[2021] Wildrift or LoL will never be a balanced game

But do you think these champions are more popular because players enjoy them?

Let's say every champions was perfectly balanced at all elos (in this case I'll define perfectly balanced as having an equal chance of winning in their intended 1-2 positions. IE a 50% winrate). Do you think people have preferred playstyles, or champions that are more appealing to a wider audience?

If yes then those popular champions would show up more frequently than the, equally balanced, but less popular champions.

Then when players don't see the less popular champions as often they assume they are weak. Thus these champion's pickrates go down further. This won't hit 0, every champion has players that enjoy them, but it is a cycle. We see this with many unpopular champions, even with they are objectively strong.

No worries at all, I'm always happy to see engaging discussions on here.

What do you mean by "keep up"? When I read this I assume you mean they struggle to stay relevant in the game when other champions are added. That is a concern when we create new champions for sure. We don't want to release a champion who is just a better version of another (in multiple aspects, but here I'll focus on power, theme, and role/identity).

There will always be some overlaps, and those can be good, think of the champions with very little overlap (Teemo, Singed, Asol) and you see some of the most misunderstood and least popular champions. What we want to avoid is too much overlap.

In the case of Sona and Seraphine, there is a lot of overlap at a surface level. But Seraphine is primary a mid laner, requiring levels and exp to do her job. While Sona brings powerful (and hard to appreciate auras and team buffs. Their Ultimates and Ws (2s) are similar for sure, but even with that in mind Sona's R's (4) speed is basically undodgeable, and her W provides a powerful damage reduction (something that off the top of my head I can't think of anywhere else in the game). Or Sona's Q (1) and E (3) giving constant teamwide stats, while Seraphine is much more of a utility mage who still needs deal damage herself.

Unrelated but it was brought up, stats per level is typically something we do when a champion is weak in mid-low elo play. These games typically go longer so they are a good lever for buffing them there without also buffing them in high level play.

You are right that Rammus is a powerful and under appreciated pick by most players. However you are wrong in saying the Sona isn't viable, even when directly compared to Seraphine (using the definition we stated earlier) Sona is a fine, and actually a stronger pick than Seraphine. Sona is THE late game support and pays for that with weaknesses in the early game.

Even talking about newer vs older champion kits, both Riven and Darius are rather old kits (from PCs release dates), but even then Darius is the newer kit.

It is understandable that you are saying dashes can be frustrating but Sona is actually rather uneffected by them. Her abilities are targeted, and her ultimate is very quick with a large AoE.

That's what I am saying though, Sona isn't a a flat out worse support. There are, and should be, situations where one is better than the other. But if you line them up side by side Sona is winning more games. Now it might be fair to say that Seraphine is better early game, and that you value the early game more than the late game. However those kind of options/differences are important for champions to have for them to be different. If I as a player/team want to have a stronger late game, at the cost of my early game, that option exists. And doing anything that puts power into Sona's early game means we need to pull it from her late game. This makes these characters more similar and dulls the strategic choice between them.

When it comes to initiation I don't think either of these champions is great, both can do it in a pinch for sure. But both are better at following up an initiation. Though I'd argue Seraphine is better at following up here, while Sonas is better if you need to protect from divers.

Even when saying older champions have a hard time keeping up with newer ones I don't think I can agree. The first thing I notice when watching pro games for lolPC is the number of older champions I see in a game. This could be different definitions of "old" (I started playing PC very early on). But champions like Orianna, TF, J4, Darius, Ahri, Janna, MF, and Varus to name a few, all pop up rather often for how old they are. And most of those are rather immobile to boot.

You are right that we don't want to power creep old champions with new ones, and this is something we try to be aware of when developing them. This isn't to say that feeling this way about new champions isn't valid. Honestly how players feel can be more important than other data points. And letting us hear that is a great way to help us make the game better.

I hear you on the Reddit mobile, I've had to correct a few things that auto correct thinks it's fixing. =p