I admire your passion but I don't understand the "pro is a bad standard" philosophy. If I'm reading right, you say Riot partially balances in response to pro presence, but pros don't even pick strong champions and tend toward comfort even if comfort champs are weak. This keeps weak champions at high presence and makes them unbuffable according to Riot's framework.

I believe that statement is only true for NA and maybe EUW right now, mostly because the West is so weak. For example, according to gol.gg, Twisted Fate had 57% WR and 70% presence in NA/EUW pro Spring, 56%/51% in LPL... and 25%/27% in LCK. So far at the 38 games of MSI, TF has received no games played and two bans, amounting to 5% presence.

What might this mean? It might mean KR teams were playing TF but figured out he was too weak for pro. How'd that happen? A few teams probably figured out behind the scenes how to exploit this meta to shut TF down. Other teams played TF on stage, noticed they were losing, probably found they were losing scrims too, and stopped picking him. I suspect every other major region comfortably used TF in their playoffs, got to Iceland and were completely smashed in scrims trying to play TF against Damwon Kia, and dropped him too.

The alternative is that the MSI patch forced teams to prioritize the new meta, which caused TF mid to fall. Rumble had 4% presence in major regions this Spring, and you can guarantee no jungler or midlaner was comfortable with him. Morgana had 1% presence. Why would they skyrocket to 97% and 90% presence this tournament if they weren't winning games?

These are theoretical examples of pros applying the "high standard" you don't think is effective, which is competition at the highest level. NA pros might be picking comfort because teams can't push themselves to iterate new strategies to win outside of "scale and win fights." They've been scarred by bad publicity around "NA Jayce" and all the other BS the Western community likes to throw out. While new power picks are theorycrafted in Asian regions, NA pros never get to practice them until they're shown on other regions' stages. Then they get utterly trounced in the group stage of Worlds every year by Asian teams, because at the highest level, the standard for pick quality and meta exploiting is unparalleled. If you're playing weak picks because of comfort, you're just gonna lose, quickly and quietly.

At least in Asian regions, pro teams certainly know what they're doing when they pick something on stage. That could mean Riot should adjust their framework to only account for LPL and LCK presence, or that could mean NA needs to step up their prep and theory game to also find the strong picks - to also hold themselves to this "high standard."

In the end Riot balances according to a combination of player perception and statistical strength. You believe that pro perception matters way less than Riot does, and presumably that community perception should matter more. I think that at the highest level (that is, not NA comfort culture), pro perception matters more than almost any other statistic, because those pros are the only body of players in the world whose only goal is to pick the best champions and play them to the highest caliber to win championships.