The plus points:
Lots of new gods which were quickly adjusted until they found good competitive spots without being OP.
Exceptions to this would be Rat and Susanoo which were obviously far above the point of balance on release/rework (as in you literally just had to look at numbers and they were fucking stupid) took too long to be meaningfully nerfed, but on the whole new gods have been very well done this year.
Buffs and nerfs have been, on the whole, proportionate and well managed. At most points throughout the year it felt like all roles had a wide variety of viable picks.
Lots of different things rose and fell out of favour over the course of the season without any balance changes at all (e.g. Kali), and balance changes have generally increased variety rather than killed it.
New joust map is amazing, ranked joust with 3 man premades is amazing. I feel sorry for anyone who tries to solo queue this game mode, but it's great for people with a competitive drive who just can't fucking deal with randoms.
Things that were becoming problems like power pots were removed/changed.
The in between
Golden bow was a mixed bag. It did drag on for too long and make apollo viable in every single lane, but it did also bring Apollo and Artemis into the meta from the wilderness and considering the domination of magical adc's atm it was quite nice to have them absent for a period. I wish they'd reworked golden bow into some sort of starter item, like 800g, 10 physical power and 35% splash damage. Then Neith etc. could probably still just clear better with trans and abilities but gods like Artemis and Apollo wouldn't be completely helpless. The biggest problems with golden bow were that it was a good item to buy anyway, so you weren