Watching the Mage Nerfs as a Talon Main

Hawthorn Tree·4/23/2018, 4:12:38 AM·103 votes·17,629 views

Riot's balance team is so pathetic that this whole mess actually made me chuckle out loud. Mages are honestly the least of our worries at this point, because it's not like any lane assassins suck ass at pushing the lane. There are a trillion million reasons why we suck, but mages is not one of them. If Riot actually wants to see us in competitive, here are a few hints.

  1. This is the biggest thing. Revert the entire bullshit with Lethality and give us the real Last Whisper back. If you break down the penetration we need into like 20 different items, we will never be fucking playable outside of Intermediate bots. Assassins all need snowballs to be worth anything, and snowballs always mean that we are hogging a large portion of our team's resources. And, if we have no space for any items aside from raw damage--no dps, no sustain, nothing--then there's no way for us to live up to the amount of gold being poured into us. When we have pop off games, which is the only situation where we're useful, we basically take a full item from our teammates, but then our builds can't allow us to really cash in that extra item. Against players of the same caliber, which is the only kind of players a pro will face, a pure damage build can only down one person before the assassin is also out of commission. Honestly, there's a reason why LL Stylish is always looking for builds that aren't lethality, and even Yamikaze--a Challenger Talon OTP--buys a full item 3074 when he's ahead enough to not need more penetration.

  2. Everything assassins do have to have counterplays via huge delays/skillshots, but Enchanter supports can all double the effective health of an ADC with a few point and click spells that are also instantaneous. Hur dur dur Talon needs to play the vision game for a year and wait out the Ezreal's E to even think about going in, but all the efforts don't mean jack shit because that Ezreal also has a Lulu. Again referring to Yamikaze, there's a reason why he bans Lulu in every single game he plays, and dodges Zilean games on his main account. These enchanter supports, they need to suck at everything else wayyyy more for how well they can protect a single target. They have to lose something major in return for counterpicking an assassin, or assassins won't be worth picking, ever.

  3. Tristana Vayne Ezreal Xayah The fact that it is a team game, and assassins will need team setup to reach past the enemy front lines, but ADCs who can peel themselves still exist. Oh, did I mention how much damage any given ADC won't lose from dedicating an entire item slot to something like item 3143 ?

  4. Illaoi EveryJarvanIV SingleMalphite ChampionOrnn WhoSejuani GoesWarwick TankVi ButUdyr StillXinZhao OutdamageVolibear Us. Similar to my last point about ADCs, building tank items are nowhere near detrimental enough to one's damage. Get two of these fuckers, one in top and one in jungle, and you will not only have a very good cc heavy comp, but any normal backline will still explode in the blink of an eye! Isn't that lovely?

  5. item 3157 item 3156 item 3026 The amount of macro and micro skill required to kill someone who is equally skilled, versus the amount of skill it DOESN'T take to build an item and be three times safer...yeah, I don't think I need to say more.

85 Comments

jocomotion4/23/2018, 5:11:37 AM27 votes

So basically your saying assassins have too many weaknesses to let their strength shine 1: itemization 2: defensive supports 3: defensive builds/abilities 4: more optimal picks 5: anti-burst items Makes since. Here’s a little take on it. From a support main 1: this is the only one I disagree with. In my opinion there are two points to an assassin. 1: snowballing and becoming a huge damage threat to enemy squishies. And 2: be such a huge threat that other champions are forced to waste time on them. They shouldn’t have too much utility in their items since their kits should be what poses the threat, and I think riots done a good job on capitalizing on this for the most part. Duskblade clears vision to make squishy champions weary of face checking the jungle, ghost blade just helps with roaming and closing gaps to combo champions, and edge of night..... well they can’t all be winners. Plus with Lethality scaling with level, snowballing is even better on assassins.

2: this’ll make you happy. I agree supports are too good against assassins. However I also think certain supports should counter them too. I feel like Riot should add some sort of skill expression to shields/heals (though I don’t know how) to make them more punishing if implemented incorrectly. But you still should remember you’re fighting a 2v1 when you jump on a carry and a support. It shouldn’t be easy to pull off.

3: Yeah this straight up shouldn’t exist in the early/mid game. If it does exist in the mid game ADC’s should run into an larger damage deficit in exchange. Late game it’s fine since it’s late game and... well... that’s the whole point of ADC’s. But building defensive in mid game is a bit too strong.

4: the main difference between assassins and those Divers/Vanguards (Plus Illaoi) is that assassins have WAY more mobility and burst in exchange for tankiness. The reason someone like Malphite deals more damage than say Zed is because over the course of a game Malphite just has more opportunities to fight on a regular basis. Assassins pick and choose their time to strike where tanks/divers can just charge through, bursting less but EVENTUALLY dealing more damage.

5: those are inevitable. Those items counter a lot of champions, and there are lots of items like those for other classes item 3060 item 3036 Grevious wounds item 3047 etc. HOWEVER, there should be an item that helps destroy shields, but in exchange for upfront damage. Like an item that gives less AD, lethality/magic penetration, CDR, and a passive that has single target abilities/auto attacks to deal bonus damage to shields. That’d be nice

AmazoX4/23/2018, 3:24:50 PM7 votes

The most real and respectable thread of 2018 related to AD Assassins.

You earned my respect and agreement.

Prozac Horseman4/23/2018, 9:16:06 PM4 votes

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that 1. Illaoi isn't a tank 2.Illaoi is a juggernaut and that's what juggernauts are and do, that is their only strenght, that they're raid bosses,if you go melee range against a Juggernaut as a squishy well you kinda deserve whatever ensues

They're the slowest characters in game, are very telegraphed, and get countered comoletely by wave clear, which any decent teamcomp has

ValiantKiller4/23/2018, 4:29:55 AM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hawthorn Tree,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=6JshVLbr,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-04-23T04:12:38.952+0000)

Riot's balance team is so pathetic that this whole mess actually made me chuckle out loud. Mages are honestly the least of our worries at this point, because it's not like any lane assassins suck ass at pushing the lane. There are a trillion million reasons why we suck, but mages is not one of them. If Riot actually wants to see us in competitive, here are a few hints.

  1. This is the biggest thing. Revert the entire bullshit with Lethality and give us the real Last Whisper back. If you break down the penetration we need into like 20 different items, we will never be fucking playable outside of Intermediate bots. Assassins all need snowballs to be worth anything, and snowballs always mean that we are hogging a large portion of our team's resources. And, if we have no space for any items aside from raw damage--no dps, no sustain, nothing--then there's no way for us to live up to the amount of gold being poured into us. When we have pop off games, the only situation where we're useful, we basically take a full item from our teammates, but then our builds can't let us to really cash in that extra item. Against players of the same caliber, which is the only kind of players a pro will face, a pure damage build can only down one person before we ourselves are out of commission. Honestly, there's a reason why LL Stylish is always looking for builds that aren't lethality, and even Yamikaze--a Challenger Talon OTP--buys a full item 3074 when he's ahead enough to not need more penetration.

  2. Everything assassins do have to have counterplays via huge delays/skillshots, but Enchanter supports can all double the effective health of an ADC with a few point and click spells that are also instantaneous. Hur dur dur Talon needs to play the vision game for a year and wait out the Ezreal's E to even think about going in, but all the efforts don't mean jack shit because Xayah Ezreal Tristana that Ezreal also has a Lulu. Again referring to Yamikaze, there's a reason why he bans Lulu in every single game he plays, and dodges Zilean games on his main account. These enchanter supports, they need to suck at everything else wayyyy more for how well they can protect a single target. They have to lose something major in return for counterpicking an assassin, or assassins won't be worth picking, ever.

  3. Tristana Vayne Ezreal Xayah The fact that it is a team game, and assassins will need team setup to reach past the enemy front lines, but ADCs who can peel themselves still exist. Oh, did I mention how much damage any given ADC won't lose from dedicating an entire item slot to something like item 3143 ?

  4. Illaoi EveryJarvanIV SingleMalphite ChampionOrnn WhoSejuani GoesWarwick TankVi ButUdyr StillXinZhao OutdamageVolibear Us. Similar to my last point about ADCs, building tank items are nowhere near detrimental enough to one's damage. Get two of these fuckers, one in top and one in jungle, and you no only have a very good cc heavy comp, but any normal backline will still explodes in the blink of an eye! Isn't that lovely?

  5. item 3157 item 3156 item 3026 The amount of macro and micro skill required to kill someone who is equally skilled, versus the amount of skill it DOESN'T take to build an item and be three times safer...yeah, I don't think I need to say more.

To be honest the building tanky and still got alot of damage apply to Veigar as well. Otherwise i agree with everything you said special when we talking about Lulu Janna big nope in your face or sudden Ga a third item on adc who got a self peel like Xayah Tristana Ezreal . But as the list of tanks to be honest the worst two is Warwick and Volibear the amount of damage + healing from early to late game when they build full tank is just overpowered in many ways, like when i was playing Veigar and i was fed with like 1350AP Volibear still was able to destroy me, heal my damage and my R yet come out of fight with like 70% hp.

catastrophicSkil4/24/2018, 2:45:37 PM2 votes

I understand the frustration of playing an assassin in the modern game of league however i don't think the solution is that easy.

  1. Assassins shouldn't be the go to pick fora given meta (arguably no champion should be the ideal champion in every situation) however I completely disagree considering assassins are becoming more and more relevant with the recent patches look at Zed and Yasuo who are considered difficult to play but both have 10-20% pick rates and winrates over 50% in fact outside of Leblanc 46% and ahri 49.67% and akali 49.51% (according to the op.gg) EVERY AD assassin is sitting over 50% winrate. although this doesn't usually explain how impactful a champion is because difficulty of champion has mattered historically looking at champs like lee sin who could have a 45-46% winrate but still be considered a S+ tier jungler in the past. The itemization isn't the issue as it is players just started learning how to play the game that makes it less of a brute force approach the game requires you to be better instead of your champ just being better. what i mean by this is knowing how to lane/trade and position properly.

  2. What huge skillshots are you talking about especially as a talon main? Your Rake ability? That has a huge frontal cone or your ult that a giant AoE that grants true invisibility. I'm sorry i'm not seeing it. Fizz's only skill shot is his ult which isn't that hard to hit and usually requires a flash to avoid at certain distances. Ahri is probably the only one I'd agree with. Zed's difficulty is backed by the amount of outplay ability he has built into his kit with so many dashes and burst built into his passive so and even then his skill shots aren't that difficult to land its more about shadow placements and positioning than skill shots. Yasuo's only skillshot is super spammable. From what I'm seeing all you want in the game is to be able to go balls deep every game without being punished for it. OTP are bad at the game they only understand how to play their champion (ask any pro player listen to any educational content creator or coach they will all tell you being a OTP in high elo doesn't make you good at the game and just because someone is a OTP doesn't mean they know exactly how to balance said champion)

  3. ADCs are strong because of supports riot said they were supposed to address this in the mid season patch so we will see. The main issue with these champs are supports can protect them until they are relevant while the support is still able to itemize towards being strong. They no longer buy wards they don't pay for sightstone their itemization is cheap if your gonna complain about itemization i could see this being the proper place to complain about. If you nerf the traditional actual support champs you end up in a game where kill lanes become meta again which is good or bad depending on preference because sight stone is built into the starting support item a number of mages can just substitute for the traditional supports.

  4. Assassins aren't really meant to do large amounts of damage you're supposed to pretty much be in and out for 1 MAYBE 2 kills and then dish out mediocre damage. They are burst champions not DPS champs not sustain damage. Tank damage hasn't been that much of an issue from what i've seen there always seems to be a mixed response here one minute i hear tanks die too quickly they're like paper the next minute they're doing too much damage. Tanks do more slow and drawn out damage for the most part. In a 1v1 situation tanks are usually doing 3-5 rotations where most ADC/Mages/Assassins can do most other squishies in 1-2 rotations its actually a rather large difference.

  5. Items like these item 3157 item 3156 item 3026 are needed in the game without them you remove too much counterplay to a lot of champions that exist in the game. The biggest issue in league and it was something i heard from a few points of view is there is too much physical damage in the game. Turrets do physical damage and majority of the jungle does physical damage outside of gromp. Because ADCs are historically 80-100% physical damage and top/jungle are typically Physical damage as well (outside of a few small niches like Swain Vladimir Ornn for top and Zac Sejuani Evelynn Elise for jungle)

TL;DR Assassins are in a decent spot from what I've seen from high elo players and in low elo play. I think hitting support itemization is probably the first place i would look at followed by anti shield items or just nerfing how shield work in some way; I've seen diminishing returns on shields and decaying shields as options idk if these are the best ways to go about it.

I'm not convinced on the tank argument there are a lot of conflicting evidence and opinions of players to really make me agree with this.

Assassins aren't DPS champs they are burst the total damage done to champions is skewed in a lot of games there is a lot of meaningless damage done its a pretty bad stat to use to explain how much impact you have or your champions use.

There isn't enough magic damage in comparison to physical damage the game I'd recommend turrets doing like a 60/40 in terms of magic damage to champions would nerf tanks into itemizing more of a split build and would nerf dives (however this might make wave clear comps OP) would be cool to see APC in the bot lane that work similar to ADC.

Depending on how riot nerfs supports will determine how much of a buff assassins get. However a number of the recent patch changes have been super beneficial to assassin champions without actually making changes to those champions AKA minion gold changes the mana changes next patch. The only actual issue that I can understand is the strength of supports however it seems like its not all supports its just the shield supports.

OHminus4/23/2018, 2:23:29 PM2 votes

Every Single Champion Who Goes Tank But Still Outdamage Us

Vi doesn't go tank. If she wants to do assassin-level damage, she builds warrior youmuus triforce. Then she can start buidling a bit defensively with Gage/GA/Stoneplate. But Vi NEVER builds tank.

InTheory4/23/2018, 6:27:19 PM2 votes

I have a question to you since everyone's bashing supports 24/7 lately. You mention enchanters especially as counterplay to assassins - but in theory the counterplay to assassins are tanks - including support tanks. If you want to gut enchanters tank supports will see more play. Do you think assassins will have a better time to kill an adc with a tank support by their side? Secondly: If enchanters are gutted and not allowed to reliably protect a squishy teammate (which is currently marksmen) - what should they be excelling then?

LechintanTudor4/23/2018, 7:02:00 PM2 votes

As a Zed main the thing I hate to play against the most is Zhonya's. I manage to outplay the enemy team, dodge the CC and stick to the target to auto attack them as much as possible to increase death mark's damage before ulting back to safety. After using all my abilities and summoners, they press the outplay key and live.

Yordle Xayah4/23/2018, 6:14:23 PM1 votes

Wait... still complaining about Tristana even though she has the worst win rate of any ADC in the game?

The Boards be The Boards...

Elohaven4/23/2018, 11:10:14 PM1 votes

TBH, Vayne's identity is to duel assassins and be a great duelist. Compared to Trist/Xayah - she doesn't have much self-peel but just a lot more kiting potential. Ezreal only has kiting potential - not self-peel.

Peel - An ability to reduce/prevent incoming damage via displacing an enemy or giving yourself a beneficial status effect Kiting - The ability to extend your mobility to prevent damage from being taken as you deal damage

Vayne is literally designed for it. (Just like Fiora is designed to shred tanks and squishies) Ezreal's kit is very player-dependent and he doesn't have much peel. His Q just provides a lot of safety and damage.

Sun Wu Ryuumoku4/23/2018, 2:25:17 PM1 votes

and even Yamikaze--a Challenger Talon OTP--buys a full item 3074 when he's ahead enough to not need more penetration.

I don't know for LL cause i don't look his stream so much, but he was avoiding lethality mainly cause Tabi was too strong and c*ckblocked totaly lethality. But in Yami case its not because pene is bad :

  • to begin, he usualy just stay on tiamat
  • he go tiamat cause most of tiamat he won't be able to kill his lane opponent.

Only item 3814 is weak.

They're a reason why he's still build Youmuu and Duskblade : theses items are good/Great (great build path, ad, cdr, not expensive...)