What if Assassins were the class with most access to vision tools?

TequilaZombie·2/7/2018, 3:53:39 PM·2 votes·212 views

Just some thoughts from a bored guy: What if we gave vision tools to Assassins?

The game right now is in an arms race. ADCs and Supports are getting more defensive options, which are also getting stronger (looking at you item 3026, that item becoming an AD item still bothers me), which in turn means that we need to boost assassins' damage to a ridiculous point to have them be able to do their job (see Duskblade+Domination Keystones one shotting the hell out of any squishier champion). Assassins were supposed to be able to quickly take out a single enemy, yet their main target is either sitting in the fog of war and you have to rely on your support to be able to spot them out, or their main target is with their babysitter ready the shield the fuck out of them.

IMO, increasing an Assassin's damage to go through a support's Shielding and an ADC's Health Bar should not be an option simply because it will also mean that they will cleave right through Bruisers and Battle Mages. It's also a bad idea to have a class that has inherently low counterplay be the class made to 2v1.

This leaves another option: focusing on the oportunistic aspect of Assassins, leaving their kits strong enough to 1v1 their targets, but not so strong as to be able to 2v1 the ADC+Support combo. For that goal, I believe that vision and mobility are key factors.

Mobility is, for the most part, covered with items like item 3142, item 3117, or Masteries such as Pretador and Relentless Hunter. Those allow an Assassin to quickly cover a huge portion of the map and captalize on the few moments at which an ADC is alone (catching up to their team on another lane for a team fight, going to a Baron, or on their way to split pushing, for example), but fall short of their goal simply because an Assassin is for most of the game lacking vision on their prey.

If Items such as item 3069 item 3401 item 3092 item 3711 or even the old Active from item 3312 with the Ghosts were an atractive option to Assassins, some of their budget could be swaped from "I gotta 100-0 this guy while this other guy babysits him" to "I gotta captalize on opportunities to 100-0 this guy while he's alone".

Currently, a huge part of the vision burden is left to the Supports with the Remnant line of items, while Assassins are either limited to a single Trinket for vision or no vision at all if swapping it for item 3364 for better stealthiness + vision denial. This means two things:

For Assassins, they have to rely on another player to be able to do their job in a way that reaps no direct rewards to said player. The support who got that well placed ward at the red buff is not getting an assist when the assassin gets a kill because of it.

For Supports, they have to invest part of their gold into vision items in one way or another, while being the class with the most restrictions to gold income. Hell, being the Ward Bot is even one of the reasons why people tended to shy away from the role in the past.

Moving or at least sharing the burden of vision between Assassins and Supports would not only make Assassins possibly simpler to balance (as they currently have the Ryze problem - Too much damage with little of anything else), and make Supports have more avaible gold so they can have some extra agency in the game.

Overall, I think it would be a decent direction to move things to.

3 Comments

Whisper872/7/2018, 4:21:41 PM1 votes

Yes yes and yes. Riot have been to quick to take the easy way with balancing by just fudging number. Focusing the efficacy of classes not on how much damage they do, but on just how well they can do their job, their utility, is much more interesting and subject to cerebral play.

Yeah maybe low elo assassin mains will cry, but anyone who understand how an assassin functions and how the game works could make VERY VERY good use of vision and mobility.

These are the kinds of buffs/changes Riot should implement MUCH more often than damage increases.