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Putting Shieds On Assassins Was A Bad Idea

63536895_DEL··7 votes·777 views

Before you make a comment about it, Yes I know Udyr's not an assassin. I put assassin in the title because most of them are.

Every assassin that's been given a shield has ended up being way more durable than they should be and for some reason have insanely high ratio's making them absorb a ton of damage by building offense.

Diana 40 / 55 / 70 / 85 / 100 (+ 30% AP) X 2 Durability of Gragas with the burst of Rengar. Makes me item 3070. An exaggeration but you get the point. Ekko 80 / 100 / 120 / 140 / 160 (+ 150% AP) What the fuck, who's idea was this? Riven 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 (+ 100% bonus AD) Combo's me under my turret, escapes taking no damage using shield that's also a dash. Udyr 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 50% AP) Ratio's not high, but its super spammable. Yasuo (100 - 510 Based on level) It's fine, I didn't feel like being able to win trades in lane by being more skilled anyway.

Also every one of their shields double's as another ability.

Diana Creates 3 orbs that damage enemies, and refreshes and stacks on the original shield if all 3 orbs detonate. Ekko AOE slow/stun that's easy as fuck to land AND bonus damage on auto's to low health enemies. Delete this fucking champion. Riven Also a dash, because the 3 she already has on her Q aren't enough Kappa. Udyr Gives him an insane amount of built in lifesteal. Yasuo Double's his critical strike chance. As if this wasn't overpowered enough on its own , he also needed, NO, deserved a shield Kappa.

17 Comments

Nahui3 votes

Yasuo, Riven, and Udyr are not assassins.

Elmo's shield requires a long set up time. Diana gets one because she literally flings herself in the middle of everyone, unlike someone like Zed, Akali, or Talon who have mechanics to get away/stealth.

Magical Zoe2 votes

{quoted}

Yasuo, Riven, and Udyr are not assassins.

Elmo's shield requires a long set up time. Diana gets one because she literally flings herself in the middle of everyone, unlike someone like Zed, Akali, or Talon who have mechanics to get away/stealth.

With your Diana logic, that means that Katarina should have a shield . If anything, kata flings herself into battle more.

ViashinoWizard4 votes

Two things:

  1. Katarina gets damage reduction from Shunpo.

  2. Kat has tools to leave a fight after going in. Diana does not.

Nahui1 votes

What Wizard said. Katarina does have damage reduction and can get out with a kill. Diana goes in and stays in. In theory, you could make the argument Diana can Q, R, kill, and R to another target to get out but that's an ideal situation that does not occur as you are almost required to use the second R to get the kill or keep it available in case your enemy gets away and you need to stick.

MunchCrunchLunch2 votes

diana is not an assassin on paper either. but they act like one. her yasuo and riven

Nahui2 votes

Diana is an assassin. She lands a Q and jumps in to burst hard. She is almost exactly like Akali to be honest in that she jumps onto a carry and bursts them down in a second or so.

Yasuo and Riven require build up and continue to output their heavy damage after their initial rotation.

Mecha MaIphite1 votes

{quoted}

Elmo's shield requires a long set up time

yeah elmo's shield has plenty of counterplay, stop complaining guys

Nahui1 votes

I laughed when I saw what my phone did to Ekko's name xD

Ralanr2 votes

Only Ekko is a primary assassin in this.

63536895_DEL1 votes

Riot's listings of what champions are is unreliable and shouldn't be taken seriously when talking about what champions are. Diana Not listed as an assassin as primary or secondary, most of the community would say she's an assassin though. Ashe Fiddlesticks Syndra are all secondary supports, but you never see any of them going support except maybe an occasional diehard Fiddle main.

SnugglePuggle942 votes

Diana is not an assassin. She's really a fighter and is classified as one. The shield is justified in my opinion.

Nyhver1 votes

I don't have much of an issue with Yasuo or Riven

granted I play them- well okay I use to play Diana, too, I might pick her up again- but even if I'm fighting them, I enjoy fighting them much more in lane than Diana

Diana has a kit that is extremely oppressive when she's doing well or ahead and in some matchups its "dodge every q or lose really hard" when the same doesn't apply to her, she feels really bad to fight in lane, pretty binary, and her 'q' isn't hard to land

Old Man Teeto1 votes

Shields on those champions are fine.

Udyr is the only one without significant assassin qualities so I'll ignore him.

Ekko's isn't on-demand and is attached to his hard CC, for 1v1's typically you only get the stun or the shield value since the shield falls off after 2 seconds while the stun is 2.25 seconds. This means the full strength of the ability is mainly for team fighting where you're not likely to get a 5 man stun. The shield is fine as the ability is a long CD, short duration, and heavy delay.

Diana is an all-in assassin/bruiser. When she goes in, she has no easy out, this lets her hopefully soak some return fire if her assassination isn't fully successful and allows her to fight targets that assassin's typically can't consider fighting. In return, exhaust is even more effective on her than most because once she extends, she can't leave the fight and re-engage.

Riven's shield exists to promote building AD and CDR for a more aggressive damage oriented build. The very nature of her kit being poor with raw durability items and strong with damage items means she needs something to let her keep fighting. Due to this and the nature of how damage is the superior snowball stat, she is one of the heaviest snowball champions in the game, but at the same time one of the easier ones to shut down in team fights as she can't reliably build as a front-line and lacks immediate backline access without flash.

Yasuo's is similar to Riven. Melee champions needs incentives to avoid building fighter and tank items -- and it still happens frequently -- Yasuo having a fairly easy refresh shield means he can avoid being purely poked out of lane, and win long trades with more durable focused champions. Yasuo still suffers from losing to higher burst damage champions that he can't reliably use windwall against since the shield isn't huge, and his damage is on the lower end for short trades.

Evelynn Vi

Both of these champions are assassin-esque with shields inside their kits, Eve's being tied to her ultimate and being one of the largest shields you can get in the game.

Both tend to dive the backline and kill squishies as their primary function, and often work in very similar ways to the ones you listed, yet you tend to not have an issue with either of their shields.

63536895_DEL1 votes

Can't even remember the last time I saw Eve being played, didn't even know she has a shield tbh. The post isn't about how shields are inherently bad, it's about how shields on champions that are in a certain class shouldn't have them. I wouldn't say Vi is an assassin even though she's listed as one, I see her played fighter/bruiser/tank more than anything, but even so Vi's shield has nothing to do with her diving backlines, that all has to do with her zero counterplay point and click ultimate. Here's the big thing with Vi's shield though. It doesn't scale with AD/AP like all of the ones I listed, it scales with health, so if she actually wants it to absorb decent damage she'll have to build items with health. Vi has to build defense to be tanky, the others listed build damage to be tanky, which isn't good for game health. It means they can build damage and be durable because of it, which isn't good.

Old Man Teeto1 votes

That's why I brought up two champions OP forgot that fit his class.

Also Yasuo's scales off level, so offensive scaling wasn't part of the OP.

63536895_DEL1 votes

Level's technically an offensive scaling, higher level = more damage. Yes, Maybe, No?

Anyway Yasuo's the only exception to what I said, so I'll stand by it.

Karma Deified1 votes

Before you make a comment about it, I put assassin in the title because most of them are.

You'd be making a great argument with your title as the point, if we accept not mentioning Udyr as not being an Assassin as not debating any of your other inclusions.

But that would be silly.

Putting Shieds On Assassins Was A Bad Idea

Only Ekko and very arguably Yasuo can be said to be designed as assassins. Yasuo's passive and cooldowns however, tell you he's meant to be a sticky fighter who only requires two damage items. We must focus on the intent with giving them shields, not the results of having shields with their current playstyles.

Ekko the only champion here that is clearly designed with the intent of being an assassin is actually overloaded in tools. He has all the tools to play an assassin but also has excessive mobility, % damage and a significant heal tied to a blink that allow him to do the bolded job below.

Diana has a shield because she's meant to dive and disrupt with an aoe cc.

Riven has a shield because she's meant to dive and disrupt with aoe cc and damage.

Udyr isn't relevant here since he hasn't even fallen into the role of assassin, but his kit overall just makes up for the fact that he has to run into any target he wants to engage with. He has movement boosts, a stun, a shield and 2 forms of DoT for when he can't land another AA.

Yasuo has a shield, based on movement, because he's meant to have extended fights where he gets to apply the shield multiple times as he dives in and disrupts with aoe cc and damage.

There's a bit of a trend in what these champs do and you can understand why they have shields. With appropriate balancing, Ekko could either need a shield for his role or deserve to lose it.

Now observe a few other champions designed as diving front liners. Note that they all perform a similar function of diving in, displacing and affecting multiple targets.

Aatrox has a revival passive and healing as a form of damage mitigation.

JarvanIV has a shield which increases based on enemies around him.

Shyvana has bonus defensive stats in her disruptive form.

Vi gains a shield upon hitting with an ability, ideally the one she dives in with.

MonkeyKing gains bonus defensive stats when more enemies are nearby.

TLDR - Look at intent not aftermath.

P.S. This isn't unique to champions that are meant to dive into an enemy team and be disruptive. Any non-assassin melee has a form of mitigating damage while they're doing their job, while melee assassins instead avoid it altogether.

Examples being

Nocturne Pantheon Tryndamere with their shields/damage negation.

then the assassins

Zed Akali Talon with their blink/stealth.

Remember these examples are based on design intent not what they do in the game today.

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