This preseason is a perfect example of why I agree with Blizzard's philosophy on Hearthstone. Blizzard has caught a LOT of flak recently for "not balancing often enough", among other things.

There is a running joke which is based on an intentional misinterpretation of a comment made by Ben Brode (head Hearthstone designer), where he suggested that when a change is absolutely necessary, they try to change as little as possible, to keep the soul of the card in tact. What he means in context is that if making no changes is absolutely not possible, then try to see what one change can be made to a card to fix the issue present. If no one change is enough, then consider two. Etc. But people were being deliberately obtuse, pretending as though Brode was referring specifically to the 2/3 stats of a card as the soul of the card, and have been brutally mocking him for it ever since.

But what he said makes perfect sense, and it's largely why I am upset with Riot right now. The main idea of what he was saying is that when you make changes too frequently or on too big a magnitude, it makes the game not feel the same anymore. You don't want players to take a week off from the game, and to come back to a game that doesn't even feel like the same game. If a card (or a champion) is too strong, make the necessary changes, but don't go overboard (which is why I think reworks should be only done when completely necessary, like a champion that is 5 years old and whose kit doesn't make sense anymore). When a player comes back to a game where half the characters do completely different things, and towers function completely differently, and minions function completely differently, and the items are completely different, etc, it turns them away from the game. Learning a new game of the complexity of League takes a lot of time. Learning League after so many huge changes also takes a lot of time, except this time you have the added frustration of expecting that you know how something works, only to be surprised when it doesn't work that way.

Change is definitely necessary, both to fix issues in the game, and to keep the game fresh. But there is a huge difference between keeping a game fresh and completely turning it on its head.