Nearly every single qq thread here is about an assassin. People will even complain about the ones who have much lower win rates compared to most other champions.
Yes I perfectly know that win rate does not directly equate strength, but it is still a factor nonetheless.
If people can understand that, then how come they can't understand that assassins are fundamentally balanaced, just like mages, tanks, bruisers, and ADCs?
the majority of players are ADC mains
Probably because the entire point of the assassin class is to kill another champion so quickly that they have little to no chance of retaliation. Getting killed before you even had the chance to fight back is gonna create a lot of salt.
So here's the best reasoning I can think of all the complaints about assassins. Not sure if it's worth noting at this point but here goes. RIght now, at this moment, assassin's are the worst designed class in league. There are a lot of factors that go into this so let me put out the biggest ones.
Firstly, mobility. Mobility is a very frustrating thing in league because it gives a lot of freedom in any given situation. Assassin's power budgets never take mobility into account so they tend to very in their ability to get in and get out of a fight. No matter what assassin you talk about whether it is zed or fizz, akali or rengar, you will see that the ability of assassin's to get to their opponent/stay on their opponent is hated by most carry roles. This is further augmented by the second point.
Damage. The damage of assassin's generally isnt that great compared to mages. whether it is annie, azir, orianna, lux, corki, vayne, caitlyn etc, most mages and adc's as damage roles can outdamage assassin's. Then why is damage a problem? Because assassin's do it faster. It doesnt matter if azir can do 2x the damage of leblanc if leblanc blows him up before he does anything. Combining this with the aforementioned mobility gives every assassin by nature, decent early games a terrifying mid games. In lane, once an assassin has the ability to all in you, they can straight win the lane with equal skill just because they have low margins for error. You blow everything as an assassin and you will generally have enough damage to kill something because most mages/ adc's need time to do lots of damage or are balance around doing damage to an entire team. Because an assassin's damage is single target they can only delete one champion, but early and midgame are literally defined with single situations as more than just a probability, they are a fact. Until both teams start doing 5 man groups late game being an assassin is generally not that hard because at some point someone will always be isolated and SURPRISE QWER you're dead. This brings us into the 3rd problem
Scaling. As I mentioned before assassin's have strong early games by nature. Maybe you want to avoid this and say akali pre 6 but that's the point. Once she hits 6 akalli is plenty strong and can straight kill her laning. Add to this the fact that you have a few, leblanc, fizz and akali come to mind, who hyper scale into the late game to delete anything and viola you have a recipe for a champion class that will frustrate nearly everyone. It makes certain situations very binary where the equation is: if assassin is present you=dead, if an assassin not present you=alive. This is further augmented by the fourth major problem of this class.
Itemization. this is actually the worst part of the class. The way that league works, every class has its own items/group of items because the class wants those stats. ADC's want Crit, AS, AD, lifesteal. FIghters want health, resistance and damage. Pure tanks want just health and resistance. Etc for mages and supports. Not only do assassin's go down both AD and AP as their damage system, their are currently no items meant specifically for assassins. Think about it. All the items for assassins fall into other classes like ADC items/fighter items for AD assassins and mage items for AP assassins. The only stat both classes share as wanted is penetration which is still split between AD and AP. This means that they can fluctuate in and out viability much more randomly then any other class. The only explicit nerf to assassin's from an itemization stand point is when tanks are buffed. At least in theory, assassin itemization should be filled with low scaling, high penetration items to give them better early games and worse late games or something akin to this, but because this is not the case, all assassin's are allowed to just keep scaling to high heaven.
tl;dr there are 4 main points to all assassins that make them frustrating. mobility because it can give safety and reliance. damage because while not exceedingly high it is all single target and thus more than effective. scaling because they basically become strong once they get access to both damage and their mobility which can happen as early as level 6. itemization because it means any assassin can become relevant at almost any time.
because as always, they accomplish too many tasks, and often its a unique goal which no one else can replicate, see fizz troll pole. see zed shadow swap. see lee sin hop around all game long.
now ask yourself, why does this person with extreme mobility deal even more damage than an immobile mid laner? why play the immobile mid laner at all? whats the justification?
it used to be they had extra utility, like a stun, or a slow. but riot feels the need to gut those "oppressive CC" abilities. see veigar, swain, karthus, middlesticks, ryze, zyra, syndra, all had their CC nerfed. etc etc.
so why should i land my skill shot, when some targeted assassin is going to deal just as much damage? why should i have to deal with a mana pool and rush mana and CDR as first items to keep up with the wave clear from the full AD/AP rushed enemy assassin who has both kill potential and wave clear?
wheres the reward?
ACTIVE: Zed throws his spinning blades forward, dealing physical damage to the first enemy they pass through and 60% damage to enemies thereafter. 「 PHYSICAL DAMAGE: 75 / 115 / 155 / 195 / 235 (+ 100% Bonus AD) 」 Living Shadow.png LIVING SHADOW: Active shadows also throw a shuriken in the direction of the target point. Additional shuriken striking the same enemy deal 50% damage and restore energy. 「 ADDITIONAL DAMAGE: 37.5 / 57.5 / 77.5 / 97.5 / 117.5 (+ 50% Bonus AD) 」
ACTIVE: Syndra conjures a Dark Sphere at the target location, dealing magic damage to all enemies hit, which then remains for 6 seconds. MAGIC DAMAGE: 50 / 95 / 140 / 185 / 230 (+ 60% AP) Transcendent.png TRANSCENDENT BONUS: Dark Sphere deals「 264.5 (+ 69% AP) 」magic damage against enemy
just compare the bases and scaling. and the fact that zeds shuriken is 900 range. and syndra orb is 800 range. because melee assassin logic.
and then when you add up zed can cast his Q 90 times to your 18casts(before you totally oom and leave yourself defenseless besides summoners and auto attacks) before the first back at or around the 9minute mark. assuming you dont early back for a second dorans just for the necessary mana regen.
They won't stop until Mages and ADCs are played in every role
Because they're an entire class of champions designed around being able to kill a target before the target can do anything about it, in a game where kills equate to gold that make it easier to get kills.
How is that NOT supposed to generate a truckload of salt?
While the rest of this Game is based on strategy and decision making (as a Team) - Assassins are all about reactions and muscle memory AND are forcing this on every other role as well (#Rengo - hey press Zhonyas within 0.2s or you're dead).
Additionally they're not even near to be Fun2Play against. (Talon and Shaco are OK.. but the rest, dont get me even started!)
It's probably inherent to the character class. You will feel salty dying in 2 seconds ir less out of nowhere from an assassin, you will feel like there is no counterplay as opposed to when you're killed more slowly. The counterplay is map awareness to prevent an assassin from doing their job.
Assassin's tend to be pubstompers. It's the same reason Gameplay always complains about Yasuo and Riven despite higher the huge amount of data from higher elos showing them to be quite sub-par.
Wow...you don't get it at all. Fine, let me explain.
Power is not a factor when determining whether someone will complain about a champion. Frustration is.
Assassins are, by necessity, high burst low counterplay champions who exploit the current vision system to simply appear out of nowhere and 100-0 you before you even realize they were there.
This experience is upsetting. More so than a tank who just sat around never dying and winning his team the game, more so than an MF who got 8 Crits on he ult for 1200 damage AOE. Assassins feel bad to play against because it feels like the only options you have against them are to build defensively.
because assassins become perma ban the moment they are relevant.
Fizz, Talon, Akali, Katarina just to name a few. It has happened countless times, they're horribly designed, just look at fucking Rengar, what an abomination and you expect people not to hate them?
Because no one likes to not play video games today. Just look at all of the rengar montages and ask yourself, is that fun to play against?
Idk, bruisers are worth complaining about though. :)
