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Riot needs to look at AP assassin itemization

Taliniz··1 votes·546 views

Riot thinking that AP itemization is better than AD items is laughable. Zed et all get access to items like Steraks, maw, ghostblade, dusk blade, scimitar, death's dance etc items with lifesteal, enhanced autos as a result of AD to help them get around the battlefield and survive engages. Meanwhile HORRIBLE AP itemization for melee AP's (AP itemization is built for ranged champions as 85% of all APS are range) get a constantly nerfed zhonyas since long range CC heavy mages abuse it, lichbane which has also been nerfed from abusers like ahri and nashors which while a GOOD item is very hard to take advantage of when there is very little way for them to survive for several autos.

Riot constantly groans that all the AP assassins (fizz, ekko, akali, eve etc) go tank. Well you know, if you gave them proper itemization and ability to survive we wouldn't have that issue. YES AP ITEMIZATION IS GOOD ON ASSASSINS, IF YOUR NAME IS LEBLANC or Kassadin (who essentially becomes a leblanc late game with his 1 second CD ultimate. Leblanc, A ranged assassin with INSTANT GAP CLOSE AND INSTANT PORT BACK with as much or MORE burst and mobility than the melee centric assassins. It's hilarious how riot's excuse for a worst in class MS speed with Fizz is so that he has to rely on his spells for mobility while Leblanc (who has higher MS AND IS RANGED) has higher mobility. Seriously riot, take a step back, get off the favoritism train and take a serious look at the itemization for melee AP. Something like a mirror to MAW with AP, magic pen, armor and a shield that scales off total AP but make the item MELEE only to prevent abuse from tanks and ranged alike or a ghostblade type item which grants movement speed so they can take advantage of their more auto attack centric focus (eve, fizz, ekko) and to take advantage of a well designed class item nashors better. It's very easy to see why these champions go tank.

4 Comments

Avienal1 votes

{quoted}

Riot thinking that AP itemization is better than AD items is laughable. Zed et all get access to items like Steraks, maw, ghostblade, dusk blade, scimitar, death's dance etc items with lifesteal, enhanced autos as a result of AD to help them get around the battlefield and survive engages. Meanwhile HORRIBLE AP itemization for melee AP's (AP itemization is built for ranged champions as 85% of all APS are range) get a constantly nerfed zhonyas since long range CC heavy mages abuse it, lichbane which has also been nerfed from abusers like ahri and nashors which while a GOOD item is very hard to take advantage of when there is very little way for them to survive for several autos. Riot constantly groans that all the AP assassins (fizz, ekko, akali, eve etc) go tank. Well you know, if you gave them proper itemization and ability to survive we wouldn't have that issue. YES AP ITEMIZATION IS GOOD ON ASSASSINS, IF YOUR NAME IS LEBLANC or Kassadin (who essentially becomes a leblanc late game with his 1 second CD ultimate. Leblanc, A ranged assassin with INSTANT GAP CLOSE AND INSTANT PORT BACK with as much or MORE burst and mobility than the melee centric assassins. It's hilarious how riot's excuse for a worst in class MS speed with Fizz is so that he has to rely on his spells for mobility while Leblanc (who has higher MS AND IS RANGED) has higher mobility. Seriously riot, take a step back, get off the favoritism train and take a serious look at the itemization for melee AP. Something like a mirror to MAW with AP, magic pen, armor and a shield that scales off total AP but make the item MELEE only to prevent abuse from tanks and ranged alike or a ghostblade type item which grants movement speed so they can take advantage of their more auto attack centric focus (eve, fizz, ekko) and to take advantage of a well designed class item nashors better. It's very easy to see why these champions go tank.

First man, learn to space that wall of text into sections, even if you are making them into a sentences, a wall of text is ridiculously annoying. Second, Not all 'AP' assassins are in bad positions, especially with Akali[Whose a HYBRID type, stacking only AP or only AD is usually a bad idea with her if not done right] who just needs level 6 and a hex tech revolver to start her mayhem and mix it into a gunblade to use the burst heal, hybrid stats and active bonus 'hit' (which is a good upgrade from revolver due to AP scaling tacked on top and move eating) to get her rolling into a menance in mid lanes except against particular champions. Its just more of an annoying matter they don't have a perfect diverisity for every 'champion role type' with both AD and AP sides, so people end up just pooling a bunch of items together like tank items and lawl'stomp around with ya.

Plus if Riot became simple in terms of arranging the champion types. They might as well just make all assassin's AD, All tanks AP, All Fighters AD, All Mages AP, All marksmen AD and all Supports AP. But just like a certain MOBA by the name of Infinite crisis, it's not exactly a good idea to standardize a roster like that since it creates too many ridiculous limitations especially if a game had progressed far enough and suddenly doing a change like that could ruin unique'ness on some champions (Like how IC had 'Mecha wonderwoman' as this type of Hybrid Marksmen but got ruined partially by forcing her to be stuck on AD too much and then another 'champion' aka Catwoman in IC was this really interesting type of AD assassin/Mage who was a 'melee' but had interesting mobile and range attack mechanics, but then constantly got bounced around between AD and AP and then finally was stuck as a AP type of 'champion' whose ultimate became a waste considering it was mainly made to spam her cartwheel, use her abilities to inflict heavy bleed on targets and effectively damage spaz them like crazy). End result, bad idea from the head'aches that way if they use that as a means to 'fix things up'.

Ultimately Considering how i'm seeing a plenty of scummy plays such as using stealth or 'wall jumping' or easy to leap on top of a target type of mechanics going about, the presence of 'carry tanks' even if they don't build tankie (cough Xin Zhao full attack speed granting lifesteal more silly then Aatrox or Swain's cough), Plenty of items need to be redone and not just simple small tweaks and not just 1 or 3 of them at a time, literally they need to rework maybe a total of a dozen items that have become too dominant itemization to lead to these oppressive builds. Some of these items being:

-Rod of Ages (Just like Black cleaver and Trinity Force it's basically a cookie cutter Mage item that lets them get free mana sustain, easy HP and Mana stacks so they can cling in a lane easier even if they get harassed more then their opponent by jungle ganks and top of that it gives AP, not a bad item in general but compared to Moredellicon, it might as well be the go to for too many AP champions who can scum play and ignore CDR especially early game, since one problem with 'tankie' champions is easy items to get hp and their damage stat on top of many gimmicks).

-Blood Razor (Even with all the tweaks they done to this item especially after the 'Sated Devour mini game system', God i still miss the little wolf, It feels like this item is just as much of a culprit by being the equilvency to a Early game Blade of the Ruin king by providing sizable attack speed and % hp kill which stacked with a champion who can either fire it rapidly or has other on hit bonuses they can mix it with, then it lets them evaporate 25% to an entire 100% hp bar within just a few seconds of 'starting' a gank. I could go as far to say this item might need to get the % hp kill cut in half to make it more of an option that could easily be swapped with instead a Warrior Enchantment instead.

-Black Cleaver (Staple to any Tank or Fighter type o AD champion and even screw the crit and go penetration build marksmen, item needs to get its usefulness hashed out to make it more of a fighter option item and especially less of a marksmen item, namely killing the oppressive potential of the armor % cleave a bit could be one idea they could fix it).

-Ghost Blade (Can you really name one game you ever had happen where someone wasn't using this item, Blood Razor or even Black cleaver? Even just Ghost blade is too much of a easy giving pen item and rush around to escape and chase item, push turrets, flip a trade in a blink of an eye and plain laugh your face off if someone tries to trade with you on equal grounds without proper measures to counter out your easy +20 armor penetration off the item alone).

-Phantom Dancer (Yasuo build plus a simple ez mode mobility item which just like Ghost blade, makes it chase and escape enemies like you just turned into Vayne and got her passive on top of your own. Its more of a wonder when i ever see Shiv or Runan's hurricane that much and its a more uncommon sight for me to see Rapid fire hand'cannon instead of Phantom dancer because people already got things like Ghost blade and Black cleaver as their means to damage nuke you, they only really need to be able to chase and escape for the rest of the thing.

So many other items could also be involved but to me these kind of items always seem to show up too often and usually what decides if i'm gonna get wrek'd within the first 20 minutes of the match and sometimes suffer to losing because none of my team mates want to surrender when its extremely obvious we have no chance of a turn over (usually a turn over can only occur if a team did 'NOT' lose every single one of their lanes and did NOT lose their second turrets before 20 minutes have passed) OR it simply becomes that even if we manage to pull a win out of our arses thanks to late game power on champions, it still becomes a annoying task to perform because those champions running all those itemization and champ types make it hard to even push hard in a match.

Calabok1 votes

yikes. Block of texts Block-Man!

Taliniz1 votes

Nobody wants to standardize the roster and make all assassins AD etc. But if they are going to diversify the roster so heavily then they have to create proper itemization for those champions. A melee only AP champion with limited escape (trickster which is your AOE highest AP ratio on a 400 unit escape or your highest AP ratio tied in with your ultimate (ekko) or in the case of eve or akali very little) , they need to have items that ensure they are able to survive while building for their job. Leblanc doesn't need those with an instant port back neither does kass, a zhonya's is good enough as his R isn't the main source of his damage and late it is on a 1 second CD.

Right now, with the melee assassins it is basically die in 2 or 3 shots from ADC (which is .5 second), yet riot makes it so that they can't one shot the opponent with constant nerfs. Then you have the support healing or peeling, mikaels, the spell heal, banshee, zhonyas etc and it makes it literally impossible for them to do their job. So not only do they have an absolutely atrocious early game where if they don't get ahead they are practically useless but late game (when ratios kick in) are mediocre unless you catch the enemy by surprise. Riot stating that AP itemization is good for AP's is VERY VERY ignorant and shows how much they know about their game. YES when looking at leblanc and kassadin, the item pool serves them well, but not on someone that is expected to survive in melee with no shields and CC.

In all honesty, they should make all melee assassins AD and all ranged assassins AP since the item pools are better suited for that unless they want to add some items to the pool.

Avienal1 votes

{quoted}

Nobody wants to standardize the roster and make all assassins AD etc. But if they are going to diversify the roster so heavily then they have to create proper itemization for those champions. A melee only AP champion with limited escape (trickster which is your AOE highest AP ratio on a 400 unit escape or your highest AP ratio tied in with your ultimate (ekko) or in the case of eve or akali very little) , they need to have items that ensure they are able to survive while building for their job. Leblanc doesn't need those with an instant port back neither does kass, a zhonya's is good enough as his R isn't the main source of his damage and late it is on a 1 second CD.

Right now, with the melee assassins it is basically die in 2 or 3 shots from ADC (which is .5 second), yet riot makes it so that they can't one shot the opponent with constant nerfs. Then you have the support healing or peeling, mikaels, the spell heal, banshee, zhonyas etc and it makes it literally impossible for them to do their job. So not only do they have an absolutely atrocious early game where if they don't get ahead they are practically useless but late game (when ratios kick in) are mediocre unless you catch the enemy by surprise. Riot stating that AP itemization is good for AP's is VERY VERY ignorant and shows how much they know about their game. YES when looking at leblanc and kassadin, the item pool serves them well, but not on someone that is expected to survive in melee with no shields and CC.

In all honesty, they should make all melee assassins AD and all ranged assassins AP since the item pools are better suited for that unless they want to add some items to the pool.

It would also help if they made clear borders to define what it means for a champion to be 'OP' early game but becomes not that useful in Late game. Basically they need to give each champion a power scale where they could have a bad 'point in time' like Early, Mid or Late game where they aren't that good but in trade off they are much stronger at a different point in the game. That or have champions to simply be 'reliable' in all phases of the game.

Take for Example Garen, his kit is cookie cutter simple that might put him in a bad spot against other 'naughty' champions early on, but not by that large of a margin since he has measures to sustain himself (passive hp recovery that gets stronger into late game and his W which lets him get a up to flat 30 armor and a active to reduce damage taken for a few seconds based on its rank), while also having good measures to lane close or escape (His Q acting as a slow breaker, move speed gainer and 'decisive' hit to start a trade) and his wave clear (in the form of his E which also does more damage on targets by themselves, it can be canceled early and it can even 'spin more' for more hits of damage) with his Ultimate giving him the perfect gimmick to 'smite' a powerful champion as the coupe'degrace.

Why did i mention Garen? Because his 'progression of power' is a steady climb and isn't able to spike all over the place that some champions are making heavy use of due to itemization exploits or just having kits that let them be too strong for too long of a period and the existent of them having a 'weak phase' is non-existent.

P.S. Melee Assasins like Fizz, Zed, Akali (technically Yasuo and Jax since they are both are fighter/Assassins yet have ridiculous measures that let them surprise attack you with annoying gap closers and cheese kind of actions) all have annoying gap closer measures and actions that let them dis'engage in the most ridiculous of ways [One common element besides Zed being they can just dash onto another enemy target or even Ally as easy dis'engage trolling measures, with Zed he can do it just as easily thanks to his Shadow via his W or his Ultimate] or just pull burst down yolo type attacks.

Assassins and Marksmen are suppose to be damage dealing glass cannons where the former should be force to unload the majority of their kit in one combo to get a successful chance to 'take a target down' if they aren't heavily padded with armor. Marksmen being the same but more by dealing 'consistent' damage over a period of time with strong autos. But just like with Assassins they get basically 'shat' on because of easy to do hp stacking builds so thats where the penetration build setup came in to just take a plain 'shat' on 'beefie' supports and even junglers or mid laners too.

Its hard to find where the 'starting point' on what Riot needs to do if everyone keeps throwing fits about all sorts of things. Even when the dominant 'single' reason on why the game is being ruined is in plain sight but its covered in a bunch of people trying about various things, that are actually not true and its likely because they kept running into 'wannabe' players who bought a champion cause they keep getting wrek'd by it is partially due to them not being good players paired with a not so good champion. Since i know the feeling when i bought Akali and still managed to get myself 'wrek'd', but once again i repeat, Jax is a critical problem since he was present in the match a 2nd time i fought one today with them as a enemy jungler and regardless of the match out'come, he was still a annoying type of opponent, like a Teemo whose shrooms would not detonate on minion impact so said 'Teemo' could just litter a lane with them to screw with you crazily.

[slayer-jinx-unamused]

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