Everything wrong with the Tank Assassin Meta

Magical Zoe·Apr 4, 2016·5 votes·4,056 views

Anyone else really starting to hate this "tank assassin meta"? Champions like Akali, Ekko, Rengar, Kha'zix, Yi, can build full tank and a little AP or AD and still stomp late game. Isn't there something wrong with that? Traditionally, assassins are supposed to be mobile, low hp, and bursty. But when they build tank items with their AD/AP items, it makes for a really well rounded ( overpowered) champion that will most likely carry their team late game or even mid game.

6 Comments

SaltyKrackaApr 4, 20162 votes

They could probably stand to pull back Tank Ekko's power a bit, yeah.

Tank Akali isn't exactly overpowered though, and Rito explicitly made changes so that Yis wouldn't build tanky.

NoPaxtApr 4, 20161 votes

Assassins got smart and stooped with the glass cannon builds and learned to build to survive, that's smart!

Tankali though is better that you give her credit for.. item 3146 item 3068 item 3020 item 3512 item 3742 item 3156

SaltyKrackaApr 4, 20161 votes

I'll start caring about tankali builds when they get higher winrates than her normal stuff.

ProeliumApr 4, 20162 votes

Ekko is a really unhealthy champ IMO

67chromeApr 4, 20161 votes

Anyone else really starting to hate this "tank assassin meta"?

Seeing that the meta is largely dominated by triple ADC + duo tank teams, not really seeing this as a tanky assassin meta.

Tanky assassins aren't anything new either. In season 1 and 2 assassins generally built the same meta-golem build as fighters. A wide number of fighters are essentially tanky assassins as well, making the term tanky assassin a little redundant when the term fighter largely covers that specific build-path and play style.

As for tanky assassin issues: Assassins in LoL have always had 2 major problems.

Firstly: assassins are the worst archetype in team-fights, and games are generally won by 5v5 team-fights. Being squishy and melee isn't great in a 5v5, makes you hard to protect and easy to focus. Being single-target focused is also worse than having an AoE focus in a 5v5.

Secondly: assassins don't have a dedicated itemization pattern. They have to make do with mage, marksman, and tank items that aren't really geared towards them, outside of the odd item like Deathfire Grasp, Lich Bane, or Duskblade. Such items aren't part of a solid core build like item 3031 item 3094 item 3036 though: leaving assassins with 1 item, if that, geared towards there play-style that really doesn't have the innate synergy with other items to push a specific build path. Given fighter itemization saw a solid bump this season and AP itemization saw a big decline, it's even harder to justify full glass-cannon assassins when tanky DPS has been more efficient or less bad by comparison.

Within the near future: Riot could try to really push a solid itemization path for assassins that makes glass-cannon a significantly more appealing path for the class to go down. Otherwise a lot of assassins are just going to fall prey to becoming meta-golems with meta-golem builds :/

MunchCrunchLunchApr 5, 20161 votes

idk about rengar or kha zix. ekko is a bit out of hand tho. ekko is my 3rd most champion i do not hate him in any way but the tank builds are just disgusting