Pretty sure assassins are weak.

HongChongDong··46 votes·3,474 views

Every single fighter consistently can out perform an assassin at this point in the meta with dive potential, mobility, burst damage, and something assassins don't have: durability. No matter what anyone says I still think that the AD itemization is horribly unbalanced in suiting those fighter champions.

Far too many items that are overloaded with defensive stats and utility while sacrificing no damage at all. Notice something? Some of the worst examples of this are currently perma banned around the clock or are at the top of the meta: Vi, Hecarim, Olaf, Darius, Yasuo, and Lee sin just to name a few.

If fighters can display the same amount of burst, mobility, and dive potential as the best assassins while still utilizing far more durability and typically better itemization, then why did most of the assassins get the "Delayed damage" handicap?

At this point assassins are a pretty grey area where their existence and role is almost pointless. I imagine leblanc and zed will continue to be great as they were always the best assassins in the game due to their mobility but I'm not sure about the rest.

My opinion is that defensive/bruiser items are still too easily accessible to AD champions, giving them plenty of offensive stats while keeping them extremely tanky.

55 Comments

zarxus123431 votes

Its not that assassins are trash. Its that damage is way to high and every one does assassins damage without their weaknesses.

Xonra1 votes

Exactly this. I can burst someone down just as fast or faster with a Darius than with a Talon.

Jesus Is My King13 votes

i think riot didnt want assassins to be used anymore. yeah theyre garbage rn

Astôlfo12 votes

Duh? They are complete trash.

Wukong Airlines7 votes

I wouldn't consider Kat or Lbl though, well at least kat, she's broken af but people will always give you the "requires skills to play her", meanwhile Talon

PROJECT Katarìna3 votes

I still miss my baby talon that I still play him in ranked just to go 7/12

Ibn La Ahad2 votes

Man I was fine with his previous kit, just keep revert the Q,W,R changes and keep the E and new passive.

PROJECT Katarìna1 votes

TBH though melee Q damage would need to be toned down then

DKM Bismarck1 votes

just make w and r snapbacks quicker and he might actually be snappy again and not the clunky mess he currently is.

Xonra1 votes

I still don't see LB as an assassin, when I can kill people faster with Syndra, I just don't have the same "assassin" mobility.

SGT Dingle Berry8 votes

As someone who hates assassins in ALL games I can completely agree they're in a pretty tough spot, for the most part anyway a few are decent. As a general example I was playing an ADC game last night and the Akali was giving me trouble, all it took was building a maw and BT to negate her in the 2nd half of the game.

Xonra1 votes

Yup they basically focused too hard on Assassins being good at roam ganks and laning phase. They seem to forgot that the game goes past 15 minutes, because outside of a fed Kat, or a fed LB (she can fall off with a bit of mr honestly), they have no late game. Especially the likes of Talon.

Kha and Rengar are dependent on the situation, but Rengar doesn't build like an assassin anyways.

Fishlord5 votes

wtf? this post is absolute trash, i main assassin and I play Darius and i fukin dunk your arsiee while you shiting your pants in fear. gg

MasterChief1076 votes

Bru, u pley the gretest champs in the gam. How u not chelenjure? [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

rtbf2216514124 votes

{quoted}

Every single fighter consistently can out perform an assassin at this point in the meta with dive potential, mobility, burst damage, and something assassins don't have: durability. No matter what anyone says I still think that the AD itemization is horribly unbalanced in suiting those fighter champions.

Rengar

Cubíx14 votes

Too be fair, rengar is more effective when built as a fighter instead of full AD

dominusx7 votes

Rengar is ONLY effective built as a fighter and not full ad. disregard the golds/plat who build full dmg and somehow manage to win games because the enemy cant burst a 2k hp champ with 70armor 60mr

rtbf2216514122 votes

{quoted}

Rengar is ONLY effective built as a fighter and not full ad. disregard the golds/plat who build full dmg and somehow manage to win games because the enemy cant burst a 2k hp champ with 70armor 60mr

Disregard higher ranked players and the fact I didn't say he doesn't built fighter.

There is a reason I left that part out. He said every fighter outperforms every assassin. Last time I checked, Rengar has more damage and can survive.

THE RlVER KlNG1 votes

To be fair, he's still an assassin, and half the assassins people like to bitch and moan about how weak they are aree more effective when built fighter-y.

LordOfTheLeague1 votes

Assassin role is about being lethal to the most important target with heavy damage and huge mobility but it doesn't say that assassin shouldn't be a bit durable.

Hauling Ashe4 votes

As an ADC main, I'm way more scared of a tank/tanky champ (cough ShyvanaHecarimViGravesPoppy cough) than I am of an assassin, unless that assassin is fed. Tanky champs feel so overwhelming, even though I play the class that supposedly counters them!

I think assassins feel weak right now because they're countered by a class that naturally is supposed to counter them (tanks) and they can't tower dive as effectively as a class that primarily builds HP but is doing more damage than they should (tanks).

Xonra3 votes

sees Talon coming

sits in a bush waiting to assassinate him as an ADC


sees Poppy coming

flashes away and says "fawk that"


Yeah, Assassins are a joke right now lol

SpongebobIsLife4 votes

zed is actually pretty bad rn. The only good assassins are lb, kat, ren, and fizz. The ad assassins and akali are the true ones suffering.

Pommel Knight3 votes

Fizz is doing pretty bad, he's in the same boat as talon. Try kha, he should be there instead of him.

Xonra1 votes

You were okay there until you mentioned Fizz.

SpongebobIsLife1 votes

lol maybe its just me. i have a 70 percent win rate with him over 20 games in plat-diamond elo. I have heard people say fizz is lacking. idk

Xonra3 votes

The problem is, Riot is too obsessed with breaking everyone up into these neat little roles and they don't seem to know how to properly work within their own constraints. I mean when "duelists/fighters" have more burst and assassination potential than most assassins do before and especially AFTER their rework. When I can burst and be bursted down faster by a Darius than a Talon.

When Assassins need their "window" of strength and counter play, yet we get a new champ like Camille.

AirKingNeo2 votes

This is why I'll probably play bruiser/fighter Ekko for now on.

Pale Pirate2 votes

As a leblanc main I hate the new Leblanc.

Death by Glamour2 votes

knife cat is still oppressive as hell once he gets going.

also why take talon or zed when you can insta gib someone as annie or miss every skill shot as syndra and still nearly oneshot the adc.

LA Losty2 votes

I dont even think Zed is great, i think he is decent but there are often better picks, besides its usually up to the midlaner to bring ap to the team.

Handin Out Naps2 votes

You imagine Zed and leblanc will continue to be great? Damn didn't realize Zed was a good champ. Silly me.

aspects12 votes

its just that every other class has equal damage and more durability, or more range

Golden Tager X2 votes

Melee dps people HAVE to be tanky for them to not get bursted and outclassed by assassins, the problem is assassins should not have delayed burst as that literally defeats the whole purpose as now they are just worse mages with less utility and damage.

Riot has a very skewed vision of these things and that causes shit like this. Assassins should have 0 delay on their burst but have no option to escape other than their team following up or them carefully setting up an escape path with things like a Shaco box, Ekko w, etc. Instead they have escapes built in to their kit and that is actually the part of them that needs to go.

Melee dps champs like the ones you mentioned (well most of them anyway as some are divers that are more burst oriented) need to be tankier than most classes. Obviously tanks need to be the tankiest, and then juggernauts, but divers that deal dps are next, and then divers that deal burst, then assassins (yes assassins) mages and adcs.

Problem is the difference between assassins and mages is in the wrong direction so on top of being weaker and not having as much utility as mages as well as putting themselves in more danger, they are even more squishy than mages, but at the same time divers are tankier and do just as much damage, so it is like assassins fulfill nothing, they kinda just float around not being as good at anything as the other classes.

TL;DR

Assassins suck ass and need to get their damage back but need their escapes to go in the process.

Chembaron Yamada2 votes

If you say that assassins should have 0 delay on their burst, while having no escape other than their team following up or setting up an escape beforehand..... That describes divers, tbh. Divers are going into the enemy team, kill a high priority target and have to survive just as long as their team needs to follow up.

If you say we should remove the escapes from assassins, what would differentiate them from divers?

Golden Tager X1 votes

The fact that they can kill someone before the enemy team has time to stop them, whereas divers are more dps/cc based.

Hexs Fortune1 votes

Sounds like diver fighters could use a nerf

LegitBacon661 votes

Then marksmen will be even stronger

CasterGilgamesh1 votes

who said marksmen dont need nerfs as well lol

Ultîma1 votes

Lethality is bad, that's why. Assassins are supposed to be about snowball potential, and it's being gated by the only mechanic in the game that gets more efficient based on your opponent's level instead of your own. Honestly, it's so inefficient at this point in time that buying Lethality before the 10 minute mark feels like a noob trap.

salty testi1 votes

[deleted]

Wukong Airlines1 votes

The funny thing is kat and lbl are even stronger now.

Fisher No Chains3 votes

Yeah, being killed before you can even proc your mark mid-late game makes LeBlanc really, really strong. :^)

Cloud2731 votes

If you look at winrates for diamond, pretty much all assassins have at least a 52% win rate (over the past month). Fun fact, almost all assassins have a higher win rate than Yasuo right now.

False 0011 votes

I think Katarina, Rengar, and Khazix are all strong/op rn. Talon and fizz are garbage.

Jet Sett1 votes

Assassins do much more burst damage, it's just when Talon Gets you you go "If I dodge this he's gonna die in 2 hits because crits" And then Vi Comes along and takes one second longer to kill you with damage AND hard cc that assassins generally don't have. But that isn't the worst part, It's when you realize that even if you eat all of a bruiser or fighter's abilities and survive they're going to keep hitting you and chasing you because they don't blow up like assassins do.

Sure Talon can chase me down, but he'll back the hell up after 2-3 crits to the face, especially with his cooldowns. Shyvana Chases me down and I do much less damage even with armor pen items because Riot will allow ADCs to build items to weaken your built items, but they won't allow you to nullify them entirely.

macromite1 votes

up-front style divers (like vi or noc) and ad assassins (like zed or kha) should be sharing similar damage numbers.

Assassins get to have ten escapes, divers get to build somewhat tanky without losing 100% of their kill pressure.

TheOneTrueBrand1 votes

Actually I think assassins are the only balanced class right now, everyone else is just cranked up to 11 thanks to damage creep.

Jeanne fan club1 votes

the big problem of the game is that the item dictates the meta in most cases. Black cleaver and other bruiser items are extremely strong, well, the champions that benefit most from them are champions like Darius, Vi, Hecarim and Lee sin. These champs become top tier easy, but if the bruiser item were to be nerfed, the other bruisers who aren't as much of a problem become even lower tier than they were before.

Honestly, I think this game would be much more balanced if every champion had like 12 champion specific items. It would make buffs/nerfs much easier to do for items since you wouldn't be knocking a whole crap tier of champions a peg lower by nerfing a meta item that some lower tier champions need to build too. Then the champion specific items would have champion specific unique passives that directly benefited specific abilities in their kits. This would take forever to program, but in the long term it would end up helping champ kit diversity and balance in the end.

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