Why the Assassin Update is Incomplete.

The assassin rework is great for people who play against assassins, but it does very little to fix a major problem for most assassins.

In order for assassins to be viable and healthy, they need a method of staying alive despite diving into the enemy back-line, a sort of 'survival utility'. A good example of this is Fizz e, which allows you to survive longer by avoiding damage. Unfortunately there are not nearly enough of these mechanics in the game leading to assassins being weak at high elo where you can't get away with abusing abysmal positioning.

Without survival utility you can only survive for a very short time in the backline of the enemy team, but backline threat is a major part of what makes an assassin worth picking - if you aren't going to dive then you might as well pick a mage who is better suited to sitting back.

If being an assassin requires diving the backline, and diving the backline means you only have a very short amount of time alive, then assassins must be able to do their work in that short period of time.

If assassins must do enough damage to kill someone in a very short time, then there obviously won't be very much time to react, leading to a lack of counter-play. This is an issue, and a big reason for the recent assassin rework, which adds time to react and therefore counter-play.

But in order for this to work, assassins need more time. If the time assassins take to kill someone is less than the time they have alive in the backline, then assassin won't be able to dive the backline. If assassins can't dive the backline, then there's no reason to pick an assassin.

There are two ways to survive longer. One is to be tanky. This is why bruisers like Irelia, or tanks like Maokai can dive the backline without having 1 shot potential. If you make an assassin tanky it is no longer an assassin (like tank ekko, and bruiser fizz last year) so it would be the same as removing assassins from the game, which I think should be avoided.

The other way is to let assassins avoid damage with survival utility. I mentioned Fizz e earlier, but invulnerability is not the only form this takes. Spellsheilds (like Nocturne), CC (like Ekko), CC immunity (like Fiora) and mobility (like Yasuo) are all other ways to increase survivability without raw tankiness.

Of course, these often give extra benefits in addition to survival utility, so you can't just give everyone a few dashes and call it good. I think the new item that channels a spell-shield is a good start, but won't be nearly enough in my opinion.

I know that a lot of people see these abilities, especially Fizz and Yasuo e, as unbalanced or unhealthy mechanics and would not want similar things to be added. I believe most of this hate is unwarranted, and the mechanics are just easy scapegoats for other issues. They have clear counter-play that is available to any champion, even if it is hard to adjust your play-style for a certain champion.