Unpopular opinion: Assassins should never be viable

TrikzterzArma·Jan 18, 2019·40 votes·8,323 views

As title says. Assassin-metas are the worst metas in the game. Jumping in, killing the enemy in half a second, and then jumping out safely is in my eyes extremely unbalanced.

"B-but the support should defend the squishy ones" Every squishy person can't hug their support for the entire game. And still, there's no time for the support to react to Kha'Zix suddenly appearing out of the stealth to Q and auto the enemy so they die, only to go back to stealth again. Or a shadow appear out of nowhere, Zed appears and instakills the enemy. Or a Wukong jumping out from nowhere, q'ing the enemy and the knocks everybody up.

Supports should be able to defend their allies, but it isn't possible with the absurd damage the game has today.

62 Comments

ChalzeJan 18, 201915 votes

Assassins should be high risk high reward, but are currently no risk high reward

ChaddyFantomeJan 18, 20195 votes

{quoted}

Assassins should be high risk high reward, but are currently no risk high reward

litterally the only one one that is no risk is Leb and maybe Zed.

deadlychuckJan 19, 20193 votes

That's what happens when you pair the most advantageous defensive design (high mobility) with the most advantageous offensive design (burst), in a game which has next to no methods of addressing either of these.

ŚhunpoJan 19, 20191 votes

Katarina Kat objects to this statement.

The ArchiveJan 18, 201915 votes

Really, any champion type should be viable at any given time, in a perfect world. I'd go for a bit more nuance and just say that assassins shouldn't ever be the 100% of the time best choice, but a possible option. As should any other type of champion ideally.

Though, they're probably a bit too good currently.

deadlychuckJan 19, 20193 votes

Assassins could exist, the problem is that the pieces of the game that need to exist for them to be balanced don't in nearly enough.

Mobility is still unaddressed, because riot doesn't want to introduce more grounded effects for arbitrary reasons.

Burst also has no real countermeasure, as the only thing in the game which actively mitigates the natural advantage of burst damage patterns is item 3812

AnidanJan 19, 20191 votes

Actual unpopular opinion coming through: Every single ability scaling is a mistake. Am I saying there should be no scaling abilities? Absolutely not. But not every ability needs to scale. Damage vs. Tankiness is this game is a never-ending arms race of absurd proportions due to the idea that everything has to scale. Hell, we have offensive scaling on abilities as a result of defensive stats due to that damage arms race. That's just stupid.

Akali is SO HOTJan 18, 201914 votes

I think this is a pretty popular opinion on Gameplay

The thigh guyJan 18, 201910 votes

Agreed 10000%.

Assassins are so cancerous and should be niche, not the current state which is “play 5 assassins win game”

MasterDCloneJan 19, 20192 votes

Its called a "meta". This may be a strange concept but the game goes through them every once in a while where one class gets "stronger" than another.

D357R0Y3RJan 18, 20197 votes

very unpopular indeed

ZeyphelJan 18, 20197 votes

Assasins should be viable, what shouldn't be viable is one-shotting with 1/2 abilities or 1/2 AAs. Assasins should be put in the High Risk, High Reward position as they were designed for. Assasins should be more about abilities instead of doing half or 3/4 of your hp bar with one AA and then just proceed to use another ability or AA to kill you.

deadlychuckJan 18, 20192 votes

The problem is that the fantasy of assassins isn't high risk high reward, it's low risk high reward in the context of how the game is designed...

Having a defensive philosophy like "jump in jump out", paired with an offensive philosophy of "kill quickly", leaves no actual design space relative to the rest of the game. Yes you can design around this, but that involves things that just frankly don't exist in the game at nearly frequent enough rates for it to be meaningful. Mechanics like grounded would need to be increased in commonality like knock ups have, maybe as an alternative to slows, like how knock ups are an alternative to stuns. As well, the passive of item 3812 would need to basically be an entire stat, not just a 1 off option.

Yet riot doesn't and will probably never do this, because you'd basically be putting in all this effort to turn the game on it's head, when you could just build a new game/mode from the ground up which had these necessary design pieces.

Exin0Jan 19, 20191 votes

{quoted}

The problem is that the fantasy of assassins isn't high risk high reward, it's low risk high reward in the context of how the game is designed...

Having a defensive philosophy like "jump in jump out", paired with an offensive philosophy of "kill quickly", leaves no actual design space relative to the rest of the game. Yes you can design around this, but that involves things that just frankly don't exist in the game at nearly frequent enough rates for it to be meaningful. Mechanics like grounded would need to be increased in commonality like knock ups have, maybe as an alternative to slows, like how knock ups are an alternative to stuns. As well, the passive of would need to basically be an entire stat, not just a 1 off option.

Yet riot doesn't and will probably never do this, because you'd basically be putting in all this effort to turn the game on it's head, when you could just build a new game/mode from the ground up which had these necessary design pieces.

its high risk there for when you play games about assassins you must be sneaky a set up your kills not jump into middle of action and no assassins shouldnt have escapes whatsoever they should set up things in way to able them walk in and out, like going for secluded target not jumping throu walls. and of course they go for that one critical hit outside of it damage is minimal also ingame there is lack of assassin techniques in assassins kits like traps, poisons, blinding etc. they are just mobile killing machines on steroids.

flibitydooJan 19, 20192 votes

if you can come up with a design for Rengar that doesn't get reverted then by all means, show the class what you've made.

but otherwise, this champion is either 100-0 instakill you from stealth, or don't. and if it's don't, he's completely useless. and if it's do, then he's ranks among the most anti-fun zero counterplay champions in the game.

YboatJan 19, 20191 votes

{quoted}

if you can come up with a design for that doesn't get reverted then by all means, show the class what you've made.

but otherwise, this champion is either 100-0 instakill you from stealth, or don't. and if it's don't, he's completely useless. and if it's do, then he's ranks among the most anti-fun zero counterplay champions in the game.

This. It's not fun to be 1 shot in under .5 seconds, where your only way to survive is stop watch, if it's up and if you have the reaction time to use it. The average reaction time is ~.25 seconds, gamers are a little better at ~.20. Add in some ping, and it very well could be impossible for you to do. Which is where the issue lies.

I am 100% ok with being 1 shot, what I am not ok with is being one shot with little too no counter play.

Yes I know wards are a good thing, but you can not ward every where and you can only have 1 control ward at a time.

painkillsJan 18, 20196 votes

{quoted}

Supports should be able to defend their allies, but it isn't possible with the absurd damage the game has today.

So really, the issue is the absurd amounts of damage, not the assassins.

Dorans PantsJan 18, 20195 votes

They are toxic by design and only balanced on paper. The usual defenses used are that they don´t have much control over their laning phase and can be pushed in easily, that they have trouble getting to high priority targets in teamfights, and that they don´t contribute much to the team besides single target dmg yadda yadda.....

That sounds nice in theory but in reality, one quickly realizes that most those drawbacks demand teamwork and are not present in an average game of league, while the reliable advantages, the class has, almost always persist, since they only require basic mechanics from one player.

As a support player, I can only shake my head on the rare occasions I play them. Kills I should have never gotten, situations I should have never survived and it´s just demoralizing seeing how rarely sub-optimal play can or will get punished when playing that class. On top off that you are also having the most flashiest moves, so everyone gets tricked into believing that even your dumbest plays look impressive and on a high skill level.

No wonder they are so popular.

deadlychuckJan 18, 20193 votes

Even on paper they're not balanced if you're literate.

MasterDCloneJan 19, 20193 votes

an assassin main can say the same for supports. A tank main can say the same for adc's. an adc main can say the same for mages. mage mains can say the same for yasuo's. As long as the meta is in favor of one class that class will be "toxic by design" these same post were made for enchanter during ardent sensor meta, and the same happened for tanks and adc's for their respective meta's. This assassin meta is already fading and their will be a new class to hate about how toxic they are by design

GigglesOJan 19, 20191 votes

"Can be pushed in easily"

Only if you have a death wish. Talon can all in level 2 and win... and the enemy normally has a jungler.

NetorareJan 18, 20195 votes

Assassin mains will always be delusional and say assassins are weak when they are not. All assassins are viable, if they are bad and forget what an assassin is supposed to do its their fault. AD assassins were much better without lethality. LB is completely busted same with fizz. Assassins are just badly designed in league... But too bad, assassins will always be viable.

MasterDCloneJan 19, 20192 votes

Assassins's won't always be viable lol literally last year they weren't viable because of the ardent meta, and then this year they are viable for half a year and everyone's losing their shit, the game goes in cycles, maybe you'll enjoy the next cycle where a new class becomes meta just like it is for every season. So calm you're shit

Irelia BotJan 18, 20195 votes

Let us reverse this and see if it is a good idea.

Unpopular Opinion: Marksmen should be seen as too risky to play because they always get one shot.

HammermancerJan 18, 20196 votes

[{quoted}](name=Irelia Bot,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7vEvuEdF,comment-id=000b,timestamp=2019-01-18T18:20:15.849+0000)

Let us reverse this and see if it is a good idea.

Unpopular Opinion: Marksmen should be seen as too risky to play because they always get one shot.

Let me rephrase that

Marksmen should be considered as toxic for the game since all they do is right click

go play an assassin

deadlychuckJan 18, 20192 votes

Yeah, and they did run this risk in the past before assassins were introduced... it was called burst mages...

The weakness burst mages had were tanks who could shrug off their damage, and the mages generally couldn't shake a tank off of them...

the weakness that tanks had were those marksmen that could apply constant pressure (with virtually no CD) to the tanks...

https://i.imgur.com/WdIeKEt.jpg

LTK KoRoJan 19, 20192 votes

Let's say an actual unpopular opinion

Markspeople are bad design because game orbits only around them when they're strong, but they're literally useless when bad.

Weiss GuertenaJan 19, 20194 votes

Assassins should be viable, but not fulfilling the assassin fantasy. "Get in, assassinate, get out" has no place in a PvP game. What assassin should be is a guerilla fighter, utilizing hit-and-run tactics and finishing weakened opponents.

BotRK building, skirmishing Zed was okay. Lethality one-shot Zed isn't. Release Pyke who relied on his teammates was okay. Overbuffed Pyke who executes you from half HP isn't. Kha'Zix who was required to play around his passive and isolate targets to 100-0 them was okay. The abomination we have now isn't. LeBlanc who had to... oh wait, she was always cancer.

Fire BlaustoiseJan 18, 20193 votes

Unpopular opinion : bad players shouldnt concern about balance.

Supports should be able to defend their allies, but it isn't possible with the absurd damage the game has today.

Supports can already do it.

TrikzterzArmaJan 18, 20198 votes

[{quoted}](name=Fire Blaustoise,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=7vEvuEdF,comment-id=0006,timestamp=2019-01-18T13:42:01.380+0000)

Unpopular opinion : bad players shouldnt concern about balance.

Supports can already do it.

Is that why people leaves the game to play other games?

MasterDCloneJan 19, 20193 votes

people will always leave the game, people will always leave any game when they grow board, what makes league special is that it's always around and people will always come back.

ParavozikchoochoJan 19, 20192 votes

truly unpopular opinion

Fire BlaustoiseJan 19, 20192 votes

ofc, gold and below are triggered by this and they're the majority

KattzyJan 18, 20193 votes

lolipopevelynnJan 18, 20193 votes

{quoted}

As title says. Assassin-metas are the worst metas in the game. Jumping in, killing the enemy in half a second, and then jumping out safely is in my eyes extremely unbalanced.

"B-but the support should defend the squishy ones" Every squishy person can't hug their support for the entire game. And still, there's no time for the support to react to Kha'Zix suddenly appearing out of the stealth to Q and auto the enemy so they die, only to go back to stealth again. Or a shadow appear out of nowhere, Zed appears and instakills the enemy. Or a Wukong jumping out from nowhere, q'ing the enemy and the knocks everybody up.

Supports should be able to defend their allies, but it isn't possible with the absurd damage the game has today.

they HAVE to be viable because if not ADC rofl stomp the fucking game even harder than they do now.

ZerenzaJan 19, 20193 votes

So because Assassin meta's happen they should NEVER be viable in any way shape or form. Meaning every assassin should have an abysmal winrate?

Okay, so, in my opinion the winrate of a champion should correspond with their Playrate and Learning Curve. Assassins have pretty high learning curves on average, their just as squishy as most other damage dealer's but don't get the safety of range(usually, Leblance and Ahri are exceptions.) which makes them harder to learn and makes player's put more time into them. Because of this assassins should have low Playrates, how you know were in an assassin meta is when ALL ASSASSSINS NOT JUST THE AD ONES have play rates above 10%. Out of 13 Assassins only 3 had pick rates above 10% those champions are as follows in their primary roles.

These three are heavy outlier's, as you can see.

Kha'zix: 18.47% pickrate 51% winrate Pyke: 13.85% Pickrate 49.04% winrate Leblance: 10.34% Pickrate 48.49% winrate

5 had pick rate's of over 5%, a couple might need some minor nerfs but this is definitely within the lines.

Evelynn: 50% winrate 5.7% pickrate Talon: 51.41% winrate 5.27 pickrate Zed: 6.95% pickrate 50.75% winrate Ahri: 51.2% winrate 5.55% pickrate Akali: 47.6% winrate 5.44% pickrate

The rest had pickrates bellow 5% These champs are used only by mains.

Katarina: 52.04% winrate 4.11% pickrate Fizz: 51.33% winrate 3.24% pickrate Ekko: 50.82% winrate 3.56% pickrate Rengar: 49.77% winrate 1.94% pickrate Shaco: 53.82% winrate 2.72% pickrate

There's more assassins than this but can you tell with ease which ones need some tuning? Obviously the top 3 up there need to be nerfed, but for all the other's it's kind of hard to tell, assassins are among the funnest to play champions in the game and their playrates have always reflected that. Right now only 3 out of 16 total assassins are seeing play rates above 10% and those 3 are heavy outlier's as well, this is not an assassin meta.

IP MasquerenaJan 19, 20192 votes

Although I do agree with your points, I am heavily wondering what tracking site are you using, and what search settings as well. Here's what I use and got:

Same order as your's:

Trash OP bug: 52.4% wr with 19.3% pr in D+: https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/khazix/diamond Pyke: 47.9% wr with 14.4% pr in D+: https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/pyke/diamond LeBlanc: 49.6% wr with 8.4% wr in D+: https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/leblanc/diamond

Eve: 52.7% with 4.9% Talon: 53.3% with 4.9% Zed: 49.8% with 10.7% Ahri: 52.5% with 7.1% Akali: 47.8% with 9.8%

Kat: 53.3% with 4.9% Fizz: 50.7% with 3.6% Ekko: 50.6% with 5% Jhonny Rengo: 51.6% with 7.2% Can we nerf him already?: 55% with 5.5%: https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/shaco/diamond

So on list, the outliners are:

Trash OP bug: 19.3% Pyke: 14.4% Zed: 10.7%

With the honor mention of "Can we nerf him already?" for the super high winrate at a decent playrate when everyone keeps talking how "weak, trash, bad" he is and currently became the highest winrate champ in the game.

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/overview/diamond/by-winrate

ZerenzaJan 19, 20191 votes

Oh forgot to mention it was Op.gg which uses Korean statistics instead of NA, i always forget that and use it instead of one for NA. They also update Op.gg every 5 minutes or so, i noticed as i was flipping around that their winrates and playrates fluctuated a bit.

IP MasquerenaJan 19, 20191 votes

Well, you can switch what region you look at the statistics, iirc.

For example Shaco has a 52.6% with 6.4% in NA and 55.2% with 2.4% in KR. The numbers I gave are just general numbers from all regions combined.

KR bug has 51.3% with 21.8% and NA has 52.8% with 19%, tho both has banrates on his of over 30%, at 31% KR with 37% in NA.

Although different regions have different picks, when talking how good something is, the general stats are better than region specific because it shows how good something is on average.

MarshbouyJan 18, 20192 votes

I don't think assassins as an idea in PvP gaming have ever been a great idea. Their niche is essentially "burst someone extremely quickly" but that inevitably leads to feast or famine designs and oppressive gameplay.

GallJan 19, 20192 votes

Assassin meta is the best way to practice Zilean. You have to have a 0.6 second reaction time to place your ult correctly, and if done, you usually win pretty easily.

Still... 0.6 seconds.. fuck. (non-exaggerated, my latest zilean game had people dying between 0.6-2.5 seconds on average)

MasterDCloneJan 19, 20192 votes

You do realize the difference between an assassin being viable and an assassin being meta right? During the damage meta, some adc's were viable that didn't mean we were in an adc meta.

Iron PhantomJan 19, 20192 votes

The game would be boring af if assassins weren't viable

deadlychuckJan 18, 20191 votes

It's not an unpopular opinion, it's just a divisive opinion.

Frankly the entire design of assassins can't be made viable with the current foundational design of the game. If they want to make them work they need to massively overhaul numerous details about the game's core mechanics, from auto attacks, how ability scale, class roles (which they've already tried to do in isolation), stat pricing, and even just the primary and secondary stats that exist...

but with such overhauls to core principles of the game's design, they'd be better off just making a completely new game... well at least a completely new game mode, technically there's no reason to make new art and launcher assets.

Baron Von GarenJan 19, 20191 votes

I just think they should find some balance by adding a lot more lethality to the items while decreasing the amount of ad. This way a 2/0 rengar/khaz can't run around one shotting everyone. (Same with flat magic pen for ap assassins)

The people who build armor will be able to deal with them because their ad is lower and lethality sucks against armor.

Assassin's jobs should be to take down a single target at a time with long cooldowns and short bursts, if you play well, you should be able to 100-0 someone who has no armor (magic resist for ap assassins, but you get the point). However, you shouldn't be able to consistently one shot everyone on the enemy team even if they build resists and/or you miss half your abilities.

hewhodoesnotcareJan 19, 20191 votes

then u might as well just say nerf all champion so they have base damage and have stats but only receive stats from items.

wildfox9TJan 19, 20191 votes

"unpopular opinion" then proceed to say the exact same thing as the boards say every day

i would have downvoted you even if your argument made sense

T2K BakaJan 19, 20191 votes

Assassin rework complete fail, most of them got reverts or rework. Katarina is the only one that has the most delayed dmg and the weakest out of them all. Also everyone has dmg now so everyone is an assassin anyways

hoganftwJan 19, 20191 votes

I think Assassins should exist but they should be a more niche pick, not something that you'd actively seek unless the enemy team has a certain team comp.

JeaneGreeneJan 19, 20191 votes

Heroes of the Storm has a good philosophy around assassins. They view them as high damage champions that require multiple spell rotations, or sticking onto a target for a few seconds, to get a kill. Most likely, they will look for low health enemies, then finish the job, and rarely are there characters who are capable of deleting someone with one spell rotation. To fix league, all damage should be dropped, cool downs should be kinda dropped, and defensive buffs (like shields etc) should be buffed a little. This way, assassins would have clear patterns of when they are or aren't going to attack. Leblanc would have to QRW you, then wait some time for her cool downs to come up again, so that she could get a kill (all the while you are given a chance to back... etc).