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My philosophy on balancing mirrors Riots.
Re: specific champions/items, etc.: it should not be OP at any tier of play that you spend any amount of time in (meaning you don't balance for newb island :P). This includes pro/extremely competitive, high Elo, and mid Elo. After that, they are balanced to make the most viable heroes at the top level. Because of the first requirement, it's often not possible to make every hero viable for competitive play. For example, old Ryze: sucked at competitive level, but would have absolutely facerolled at mid Elo (more than he already did) with any sort of buff. I love his remake, even if he was a tiny bit UP. I'm very excited for the upcoming Ryze buffs.
As for gameplay, I think that if at all possible, it should enrich the competitive metagame while not making the life of a newb much harder than it already is. I'm amazed at how many things Riot has done to make the learning curve smaller without diminishing the competitive metagame. The only one as I mentioned was death streaks.
As for gameplay, imo, it needs to be balanced for competitive first, casual second: even if casuals play MORE, you cannot balance a game for them. There's a lot of game dev theory stuff on this (which I am not very well versed in), but that's just my opinion on the matter. Casuals emulate high tier play. Making the game easier for casuals to push and such is going to poorly affect the competitive scene, where it's already quite difficult to defend.
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