Boards›Gameplay

The Assassin controversy - an open question for the community

Tomoe Gozen·7/30/2018, 8:57:14 AM·31 votes·13,212 views

Since people can't come to a consensus on what makes a good Assassin, i'd like to ask these questions for the community to answer:

What do you think a fair Assassin would feel like to play as/against? What makes a Assassin "fair"?

These are pretty important questions to address since no one apparently can agree whether assassins were fine with a bit of delayed damage before the burst or being allowed to combo quickly without the delays. Or it may be a completely different direction entirely. But one thing's for sure - it's always one side that's displeased when going back and forth between these directions and unless you're an outlier (overperforming), Assassins aren't seen much in Pro play for very clear reasons:

They suck at teamfighting, they focus on solo performance
They focus on taking the target down first, without much utility (mages do both but without the added mobility and that's why in Pro play, they are mid lane kings to this day)

I'd personally love to see Katarina more but the reality of the situation is that she's a solo queue champion with a high skill ceiling. She holds so much power in her basic abilities (for an experienced Kata player) that she sometimes can feel like a problematic champion if she gets access to early snowball. However, for teams that can zone her or are packed with CC, she can almost never get an opportunity to initiate a fight or even stay in it to do damage, not even with her ult. And in these situations, she feels like dead weight more than a champion that can contribute to her team.

100 Comments

DW Diana7/30/2018, 9:08:31 AM41 votes

Ok here's my take:

An assassin should fit these 5 things:

Burst without 100-0. Assassins are meant to pick their time and target, not just go "you are alive so I'll kill you in 0.2 seconds."
Mobility. They are MEANT to be mobile. They're meant to be fast and roam. They should ALL have some form of escape.
Squishy. They should be able to be taken down as quickly as they take down their opponents. Their mobility is their defence!
Tactical. Assassins should be strong against squishy targets, and weak against thoset hat can live through their burst. Right now no one can live through their burst. This removes any tactics from their kit.
Single Target. They are meant to be the most bursty thing going. They're meant to take out priority targets. They're NOT meant to be able to go around 1 shotting 2-3 people at once.

Fit them to these things and they'll be much more fun to play and play against. Downvote above xD

Zerenza7/30/2018, 11:21:36 AM9 votes

I agree with the other's Somewhat but i'll adjust a bit.

Burst, assassins should be able to 100-0 you in less than a second, the difference is the amount of Set Up it takes to get there. Evelynn for example marks you and it takes 2.5 seconds for the mark to activate, you have ample time to get somewhere safe most player's just chose not to.
High Mobility, this is the thing they get for having to dive into backline by themselves, they aren't tanky or shouldn't be tanky and this is the reason why.
CC, no assassin should have a CC ability without some sort of caveat, again, evelynns is Delayed and requires her to land an ability after the delay, for example and she also doesn't have any mobility to make up for having this+perma stealth.
Single Target, Assassins should be able to single target burst anything that's just as squishy as themselves, reset, and try again later. Assassins should be able to burst 1 person and reset to get a different person/same person later, they shouldn't get more than 2 kills in one skill rotation.

That about cover's it all, i think that assassins often get bunched together but a large majority are actually pretty fine right now. The few that aren't are from a different Era in league and should be adjusted to fit new parameter's such as Burst Window VS Prep Time.

Burst Window VS Planning Time is basically just, how long does it take to burst someone VS how long did it take your abilities to allow for burst, so for instance Evelynn's W is extremely important to allow her to burst, especially early so most of the time her Prep Time is 2.5 seconds at the least.

Evelynn Burst Window: .5 Seconds Prep Time: 2.5+ Seconds

Zed Burst Window: 1 Second Prep Time: None

Talon Burst Window: 1 Second Prep Time: 1 Second

Katarina Burst Window: 2+Seconds Prep Time: 2+ Seconds

Kha'Zix Burst Window: 1 Second Prep Time: None

Pyke Burst Window: 3+ Seconds Prep Time: 1 Second

What i mean to show here is that if an assassin has a short Burst Window, the Prep Time to burst must be high, if the person has a long Burst Window, the Prep Time has to be Small. If all assassins were made to these parameter's, more likely than not they'd probably be Balanced, for a long time Zed was pretty balanced since he had to land his Q's but that's changed recently.

And of course this doesn't apply that well if the Assassin is super fed but i mean at that point anything can one shot you so it doesn't really matter.

Rumkatten7/30/2018, 9:12:09 AM8 votes

As far as I understand: In high elo and proplay, assasins are fine and mage players are skilled enough to counter them. In low elo assasins dominate, and for a low elo mage (aka myself for instance) there is no counterplay exept positioning so they cant blow you up (wich is not always possible). As an assasin you can make 100 mistakes and it means nothing, as a mage 1 mistake against an assasin can cost you the lane or the game. As far as I understand: This situation is something that will not change and as a low elo mage you have to suck it up or deinstall :)

TekkenPlayer7/30/2018, 11:37:18 AM7 votes

Assassins I consider fair (or borderline OP but still not dreadful to play against)

Notice that I play primarily mages and I mostly circlejerk mages, so my viewpoints are probably biased

Ekko : Doesn't have absurd amounts of damage early. Uses his utility to set up that damage and scales very well. Using ult as an escape allows him to get out safely, but in other he can use it to outplay a mispositioned enemy (that the enemy can see). He has wave clear with Q, but this is only a signal for the midlaner to play around this and take an aggressive position around the creep wave.

Katarina : Huge aoe potential, high mobility, obvious weaknesses. Her daggers are telegraphed and she is very prone to CC heavy comps. Her waveclear is ok at best and isn't entirely feast or famine which is generally what makes an assassin broken in the first place through several patches. The only issue right now is her interaction with item 3146 which gives unnecessary amounts of strength which can't be deal with by numerous midlaners

Zed : Zed kit wise is balanced. You can dodge a lot of his poke in lane and work around several laning patterns zed uses. You can build zhonyas to negate his ultimate damage; however, several patches has frontloaded his damage and has made a bit of a safety net for his dominance. Electrocute in particular has made his trading too strong for any sort of retaliation. Hexdrinker in particular delays damage yes, but it makes it practically impossible to kill him as he is incredibly nimble, and nullifying orb on top of that makes him practically an anti-mage. Duskblade lowered the skill floor for him to do his job.

Ahri : (I still consider Ahri an assassin): Aside with how frustrating it is for Ahri to ult out of every dangerous situation. Her numbers basically means she is pidgeon holed into landing charm, which is sortve her main power budget. If I get hit with charm then thats 100% my fault. Her combo theoretically only gets deadlier the closer she is to you since it reduces the time to react to charm, so that puts at least some element of risk in her kit

Elise : Again, like Ahri she has a power budget based on landing E and then loading her rotation onto you. She has several ways to close the gap, but if she closes the gap in spider form which is the best way, she has limited amount of time to then CC you if you aren't dead already

Pyke : Everything in his kit is dodgeable. Except his ult "which realistically he can only miss". He does illustrate a "cat and mouse" / pick oriented kind of assassin that cannot build more health.

Nidalee : Dodgeable spear, has low utility so she performs a niche role that only OTPs can usually be successful at. I do feel like if I got hit with a spear that is 100% my fault

Evelynn : I'd put her on the list since she has a dodge able form of CC, but the charm is really, really forgiving at times so I'm pretty neutral about her

Leblanc : Bad waveclear so can be dealt with with wave manipulation, outplayable in lane, becomes more and more difficult to use outside of lane. Most people think LeBlanc is broken, but I think this is nonsense.

ASSASSINS THAT DONT FEEL FAIR TO PLAY AGAINST

Fizz : Fizz is basically an outplay assassin with several ways to abuse his overloaded kit. Ult is barely dodgeable, E grants invulnerability. His early cheese is basically a reminder to mages to not even misposition for a half second and level 2-3 and only becomes more unbearable to play against. E flash interaction says "fine you flashed away to avoid my E? Get outplayed nerd" And electrocute and ignite on top of that made him even more problematic to the point where you're only option is to hard counter him in champion select.

Rengar : Killed for existing. Counterplay usually involves a leap of faith prediction kind of CC

Khazix : Killed again for existing. It doesn't help that the isolation range is way too forgiving, so positioning like an AD carry should will mean "isolated"

Shaco (AD) : Healthy interaction with W, and ult which makes him take some skill to play; however, shaco when he's snowballed basically means he has a kill button Q, auto, E, electrocute + dusk. So if he's ahead he has a kill button with outplay tools

Nocturne : Kill button + spell shield

MonkeyKing : Low counterplay + punishes people for existing

Talon : Has clear weaknesses, but right now he can choose to ignore them with tiamat.

Akali is SO HOT7/30/2018, 6:35:17 PM6 votes

Sideboob

Tormentula7/30/2018, 4:01:01 PM5 votes

What the boards forget is riot tried to appease them with the assassin rework, then shit went VERY wrong for assassins.

Assassins need to be able to burst shit, otherwise they fall off or become worthless over other high damage champs, like if you can't 100-0 somebody with Khazix , then divers like will just completely outclass the assassin, for example. Or if evelynn no longer could burst you, people would just play Elise , another diver with lots of burst.

When the assassin rework came around, they tried to delay burst windows, especially for Leblanc Fizz and a clunky mechanic that, maybe didn't fix burst, but did change the counterplay from burst being an auto attack Rengar , and it all put these champs into exactly what I just said.. inefficient and clunky because they couldn't burst as reliably as other assassins and divers being played at the time.

There is no middle ground. You can remove duskblade sure, or make it melee only, but assassins will still get compensated to stay relevant.

as for what makes assassins fair, nothing really. Its just the nature of an assassin to die to it, and that will never be fair in a player's eyes. The most fair tradeoff is assassins being squishy and punishable, potentially useless later in the game in organized teams, but you're never going to always have that.

Glory977/30/2018, 2:51:19 PM5 votes

I do think that assassins shouldn't be able to burst 100-0 within 0.3 sec or less. But assassins that work like that don't fit into the game because of how much damage their targets can deal. The reworked leblanc could jump onto the enemy adc, but the adc would burst lb effortlessly before lb could trigger the damage from her passive. It's not all about assassins. To create a meta where assassins aren't super frustrating, ranged characters shouldn't have burst damage from their items (statiks, stormrazor), also peel-supports shouldn't be that extremly effective at completly crippling assassins with just one point and click spell. In this way assassins would have a fair chance of killing the enemy adc in a longer burst window. The gameplay wouldn't be balanced arround "I have to burst you so fast that you can't even react- or otherwise anything I try is futile).

Herlgar7/30/2018, 5:31:45 PM3 votes

I'll go back to the time when champions like Twitch and Teemo were considered "Assassins" (quite a while ago now).

The big thing with assassins was the element of surprise and ambush. Assassins had to make good picks and decisions to catch enemies off guard, giving them an advantage in the ensuing fight. For example, Twitch gets an attack speed boosts upon getting out of stealth, allowing him to get a few hits in before the target can retaliate. If the target wasn't able to fight back, they still had the chance to retreat, and then perhaps the poison would finish them.

Now it's just like... you were out of position? You have 0.3 seconds to regret your decision. I feel the switch from assassin = surprise ambush fight to assassin = instant burst murder was not the right idea.

Now the old Twitch assassin mentality is barely possible, because if the assassin doesn't get to murder their target in a split second, most likely the retaliation will obliterate them instantly. The only advantage an assassin gets now is death. I'd argue the current assassins with a playstyle most similar to this are Evelynn with her charm and Ekko with the timed stun if you consider him one. In theory Shaco has a similar mechanic if he can land a box while stealthed, but he's such a one shot button now he doesn't get the chance to exploit it properly.

DuskDaUmbreon7/30/2018, 5:47:21 PM3 votes

What makes a Assassin "fair"?

As I look at it, a "fair" assassin is one that gives the opponent a chance to fight back. Not just through shitty, forced delays (as part of the assassin rework did), but rather through more natural delays (Something along the lines of Zed's R, or Evelynn's W) and through having reasonably dodgable abilities that set up their kill (Such as Ekko's stun, Eve's W, Ahri's E, etc.). An assassin should not have the damage to kill a healthy target without landing at least 2/3 of these reasonably-difficult skillshots. If the skillshot can easily be used point-blank and is near-instant, it's not a valid ability for this, because it's not reasonably dodgeable. Zed's Q coming out of R just isn't reasonably dodgeable, because it's point fucking blank.

What do you think a fair Assassin would feel like to play as/against?

A fair assassin would feel like a test of skill for both the assassin and for the opponent. Nearly every death to one should feel like you failed, not like you were just fucked to begin with. Everyone should have a reasonable chance of surviving one - even in a 1v1 - And the assassin should have a reasonable chance of killing nearly anyone - Even in a 5v5. It should have less to do with positioning (that's more against mages) and more about proper outplay. The test of skill would not be whether or not a Janna or Lulu was nearby to save the ADC, but rather whether or not the ADC could dodge the abilities properly.

Wolfalisk3187/30/2018, 4:36:10 PM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tomoe Gozen,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=5APqEc6c,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-07-30T08:57:14.072+0000) What makes a Assassin "fair"?

What makes an Assassin fair in my opinion is a social contract that no longer exists for the Assassin design philosophy. That social contract entailed a handful of things:

An Assassin should be able to kill you in lane easily, but they should have extremely poor farming mechanics and must expend key abilities in order to achieve moderate farm.
An Assassin killing you should mean they are staying even, not getting ahead. "Getting ahead" for them should entail outleveling you and ganking other lanes, applying pressure, etc.

Now an Assassin is allowed to just farm perfectly under the tower and their scaling is guaranteed, whereas they used to be forced to get kills and light/moderate farm to scale. You know, because they were Assassins.

Assassins designed today just have the best of all worlds now. They kill you repeatedly in lane and they can maintain perfect farm. There is no analog to this privilege in the game. It's hard to even think of a hypothetical one. Imagine an ADC scaling heavily without needing farm, in other words, their late-game is guaranteed and nothing is required of them to get to late-game. The community would not tolerate this, but this is analogous to what we currently tolerate with Assassins. Nothing is required of them to hit their stride. The 0/3/0 Zed who failed to be an Assassin in lane was able to farm well enough, so he will just meander on down to Bottom lane and 100-0 someone because he safely farmed a core item under his tower.

Ranmaru7/30/2018, 3:31:11 PM2 votes

Nidalee I'd say shes reliant on spear and she can be peeled while going in

ESeTyRC7/30/2018, 9:57:48 PM1 votes

Put all of this together and we have a template for interactive, strategic / tactical, and interesting Assassins that AREN'T reliant on 100-0 to be effective:

1) Primarily single target damage, doesn't actually have to be burst. Ex- poison, bleed-out, etc.

Reasoning: Assassins as a "class" shouldn't be dealing AoE since that's more of what a Mage is for & to keep them unique, they should be primarily single target. In terms of damage, they need damage, but they don't have to instantly kill a chosen target before they can react. That shit's for single-player games. Giving the enemy time to react in order to save themselves leads to interactive gameplay, which in turn creates "hey, I could have done this to survive, or my teammate could have saved me" situations as opposed to "there was absolutely nothing anyone on my team could have done in that time-frame."

2) Self-defensive utility, at least one.

Reasoning: If an assassin doesn't have the damage to 100-0 a target without fail, they need to be able to A. survive to rejoin the fight, and B. provide support to the team in some way, esp. in teamfights, in order to be viable. However, an assassin that has good offensive utility (ex. stuns on chosen targets) or defensive utility that applies to teammates (ex. ally shielding / healing / defensive buffs) can be delegated to the support role. The concept of Akali's shroud is a good example of self-defensive utility. It keeps the assassin conditionally safe while providing minimal assistance to teammates and doesn't prevent the enemy from acting-- if Akali is the target, it provides the team some safety as the enemy spends time trying to damage Akali, and if Akali isn't the target, the ability has done it's job in keeping Akali safe.

3) Need Mobility spells / Lack of Raw Defense (Shields, Damage Reduction, etc.)

Reasoning: Mobility should be self-explanatory. They need to be able to get to their chosen targets in some way. As for lack of raw defense.. Let's start with an example-- If the defining trait of an ADC is attacks from range, then they should logically be weaker at melee range than melee champs, yes? Then if the defining trait of an Assassin is mobility (barring a certain man's atrocities with uncountable dashes), then they should logically be weaker at face-to-face fights against the champions that are LESS mobile. In order for this to happen, they can't have powerful shielding or damage reduction, else they'll be able to choose their fights, escape unwanted fights, evade skill-shots, AND win fights against anyone that can't out-dps them (which only gets easier with raw defense). Let them choose their fights and escape if need be, but if they decide to fight, they shouldn't be able to beat out beefier opponents easily.

4) Scouting / Intel Gathering / Vision Denial Utility

Reasoning: There's a severe lack of scouting abilities and intel gathering abilities in this game, and that's reasonable given how powerful Intel is! However, I believe this niche can be filled by assassins because knowing where enemies are / aren't is even more important for them than any other class. Vision denial from Duskblade should also be moved into select Assassins' kits imo. The only example I can think of that fulfills this Scounting function from an Assassin's kit is Rengar's ult. Yes, it tells them that you might be coming to attack, but it also tells you where they are, allowing you to think about where to go, and choose whether to engage or not. It gives _choices _ to both sides. The opposite would be Nocturne's ult, which denies Team-Vision for a period for the enemies, preventing them from knowing what's going on without voice-comms, and even with it, leaving them unable to accurately influence the outcome of a fight that's not in character range. Both are powerful tools that can take some of the "power-budget" in a given kit to reduce damage for point 1).