The dual/duel power of a fed assassin. Yes thats a pun XD

Ive gotten to thinking ab assassins because I just started playing one of them: Ekko. All assassins feel really unfair when they can kill you before your eyes can even move back from looking at the mini map when you are trying to stay safe but still farm, and they can kill you before your teammates can react to save you. Well, except for tahm. But he might be a problem anyway. As much as I hate dealing with them, maybe they have a role in a game which also has hypercarries with range like azir and jinx.

For starters when the assassin makes the enemy adc feel like they cant farm their lane, that is a really powerful thing. Right now, with the bush and river ms mastery and the skuttle crab and yomus, they can probably get to an adc faster than you would think or expect and from further away. Certainly, it is faster than enough time to get meaningful gold in exchange for the risk of dying to the duelist assassin. So really, farminig alone is too dangerous. (Is it a strat among assassin mains to just hide around fat waves pushed to enemy towers? Its probably a #1 strategy now that I think about it).

Now, you might want to think you are safe if you are accompanied by your support, however you fucking aren't. That's the second really strong thing about assassins. I mean, maaaybe it would be ok if all they did was disallow you to be alone, but they can also kill us when we are surrounded by allies and a tower! They can dominate a team fight and they can dominate games where the enemy wants to split up to farm gold. That's global control of the game. Too much! Having both threats is too much.

Right now, assassins are supposedly almost useless in soloq if they cant wipe you out before anyone has a chance to react (i.e. before anyone can "counterplay them"). That's the way I see it anyway. Now, when they can do that they completely change the way squishies have to play the game. It would be fine if they could duel like that in a teamfight or if they could make the adcs more afraid of being caught out. But both is too much. Is there another class that has control of teamfights and control of splitting in the way that assassins do? Idk man.

It seems like there should be two classes of assassin, each one embodying one of the two things that define assassins at the moment, but failing at the other think. One class should be very effective at getting to and killing targets in a teamfight but very bad at catching pple out split pushing. The other class should be very bad (by comparison) at team fighting and initiating onto a target surrounded by multiple allies, but very good at catching ppl out.

Kah' Xix is a good existing example of a pick assassin because of isolation, but he is a violater because he can isolate targets with his ult regardless of the surrounding allies. I actually only barely know how he works. I never see him and havnt played him. I do know that he relies on isolation which sounds like what one of the classes of assassin should be good at according to my suggestions. Hypothetically, before he gets his ult he would really only pressure solo lanes, because he can only isolate targets that are actually alone. The first lvl of his ult could allow him to isolate a target that is with one ally around them, the second isolates targets with two allies around them, the third can isolate a target with three neighboring allies. So, as he gets lvls he will grow more effective and gain a clear power spike at lvl 6 when he can wreck a duo lane. Now, he still is mostly weak in teamfights, probably even weak enough that he cant duel the adc inside of that fight, but at lvl 3 he only needs to wait for one person to die before his target is surrounded by no more than 3 allies and he gets to outduel them. He would never be able to initiate onto and delete anyone at the start of the fight because he wont have the dmg with that many pple in the fight. He also discourages late game splitting because at that point a 4v4 is what he is looking for. At lvl 3 ult, he can initiate that fight with an assassination. That's pretty balanced I think. Invisibility and ms boost can stay as are, but overall his mobility in getting to the part of the map where an isolated target is farming could use some work. He needs higher base ms so that you he can get across the map to that isolated target fast enough. Hypothetically, this would give him a strong early game (with a bot lane he doesn't really go near), while weakening his mid game (and opening up bot lane ganks) and mitigating his late game (by incentivizing that he wait for one enemy to die in a 5v5).

Zed is probably a decent example of a what a teamfighting assassin could be. He has a lot of gap close and burst and something to get back to safety. However, there is currently no mechanic to keep him from pressuring or killing a target that is across the map farming. If zed is on the enemy team you kind of are afraid to farm. He can buy mobi boots and yomuus and get to you in a hurry. So, he would be considered a violator. Its pretty obvious how you can keep a champion like Kah less than perfectly effective in a teamfight, but I am not sure how you keep a teamfighter weak in a dueling situation. Would you give them really low roaming capabilities, like really low movespeed, but good gap closers, so they can still get to a nearby target very easily, but have lots of trouble and expend lots of effort chasing a target around the map? That seems like it might work. Make them only deadly to people who are need to stay in one area, like the middle of a team or near a tower. Maybe Zed should need to set up an area where he can close in. His gap closer or ultimate is like a zone that surrounds the teamfight and he can use his ult inside that zone. A split off adc could avoid zeds dmg by running away for a while, but a teamfighting adc would want to stay and defend the objective. Zed wouldn't be able to prevent farming under these conditions because his ult is temporary and the adc can always come back after the ult is on cd. Zed would have control of the teamfight because those are centered around stationary objectives. He can zone the area under the tower for instance. That's strong enough. He doesn't need to affect the ad carry's farming strategy.

I think this would also provide a good metric for the game. If one class of assassin starts to dominate, then that area of the game is too important. If the pick comp assassins dominate then the game is too economic and ppl just want to farm minions, if the teamfight assassins dominate then grouping to too strong for whatever reason.

For hypothetical new assassins the two classes also give some direction in the design of new kits for assassins because they give some formulaic, but very non-specific outlines and motifs.