Assassins shouldn't rely on armor penetration to be relevant + extra.

The last section is a bit wordy, but please give your thoughts and read to get the full opinion.

The stat for armor penetration is just not early-game focused by nature. ADCs (and most any squishy) do not have significant armor growth through the game. It is entirely dependent on levels, and despite this, there are no reliable armor purchases until a squishy has typically dedicated to their damage (which emphasizes glass cannon in this meta).

The game has largely moved away from champion base damage values and instead focuses on their health, ganks and things like Ignite. It's almost like the game has done a complete 180 with regard to how the early game is handled, which has everything to do with armor penetration existing in the game.

Duskblade is already a Sheen-like proc. It starts with huge upfront early game damage that also scales, which is bad design. Assassins need higher emphasis on mobility later into the game, NOT just damage. If the enemy is too tanky, they should alternatively be able to build better sustained damage options via Black Cleaver and a DPS item specifically designed to lower CDs and/or attack speed and deal bonus adaptive damage when fighting against tanks.

Being able to straight up ignore stats built I think has always been an issue, because the sooner you can do it, the less significant building tanky is even when you're supposed to build it to survive.

My suggestions are as follows:

Lethality removed from all items.

Heavily lowered base damage. Scales heavily with AD and level scaling lowered.

Channel removed, duration lowered to 2 seconds, now gives true invisibility if an ability is blocked. Does not work on certain AoE spells (similar to Zoe E). Gives 500 health instead of 250 and 10 more AD.

Movement speed effect removed. Now partially refunds the cost and cooldown movement-based abilities (move speed bonuses, dashes, etc.) when damaging enemy champions (scales per level). Active effect changed to allow a champion become invincible but also be allowed to move for 1 second (60 second CD).

Now allows a champion to choose their location and be able to optionally teleport back to it after 1.5 seconds. CD increased to 90 seconds.

This is all I have to offer right now, but assassins should have more emphasis on building health and AD since Spear of Shojin will be the backbone of what makes up for that squishiness later into the game, otherwise a GA is suitable if the enemy is going to blow their most important spells on you. I will not include champion changes but more emphasis on early game HP and base stats should be involved, with damage and attack speed adjusted accordingly.

I believe tanks need similar changes to their items to remove raw stats outside of health and focus more on effects and situational tankiness, so that they actually take more skill/competence to play but also have more actual AGENCY over the game. Currently Cho'Gath is one of the only champions in the game that is able to transfer his defensive stats into offensive stats and in a rather unhealthy way.

I also have ideas for mages, but with regards to assassins, it has always been a problem where a fed assassin just eats a mid laner for breakfast. The power balance also has shown that the opposite can be true when the mid laner is ahead. I think more counterplay needs to be involved in the ITEMS themselves rather than in-kit, as every kit is different. A stopwatch equivalent should exist in the Inspiration tree that allows a champion to refund one recently used non-ultimate ability, but that ability to will do no damage. This is just to add lane safety and give a skillshot that normally would be inaccessible. If it's too strong in testing (I see you snare looping), make it so that you can only refresh the ability if it has not hit an enemy champion.

Thoughts?