with it."

Which leads into the other issue I see - the tools. We're limited to six slots, so offer lots of item choices that fit different situations. Right now builds are pretty cookie cutter, but what if there were more choices? AD plus armor, AD with MR, AD with AS and health, and all kinds of other combinations? Let there be be a meta game within the game around which team geared up the best to go against the current opponents team. I think this idea would also benefit from more items with activated abilities, but we could start slow and just add more build options.

Conclusion: the state of the game should be more stable to allow players the time to come up with counters, but those players should have access to the tools necessary to make those counters possible.

Malphite doesn't counter the meta. He's the definition of meta: Bruiser sent top or jungle due to gank or sustain potential. Role on team is generally to engage and focus the ad carry. Not all that different than say renek, jarvan, nasus, riven, olaf, talon, noc, ww, garen, morde, etc. He just happens to be able to get to the carry far more effectively than many of the others mentioned. He gives up a little on the way though (not strongest in terms of damage, lacks hard cc except ult, doesn't get morde's sexy ghost, etc).