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How do we make a healthy assassin? An analogy and some thoughts

visceralsimplex·2/27/2015, 11:10:57 AM·4 votes·1,051 views

Scenario 1: You wake up in the middle of the night suddenly to find a knife stuck in your chest. You look and see a dark figure walk off as you die.

Scenario 2: You wake up in the middle of the night suddenly and hear someone creeping about. You see a dark figure and the glistening of a knife in the moonlight and you quickly grab hold of his arm and fight for your life.

The assassin in both scenarios exploited a vulnerability in your position. Instead of getting you out in broad daylight, he went after you in your sleep. In Scenario 1, you die to him without ever knowing he was there to begin with. In Scenario 2, your fate is decided by how well you can hold off the assassination attempt, despite being in a vulnerable position.

The assassin role is much more than simply killing/deleting someone to eliminate them from the fight. It is about the interaction between the assassin and his target. Assassins should open up (positive) interactions between themselves and the target.

Let's take a look at an assassin that promotes positive interactions: Zed

When Zed decides to assassinate a target, it is telegraphed. It declares, "Zed will kill this target." There is a delay when he initiates the Death Mark and another delay before the Death Mark procs. This is like Scenario 2 mentioned above: there is time when you realize the assassination is happening and the moment(s) where you are able to react from your vulnerable position. There is ample opportunity to mitigate damage done by the assassin.

Take note that I am emphasizing that Zed promotes player interaction, and I am not commenting on the state of his current strength (the same applies any other examples I might give, unless otherwise specified).

Now let's take a look at an assassin that doesn't promote positive interactions: Leblanc

When LeBlanc decides to assassinate a target, it is not distinctly telegraphed. If you are in range for a combo, it is possible that you will be the target of that combo. Thus, your options to not get assassinated is to not be in range for her combo. There is no delay between when she decides to initiate the assassination and the time which the assassination is carried through. It is much more like Scenario 1 where you die from a vulnerable position without warning.

The important thing to note is that Zed has a telegraphed/delayed assassination versus a non-telegraphed/immediate assassination. It is also important to note that both fit the assassin fantasy/theme. Both pick out a target to kill and make it their job to do so.

The issue of non-telegraphed/immediate assassination is exacerbated by mixing mobility with damage.

For example, champions like Kassadin Leblanc Diana Akali have much of their damage associated with their mobility spells. With these examples, their burst is tied to dashing/blinking to the target directly. There is no way to counteract this damage, and so does not promote positive interactions.

This is done to a lesser extent by champions with assassination potential like LeeSin Nidalee Khazix who deal damage to you simply by jumping on top of you.

On the other hand, we have assassins whose mobility is not totally innately tied with damage: Zed Shaco. Their mobility is generally used for gaining advantageous positioning and their damage, for the most part, is relegated to their other abilities.

So how do we make a healthy assassin?

First - we allow room for counterplay by telegraphing moves in an indirect fashion. The target should be able to predict moves, but the assassin should have options, especially for positioning. Non-telegraphed/immediate assassinations aren't fun to play against.

Second - we use their innate mobility as a utility for reaching advantageous positioning rather than straight damage output. Against this ties with immediate assassinations.

Those are some of my thoughts. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think - how do we go about making "healthy" assassins for the game?

7 Comments

AyRe CoNteMpT2/27/2015, 1:09:35 PM2 votes

as a matter of fact, leblanc has to commit more to an assassination than zed due to her mobility being tied to her damage. this means if she really wants to kill someone with a Q R W E (or similar) combo from full health, she has to stand in his range for the animation of all her abilities and afterwards has no mobility left. zed on the other hand has alot more freedom to his mobility.

you did say that leblanc has less counterplay than zed except staying out of her range. it IS true that if zed tries to kill an equal-in-gold-and-level opponent who is able to defend himself (i.e. a bruiser or someone with a stun), that person indeed has some counterplay options.

on the other hand, if zed is very fed and leblanc is too, it is MUCH harder to counterplay zed because he needs to invest less time in his combo to kill you wereas leblanc still needs her full combo and also alot more execution time. it ALSO is MUCH harder to stay out of zeds range than out of leblancs range due to zed being able to jump twice and still do 90% of his damage while leblanc loses 30% of her damage with each jump and also has quite long animations.

what im trying to say is, that if an assassin DOES catch you out of position, you ARE indeed going to die except if you are an outstandingly strong fighter (bruiser) with the ability to wrestle their dagger away while lying in bed. so the question about what is healthy and what is not should be "how much thought and effort does the assassin have to put in to find/make you out of position" and "how hard is it to not be out of position against said assassin"

also "how easy for the assassin is it to survive after going for the kill"

i think every assassin should have some sort of soft-escape to safely escape after killing, but should definitely not have a free-out-of-jail card like zed has. leblanc is similar in this department except that she has quite a few limitations making her, together with talon, the only true ASSASSIN who is really just that, an assassin.

most, if not all other popular assassins like akali, katarina, zed have much better ways to not only kill someone and get out safely but also snowball a fight faster after killing someone. i think that is more of what a fighter should do. an assassin takes out a core target but then has to retreat and wait for another chance to strike.

in that sense, i actually find leblanc a very healthy assassin as even tho she is quite good at killing someone, she still, even if fed, has to put in alot of work to actually do so before and in teamfights and EVEN IF SHE MANAGES TO DO IT she doesnt immediately make the fight a 4on5 but rather a 4on4 while waiting for her cooldowns. with a normal leblanc build she has about 25% cooldown reduction so being able to act again will take her about 8 seconds. enough time for the enemy team to capitalize.

so. lets conclude those points: a healthy assassin has

  1. to put thought and effort into finding and killing someone who is out of position
  2. to have only a soft-escape after killing a target
  3. to have cooldowns or work in a way that gives the enemy team time to react even after a successfull assassination
  4. to have very reliable methods of killing you once you are in her zone but also give you reliable methods to stay out of her zone.

this should be the general concept of how assassins have to work on the map and around fights. now there is another factor, the laning, that makes and breaks assassins. lets get to it.

assassins have naturally high killing power. this means that if in lane, the assassin has means to farm safely and still be a threat at all times, its clearly not the way an assassin should work.

zed for example is one of the safest farmers in the game as he can clear from long ranges and also short ranges by being a strong melee fighter. he can lasthit well under tower and has no manacost to limit his long range farming. he also has one of the best escapes in the game which makes him extremely hard to gank. this means, a zed, who is suppposed to be an assassin, is actually one of the safest champions in the game and at the same time possesses one of the highest killing threats.

(note: this is not me crying about zed all right, i just dont find his laning fitting for an assassin type of champ)

on the other hand, leblanc can not waveclear from safe ranges while still maintaining a high killpressure. she either clears for a fair amount of mana, or she threatens to kill you. being able to push her under her tower therefore reduces her in-lane killing potential dramatically and makes way for relatively safe laning.

her power then comes in the form of catching people off guard and roaming. always at the price of losing farm due to not being able to push in the wave quickly with one button and then going to roam. also, the mana is always an issue. so i think that this also is a very healthy part of leblanc and an example of how assassins should gain their powers for obvious weaknesses.

to conclude this, i think that assassins in lane

  1. have to use their cooldowns either to threaten or to farm, thus giving the enemy a window of safety.
  2. should be bad at waveclearing with auto attacks. auto attacks are for fighters, not for assassins. this also prevents assassins from building immediate lifesteal items, making their laning even harder. assassins are no sustained laners/fighters. their laning should therefore contain weaknesses.
  3. should either have to use resources to waveclear OR put themselves in danger (example, talon)
WolfChases2/27/2015, 2:50:34 PM2 votes

As a Zed main, I am telling you that the only thing Riot should do abot Zed is to reduce the AD scalings on his E against minions early/mid game so he cant outpush Xerath after Cutlas+Brutalizer. That's the ONLY problem. His PvP is healthy, but his PvE is not.

Martyrofsand2/27/2015, 5:01:16 PM2 votes

Zed is far from healthy and this idea that an assassin should insta-kill a target with their kit is completely wrong. A healthy assassin isn't going to appear drop a target and be gone in the span of 1-3 seconds. A healthy assassin will come in, deal enough damage to get you weak, say 25-35% of your hp, and then be gone leaving you to make a choice of either staying and risking being dropped on the 2nd pass or to leave and fight another day. Right now no assassin fits this bill and the game is extremely toxic for how they currently exist.

That said in order to make this healthy they need to address things like life steal, which would need to be nerfed so weaken targets don't just life steal back to full health before the assassin can come back. No character should be 100 to 0ing anyone at any point in time in the game. Assassin should either be picking off weakened targets or needing to make at least 2 rotations, one with ult and one without, in order to drop someone.

SEKAI2/27/2015, 11:20:25 AM1 votes

I didn't read the OP because I think rather than going for an analysis, the entire problem can be solved if they follow this 1 single common sense:

  1. Engage has to be committed, costy in one way or another.

Simple.

Serevas2/27/2015, 4:28:49 PM1 votes

There have been several extremely good points made here, and I'm glad to see an actual healthy discussion about assassins. I personally main entirely mid lane assassins, so this is a discussion that I love to dedicate time to.

I would personally say that Talon and Zed are two extremely healthy assassins for the current game, Talon being the most pure and proper assassin, but having a severe fault at the same time.

An assassin is intended to get in quickly do their damage, and die in the line of duty or get out relatively safely. They utilize flanking and overall the element of surprise to get their job done.

Talon's only downfall is that he has zero way to get out safely other than hopefully having slowed the enemies enough to get out without getting blown up. His initiation is his escape (Cutthroat), and even as an escape it's very poor due to needing an enemy target to blink to. The only other pseudo-escape that he has, is the speed boost on his ultimate, which may leave him far out of position to deal the second chunk of damage that he needs to with the ability for it to be effective. This is his downfall, but though having that weakness it encourages intelligent decision making on his players part, because if you go in and don't have the damage to deal with the threats, you're dead. Simple, effective, counter play.

Zed, is less healthy, while still being relatively healthy in his base, a lot of people feel his strength is excessive, but his whole his kit is designed in a mostly healthy way. Sure the escape is a little too easy to activate to instantly teleport out leaving him a bit safer on the escape, but he's rather poor at putting out any sort of AoE damage, he's almost entirely focused on single target. Sure he can put that damage out, but it requires him to give up that safety he so desperately clings to for survival.

The difference here is that talon naturally puts out AoE damage through his abilities, whereas Zed has small AoE on his E usage. It's a trade off makes Zed a bit more healthy than people seem to realize.

LeBlanc is another story, her damage is her mobility, and that damage is also AoE, she excels more at killing single targets of course, from the mark popping as well as the chains, but she can deal substantial damage in AoE if allowed, and can immediately escape with almost zero retaliation. I say almost zero because a screw up in the combo, or phenomenal timing will allow you to retaliate against her.

Lee Sin and Nidalee have their degree of health as well because their entire combo is tied to hitting a skillshot that's rather narrow and in some cases finicky. My only problem with Nidalee is that front loaded damage in the initial skillshot is massive and frequently guarantees her kill.

I feel that Kha'zix is healthy, because in order to escape, he often needs to secure the kill. (Evolved Wings give you the reset on Leap.)

the OP stated that telegraphed moves are a good healthy measure for Assassins, and that's semi-true. If we consider that Talon is widely considered the most healthy of all assassins, as most people will tell you is the case. We look at his playstyle, which is sudden instantaneous all in, There's very little warning, and you suddenly get torn to ribbons, but he's stuck afterwards.

So I would argue that a healthy assassin needs one of two things. An assassin needs either abilities that are semi-telegraphed and can be countered with proper play, or a kit that though spelling instant death for carries being out of position or successfully engaged on, also leaves the assassin high and dry if he fails to kill the target.

PokladnicaZla2/27/2015, 5:39:45 PM1 votes

If I were you,I would not use Zed as a proper balance indicator...