Diana. Never really meaningfully (keyword there) nerfed until a major tournament where she's picked and banned. Rengar has been the same way, urgot was that way. A lot of champions were that way.

Riot has their own basis that's way worse than the perceived "general discussion" biases (because you know, the General Discussion is one entity and all that). So any champion that sticks out consistently in a tournament is going to get nerfed to varying degree's. And it's silly that it has come to that. It's not even the fact that they've been nerfed at all. It's when they absolutely destroy champions (R.I.P Urgot) off the face of the earth.

I think riot needs to stop basing heavy handed nerfs based off of what happens in tournaments, and rather buff other champions that would do well against said popular champion, but just isn't "there". Balancing would appear to me to be a lot more accurate.

False. There were plenty of Nerf Diana threads before the tourney. Diana had almost as much burst as Akali but twice as much survivability. That's not good.

Another thing I want to add. The players in those tournaments are much better individually and as a team than most of us here. It's unfair to nerf a champion based on what the top .0001% of players do, because it's more of the player being really awesome, who can utilize that champion with 4 other players with extreme coordination, that most of us will NEVER see. It gives everyone else a really high bar to shoot for, and to compare our own play to.

Am I saying Diana and Rengar don't need nerfs? No. What I am saying is you are basing your balancing on something that the .0001% of players are capable of doing, and the other part of the population tries to emulate that (to little success most of the time). What I am saying is that you need to be much more mindful of the rest of your playerbase, take them into MORE consideration than you might give, and then act. It appears to this player, that you just take what goes on in a tournament, and nerf things based on that.

While I can understand what you are saying and I agree with some points, even in 1300 Elo, where I am at, Rengar and Diana were too snowbally pre-tournament. Top lane feeding Rengar 0/6/0 before 15 minutes was common.

The most brutal nerfs tend to come after tourneys, or at least it seems that way. Some are justified, like Ez losing the AS slow from hell on his W. Some, not so much. They're never gentle, though.

The presence of nerf threads doesn't mean much. Diana needing nerfs is irrelevant. It's the medium in which the nerfs are taking place in, and then the act following that. It was pretty damn obvious Diana was overpowered. She recieved some slight adjustments over the period of time. When a major tournament hits when she does really well in, BOOM. Destroyed.

How does that not paint a picture for you that riot largely bases nerfs on what happens in tournaments? The same goes for a lot of other champions.

teemo was nerfed without getting any tournament play

The reason Riot tends to balance around tournaments is simply because they put a lot of money into those events and it's not really fair for one team to get a glaringly larger advantage over the other team by having a stronger champion on their roster. It creates imbalance when large sums of money are at stake and while tournaments exist on a prior patch than the current one, they showcase what tends to be the strongest at that point in time.

And I can totally agree with you. But again, the discussion isn't aimed at nerfs, but how they come about. And that I believe they are largely in fault of causing champions to be destroyed because skilled players in tournaments can magnify a problem and cause it to exaggerated based on their own individually skill, and all the skills of their team.