Idea for improving Counterplay against Assassins based on Annie's Passive, using Zed as an example.

It's pretty much fact that part of the assassin-hate is founded in the safety their mobility provides, mobility that is designed to be offensive.

A common argument provided for how to beat in lane (especially for junglers) is to gank/engage when his W is down. A common argument provided for how to beat in lane is to do the same when her stun is not primed - indicated by the swirling around her body while she holds it. As frustrating as Annie can be, at least that's there. Zed on the other hand (and other Assassins) have no direct parallel.

If one looks closely at Zed's model in game, they can notice a single swirl of shadow around his legs, curling up to his waist before disappearing. I noticed it and in my mind equated it to Annie's passive, testing it against his CD's and seeing if there was any relationship. There wasn't.

But what if there was?

What I suggest wouldn't harm the output or decision making of Zed's, but would allow people to see when he's vulnerable or not. This correlates with Riot's recent love-affair with the concept of "moments of power" that are highlighted with Gnar's Passive and Ryze's reworked Passive - granting them moments of weakness and moments of strength.

If I - as a poor, defenceless, mana-manipulating mage of midlane - could see when Zed could and couldn't nope.jpg away from my spells, I'd consider it a step in the right direction towards evening out the plane between immobile and mobile. Champions like Zed don't lose out on any other parts of their kits for having mobility (shit son, he gets bonus %AD as a PASSIVE for his W), so I think it'd be fair if at the very least, we can also know if they have their mobility and if they don't.

As far as I can see, something like this wouldn't destroy the viability of mobile Champs at all, while being a universal QoL addition for immobile Champs.

TL;DR - Annie gets swirls when she can stun so you stay away from her, Zed gets shadow swirls when he can shadow-nope.jpg so you know when he doesnt have it and you can engage on him, closing some gaps between mobile and non-mobile Champions.

Thanks ShuffledPancake for reminding me!

Thoughts?