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Hard to swallow fact: Support-Assassin can be done and be done healthily

Hotarµ··18 votes·7,531 views

Just before I start I want to say that I am a Pyke main. Surprisingly, a lot of people will downvote me for that alone. But I want to say that I'm on your side if you disagree with Pyke's current state. Please just don't throw any hate because of the champion I play, and if you're actually concerned about the health of the game, read on. Thank you.

Pretty much ever since Pyke's conception people have doubted that Support-Assassin was a good thing for League. Unfortunately, his release wasn't handled well and his kit has a ton of flaws that are currently being abused. Most namely, Pyke's biggest issues are:

  • Being able to build full on tank and his kill power not suffering as a result
  • Nearly impossible / way too hard to kill despite being designed as a squishy assassin

I believe his main abilities (Q-W-E) are in the right place — they can all be dodged or countered easily and offer great tools to his team. The problem lies in his ultimate and passive, as they're directly linked to the problems stated above.

To make Pyke a healthier champion, two things need to happen.

  1. His passive needs a short delay before activation, and to scale solely with AD. This means if Pyke builds AD, he's properly rewarded and can eventually jump back into the fight if damaged. This also reduces the effectiveness of tank builds because much less damage is being regenerated, forcing him to recall or lose the fight.

  2. His ultimate needs unique interactions with AD. Building tank still gives Pyke the ability to instakill without fail. Sure, you lose out on 30-80 hitpoints of your ult threshold, but that's negligible when we're talking about instantly executing people.

I'd propose something like "Upon reaching X amount of AD, Pyke's ultimate will execute enemy champions below the the threshold." Sure, Pyke would suffer until reaching that point, but it removes the abusive nature of tank builds. It would also mean tank builds are still possible as you can still kill with his ult, but it wouldn't penetrate through shields and last hitting to share gold would be much harder until you reach the AD point.

I'm also aware of the PBE changes (making most of his abilities scale with Lethality), but I truly don't like them or believe they will fix much. Currently, Pyke has the ability to buy any damage item in the game and use it efficiently. Unfortunately, these PBE changes will make him into another generic assassin one like Zed Talon Rengar Khazix.

Every game would become: Pyke-item 3147 item 3142 item 3117 item 3069 etc.

I'd love to get a moderator's/Rioter's opinion on this but I'm not sure it'll happen. I just want to see Pyke pushed into a healthier, better designed spot.

18 Comments

Oleandervine9 votes

I actually agree with your suggestions, and I'll make one of my own - his gray health needs to start decaying at some point.

Daddy Ants9 votes

Pyke should have a cooldown on his grey health / healing effect, similar to Tahm Kench.

At his current level of tuning, Pyke is near impossible to punish in lane.

If he loses a trade he just runs away and comes back 5 seconds later with all the damage he took healed back.

AXayahAccount4 votes

Building pure tank on Pyke DOES make his kill pressure suffer, however it just makes the ever looming ultimate resets more scary.

DoomRPG3 votes

I agree that not only is support assassin is a very real viable yet balanced possibility. In fact I personally think Pyke is one of the best designed champs in the game. Yeah he has faults (Namely that he shouldn't be able to build tank.) However I personally disagree with your statement about adding lethality scalings.

The reason for that is in my opinion there is nothing wrong with lethality and assassin items on a base level. The problem is that there are THREE. Two in practice, if Dusk and Ghost slightly nerfed, and a slew of other lethality items to cover a few niches in utility. I think Assassins would become much easier to balance, and be more fun overall. Whether they're Pyke in bot lane, rengo in jg or what have you. (Apologies for tangent.)

Illabethe3 votes

I want to counter a few assumptions you make, which really are biased and not true.

  1. It's not that kill power doesn't diminish when building armor. It's the opposite. Kill power diminishes when building AD, because Pyke survives FAR less even initial engagements. On AD, in relevant elos, Pyke can't even survive his entire E on AD, meaning his Deaths rise, kills fall, and he is more or less wasted team space late game. On Armor, he's actually able to fulfill a role by not dying before his very first skill is cast.

  2. Horribly wrong and biased in the "Almost impossible/hard to kill in lane." A) He dies to almost every single adc once they have a Stormrazor; His W decay puts him slower than their chase when it's procced. And then there are champs like Vayne and Sivir who are rewarded for chasing him. And that's just the adcs. I can eliminate Pyke with almost any Mage support, and almost all diver junglers/mids can outrun Pyke.

Maybe you're referring to the fact..... like every other catcher..... he stays back in lane and doesn't engage unless he gets hooks. When you're fighting at 500-600 range.... yeah. he's hard to kill..... just like every other champ.......

  1. You do realize the entire point of his HP > AD passive is to make it count as Bonus AD, not Base AD, right? Pyke's Base AD is systematically low, so the HP > AD tradeoff actually puts Pyke on par in AD with where BASE AD scaling champs are in skill damage ratios. He basically is losing all his HP potential to gain stats other champs already have.

In other words, his regeneration is the compensation for this fact. Without it, he's at a net loss to every other AD champ.

Even with good AD scaling, Pyke generally is one of the lowest damage output champs, even when he goes 20/0/7 So trying to argue his damage is high and that it gets expressed is completely ridiculous.

  1. You're misrepresenting Pyke's Ult. It doesn't guarantee a kill at all. It has several restrictions, and conditions that need met:

-Can't kill Unkillable. -Can be easily dodged. -Can be flashed. -Can kill Pyke before it lands, and it won't kill. -Can be CC'd and negated, if timed before the Crossbones fall. -Can be outhealed. -Requires the target to be low health in the first place (Something Pyke has trouble doing himself)

We're not talking about instantly executing people. We're talking about putting the final hit on a champ already in a prone position...... in which case.... they shouldn't still be on the map, and there are TONS of champions who have similar skills, that even if not an execute, behave like one (Nidalee Evelynn Elise Ekko Akali Chogath Darius Fiora Jhin Kayn RekSai Urgot ...... all have skills that behave as executions, and are either instant kills, or do so much damage to low HP champs that they might as well be executes, because they are unmitigateable by defenses.

  1. PBE changes are going to erase his viability and immediately shove him down to a 40% win champions. High elo cannot survive as pure Lethality, scales CDR slower, and is purely outrun/cc'd. It's a cute idea to force Lethality..... but it will only work in low elos where you can get away with Lethality builds.

Personally, I'm disgusted with it, because I don't take Domination or Aftershock. I take Phase Rush, and do better than most meta Pyke's I've seen. Never lost to an opposing Pyke, and I legitimately have perfect games

ez mental boom2 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XUIYHt6C0A

(edit) I just realized I've been wanting to do "bot lane revolution" for 3 years and still haven't found a thresh player

DarkDeamonDragon1 votes

[{quoted}](name=ez mental boom,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=OsjFZusV,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2018-10-29T18:26:18.725+0000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XUIYHt6C0A

(edit) I just realized I've been wanting to do "bot lane revolution" for 3 years and still haven't found a thresh player

I would love to do this, but my Thresh is no where near good enough.

Don Lupus2 votes

He needs some hard nerfs. People WHINE about Janna, Soraka and Nami cause they are so oPrEsSiVe. But Pyke is another one of those "you get everything" champs - high mobility/escape, Assassin dmg, ability to build tanky while still being bursty, CC AND the option to play as a support without really losing effect.

Whisperwind232 votes

implying pyke is healthy.

iiGazeii1 votes

I think they should keep the PBE changes, but have his passive also convert armor/MR into Lethality. That way, he can't ever be tanky, but his item pool is no longer restricted.

Bobloser35551 votes

I don't play him but I don't really see anything wrong with him, except that his early game is a bit too strong and maybe his late game should be slightly buffed because he is strongest in lane. Ive seen it many times, he absolutely demolishes laning phase and falls off pretty hard in late game. I think a tank assassin is a good idea because he is unique in that way.

Daddy Ants1 votes

My proposal for Pyke

Pyke is a playmaker but right now he's unable to be sufficiently punished when he makes a bad play or takes a bad trade. To tackle this we are adding a cooldown to the Grey Health healing effect which scales down based on level.

Gift of the Drowned Ones (Passive)

Cooldown added to Grey Health healing effect VALUE: 30 / 25 / 20 / 15 at levels 1/6/11/16. (before CDR)

Noor Sakata1 votes

Support assassin isn't a bad idea , but Pyke is a bad idea

One of his problems is his E hitbox , it hits sometimes even when dodged and his low cd E

personally I wouldn't mind an assassin support and I suggested that idea before

Illabethe1 votes

You do realize E has a 15 second cooldown, right? One of the longest in the game. Even after CDR, it's still 7.4+ seconds......

TwitchInMyPants1 votes

Personally? I think Pyke is balanced, but his ultimate is absolutely not fun to deal with. His regen counters poke but as long as you maintain vision and chunk him when he's close there isn't much to worry about. And really his main impact is his Q/E, he has a similar pattern to other catchers like Thresh and he doesn't really have solo kill level damage most of the game.

However, his ultimate resetting - while not unheard of - is absolutely obnoxious to deal with. If your team has AoE and has Pyke, getting even 1 person low means you're guaranteed a 2nd ult. And its likely your 1st ult hit someone else if its a tight funnel like baron/dragon pit or a jungle route. So you get to repeat it and end fights absurdly quickly. Katarina is forced to juggle daggers and have good timing for her base kit to be allowed that kind of ability. Darius has to whack people multiple times and has no mobility to justify his. Kha'Zix is probably the most unreasonable of these given how low his other CDs are, but his reset is his escape so he has to take an active risk to use it.

Pyke gets to have his cake and eat it too, he has very strong basic abilities on top of a reset ultimate. The instakill threshold is pretty bad for tanks but in most cases isn't a big deal, there's higher kill thresholds for other executes. The reset though is absolutely obnoxious. You can basically replace the safety Thresh offers, get all the standard advantages of having a catcher champion in lane, and if your team has literally anyone that's low he gets 2+ bursting attacks with a dash included. That part of his kit straight up has no counterplay other than "Don't get low" which is pretty hard in League of Damage.

TeCoolMage1 votes

Harder to swallow fact: a support assassin can be done healthier than other assassins because they have a wider range of things to do than “wander the jungle and hope someone is caught out” and “one shot the carry then mobility away”

Reaper Soraka1 votes

Every time Pyke goes unbanned I hope Leblanc does as well. At level 9 she can just kill him regardless of his items because he cannot build enough health to live through her combo.

He's really fun to play against. It's too bad he's banned so often.

Marothennan1 votes

was gonna upvote but then i realized this is in the wrong board, you should post this in memes and games

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