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@Riot I really like Shadow Assassin Kayn

Zerenza··6 votes·823 views

But i have 2 very distinct complaints.

Shadow Assassin Kayn's passive read's like this "Deal bonus magic damage on your basic attacks and abilities for the first 3 seconds of combat equal to 12-44% of all damage dealt to champions." but wait. That's not actually what it does, infact i don't know what it does, the reason why is because this text doesn't tell me how much damage it does, it doesn't tell me what it means by "All Damage Dealt To Champions". Does that mean, throughout the whole game? Like what does this damage do, how much is it, and how come it's so cryptic.

That's the major problem i have with him, the lack of clarity on his Passive is actually surprising. It's basically impossible to actually know what your doing, not to mention, when you find out that it means "Post-Mitigation Damage" that means that his passives damage is being reduced TWICE, first by armor then by MR.

The second problem isn't as serious but i think it should be addressed. Shadow Assassin kayn ultimate is a joke, it does next to no damage at all, dealing, usually, less than his counterpart Rhaast. I understand that Kayn shouldn't be able to Burst someone with his ultimate but for gods sake, you gave Rhaast max health damage, meaning if anyone is bellow about 10% of their health, Rhaast is probably gonna kill them if they have no armor. Kayn on the other hand probably won't, that's why if you were worried about him bursting people, don't give it a high scaling, give it Missing Health scaling when in Shadow Assassin form, this way he can actually rely on it to deal damage like most assassins do.

These two problem are the problems that keep kayn's shadow assassin form from seeing play, honestly, i love Kayn's release because people were complaining the second he was shown "Ohhhhh boo hoo the next camille, waahhh please no, why do you do this to us Rito". Then he's released and he's actually pretty weak, his shadow assassin form is of course much weaker than his Darkin form but this can be fixed pretty easily and i hope pretty quickly.

23 Comments

Stars Shaper7 votes

About problem 1: I always intended this as: "for 3 seconds as you enter combat your skills/attacks deal X% bonus magic damage". Like, if your autoattack deals 100 at level 1 you deal 100 physical + 12 magic damage and if your skill deals 200 (physical or magic) then you deal 200+24.

About problem 2: As a Shadow Assassin your Ult isn't a mean to deal damage but to chase, getting an invulnerability window and reset your passive. Using it with this in mind will have much better results.

Zerenza1 votes

Yeah i just got done testing it extensively in the practice tool, his passive doesn't actually seem to work lol Like, there's no damage coming from it, there is litterally no noticable difference in having it and not having it.

Okay no masteries, 15.4 AD runes, no items, level 18.

Shadow Assassin kayne with his passive AA+Q+AA+W+AA= 633 damage to 100 Armor and magic resist dummy, keep in mind my base AD is 124 right now and i have 0 penetration.

Shadow Assassin Kayne without his passive AA+Q+AA+W+AA= 530 damage to 100 armor and MR dummy.

So his passive actually increases his damage by about 19-20%, not 44% because it's reduced Twice by resistances.

Hexs Fortune5 votes

{quoted}

Yeah i just got done testing it extensively in the practice tool, his passive doesn't actually seem to work lol Like, there's no damage coming from it, there is litterally no noticable difference in having it and not having it.

Okay no masteries, 15.4 AD runes, no items, level 18.

Shadow Assassin kayne with his passive AA+Q+AA+W+AA= 633 damage to 100 Armor and magic resist dummy, keep in mind my base AD is 124 right now and i have 0 penetration.

Shadow Assassin Kayne without his passive AA+Q+AA+W+AA= 530 damage to 100 armor and MR dummy.

So his passive actually increases his damage by about 19-20%, not 44% because it's reduced Twice by resistances.

Shadow Kayn is supposed to be prioritizing squishy champs. The double resistance reductions were probably meant to encourage that behavior.

Rhaast probably has too much base damage, he should be focusing tanks with his percent max hp, but currently he is able to kill everything indiscriminately

Zerenza1 votes

Uhm...but, the fact of the matter is, if your doing Flat Damage, tanks won't die to you regardless. So there's no reason for it to be reduced twice. It's also misleading and your passive is flat out lying to you about how much it ACTUALLY does, it's a matter of clarity more than actual damage.

SzGamer2271 votes

"Flat damage"

What exactly do you mean?

Zerenza1 votes

Flat Damage, Flat Number's, as in, not percentage number's. The only way your going to beat a tank with pretty much any champion is if they have some sort of Maximum Health/Current Health damage. For assassin kayn your doing what's called "Flat Damage" flat damage is simply a number than both you and your opponent can see. For example, i have 100 AD, my Auto Attack will do 100 Attack Damage not counting Armor. If my auto says something like this "Deals 5% maximum health True Damage to the target." that's not a flat number, as in it's damage is based on their health not my damage.

Stars Shaper1 votes

What I noticed as Rhaast is that he excels at burst temafights. A Q hitting 3-4 targets with some tanky ones in it can heal for massive amounts (build item 3812 ofc) and help you secure kills quite easily.

Sire Hippington1 votes

vs target dummies with 100 armor/mr and without items. As assasin kayne, you aim at squishys that usually have ~50mr, which means it's more a ~30% increased damage later on, which is quite a noticeable increase in damage. With fullbuilt, it easily increases the damage of your combo by 500-700 vs squishy targets.

DeathBurst1 votes

About 1: almost that, but not exactly. If you deal 200 damage with your skill, you get 24 "passive stacks", that will be applied with your next basic attack. So your next attack will deal 24 bonus damage. If you deal 100 with an attack, you get 12 stacks, and your next attack will deal 12 bonus damage. If you go aa+Q+aa, the first aa and the Q will generate 36 stacks, and you will apply them on the second aa for 36 bonus damage.

Stars Shaper1 votes

Guess we need an entire Q6A about Kayn's kit, there is too much unclear stuff.

Penns1 votes

His passive isnt a problem imo but his ult feels like it needs... something more, tho resetting paassive can be pretty strong too.

Zerenza1 votes

Litterally tested it in practice tool for the last 30 minutes, there's no noticable difference to having the passive up or down. It literally doesn't work.

KuroCaliber1 votes

It works, not as much damage as it should have. Stop pretending that the passive doesn't work the way it is intended. If it is that much of a problem, take sorc shoes for mpen and lethality cleaver mortal reminder for armpen and then see what the passive does.

Penns1 votes

Well dummies have 100 100 armor/ mr, thats pretty high against an assassin. In a real game I feel like SA does give me a pretty big spike in damage.

He just has the same problem that every assassin has, support items suk. Its like if Vayne was in every single game, you probably couldnt play tanks very well either.

Zerenza2 votes

That's fair, but even with this build

item 3142 item 3147 item 3071 item 3036 item 3026 item 3117 (A normal build for a real game)

I did about 4246 damage with a full combo(AA+Q+AA+W+AA+R+AA) to the dummy. Now that sounds like a lot, cause it is. But the thing is that, that's not how much it SHOULD be doing while his passive is up.

Without it i do 3558 damage with the same combo. So 44% of 3558, that's 1565. so i SHOULD be doing, according to the passive, 5123 damage, not 4246.

This means that if you have 50% or more MR, Kayn's passive get's reduced by 50%, so instead of 44% it's more like 20-22%. And that's kind of dumb, If it applied the damage as AD, then he'd be closer to the damage it says he's supposed to. Not to mention, he doesn't do this damage instantly, it takes time to apply this damage about 3-5 seconds for the full combo, which is almost 3x the length of time it takes any other assassin to kill a target. And the thing is, within that time, that assassin has already accepted their fate, they most likely won't make it out of this but their gonna take that squishy down with them, hopefully.

Now, this isn't just about the damage, the damage is still good, it's just the lack of clarity that's the issue. Now i know that i have to stat check someone to see how much my passive is gonna do and whether i can rely on it or not.

Also, i do agree, support items suck for all assassins, as does lifesteal when your opponent can get to full health within the time it takes you to kill them. But, the lack of clarity his passive has, bother's me, and the lack of satisfaction when using his ultimate bother's me as well.

Penns2 votes

I dont think there really is a clarity problem, it says "x% of damage dealt as bonus magic damage", which... it does. Only thing I think they should change is how it says "all damage", because it doesnt increase blue smite or Ignite damage (not even sure about thunderlords).

Zerenza2 votes

They change it to a flat number, this means that each ability will instead have a number next to it that will show you how much your passive hit will do. This way, we can actually see the full damage we'll deal instead of having to calculate percentage inside our head.

If every ability in the game said the scaling of the ability and not the flat number, then you'd understand where i'm comming from with this. Like, i know that katarina's Q has a 30% scaling with AP. But in game it tells me the number instead because the information doesn't need to be hidden from me.

AwesomeGuyDj1 votes

100 armor isnt that high for a squishy. I mean, syndra has 82.5 base armor at lvl 18, +45 armor from zhonya, orianna has 68 at 18, twitch has 74 armor at 18, (and you know he'll build a ga at some point) And banshee's veil isnt to uncommon of an item.

BLACK REALM GOD1 votes

it cant tell you how much damage you do because it doesnt do the same amount of damage every time.

hhaavviikk1 votes

my problem with his ult as well is that it causes you to dash away from the enemy, I don't want to dash away from the enemy as a melee, terrible idea, it's often caused me to miss my Q

Sun Wu Ryuumoku1 votes

That's the major problem i have with him, the lack of clarity on his Passive is actually surprising. It's basically impossible to actually know what your doing, not to mention, when you find out that it means "Post-Mitigation Damage" that means that his passives damage is being reduced TWICE, first by armor then by MR.

And ??? u build him full lethality... so its like... ur target have 0 armor.

The second problem isn't as serious but i think it should be addressed. Shadow Assassin kayn ultimate is a joke, it does next to no damage at all, dealing, usually, less than his counterpart Rhaast. I understand that Kayn shouldn't be able to Burst someone with his ultimate but for gods sake, you gave Rhaast max health damage, meaning if anyone is bellow about 10% of their health, Rhaast is probably gonna kill them if they have no armor. Kayn on the other hand probably won't, that's why if you were worried about him bursting people, don't give it a high scaling, give it Missing Health scaling when in Shadow Assassin form, this way he can actually rely on it to deal damage like most assassins do.

Honestly he dont need more damage. From my experience, Kayn have no issue with for his damage (so high).

These two problem are the problems that keep kayn's shadow assassin form from seeing play,

no. The main issue of Kayn is his early. And for SA, its because its require more skill (unless to say at low elo they lack of it).

DeathBurst1 votes

Blue Kayn R scaling is a bit low compared to Red Kayn, but it has 350 base damage. Much more than what 10%maxHP (from Red form) would deal to any ADC or Mage. ADC typically get 2000 HP by late game, Mages a bit more with rylai/catalyst items, but that's still 250 or less damage, not 350.

The problem, IMHO, is that Red form scales at 13%maxHP per 100 BonusAD, which is 250-300 damage per 100 BonusAD on a squishy, whereas Blue form scales at 110 damage per 100 Bonus AD. With 200 BonusAD, Red form is probably dealing more than Blue even to squishies. (And Blue is useless versus Tanks, whereas Red is even better, but that is actually intended, it's not a problem.)

Skias1 votes

The reason that Shadow Assassin will never be viable is that Rhaast Form has a god load of healing and the ranged increase of Shadow Assassin isn't even close to as effective as a pop up. One is just simply superior.

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