[2021] Riot's boner for build diversity is hindering their ability to properly balance old champs.

Obviously not the designer who worked on this but, uh, I have thoughts:

I know for a fact that the Xin Zhao work was ongoing well before AP ratios were added to the kit. It's not exactly hard to say, "OK, I'm happy with the reshape, let's slap on some AP ratios now." As someone who gets to see in-progress updates, there were weeks and weeks of design work and updates. The very last change list I saw had AP ratios attached. If you want to take a pessimistic view, I guess it means that there's comparatively less playtesting on the AP build, but the entirety of the design work was done with no changes to AP ratios at all.

So to be clear, the idea of AP Xin Zhao in no way impacted the work done on Xin Zhao.

The refrain, "Literally no one wanted to play [x champion build] before [x champion build] existed" is a dumb one. No one asked for a wind samurai but guess what he's the most popular champion in the game. If your argument is, "No one asked for this" your argument sucks. Try again. I think it's incredibly compelling to allow players to rediscover champions in new ways and try them out with different builds. It's something I find really cool about champions like Varus, for example. Now maybe longterm it comes to pass that build flexibility hurts the game. But until that's proven, giving players a new thing to play with is pretty compelling. Your team picks all AD and you're last pick in bot lane. What do you do? Hope Kog'Maw is enough? Having AP Twitch be remotely viable allows you, a Twitch player, or at least an AD Carry player, to have one more option in your arsenal. In general, I'd consider that a positive.

Now to be clear on my counter-points, I think AP Twitch should probably not be stronger than AD Twitch. I think giving you the option to play an alternate build is a good thing. Forcing you to play the alternate build is not. That's why AP Twitch is getting nerfed next patch and AD Twitch is getting buffed. It's good due diligence by the designer behind those changes.

For about three years running, AP Shyvana has been the weaker of her two builds. I understand that people are largely unable to realize actual champion strengths, but this is still true. AD Shyvana is by far stronger. Maybe people don't find it as fun to play, and that's maybe a fair criticism, but it's not like there's room to buff AD Shyv. Seriously, if you want to play AD Shyvana, just go pick the champion. She's absurdly strong. No one is going to stop you. Complaining that Riot is "incentivizing" AP Shyvana is... I don't know. Are you expecting a PSA or something? Just pick the champion. Meanwhile, AP Shyvana, the build that presumably players enjoy, considering the pick-rate and win-rate disparity between the two builds. If that's the case, then why not let a champion (AP Shyvana) that people enjoy not be garbage? Last I checked AP Shyvana's win rate was trash. So they might as well make you not grief your team when picking it. And it's why they buffed things that weren't on-cast E damage. Because this objectively weak champion is still somewhat played, so I guess they decided to put power into less-frustrating parts of the kit.

So to recap: AD Twitch is pretty viable. Looking at public data, all three AD marksman mythics have > 50% win rate. AP Twitch is OP so it's getting nerfed, but is otherwise a reasonable alternate playstyle. AD Xin Zhao was the entire point of the rework coming in the near future. The last set of changes were to add a set of AP Ratios since, heck, why not. It allows things like Baron buff and an allied Moonstaff have some value. It also allows for builds like Doran's Ring starts in lane, which plenty of AD champions already make use of. And finally, AD Shyvana has always been vastly superior to AP Shyvana. You're free to pick it.

I mean, that's generally how balance works. If people aren't frustrated by it (ban rate) and players aren't penalized for reasonable choices (win rate) then yeah, you let it ride. AP Twitch had a lower win rate for a very long time, presumably because it took people a while to learn the playstyle. But here we are with like a 2% win rate bump by going Nashor's first vs. an AD mythic and it's a pretty reasonable thing for the designer to check up on his project and go, "OK, yeah, I have to nerf this."

Stridebreaker or Trinity Force.