They're increasing the time that an assassin needs to kill you

KONO RUBICK DA·Jun 30, 2016·41 votes·11,583 views

doesn't that mean that talon can have his silence back? since it was removed because of instant burst+silence

197 Comments

DeathBurstJun 30, 201646 votes

No, to the contrary. They want to increase the time an assassin needs to kill you to open up opportunities of counter-play. A silence would remove any possibility of counter-play.

RiotMeddlerJun 30, 201643 votes

Yup. A silence on a melee champion with a much longer kill time, or much more limited target accessibility would be fine (e.g. Garen). Big issue with some assassins is the limited ways for enemy players to respond to them, which correspondingly means we have to then restrict the amount of other stuff assassins can do because of that fast, reliable kill pattern.

AptestJun 30, 20167 votes

Can you guys design an ADC who is to assassins what assassins are to other ADCs? (would be hilarious to read the qq on the forums) (I.E. your counterplay is don't get caught out of position (= stay out of engage range) and have the support nearby with ult ready)

TheThundersRoarJun 30, 20165 votes

That's literally every ADC late game. And a certain few earlier Graves Kindred .

But we don't really QQ about getting 2-shot by ADCs at this point because we've accepted that it's perma ADC meta at this point. So we complain about the next strongest thing, which now seems to be some AP mages and a couple assassins.

AptestJun 30, 20164 votes

no. it's got to have the ability to overpower assassin's mobility and "active defenses" also, while rendering their damage output irrelevant in the fight.

what i mean is a character that can walk up to zed, and then zed can't run away can't juke between shadows can't ult you back. has to have the support. or die.

TequilaZombieJun 30, 20162 votes

So a juggernaught with more CC?

AptestJun 30, 20161 votes

not sure if CC is the right word.

definitely not a juggernaut: a marksman.

TequilaZombieJul 1, 20162 votes

Ok, a ranged Juggernaut. And yes, the only way to delete an assassin is by CC'ing them.

SiachiJul 1, 20161 votes

So, going with this rhetorical champion, something like "Marks a champion, if that champion tries to blink or dash, they are rooted and take X% more damage from your basic attacks."

TequilaZombieJul 1, 20162 votes

Ranged Poppy on steroids? I like it!

zlumpyJun 30, 20161 votes

Like an adc that can use an ult to single someone out and whenever they get close to you it just pushes them backwards and does a medium magic dmg hit for a few seconds? I'd be fine with that. Call him Mr. Nope

AptestJun 30, 20165 votes

no. not an ADC who can't be assassinated (hi kindred and kayle). an ADC that goes up to assassins and kills them. that can decide, on his own to attack an assassin, and has reasonable chance to kill said assassin, and the assassin has to "not get caught out of position".

like when you read on the forums assassin players talking about how they are "meant to kill the squishies and get out"? like that. Meant to go up to fizz, pursue him through his whatever, and blow him up. And get out.

TequilaZombieJun 30, 20161 votes

What you want is Roadhog from Overwatch in League of Legends.

Battlecast SonaJun 30, 20168 votes

I think what he really wants (and what I also want) is for assassins to understand how stupid they sound when they defend a class of characters who literally makes it impossible for certain other characters to play the game because "that's what assassins do."

Yes, assassins should certainly have the tools to get into and out of a teamfight and assassinate a target, but it shouldn't be "I got in range of my point and click targetted blink and now you're instantly dead."

More Katarina, less Zed.

HyperiönJun 30, 20163 votes

But why punish assassins? Assassins are meant for a quick kill, in an out. And with all of the defensive items that carries can get now, it would be nice to have a little more assurance, considering that a lot of assassins (disregard zed here) are forced into a tankier route than what they used to be because of the defensive items the carries are wearing. Look at AP mages, in the mage update, you pretty much gave a lot more health to them, adc's have black cleaver, since its becoming a bit more popular, you have GA, merc cept, banshees, maw, steraks, etc. It would be nice to put the ball back in the hands of assassins like it used to be. Assassins are forced to build tankier now because of this, otherwise, they instantly die. So when they are forced into going tank, it takes away from their kill pressure, and therefore kind of making them useless in a sense late game. So please consider re-adding certain champs silences back. EX, Talon and Kassadin Please!

zlumpyJun 30, 201624 votes

Mostly because most non assassin hate that there are champs designed around just not letting you play the game. It's why people hate champs like blitz, teemo ( to an extent), and any champ wit ha self rez like Zac. They make you feel like you aren't really playing your game.

HyperiönJun 30, 20166 votes

Okay, but then you have cho with his Silence, Garen with his, Malzahar with his. There are plenty of champs with silences, and just becuase Riot thinks they can't kill you with 1 combo is why they didn't change them. Well let me tell you, Malz will shit on you if he lands his combo. Cho will 1 shot combo you if he lands his knockup and has some AP, Garen just chases you until you die with his 1500dmg Ult. See, what you said is completely invalid, because people just want the easy way out. It used to be a lot more hard back in season 3/4. Where you actually had to keep track of timers, summoner spells etc... With this new wave of people, they want everything super easy and convenient for them. Bring back the Silences. It will make things fun again. Especially on Talon, because he has no CC, the silence was a key part of his Kit, and since they took it away, he fell off hard.

zlumpyJun 30, 201622 votes

I have no problem with silences. I have problems with high mobility AND super fast kill times. Constantly watching for 1 guy to appear next to you and delete you is super tiresom and frustrating.

Mandang0Jun 30, 20167 votes

You're right, but it gets tricky when considering what assassins should be good at. If Riot lowers the speed of their kills, they'll likely have to put other systems in their kits, which have historically been abused by tank builds (Tank Ekko, Tank Akali, Tank Kat back in the day).

Additionally, I think Riot far undervalues the importance of a fast kill in a teamfight. Even if the assassin trades 1 for 1, if they prevent their opponent from doing their job, the fight is still 5 contributions vs 4 contributions. In terms of surviving champs, it looks like a 4v4, but if you go consider cooldowns and how the fight plays out, it's still largely successful for assassins to "fail" and go 1-for-1.

But 1-for-1 isn't what I'm worried about, it's when Riot gives these champs resets (Kat), sustain (Akali), CC (Ekko), etc. Player feel aside, I honestly think one-kill-and-done burst assassins are healthier than the Ekko/Akali/Kat's of the world.

Hyrum GraffJul 1, 20163 votes

{quoted}

Yup. A silence on a melee champion with a much longer kill time, or much more limited target accessibility would be fine (e.g. Garen). Big issue with some assassins is the limited ways for enemy players to respond to them, which correspondingly means we have to then restrict the amount of other stuff assassins can do because of that fast, reliable kill pattern.

What if opting in to the silence meant sacrificing the damage to kill a squishy in one rotation?

In talon's case, that would mean your kill pattern with silence would be to jump in, use all his abilities, hang around for the full duration of his ult's stealth, then pop out of stealth to kill the target with his second rotation. Example kit.

venomous frostJun 30, 20163 votes

no, it means that they no longer want assassins to 1shot people, which means that assassins will have to build tankier to survive the time needed to kill somebody. which will in time mean to tanks being picked over assassins or assassins building tank.

RiotMeddlerJun 30, 201624 votes

We're still expecting assassins post changes to kill squishy targets in one ability rotation generally. We'll be looking to extend how long that takes a bit though from extremely fast to just fast, say from 0.2s up to around 1s (example numbers only, but that style of change). Damage is also likely to be less guaranteed on average, that should give us some power budget to offer assassins somewhat broader toolsets in exchange though (e.g. better out of combat mobility to flank, vision tools to find targets etc).

AMYS GRAVEJun 30, 20169 votes

How do you plan to disincentiveize tank-sassin builds in a world where assassins take longer to do their job?

Quick EDIT: or rather, do you plan to disincentiveize tank-sassin builds at all?

ProfirixJun 30, 20161 votes

They should do what they did with Kalista and make it so bonus armor and MR are less effective on assassins, but make up for it by giving them more power or utility. That way you stop them from buying tank items and reward them for buying assassin items.

AMYS GRAVEJun 30, 20165 votes

imo, that was an awful design choice. How much AD does a BF sword add to your AA? 40 for every champion but i hope you remembered the exception. That solution lacked clarity and does nothing but obfuscate the effectiveness of items. Instead of memorizing just how much stats an item gives you have to remember a matrix of how much stats each item gives for every champ. The burden of knowledge that kind of variable scaling yields to is too damn high (insert meme here).

DeathBurstJun 30, 20163 votes

Kalista is not the only exception. Graves also has an AD ratio on his basic attacks, Corky had one until recently, Kog'maw has one in mini-gun mode. And more generally, ratios on basic attacks are rather common. Ashe and Jhin have a Crit/Crit chance ratio, Graves and Jhin have an AS ratio.

You can argue it's a bad choice in all of those cases, but I think it opens up an interesting design space.

AMYS GRAVEJun 30, 20161 votes

I forgot about graves, i'm not entirely sure how i feel about his ratio because they are weird and i'll have to look into it more.

I would argue that removing corki's ratio was a good thing, he was dominant with a 1.1 ratio and when that got nerfed he fell back in line. Successive corki nerfs have had him weak for a while now so we'll see what happens with him.

Koggers is an ability and that isn't as bad, like with jinx getting extra damage on rockets it costs mana and does more damage like an ability should.

Crit chance (even if guaranteed in certain circumstances) is an on hit effect and is different than the base damage done on autos. Ashe for instance interacts with crit differently from others but that's different from scaling off bonus ad differently.

DeathBurstJul 1, 20162 votes

My point was: it's relatively common that buying the same item on different markspeople does not scale their basic attacks the same way.

You can say that Crit is an on-hit and everything, but look at what buying Crit items does for Ashe, and you'll see it's exactly the same thing as what you were complaining about with Kalista.

"How much DPS does an IE add to your AA?" Well, it depends, not the same if you are Ashe.

So I certainly agree with you that it's not perfect in terms of clarity. But saying that "it's an awful design choice", that's quite a bit stronger, and I disagree with that.

Also, regarding Corky, you mentioned power levels, but that's a completely different topic. Current Kalista would probably be OP if you removed the passive all of a sudden, and that doesn't prove this kind of ratios are a good thing, no more than removing it from Corky and making him balanced proved it was a good thing.

Ratio on AA are just yet another balance lever among many. The important question, the one we started to discuss in the beginning, is: is it a good/useful lever, or does it have too many drawbacks (e.g. clarity/burden of knowledge, etc.)? For me it's a good lever, and the problem you mentioned isn't really a problem, since all other abilities already have a ratio, so this kind of variability in the value of a given stat between different champions already exist. But that's an open question, I certainly don't know the absolute truth.

AptestJun 30, 20163 votes

easy. kill off ADCs as a neccessary class. Make them specialized tank killers and leave the floor open to ability users to more general purpose ranged damage.

How to do it?

make rageblade the 1 important ADC item by redoing it's stats. The core idea is that ramp up requirements limits the ability of ADCs to deal with soft targets while making them OP against tanks once they get their groove going. Rageblade should be ending up a lot weaker as a stand-alone item, but also a lot stronger if you have 2-3 other damage items (IE, zeal items).
nerf hurricane. Specifically: hurricane no longer triggers on-attack effects. This is because ADCs that already have ramp up mechanics (hi ashe, jinx) use hurricane as a "cheat" to get their ramp faster.
buff AP champions and tanks ability to kill towers. Make AP, MR, armor and HP more impactfull VS towers.
give mid range mages (but not assassins) and AD casters (hi graves) items that are good at taking our "somewhat tanky" (triforce and hydra into sunfire) but not full-tank targets.

Battlecast SonaJun 30, 20166 votes

you know Ashe doesn't build hurricane to stack her Q faster (it doesn't, just fyi) - she does it because the Q applies on the runaan's bolts. Caitlyn is the big abuser of runaan's to stack a passive faster (Jinx too, but I think more headshots is probably harder to achieve than Jinx ramp-up time on Q).

AptestJun 30, 20163 votes

Well my point at the end of the day is this:

league of legends is to some extent an economic problem. The economy of the game necessitates an ADC. Therefore a lot of champions are defined primarily through their ability to pursue and kill the ADC, or through their ability to protect one.

So many champions who's "gameplay fantasy" is "I do X and the enemy ADC dies" exist that you get a whole class of champions who's game-play is basically "everybody kills you", a second class of champions who's gameplay is biased towards "go peel for him", and a fairly narrow way of playing the game in which some items item 3153 item 3146 item 3078 are "fun" and some are just not item 3050 item 3143 item 3222 .

The leading competitor (DOTA2) has a much broader definition of what champions should be doing, resulting in a much broader range or strategies. There are a bunch of very clever design decisions in DOTA2, but one of the chief ones is the economy of the game being set up such that having a ranged ADC on the team is not a win condition.

Battlecast SonaJun 30, 20163 votes

But having a carry is a necessity.

Riot's problem is primarily that no other champs have been able to successfully play the role of carry. There isn't a single DotA2 game where a carry isn't involved in some way, shape, or form - it just so happens that in League of Legends we don't have an applicable melee champ (or champs) that can take the role.

0cs supports exist in DotA2 as well. The mechanics you described are all that, except the word ADC is just replaced with carry. There's a reason supports like Oracle that can make you stop taking damage or be immune to magic damage are strong... or supports like Shadow Demon who can disrupt the carry to protect them from damage. The mechanics are very, very similar to League mechanics - the role just doesn't include "ranged", only "carry". But a carry is still 100% necessary, and a physical damage carry is highly preferred.

AptestJun 30, 20161 votes

what's called a carry in dota and what's called a carry in league is world's apart. The same can be said of supports.

What's the equivalent in league to faceless void (carry)? closest comparison is probably Ekko (assassin? bruiser?). Tiny? probably sion. Templar assassin? idk maybe Fiora (slayer).

from the support side, how about we talk Lina here? what kind of support in league can 100-0 the enemy mid-lane? what kind of damage oriented mid lane champion can go support with success?

League has melee carries. Yasuo. Mr Yi. Fiora, Nocturne and others. non of them managed so far to displace the obligatory position that the ranged ADC occupies in teams. Whereas in DOTA2 yes you call faceless void a carry but honestly when your carry can just ult the enemy top lane and 1v1 me bro with just a little bit of extra damage from the support you're not playing the same game.

Battlecast SonaJun 30, 20162 votes

faceless void hasn't been a hard carry for a few patches now.

The major difference is that instead of having melee carries (Yi, Fiora, Tryn, etc) and ranged carries (ashe, ez, jinx, jhin, etc), where one is considered the "hard carry" because of their necessity for pushing towers (generally the ranged carry), in DotA2 a "semi-carry" (the equivalent of the melee carries above) is what someone like Tiny, Void, or Templar Assassin would be - characters without a traditional steroid (they don't have Drow Ranger's 80 AGI for free or Troll Warlord's tons of ASPD passives and ult), but who can be built to dish out significant physical damage. They generally can also be built in a more utility role (templar assassin being a great example of someone who can provide primarily utility and pick-potential or who can be your primary source of physical damage).

You can't directly compare the classes for two games that are completely different.

It also tickles me that you're like how about we talk Lina here: Zyra Velkoz Annie all played for the exact same reasons as Lina.

PB4UAMEJul 1, 20161 votes

Your first point is applicable to DOTA's meta, but it isn't objectively true.

In games like Halo, or hell, any sport in the history of ever, is it required that you have one person be far more impactful to the game than anyone else? HELL NO. And it would make no sense to try to change them otherwise.

I've personally always hated the idea of a carry in a multiplayer game, as they are basically and fundamentally gamewarping.

League (and probably DOTA, though that is a game I am much less experienced with) would be a much more interesting, and imo a much more balanced and fun game if every class of champion and every champion in each class had exactly the same game impact as everyone else. It should be much more like: 'Tanks should counter mages, who should blow up squishies who should melt tanks' than ADCs are the be-all-end-all of the game that are necessitated in every game, and have been balanced around for 5, almost 6 years now, and every other role is directly related to the ADC and how they interact with them. e.g. tanks and supports peel for their ADC while trying to CC the enemy. Bruisers and assassin's try to dive the enemy ADC and kill the ASAP and mages try to nuke the carries, and settle for AoEing the divers, or the peelers if they can't reach their target.

Battlecast SonaJul 1, 20162 votes

What's wonderful about carries in DotA2 is that they don't always work the way you're accustomed to in League, and their curve is MUCH harder than a League carries. A large percentage of DotA2 carries absolutely cannot be left alone in lane unless the laner is specifically a matchup that can't kill them - and because of deny mechanics it's much easier to make a carry miss CS. Due to how scaling works in DotA2 (it's much harder to increase the damage of your abilities outright in a meaningful way), a physical damage carry will eventually be required. But that physical damage carry can be any number of carries, all of whom work in completely different ways. I mean, Phantom Assassin and Anti-Mage are both carries, but they function in very different ways, and both of them function differently from Spectre.

To illustrate: Phantom Assassin carries hard because her ultimate is a steroid that gives her one of the highest damage crits in the game. She generally utilizes this in tandem with her blink to attempt to quickly jump to a target and kill them before they can react - she plays much more like an assassin than a traditional carry. Her blink however needs a target, so her escape options are limited in comparison to her engage options. She works great with teams with a lot of hard engage or who have another damage threat that may need to be focused down, allowing her to destroy the backline.

Anti-Mage takes reduced damage from nukes and has a blink on a very short CD. Additionally, he drains mana with his AAs (and can nuke you with damage that increases based on missing mana). Anti-Mage is fairly weak early (needs a lot of levels in all of his skills on top of items to scale into a damage threat, though cheesy level 6 kills are not impossible and he's hard to gank). He's a very strong splitpusher and can 1v1 people very easily. Anti-Mage generally spends the early part of the game pushing a lane until battlefury and then utilizing his blink to quickly farm in the jungle (blinking between camps and into lanes to accelerate his farming speed). He can work great with push comps because he can quickly rotate to fights and splitpush easily.

Spectre is a carry who literally carries by standing in the middle of the enemy team. She generally is fairly weak until 2-3 items, but you also generally build items like Radiance (a damage item that functions similar to Sunfire) and utilizing her second ability, which reduces a percentage of the damage she takes and deals that damage to the units around her (higher damage to closer units). She also has a global ultimate that creates copies of herself (which can use her Radiance burn), and she can choose to teleport to one of the illusions. Spectre is generally very good when your team lacks a tanky frontliner but has initiation tools or ways to assist you in setting up fights or picks.

None of these carries carry in the same way. They all operate completely differently, and different items are good on them, but they're ALL agility carries.

DotA2 has the right idea - carries that all function differently and work best with different kinds of teams. In League it feels a bit one-size-fits-all, which I think is why we only really see 2-3 carries in the spotlight at any given time.

Battlecast SonaJun 30, 20167 votes

it will happen naturally. Adding counterplay to the abilities and making their damage less reliable makes the damage each individual hit does more important, incentivizing damage if your goal is to delete a target.

I mean, if Zed can oneshot you purely with bases on Q-E-ult, he doesn't NEED to make damage. Make his burst less reliable though and he HAS to build damage or risk not completing his task. Adding counterplay will make it harder for tanksassins to be useful because their problem has always been reliable damage + high bases.

AMYS GRAVEJun 30, 20162 votes

If you buff the ratios to make each ability that hits hit hard enough for them to still kill you then you risk making them too snowbally. As a support it is immensely frustrating to see that XYZ assassin has 8 kills by 7 minutes, and there was realistically nothing i could do about it.

There are also other ways of adding counterplay to damage abilities other than making them completely missable (binary hit or not skillshots). Making it dot or delayed, locking the abilities under various circumstances (think rumbles self silence) or making the next abilities ramp up in damage based on how many abilities were landed previously could all be done and might solve assassin problems while also promoting skillful play.

Battlecast SonaJun 30, 20162 votes

I never said to buff the ratios. Or that they had to all be skillshots. I actually didn't even mention ratios once in my post.... The problem is that assassins have high bases with reliable damage, so they don't NEED to take advantage of ratios (most of which are already fairly decent).

I wasn't saying "oh buff the ratios", I was saying that assassins will be REQUIRED to take advantage of their ratios because they can no longer just mash their face on the keyboard and oneshot an ADC at 30 minutes purely with base damages and maybe a thunderlord's proc, thus helping the tanksassin problem.

RiotMeddlerJun 30, 201612 votes

Not certain yet. We haven't started on the item side of things. If I had to guess it would be stuff like creating items targeted at assassins and then balancing them around needing those, changing defensive itemization to be more around amplifying the existing defensive parts of champions who should be tanky etc.

5050BSJun 30, 20165 votes

Defensive items to survive an assassin should also be on your plate. item 3157 and item 3040 are basically the ONLY ones but there are other squishies other then AP champs

Duke AnaxJun 30, 20165 votes

How about items/abbilities that give protection or escape after a kill?

That way assassin have to be less afraid that they won't survive their own engage, provided they do their job properly. Thus encuraging them to build more damage.

Just don't give them more damage on kill, that's not how an assassin should operate.

AMYS GRAVEJun 30, 20162 votes

How about items/abbilities that give protection or escape after a kill?

this item could be broken on diving auto attack based fighters. Jax, irelia, yi, trynd, or even some short ranged adcs like vayne, twitch, kog, not to mention maybe some apcs like vlad or swain being even more unkillable.

Samflash3Jun 30, 20163 votes

So where do you guys see the rivals (Kha'Zix Khazix , Rengar Rengar ). Their identities tend to clash with each other and it becomes a fight of whether one or the other is relevant in the meta. Almost reminds me of another duo from Season 3-5 ( Graves Lucian ) hint hint

Samflash3Jun 30, 20162 votes

Do you see bot lane as a potential place for assassins to thrive? I mean they are the true anti-ADC (sorry J4 - JarvanIV / Yorick - Urgot ) . Plus, assassins like Zed, Kha'Zix, Rengar, Pantheon and Yasuo (sadly not an assassin) seem to have a lot of useful things in their kit to be able to play bot due to their sustain/defense, waveclear, easier last hit, (provided the right support - Taric ). And who knows, adding a bit of utility to assassin kits seem like a great fallback pattern if they aren't doing so hot.

Then again, buff/rework Doran's shield pls.

SpoofghoulJun 30, 20169 votes

wait wait

hanging defensive itemization to be more around amplifying the existing defensive parts of champions who should be tanky etc.

item 3070 Sion Mordekaiser Shen

AMYS GRAVEJun 30, 20163 votes

This ^ I'm worried that it will be based off their base stats and tanks are some of the squishiest in the game.

Tychusfindlay919Jul 1, 20164 votes

{quoted}

This ^ I'm worried that it will be based off their base stats and tanks are some of the squishiest in the game.

Darius Based around Darius Base Stats Darius You say? Darius Excellent Illaoi

LankPantsJul 1, 20162 votes

changing defensive itemization to be more around amplifying the existing defensive parts of champions who should be tanky etc.

If you do that be careful about Sejuani and Amumu, because they are not inherently tanky. They're squishy champs at base who completely lack durability steroids that of tanks have to multiply, so a change like this has a great potential to fuck them over.

YJRBqwXJcSJun 30, 20162 votes

{quoted}

We're still expecting assassins post changes to kill squishy targets in one ability rotation generally. We'll be looking to extend how long that takes a bit though from extremely fast to just fast, say from 0.2s up to around 1s (example numbers only, but that style of change). Damage is also likely to be less guaranteed on average, that should give us some power budget to offer assassins somewhat broader toolsets in exchange though (e.g. better out of combat mobility to flank, vision tools to find targets etc).

can you guys remove the Delay on aurelion's Q so he can double tap it. Whenever a bruiser/assassin flash engages onto him he gets killed before he can even get the stun off so he can peel back and defend himself with his W.

basically what im asking is allow his Q to work like anivia's