It's going to sound like I'm contradicting you, which is not really the idea, but on bulldog: the problem with Alliance is their heavy reliance on Bulldog for star performance. Bulldog doesn't just have 4 heroes he can play, but rather 4 heroes he has very top tier performances on. Meanwhile, the rest of Alliance consistently has underwhelming performances across many, many heroes, and any tier1 and many tier2 teams can take Alliance on often by banning out Bulldog's picks.

idk what on Earth has happened to s4 since 2015, but he's really having no impact on these games. It feels like he's fully committed to picking utility mids, which puts him into a corner where the play has to work out, or else it doesnt, he dies, the game is extended, and he becomes more irrelevant while enemy core carries become more relevant.

I highly disagree with the notion that they don't need a shuffle. They absolutely do. This is classic complacency, and it's a hole they've been in far too often. The above poster compares Alliance to Navi and says a shuffle wont solve the problem. But that's exactly what Navi did, and that was one of their most important moves that set them back on the path to where they are now.