re-balancing games with nerfs and buffs are great, imo.

Honestly, I don't even give any credence to ideas of how something CAN be beaten.
In these kinds of games, I think the real issue is whether or not something is format-warping.

If something is making people feel forced to discard most every idea in search of something that can possibly beat another particular team then there's a very good arguement that the playing experience could be improved via buffs/nerfs in a game.

I remember when Magic: the Gathering was losing players left and right and the Standard format that was its bread and *er was what is commonly accepted as the worst ever. There was a land called Tolarian Academy and everyone was playing 4 copies (the max allowed) in all of their decks. The first player to land one was winning literally 90% of all the games in the format - basically, it was stoopid. Some of the top players started doing fairly well with a mono-green deck that literally couldn't use the land at all but still played a full 4 copies in their decks along with some spell cards that allowed them to 'fetch' it - since the rules at the time meant if you had one on the table then the opponent couldn't play one. That is the kind of format-warping nonsense that resulted because of the overpowered nature of this one card. For the record, that deck would end up losing in one of the largest tournaments ever played up to that point, despite being piloted by some of the best players in the world, to just a regular ol' Tolarian Academy deck.

Now, here's the big thing though: it's not just that the card was broken and too good. The format was garbage because everyone was forced into doing the same things and the game became all about that one card. The idea of MTG and why it's been so unbelievably popular and successful is that you can build whatever kind of deck you want and employ countless different strategies to try and beat your opponents. The format under Tolarian Academy, however, took all those illusions people had of building all these different kinds of decks with the countless different cards the game gave you.... and it threw it out the window.

Similarly, Naruto Online gives us an absurd number of different ninjas we are supposed to be able to use - wouldn't the game be better if we felt like we were able to use most of them?

Buffs and nerfs are awesome, imo.