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Assassins, How Do We Feel About Them?

SoHaxing·6/8/2016, 5:34:37 PM·10 votes·4,564 views

Assassin champion

So I wanted to talk about assassins since I wanted to know how many of us think about them. Before that, I would like to establish the role of the Assassin so we don't have to completely argue about what is an Assassin is exactly. In any case, an Assassin is, what I can understand, a champion who has the abilities and potential in their kit and design to be able to "assassinate" any champion that can be killed by the Assassin.

Whether it is up to the potential of the Assassin to be able to escape ONCE they killed their desired target or die in exchange for killing their targeted champion is up to debate. However, I wanted to talk about the situation, the meta, and the overall vocal community feel of Assassins and their place within the League of Legends.

So for me, I feel that Assassins are in a good state as to where they are at. Of course, there the controversial outliers such as and who have kits that I know some of us feel that are unhealthy. In any case, I would like to discuss about the state of the Assassins within this state of the game and share opinions about the Assassins themselves and their place in the game.

67 Comments

Alüe6/8/2016, 5:37:01 PM9 votes

don't mind assassins as long as they don't have a strong engage and disengage mechanic. imo they should have one or the other, having both just advocates for unbalanced gameplay

Titanium706/8/2016, 6:12:45 PM7 votes

Warning I'm generalizing here:

In my opinion Lane Assassin as a whole are nothing but toxic *** They always have tools to farm save, to escape ganks, to engage you opponent and to avoid DMG.

The playstyle of those Assassins is always set to be as much of a pain as possible. Fizz Leblanc Zed - they all have tools to avoid any laneinteraction when in a bad spot and zone by existing when even slightly ahead. Additionally from a thematic point of view: Why exactly should an Assassin fight open in Lane at all?

On the other hand, we have the Jgl-Assassin. Those are amazing, they can deal with their Camps, but dont have massive range or Waveclear - they have basicly well rounded kits and fit into the Jgl quite perfectly. Shaco Khazix Nocturne - great Champs. I also really like Evelynn playstlye.. but.. argh shes like Kayle - played when broken, forgotten when not. Her Kit needs a little more depths.

Sure there are some bad ones as well, Rengar his Kit simply explained: ADC->Face. He does nothing else literally.

Additionally there is a difference between the smart-play Assassin and the reaction base - where I prefer the ones that draw their power from REAL out-plays (NO mashing R/E or w/e when seeing a projectile is NOT!) like Shaco or (unfed) LB. But thats another topic I guess.

Well my few cents so far - what do you think? ^^

Wînter Fox6/8/2016, 7:20:54 PM6 votes

We hate them.

Nameless Voice6/8/2016, 6:51:19 PM5 votes

I think that a healthy assassin needs to be high risk, high reward.

The problem is that most of our current assassin roster are very low-risk.

Fizz, Zed, LeBlanc, Ekko - they have easy options to escape from bad situations and recover from their missplays. That is not something that an assassin should have, in my opinion.

As others have said in this thread, it comes down to having too much mobility. An assassin should be able to engage, or escape, not both. Being able to escape after killing someone (like Katarina or Kha'zix can) is fine, because they still put themselves at huge risk when they engage. Being able to engage, botch everything, and still escape unscathed, however, is something that I don't think any assassin (or, really, any champion) should be allowed to do.

Having more than one mobility move is inherently unhealthy in champion design. Every single champion who has 2+ mobility spells (or one on a super-low cooldown) has been hated by the community at one time or another. Fizz Zed Yasuo Leblanc Riven LeeSin Kalista Nidalee Kassadin ( Akali ?)

Playing a risky assassin like Katarina, Evelynn, Shaco, or Nocturne feels very rewarding when you actually manage to pull off an assassination, because you know that if you mess it up, you're dead.

I also feel that assassins should be poor at standard laning. They should be bad at farming, pushing and taking towers, but instead excel at killing their opponents - and as a result, be required to do so. An assassin should get a lead by murdering their enemies, not by farming. If an assassin is in a lane and their opponent manages to avoid dying and to stop them from roaming, then the assassin should be placed at a disadvantage because of their poor waveclear/farming ability. They shouldn't be able to just ignore the enemy that they can't kill and farm up for the late game. A lot of current assassins are way too good at farming. For example, pre-mini-rework LeBlanc used to have to kill you to have any relevance; current LeBlanc can simply max W and safely farm until the lategame.

spombjop6/8/2016, 5:36:32 PM4 votes

They are probably healthiest designed champs. Assassin goes full damage and he does dmg,

Meanwhile Voli goes full tank and can burst down anyone in 1 sec.

ShinkoMinori6/8/2016, 5:41:02 PM3 votes

Example of stupid assassin: Irelia : goes full tank and can still burst you down in a second, plus tenacity steroids so you cant get her off your back either.

BIue Monk6/10/2016, 1:22:15 AM3 votes

Worst design.

Most of assassins are error-proof champs that can just randomly "try" their burst on anyone and still have an escape mechanic just in case they failed.

You should be instantly punished for not knowing your damage and you assassination power (= being unskilled) and/or failing your assassination combo., this is how it should be.

Also, as an assassin, you very often have high mobility (also called escape) so you can be out of position with no risk of getting ganked/caught without your opponents using everything on you.

This is also why no-dash champs are inherently more skilled than others, Flash is not enough ? You should work on your gameplay.

Add the fact that some assassins are melee and benefit from unjustifiably high MR/level PLUS they can be AD so they basically have the best advantage over most AP mages because of the easy last hitting (AD !) AND fast tower pushing (don't forget that pushing is ultimately what makes you win a game) AND eventually have a decent split pushing, add again that some of them are mana-free champs and you have a predictible balance failure.

Mana-free AD Casters are inherently and objectively unbalanced.

Bye.

FreudFromSKA6/9/2016, 12:54:51 PM3 votes

I think Riot has a simplistic, outdated and Un-fun idea of what an assassin is, as far as most assassin in the game go.

There's nothing patient, opportunistic and artful about Zed, Fizz, Leblanc, Katharina, or any of the other face-roll GG "git gud" type champs that simply wait till six then harass people in the open and then blow them up the second a fight starts

I think some better ideas of assassins in the game require greater strategy and a more cerebral approach. Shaco and Nocturne, are examples of assassins that can't just wait till six and blow up every lane just because their stats are stupid af. They really are predators.

I think Kha Zix and Eve both have good potential to be more fair than Zed or Fizz will ever be as well.

Spoofghoul6/9/2016, 12:17:46 PM3 votes

First let

assassins shouldn't have %hp damage they ought to be inneffective vs tanky targets,

I actually think zed is healthy in his assassination patter, its his endless poke and waveclear + easymode execute farming which makes him bullshit because unless you do something he will out cs you and snowball that way.

Alot of assassins kits really don't offer too much counterplay they jump in with thier super mobility 1 shot you and jump out not much you can do outside of being too tanky hence why they should not have % damage. I think that should be fixed zed for example goes in appears behind you as he marks you if you stun him as he appears he is fucked. The deathmark proc itself can sometimes becountered by healing and shielding etc.

in fizz case you either dodge the ult or you die as you cant stop him from egtting onto you with a fixed dash and a untargetability engage and if you build hp then screw you he has %hp damage.

Too often winning lane vs an assassin comes down to the assassin outplaying himself. They get the se outplay kits but their kits simultaneously don't leave room for outplay themselfes which is an issue imho

ZT Xperimentor6/11/2016, 9:46:48 PM2 votes

Assassins should be like a single target mage; long cooldowns and high costs, but able to nuke only one target, with some kind of mobility that's not frustrating to deal with. Examples would be somewhere cross between nocturne & khazix.

deadlychuck6/9/2016, 1:01:11 AM2 votes

Assassins should play a niche role in the game, but riot has designed champions who assassinate, but also do other things.

I feel that just about every assassins should be a pure assassin, and that most examples of assassin/subclass have always been extremely toxic in just about every game.

In league I dislike the fact that riot makes them capable of going toe-to-toe with champions in lane. I understand being able to hold a lane, but being able to dominate a lane doesn't feel like it should be something an assassin is capable of doing (obviously any champion can dominate a lane being 10/0). I'm not saying assassins should be limited to the jungle, but i don't think that most any design will ever work which is intended to 100-0 a target and not be punished during the lane phase.

Basically they shouldn't be limited to the jungle, but they shouldn't have a nice time trying to lane.

Teridax686/9/2016, 4:32:53 AM2 votes

There are a lot of problems with assassins right now that have been mentioned quite a bit: most assassins don't feel like they have that much counterplay, assassins very often feel very similar in terms of what they do and how they do it (i.e. "activate your ability rotation to jump to a squishy and nuke them to death"), and the class by nature tends to be really binary, with assassins either jumping off of a lead to become unstoppable killing machines or falling behind and not being able to do their job properly, if at all. Complicating this is the problem of scalings: the more you make an assassin dependent on scalings for damage, the more binary they'll tend to be (items and gold make an even larger difference on their kill potential), but the more you shift an assassin's strength away from scalings and towards bases instead, the likelier they are to go for a tanky build and deal far too much damage for far too little risk. There's also no real assassin-specific itemization, bar Duskblade of Draktharr, which makes balancing the class all the more difficult and unstable.

Basically, what I think this means is that assassins need changes to their kits and their itemization (and perhaps the mechanics of itemization in general need to change in order to discourage squishies from building tanky) in order to be more distinct, more fun for everyone involved and easier to adjust. There probably also needs to be some work done on anti-assassin itemization, since for a very long time assassins have been designed and balanced around pretty hard counters, namely Zhonya's Hourglass, Banshee's Veil and (formerly) Quicksilver Sash, but also high amounts of health/resist stacking. I think the assassin role is pretty well-defined (they're there to kill priority targets), and in an ideal world it should be okay, even healthy for assassins to be able to retreat after killing their opponent, provided they have many more options to fail, and consequently also more fallback options.

Personally, I think assassins have the potential to be the most fun class in League. In a game that's focused around team play, ally synergy and protection of VIPs (namely marksmen), assassins are sort of a release valve for all that: if you're more of a lone wolf or just don't want to stick with your team all the time, playing an assassin should give you a valid reason to be more independent. If the enemy ADC/APC gets way too strong and/or the enemy team is playing a really defensive comp, the perfect counter to that should be an assassin, who should have the tools to handle situations like those better than anyone else. Assassins are the perfect answer to the marksman meta, and the ideal class for players looking to carry on their own, who have been frustrated by the game's shift away from that mentality. Given the right tools, assassins should be about making boring games exciting, and suddenly giving really high-stakes challenges to their targets at any given moment that either side can win. In a meta where assassins are strong, they'd get to heavily punish stalling, splitpushing and turtling by taking out passive enemies, and would thereby be able to accelerate games significantly and make risk-taking competitively viable.

Aptest6/10/2016, 2:44:21 PM1 votes

I think that assassins are pretty fun to play and to play against, if you are playing mid or jungle or top I.E. if you are playing from a position and champion pool that have tools to fight them (I.E. you can either match with your own assassin, have champions with strong anti- assassin kits that you can choose yourself, or can play a fed bruiser/juggernaut/tank and run all over them).

They are short ranged, interact with their lane opponent, move fast around the map, good for making plays in the mid game which is the most fun part of the game. All positives.

If you are playing in the botlane either in the ADC or in the Pauper position (=support) than assassins are pretty oppressive and you'd rather have tank meta.

Cubíx6/8/2016, 5:39:19 PM1 votes

First off I main Kha'zix and his place as an assassin is pretty good. Assassins as a whole strive somewhat in the tank meta to pick out the ones that do the damage on the team. I can safely say I don't feel helpless when I play an assassin