Control mage player here:

The reason for the nerfs is that they‘re so popular and laning vs them is pretty unfun. Due to Doran‘s shield and their inbuilt sustain it’s actually hard/impossible to poke/punish them meaningful in lane. You have to be always very careful to their all in cuz they have perma kill pressure.

I already accepted that they can oneshot you after laning phase but you should be able to actually poke them off the lane if they do stupid things. Laning phase feels too save for them if the player knows their champ. If you play these champs, mistakes aren’t lethal ,but if 1 gap closer from them lands in lane it’s often a kill.

They should either be pokeable and kill you because of one mistake, or hardly pokeable and not deadly assassins, but not both strengths.

My experience in plat is that these champs always get fed, sometimes due to lane, sometimes due to roaming. They could easily snowball the game but god complex usually kicks in and they throw their lead. So in this way they’re balanced that they’re often not able to convert the lead due to the player.

I would love to see a nerf to Doran’s shield as it makes champs to tanky for most mid mages. You run out of mana before they run out of health, doesn’t matter how often you hit them.

Their popularity makes laning in mid boring and frustrating as you can barely punish them if you don’t play one of them.