[2020] Rell was supposed to feel heavy, but instead she just feels clunky

For new champions we generally look at winrate by day because there's usually a lot of growth - that 46% average number for example would account for the 44% day zero Rell player who doesn't know what she does as well as the 48% day five Rell player who's started to get the hang of things.

Re: base stats some of the thinking there was that when fighting, she'll often start out with her ~120 health shield, +10% resists, and then attacking that Alistar takes away ~5 of his armor, gives it to you, where it's amped by the 10%, etc., which can (depending on items) leave you tankier than the Alistar if you manage to get the jump on him.

Oh yeah, for what it's worth I think that Ali (and other champs that can reliably interrupt mounted W engage) have favorable lane matchups into Rell. This is just talking about tuning in that she's not as far behind other tank supports in total durability as it might seem if you only look at base stats considering the tools she has.

Will caveat this with "I'm not a game designer", but to me this is a question of magnitudes. With base stats closer to the upper end of tank supports, she was really tankier than everyone else given her other tools. With base stats closer to the middle/lower end, she's still on the upper end of durability taking into account her other defenses (passive steal, W shield, W resist amp). If we said, "hey here are these tools that let you be really tanky" and then you used them and you weren't, that would be a failure imo but it doesn't seem like that's the case.

Yeah I think that's a valid concern. How it feels might change over time too, we're only one week into the release of a brand new character, the winrate hasn't stopped climbing yet and optimal skill order/builds haven't quite settled. You can join us in monitoring her for now, from the points already raised above we know that base stat buffs are a pretty justifiable candidate if we need to buff her.

Probably not, high durability is at the top of the list of things that should be true about Rell. If Rell becomes a somewhat niche top/jungle with our efforts to serve support Rell that's fine, but we don't have plans to intentionally support those roles right now.

Rell is a lot about picking the right moment to go in because like you said, once she commits she doesn't have a great way out, which is one of her intended weaknesses. I don't agree that the payout isn't big though for engaging, she has among the most reliable AOE wombos in the game using her ultimate (basically an Alistar that can pull people together for his knockup). So we're operating off of the same data, looking at lolalytics overall winrate for the past week or so she's around 50% winrate, which is great for a new champion.