In A Nutshell - List Of The Winners and Losers Of The Pre-Season Changes

ArnoldSchwarzens · 2016-10-21T01:29:27.237Z

Let's get right into it. WINNER: AD ASSASSINS ** Change from flat armor penetration to lethality allows better late game scaling, something that Assassins are struggling with right now. Lethality Items all give out of combat movement speed which helps with roaming and chasing, something that Assassins do a lot. Edge of Night, a new item that gives grants lethality, out of combat movement speed, AD, MR and a 30s CDSpellshield for an active that has to channel 1.5 seconds, is insanely good and allows Assassins to deal with enemy focus and CC lock after jumping in, especially against magic damage dealers. Of all the AD Assassins, Kha'Zix is notably the strongest. **WINNER: TANKS AND TANKY SUPPORTS Armor always was a hard counter to flat armor penetration ( now lethality ), Tanks stack armor. Tanks have CC to lock down Assassins after they jump in and to peel for their carries. Knight's Vow, a new item that gives you tankiness and lets you designate a "Partner" which gets extra protection because you get extra movement/armor speed towards them and the item redirects 12% of the damage the partner is suffering to you - perfect for peeling for carries. Alistar is getting a Rework which buffs his DPS, CC, Healing and Peeling abilities - it might even allow him to be played in the jungle or toplane. New mastery, Courage of the Colossus, is replacing Strength of the Ages and is giving you a shield every 30 seconds when you hard-CC an enemy target which scales with your max. HP - helps with surviving Assassin atttacks. Zac already is an overperforming Tank, now he will be even stronger. WINNER: PEELING SUPPORTS AND SUPPORT MAGES Have heals, shields and CC at their disposal to prevent themselves and their allies from dying, which stops the assassin snowball before it can even start. Aren't affected as much by Edge of Night as other AP champions because they don't care all that much about the MR since they are not supposed to deal that much damage anyway. They also don't care as much about the spellshield because their abilities focus more on themselves than on the enemy. All of the champions you can see above are already high tier, will be even better in the pre-season. Sona, Soraka, Bard and Nami are the exception, they still get countered by Assassins. LOSER: MARKSMEN As already mentioned, lethality gets countered by armor which marksmen don't have a lot of access to - the only option is GA which is more of a bruiser item. Assassins are specifically designed to kill marksmen, because all their DPS doesn't matter when assassins jump on them and kill them in 1-3 seconds. Special mention goes to the armor pen Marksmen like Jhin and Lucian - they take an even bigger hit because they don't care about the out of combat movement speed of lethality items as much because they usually stay bot all the time and aren't about chasing people alone through the jungle. Youmuu's active also doesn't give attack speed anymore which sucks for them big time. LOSER: LONG-RANGED IMMOBILE MAGES: Assassins have the tools to ignore their long range and get right on top of them to then burst them. If you don't count Syndra, most of these champions are already pretty mediocre in the current Meta - will be even worse now. Now let's go over to the honorable mentions. They don't fit in any of the categories of above or deviate from the rule and deserve to be covered on their own. WINNER: URGOT ** Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage. Shield on W, 15% damage reduction on his passive, 50% damage reduction on his ult and tanky build paths make him extremely hard to kill. Can abuse bad laning phases of most Assassins with his poke and bully kind of play style. Because of his E armor penetration and high base damage on Q and E he too profits very well from the new lethality stat. He also doesn't care about the fact that Youmuu's active loses out on attack speed. Maw of Malmortius now has CDR instead of flat pen and its passive now also gives AD, he scales really well with both of them. Frozen Heart, another Item that he buys from time to time has its gold cost reduced by 100. **WINNER: VI ** Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage. Also profits from the lethality changes and makes also much use of the newly gained out of combat movement speed. **WINNER: SKARNER Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage. WINNER: MALZAHAR Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage ( this could probably have been a category on its own lol ). His hard-push bully kind of playstyle makes the bad laning phase of most Assassins even harder. Has a relatively tanky build with ROA, Zhonya and…

ArnoldSchwarzens·Oct 21, 2016·2 votes·426 views

Let's get right into it.

**WINNER: AD ASSASSINS **

Change from flat armor penetration to lethality allows better late game scaling, something that Assassins are struggling with right now.
Lethality Items all give out of combat movement speed which helps with roaming and chasing, something that Assassins do a lot.
Edge of Night, a new item that gives grants lethality, out of combat movement speed, AD, MR and a 30s CDSpellshield for an active that has to channel 1.5 seconds, is insanely good and allows Assassins to deal with enemy focus and CC lock after jumping in, especially against magic damage dealers.
Of all the AD Assassins, Kha'Zix is notably the strongest.

WINNER: TANKS AND TANKY SUPPORTS

Armor always was a hard counter to flat armor penetration ( now lethality ), Tanks stack armor.
Tanks have CC to lock down Assassins after they jump in and to peel for their carries.
Knight's Vow, a new item that gives you tankiness and lets you designate a "Partner" which gets extra protection because you get extra movement/armor speed towards them and the item redirects 12% of the damage the partner is suffering to you - perfect for peeling for carries.
Alistar is getting a Rework which buffs his DPS, CC, Healing and Peeling abilities - it might even allow him to be played in the jungle or toplane.
New mastery, Courage of the Colossus, is replacing Strength of the Ages and is giving you a shield every 30 seconds when you hard-CC an enemy target which scales with your max. HP - helps with surviving Assassin atttacks.
Zac already is an overperforming Tank, now he will be even stronger.

WINNER: PEELING SUPPORTS AND SUPPORT MAGES

Have heals, shields and CC at their disposal to prevent themselves and their allies from dying, which stops the assassin snowball before it can even start.
Aren't affected as much by Edge of Night as other AP champions because they don't care all that much about the MR since they are not supposed to deal that much damage anyway. They also don't care as much about the spellshield because their abilities focus more on themselves than on the enemy.
All of the champions you can see above are already high tier, will be even better in the pre-season.
Sona, Soraka, Bard and Nami are the exception, they still get countered by Assassins.

LOSER: MARKSMEN

As already mentioned, lethality gets countered by armor which marksmen don't have a lot of access to - the only option is GA which is more of a bruiser item.
Assassins are specifically designed to kill marksmen, because all their DPS doesn't matter when assassins jump on them and kill them in 1-3 seconds.
Special mention goes to the armor pen Marksmen like Jhin and Lucian - they take an even bigger hit because they don't care about the out of combat movement speed of lethality items as much because they usually stay bot all the time and aren't about chasing people alone through the jungle. Youmuu's active also doesn't give attack speed anymore which sucks for them big time.

LOSER: LONG-RANGED IMMOBILE MAGES:

Assassins have the tools to ignore their long range and get right on top of them to then burst them.
If you don't count Syndra, most of these champions are already pretty mediocre in the current Meta - will be even worse now.

Now let's go over to the honorable mentions. They don't fit in any of the categories of above or deviate from the rule and deserve to be covered on their own.

**WINNER: URGOT **

Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage.
Shield on W, 15% damage reduction on his passive, 50% damage reduction on his ult and tanky build paths make him extremely hard to kill.
Can abuse bad laning phases of most Assassins with his poke and bully kind of play style.
Because of his E armor penetration and high base damage on Q and E he too profits very well from the new lethality stat. He also doesn't care about the fact that Youmuu's active loses out on attack speed.
Maw of Malmortius now has CDR instead of flat pen and its passive now also gives AD, he scales really well with both of them.
Frozen Heart, another Item that he buys from time to time has its gold cost reduced by 100.

**WINNER: VI **

Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage.
Also profits from the lethality changes and makes also much use of the newly gained out of combat movement speed.

WINNER: SKARNER

Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage.

WINNER: MALZAHAR

Ult is a hard counter assassins, as every other instant point and click cc that can used on them after they engage ( this could probably have been a category on its own lol ).
His hard-push bully kind of playstyle makes the bad laning phase of most Assassins even harder.
Has a relatively tanky build with ROA, Zhonya and Rylai's, prevents Assassins from bursting him.
Has a Silence at his disposal that he can use defensively.

WINNER: KAYLE

Another Bully Lane.
Her ult is a hard counter to burst, which is what Assassins are all about.
Her Q and W both can be used defensively against diving Assassins.

LOSER: KARTHUS

Everyone has already talked about this but I'm posting it here again just to raise more attention.
Edge of Night already is a really good item but it counters Karthus especially. It has a 1.5 cast time before you get the spell shield which gets interrupted by damage to prevent you from using it as a reactionary spell shield - but since Karthus' ult has a 3 second channel itself it will get used as such anyway. With 30s it doesn't really have a long CD either.
Even without Edge of Night, Karthus always was countered by Assassins because of his terrible base stats and zero mobility, which he can't even compensate for with high range.

That's about it.

In A Nutshell - List Of The Winners and Losers Of The Pre-Season Changes

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