So what exactly is assassin about kayn?
I'm just not seeing why we got hyped a new "assassin jungler" when I haven't seen the assassin part of kayn once in the time he's been release.
His darkin form flat out isn't an assassin, we can agree on that and even riot basically said the same thing.. he's more of a slayer/bruiser/potential skirmisher.
His Shadow assassin and base form though do not feel like assassins at all to me, instead they feel like divers or fighters. You don't have a burst combo and you mainly deal DPS damage. None of your abilities are single target except for his ultimate which on its own, doesn't deal a lot of damage and is mostly used to dive onto the target. The fact you have to damage the target first also adds to the concept of diving into the teamfight in order to get the ultimate mark off, which makes me view him more like rek'sai (diver) than zed (an assassin).
This is part of why darkin is so much better than assassin, because his actual kit doesn't change but the kit itself is so much more favored by the diver playstyle than the assassin by a long shot, both because shadow kayn can't take care of himself and darkin is just far more useful to the team. Additionally its better to survive for multiple rotations as darkin rather than burst combo as shadow assassin (because there is no burst combo and you're almost doing as much as darkin). Its kinda similar to akali who has bordered the line between assassin and diver multiple times, except akali I believe has a clear powerspike which kayn seems not to.
His only "assassin" quality is his E but its honestly a slower and more easily cancelable (because of the "in-combat" clarity) talon wall jump. Like ok, he can flank through the wall but on paper what difference exactly is there between walking through it and going over the wall with kha'zix, talon, even lee sin? I mostly see this ability used in teamfights just for the small heal because the in-combat makes it unreliable as an escape and using it to get in-combat usually gets you killed since "oh look kayn is here.. eh whatever". Originally I thought to myself kayn would be intolerable and broken strictly off of the fact he can lane gank out of the map, but that proved underwhelming too since you can see him coming easier than an aurelion sol.
I just don't understand what riot thinks of assassins anymore. They turned one of league's poster kitty assassins into a diver and then they gave us an assassin that truthfully doesn't even play or feel like one and camille was honestly our most recent assassin who's actually a diver/fighter.
