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2 things about assassins that i'm still confused about.

deadlychuck··4 votes·859 views
  1. Who is supposed to kill assassins?

I mean this in the most literal sense. Assassins, their itemization, and the itemization of other classes, have been designed in a way that assassins seem to be intended to kill ADC (not just marksmen) and mages. Yet those are the damage dealing classes, and by design of assassin's mobility, you need to be able to dish out substantial damage to ensure kills on them. Yet the classes intended to counter assassins can't actually kill them, they are designed with insufficient damage, as to not make those classes also counter the ADCs who are now being designed to kill them (generally referring to tanks and heavier fighters).

  1. Why are marksmen still abusing lethality?

The solution seems very simple. Lethality now only applies to physical damage abilities. Yes, some of the physical artillery champions like jayce and maybe varus, will be able to abuse it, but it removes auto attacking focused champions from the list. And obviously some people will say that some of the assassins need the auto attacks to assassinate, but last time i checked auto attacks (the signature damage source of marksmen) weren't considered burst damage.

31 Comments

Joxcab3 votes

  1. Literally anyone can kill them, but the only pre-requisite is CC (tanks/etc) or just surviving initial burst and having damage (juggernauts/bruisers/fighter/etc).

  2. Because Riot panders to ADCs.

Big Lincoln3 votes

assassins get roasted by anyone they can't one-shot.

because marksman are op

deadlychuck1 votes

because shitty design*

remember, most assassins also have the mobility or poke, to weaken an enemy before they'd commit to a fight. They only need to be able to 1-shot someone from however low they can get them before they fuck up, get greedy and put themselves out of position. They are generally the ones that need to make a positioning mistake though, because if you use a gap closer or initiation tool, their mobility doubles as disengage.

Big Lincoln2 votes

majority of fighters can poke back or sustain

some assassins have dumb mobility (kat, lb) but i am fine with champions like zed

but a champ like Illaoi will never have a problem dealing with them, she pushes too hard and counterbursts too well for them to threaten her unless she severely misplays

Joxcab1 votes

You should learn what you're talking about.

Poke doesn't fucking matter unless the target is squishy anyways at which point they can just all-in for the 100-0 anyways theoretically.

And no, if they use up their gapcloser to go in, then they can't escape with it for the next several seconds which is a massive amount of time to be surrounded by the entire fucking team.

deadlychuck1 votes

if they use up their gapcloser to go in, then they can't escape with it for the next several seconds which is a massive amount of time to be surrounded by the entire fucking team.

Which again, is a kill which requires a fight larger than 1v1.

Poke doesn't fucking matter unless the target is squishy anyways at which point they can just all-in for the 100-0 anyways theoretically.

Wtf are you talking about? Poke doesn't matter when a target is squishy, because they can all-in for 100-0. The whole fucking game when fighting someone who you can't 100-0 is about trading/poking, and properly judging how much burst you can do to finish them off, while trying to keep that information away from them.

Joxcab1 votes

Um, assassins are the masters of a short 1v1, duelists being the masters of extended 1v1s. I think I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, can you clarify?

Anyone you CANNOT 100-0 CAN'T BE POKED DOWN LOW ENOUGH TO BE BURSTED IN THE FIRST PLACE. Do you not get something that simple? Fighters and other duelists are far too tanky or have survival tools (such as Trynd's ult). Your poke is going to do no damage at all to anyone tankier like a juggernaut or more.

deadlychuck1 votes

Do you not understand that you're being hyperbolic when you claim that assassin poke is worthless?

Being a fighter or duelist has basically nothing to do with devaluing poke. It's about sustain, which only really exists on items as lifesteal. You can't purchase enough health regen to really make any impact and spell vamp is gone. So unless you're going to have built in healing or be AD, poke does matter, a lot.

Joxcab1 votes

Mages aren't going to be in range of sufficiently strong poke for it to matter, everyone else will either straight up tank or heal it back.

Your argument is irrelevant. Dismissed.

Sir Yamazuki2 votes

From a balance standpoint, assassins don't belong in a pvp environment. They have never been in any sort of balanced state for any genre of pvp, whether moba, shooter, or an rpg. Assassins are one of those things Mobas adopted from PvE RPGs. You'll actually see several other things League has from RPGs, some of which are also an annoyance to deal with. All forms of Soraka for example, she even has a skin that fits the theme.

Annoxis1 votes
  1. Let's imagine an hypothetical game where there are 3 characters, X, who is the tankiest, Y, who is the only one to have mobility, and Z, who is the only one with range. The game is a 1 VS 1 between two of the three characters, which can only end when one of the two is destroyed.

Y and Z have the same tankyness, and they are 1-shot if they are attacked. X need 2 attacks to be killed.

Y has enough mobility to close the distance from longer than the range of Z and will always attack first.

Z can attack and move at the same time.

With these conditions, it will always goes like this : X beats Y, Y beats Z, Z beats X.

If you convert this in League of Legends, it works like this : X is a Juggernaut, Y is an Assassin, Z is an Marksman. But at the same time, it doesn't work, because Juggernaut can't take the fight to the Assassins, because mobility allows you to choose your fights.

So, in fact, Assassins have nothing specifically designed to kill them.

  1. Because they want damage, but they do not want it late game, they want it ASAP.
deadlychuck1 votes

Then in the first case, you've created a champion who doesn't fit into a game which is designed around kill or be killed objective based gameplay. You've got to have a class which is designed to have another class which can kill (not just counter) it, if you want to have the class exist in the game's model.

In the second case, i don't see how that changes anything, you're still getting damage that'd you'd normally be getting as an assassin, except you're basically just a physical mage with mobility, which is honestly all the assassin update really considered.

nm10101 votes

You might want to include divers in there they have mobility to get in, mildly tanky, and good damage. They destroy Assassins at basically any point in the game if the assassin isn't fed.

Sun Wu Ryuumoku1 votes
  1. Who is supposed to kill assassins?

no class are designed to do it... unless themself. And Fighter (Mighty divers & juggernaut) & skirmishers in 1v1 situation. But globaly its not a class who kill them. Its team who need to deal with them with cooperation & cc provided by tanks & mages.

  1. Why are marksmen still abusing lethality?

Actualy there only few marksmen abusing lethality. But they're many to abuse item 3147

deadlychuck1 votes

I might be insane, but i don't think that one of the defining characteristics of any class should be "can't be killed unless outnumbered"

When it comes to assassins most of this stupidity comes from mobility being their source of suitability. Most fighters, can't force a kill on an assassin, because the assassin must make the mistake. Most divers and juggernauts fall into the same boat, where they're relying on the assassin to put themselves out of position.

Then on top of that, using mobility as the suitability tool in their design has much smaller diminishing returns in team fights, as opposed to say someone like malzahar, who use to be called an "assassin", but who's assassination potential drops off quickly the more enemies there are in a fight.

Sun Wu Ryuumoku1 votes

I might be insane, but i don't think that one of the defining characteristics of any class should be "can't be killed unless outnumbered"

Skirmisher are like that.

When it comes to assassins most of this stupidity comes from mobility being their source of suitability. Most fighters, can't force a kill on an assassin, because the assassin must make the mistake.

Is it a joke ?

as opposed to say someone like malzahar, who use to be called an "assassin"

Was never called like this... Was just unbalanced... still need to be rework again btw

deadlychuck1 votes

Was never called like this... Was just unbalanced... still need to be rework again btw

https://web.archive.org/web/20150304163636/http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_champions

He had a low play rate w/ a good number of 1 tricks and punished hyperactive high tempo champions. He wasn't unbalance, he just acted as a barrier keeping mobility cancer somewhat in check.

amazinick12131 votes

{quoted}

  1. Who is supposed to kill assassins?

If you have CC, assassins are really vulnerable because they are normally squishy.

{quoted}

  1. Why are marksmen still abusing lethality?

ADC's are gay

deadlychuck1 votes

Just because you can CC an assassin doesn't mean you can kill an assassin. Even more so considering that most CC has been attached to skillshots and assassins have a disproportionate degree of mobility. So by design, their biggest counter is also the one that they account for the most.

Even then, a tank can CC an assassin all day, but that doesn't mean they have the damage to kill the assassin, but they can't really be given the damage to kill an assassin, because the damage needed to kill an assassin is the damage needed to kill a squishy, which would include ADC. Which is the role intended to counter tanks.

But if you buff marksmen, to avoid them dying to the now buffed tanks, then they overwhelm their intended counter of assassins.

This model is completely fucked. It's by nature impossible to balance, simply by the existence of assassins. All it's doing is promoting an arms race between assassins > tanks > marksmen.

amazinick12131 votes

Well, I didn't really mean the tank alone. I meant if the ADC has proper positioning, they will not get caught out and as long as they are with them team, the tank can peel for the ADC/CC the assassin which allows the ADC to kill the assassin pretty quick.

deadlychuck1 votes

I know you didn't mean "tank alone". Which is exactly my point. The class itself is designed around requiring more invested into stopping the champions, than is required to be invested to preform a role.

This is bad design, because it is going to perpetuate, and accelerate, power creep. All it does is make it so that, when the majority of the game is spent solo, these champions who can't reasonably be stalled or beaten in a 1v1 situation, will become too strong, then be met with their counters being appropriately buffed. But it's constantly buffing 1:1, where one of the classes which counters them gets buffed, even though it normally requires 2 classes of champions to kill them. As a result, you don't see any of the intended results until you've already started causing unintentional problems between other classes.

The same can be applied to nerfs, except that the nerfs are more quickly noticeable, meaning they will often be less severe, resulting in a net increase in power over multiple meta cycles, when a roughly equal number of buffs and nerfs are distributed.

amazinick12131 votes

Yeah, assassins will only be able to kill a tank if they are super far ahead. Normally, an assassin's full combo will not be able to burst the tank which makes them vulnerable to CC and they will get put down by the sustained damage dealers extremely fast. (I wrote the same thing again so you can get a notification and respond)

deadlychuck1 votes

Normally, an assassin's full combo will not be able to burst the tank which makes them vulnerable to CC and they will get put down by the sustained damage dealers extremely fast

This still involves 2 people. In the case that there is no sustained damage dealer around, an assassin can skill kill a tank, because an incomplete burst combo from an assassin does more to the tank, than the tank can return.

amazinick12131 votes

I disagree. Tanks are meant to outlast the assassins' damage.

deadlychuck1 votes

Yes, tanks are meant to outlast an assassin's damage, in the short term.

In the long term, the assassin still has the advantage because their escaping tools allow them to get much easier positive trades and if they're AD (which most tanks aren't) lifesteal of any degree tends to be more powerful in lane than raw health regen.

Joxcab2 votes

Yeah sure let me just fight the tank for 20-30 seconds and hope he just stands there doing nothing and that none of his teammates will come.

Yeah, then I can kill the tank. Oh man, that's so releva- oh wait, no one fucking cares because an assassin will never do jackshit to a tank in an actual game.

deadlychuck1 votes

Wow you're actually just that stupid...

So tell me, at what point along the line did you stop considering the laning phase part of an "actual game"?

And by extension. Do you think that the laning phase doesn't influence the rest of the game? Because that's the kind of analysis that i've been seeing...

Joxcab2 votes

Or no, you just don't know how League works.

An assassin can't kill a tank anyways if they're not almost dead already.

The only ones an assassin can kill are squishies or low health targets.

The tank CCs the assassin in a teamfight and the damage dealers kill them in half a second.

Mobility doesn't matter when it's literally predetermined where the assassin has to go because they're going to have to get in melee range of the squishy targets.

By nature it is perfectly possible to balance except Riot still keeps fucking pandering to and pretty much only to ADCs for the entirety of the history of League.

deadlychuck1 votes

You just don't know how to analyze a system.

Assassin can kill tanks, and do regularly. It's generally how the 1v1 goes down. Which is the point, of this whole fucking thing. The game's fundamental design is one which involves a prolonged period of 1v1 fighting somewhere on the map. This is caused by the nature of the number of players, Exp system, and even something as mundane as the time it takes to move across the map.

Fine, an assassin can die to a tank + marksmen all day fucking long, but that means, that you're consuming 2 enemy's players attention for the cost a 1 of yours. Which is before you consider that most CC is attached to skill shots, but most assassin burst is attached to targeted or much more forgiving aimed abilities.

It's not that riot is pandering towards ADCs, it's that they're pandering towards a design, which their game's fundamental mechanics aren't designed to support. They're trying to increase burst and increase mobility while decreasing game length and decreasing downtime. This is why CDR has become so fucking overly abundant, despite originally being designed as the AP multiplier secondary stat (which is why it's under "Magic" in the in game shop). This is why snowballing seems so bad. This is why fights are now decided in a matter of frames, rather than a matter of seconds.

ADCs just happen to benefit the most from this system, because AD benefits the most from this system and targeted damage benefits the most from this system.

Joxcab2 votes

Nope, they don't. An assassin can't kill a tank in anything under like 20+ seconds without being massively ahead of a behind tank. Which shouldn't even happen because with that long, then a jungler or the rest of the team would come.

You're looking at it the wrong way. An ADC is a team-reliant role in the first place that SHOULD be with their team anyways. The ADC isn't ever going to be alone unless they're retarded anyways. Most assassins are bad at splitpushing so they have to come to the ADC anyways. And then you consider most CC that would be used against an assassin is either also targeted or AoE or near unmissable at the point blank melee range an assassin is FORCED to go.

Riot has repeatedly balanced things to focus and/or revolve around ADCs regardless of the consequences to anyone else it was more relevant to.

But yeah, I agree on your last few points. Riot is focusing on making the game too fast.

amazinick12131 votes

Yeah, assassins will only be able to kill a tank if they are super far ahead. Normally, an assassin's full combo will not be able to burst the tank which makes them vulnerable to CC and they will get put down by the sustained damage dealers extremely fast.

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