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With the assassin rework incoming, what are some examples of current healthy high damage mechanics?

qnkxsovc·6/24/2016, 6:30:14 PM·10 votes·5,495 views

The Assassin rework @meddler with poll

Hello everyone! With the last two reworks (mage and juggernaught), we saw lots of new and improved mechanics on the champions getting reworked. With the assassin update incoming, can we get some examples of the kind of "balanced" or "healthy" abilities/champions we may see?

Many people are curious about how the dev team will give high damage (the ability to assassinate) with outplay-ability to the champions getting reworked. So, what examples of this do we already have in the game? How could some of the current "less-healthy" assassins "show a little mercy" to their targets?

Writing this post, I had Ahri in mind. She has solid damage, a nice skill cap, and the ability to chain her abilities for a "fair" assassination. Her charm is dodge-able, but doesn't feel too slow to use. She seems very healthy right now.

Another champion I had in mind while writing this post is Fizz. He also has nice damage and a well-placed skill cap, but if he goes 5/4 in lane he can (R) ult and urchin strike (Q) an adc for the kill, and get out with his Playful/Trickster (E) no problem. Although one shots are certainly hard to deal with, the easiest "outplay" for squishies is positioning and peel from the team. If our example, Fizz, doesn't have to worry about CC because of his Playful/Trickster (E), he can ignore both peel and positioning, and that's unhealthy. This is the heart of the problem with high mobility assassins, and I hope it's what Riot focuses on fixing with this update.

So, to summarize: unhealthy assassins are able to kill squishies no matter where they are, or who they're with. However, high damage and high skill caps are important to have and add to the game in a meaningful way. So, I'd like to see some of the current champions that allow the player to deal incredible damage and the victim to do something about it.

Good luck to the dev team - I'm looking forward to the update!

48 Comments

TheOvermind6/25/2016, 3:11:34 AM6 votes

They should look at shaco and nocturne assassination patterns, good burst (not stat check) , heavily item reliant ,skillshots involved for succes (noc) predictability of all in (where shaco will q from and when Noc will ulti ) and most importantly can be outplayed very well and don't leave you feeling "there was nothing to be done there " (cough Katarina, akali, cough)

Lasslow6/25/2016, 2:11:50 AM4 votes

Fully charged Sion q.

Kyrrion6/26/2016, 12:00:36 AM4 votes

Healthy assassin designs boils down to one thing;

Situational power.

An assassin with on demand burst in any situation is unhealthy. If you're squishy, you get into X range (doesn't help that assassins tend to be mobile and can increase this range artificially), you die.

Assassins need a build up mechanism. They need to jump through a few hoops to get that big burst damage. BUT the hoops need to be meaningful and need to include risk. "Going all in" as a melee assassin is not proper assassin risk - that's just a numbers check. Either you have enough damage or you don't. Not helpful.

These build-up mechanisms (which isn't poking) need to have counterplay built into them. If you allow an Assassin to "set up" on you and you die - that's YOUR fault.

Tesıa6/25/2016, 12:32:51 AM4 votes

All of the popular assassins seem really unhealthy at the bronze level.

Assassins have some of the strongest kit in an information vacuum. At the bronze level, with brand new players coming in, they are the most difficult to communicate how to effectively deal with to new players.

The lack of broadcasts and the snowballing playstyle prevent ingame learning. They just feel like impossible unfair monsters when played against.

When new players play them in the free game rotation, they generally just feel weak and squishy. The new players are then unable to experience the fed Leblanc playstyle and still don't know how to play against it.

Mages and Marksmen are in a good spot right now, where they deal A LOT of damage but the enemy team understands how and why the damage was applied.

The healthiest assassin right now is probably Kassadin. Hes fun to play, can blow dudes up, has weaknesses, but never feels overwhelming to deal with.

Kinder6/25/2016, 3:13:19 AM3 votes

Out of request from the OP to copy my response from Reddit:

I'd say Syndra's ult is healthy based off of the power curve of her kit.

She gets more damage off of the # of balls on the ground. This creates a high risk, high reward situation for Syndra.
Her ult's damage potential scales off of CDR and Syndra's level (due to her passive and maxed Q). Compared to someone like Zed who can buy a dirk and come to lane to kill you with death mark at level 6, Syndra has a more 'gentle' curve.
Her balls do show what the risk is for the enemy team if they want to try to engage her, having a more clear understanding for them of what she can do. Assassins can often just randomly find the damage at some point in the game to burst a squishy without any indication that they're still a threat as a n 0/3 Leblanc.

While she's not an assassin, her ult burst is healthy when compared to how assassin's burst work.

Mirkhail6/25/2016, 10:09:37 AM3 votes

Zed ultimate is theoretically healthy but he does so much damage that he don't need to fight as his ult suggested. FIzz ulti is a good cc and make him a better team fighter, the damage can be tweaked but thanks to his ulti he can do something (at least a bit) when behind.

YJRBqwXJcS6/25/2016, 2:14:55 AM2 votes

Rip

Assassin's are all gonna be on current shaco's level making assassin's completely trash

Elewd6/25/2016, 7:35:05 AM2 votes

Ahri is not considered an assassin by Riots standards anymore, shes a battle mage now. I think the healthiest assassin is Kha'zix. i hope he gets the least amount of change. Whenever I die to a kha'zix i dont think "wow thats so broken" i think things like "wow i played that fight badly" I think that is what riot wants to do with the other assassins, make it feel like if you die to them if you did something different you wouldn't have died. (barring they are fed off their ass)

SouL1ess6/25/2016, 8:01:39 AM2 votes

The healthiest assassin right now is probably Kassadin. Hes fun to play, can blow dudes up, has weaknesses, but never feels overwhelming to deal with.

A fed Kassadin is the worst ~~assassin~~ mage to deal with, because not only can he stick, poke, and burst, he can also tank your damage. At least all other assassins have to build full damage items if they want to actually assassinate.

They should look at shaco and nocturne assassination patterns, good burst (not stat check) , heavily item reliant ,skillshots involved for succes (noc) predictability of all in (where shaco will q from and when Noc will ulti ) and most importantly can be outplayed very well and don't leave you feeling "there was nothing to be done there " (cough Katarina, akali, cough)

Nocturne and Shaco have the worse burst in the assassin category - that's what you consider acceptably good?

Heavily item reliant also severely limits their viability as assassins. Assassins need to pick up pace early-mid game in order to be a useful class.

And, most importantly, Nocturne and Shaco are so weak as assassins that you usually feel like you outplay them.

Her balls do show what the risk is for the enemy team if they want to try to engage her, having a more clear understanding for them of what she can do. Assassins can often just randomly find the damage at some point in the game to burst a squishy without any indication that they're still a threat as a n 0/3 Leblanc.

Admitting that you don't know a champion's potential, therefore dying to them. This REALLY isn't the fault of the champion. Especially the randomly find damage part shows that you don't understand how the champion work, therefore you feel like someone that is more apparent about their power level is more "healthy". Well, if we display the chances of you dying to an assassin as an aura around/tooltip on your own character, would assassins be more healthy too?

She gets more damage off of the # of balls on the ground. This creates a high risk, high reward situation for Syndra.

How the hell is this a high risk situation? She only need to CAST Q to create them. She doesn't need to be in danger while creating a strategic advantage. It's not like she has to hit the enemy champion with Q in order to actually create usable Dark Spheres for her ult.

I am disappointed at how assassins are perceived by the community...the definition of risk and reward definitely feels strange, especially with people feeling that the weaker the assassin is, the healthier the assassin is. I would be worried about the assassin update if Riot took more advice from the community.

Blue Collar Bear6/26/2016, 12:12:15 AM2 votes

I feel healthy assassins boil down to one thing: not having % maximum / missing health damage in their kit. It will mean that they can build full tank and still have relevant damage. I feel like AD ratios are much more healthy to balance around.

Teridax686/25/2016, 6:23:33 PM2 votes

This is a very well-written post. I partially disagree with one of your points, though: personally, I think the issue with unhealthy assassins isn't that they get to kill squishies regardless of location or proximity to their team (that can actually be really healthy, particularly against hyper-defensive teams designed to grant maximum safety to squishies), but that they get to do so regardless of what their victim does. Ahri is healthy because her damage comes either from skillshots or abilities that require her to put herself in close proximity to her targets as a squishy ranged champion, all spread across a pretty reasonable window where her opponent can fight back, even if they get charmed. Fizz is unhealthy because he can combine his R, E and Q + W damage all within the same instant, and prior to doing so makes himself impossible to target, so there are far fewer opportunities for his target to react meaningfully to him. If he were to ignore your CC when diving you, but then inevitably spend several more seconds trying to properly autoattack you to death while fully exposed, he'd be fine, because you'd then have a much better chance of doing meaningful things against him and surviving his damage. It doesn't really matter whether or not you're surrounded by allies, because in the end you should still have a fighting chance as a lone target.

Abyssphere6/26/2016, 2:07:19 AM2 votes

Assassins are so tricky that it's hard to know if you actually have a good understanding of what a balanced one would be, but I'll give it a stab.

Their burst should be big and fast, but the combo shouldn't be instant. Nidalee's combo speed is a great example here - her burst happens very quickly eventually but the time you have to react to her throwing the spear and then gapclosing after it lands is probably over a second overall. The reason it's important for the burst to be fast is because when burst is properly slow (think Eve), the ADC has essentially no chance of dying to it after they pick up lifesteal. It's important for assassins to be capable of dueling the enemy ADC throughout the entire game - otherwise they will be forced to have an extreme early game or they just won't be an assassin. The enemy deserves a chance to react to the assassin, but the actual execution of the damage should be very quick so that it can't be drain tanked.
Dying to the assassin needs to -not- be a foregone conclusion. If you run across a fed Elise, for example, your thought isn't instantly "Oh God, I'm dead" as long as you're not completely out of position with no escape route. You know that the Cocoon is gonna come out, and you can dodge it. If you dodge it, Elise either doesn't kill you or kills you but gave you MUCH more ability to respond and escape (or kill her) than you otherwise would have had. On the other hand, if you ever come across a fed Zed or Talon, for example, you know you're dead. They're gonna gapclose and there's no chance of them messing up their damage. Dying to an assassin as a squishy needs to not be a case of getting within 1.5k range of them.
They need some level of safety in their kill combo. Everyone says "omg Talon is so healthy because he can't get out easily!" but... in exchange for that there's basically no chance of him NOT killing you. And who cares if you can kill Talon when he's already murdered your ADC? Personally I think Zed being able to blink 2+k range in an instant is too much, but I think the reset mechanics Nidalee, Kat and Kha have are a vaguely good approximation of where assassin escapes should go. An assassin should be able to get out of the enemy team, but they shouldn't feel untouchable.
They should be able to do stuff beyond just overkilling the enemy - when they can only do damage, they need to be able to do too much damage, too quickly and too reliably. If the champion can do other stuff, their assassination combo can afford to be less disgusting. Nidalee is good at sieging, which is why she's good despite being an unreliable assassin. Fizz's knockup can devastate the backline, which gives him teamfight presence. Elise can generate picks and peel for her team with Cocoon, etc. Having more mechanics than just "burst + run away" makes assassins less feast or famine and differentiates them better.

LSmaster166/25/2016, 2:28:12 AM2 votes

Taliyah e w combo, needs to land skillshot at fairly short range to do maximum damage while not being too biased in favor of mobile champs as you still take some damage if you dash.

SwiftKitten886/26/2016, 6:11:32 PM1 votes

um nidalee WAS healthy... back before she could jungle and after her rework.. but i guess that doesn't count anymore...

Ruin Lance6/26/2016, 1:20:06 AM1 votes

kha'zix is the healthiest assassin imo due to how his q works. if they're alone they take bonus damage

JosephAngelo6/26/2016, 1:42:46 AM1 votes

I think Nidalee and Ekko are great examples of healthy assassins.

let me talk about nidalee spears first then I will rave about how much I think ekko is perfect.

So I think a great quality that noth of these champions have that I think all champions should have is that you can understand what they are doing and what they are about to do or what is about to happen by looking at them. there are other champions like leblanc and viegar and rengar that can kind of use all of their abilities at once and they happen so quickly that you have no time to react and their ability animation all look pretty similar. Nidalee's spears are not like this though. A lot of her damage comes from her spears and it does increasingly more damage the longer the spear is in the air so nidalee is rewarded for sniping people from really far away. Since herspear is such an important part of her kit, you can expect her to be throwing a lot of them. expecting an ability gives you time to react. you can see the animation, which is unlike any of her other animations, giving you time to react. The spear is a relatively slow moving skill shot which means you CAN avoid it with a siple movement command and you have the time to avoid it. Counter play is good. AND YET, despite all of these things working against nidalee, a skilled nidalee player can still land spears pretty consistently and when she does land those long range spears they most CERTAINLY pay off #whatthefuckisthatdamage

Now ekko. Everything in ekko's kit gives the enemy time to react. It is easily visable and readable, meaning it is impossible to confuse any of ekko's animations with one another and you know what he is going to do before he does it. AND YET even though his enemies are given this information, he can still land many of his abilities and it most CERATINLY pays off. I can see ekko throw his q and I have three seconds to get out of the way before it come back. I can see him dash in preparation for his e blink and enhanced auto attack, giving me fair warning to stay away from him. I can hear him cast w, allowing me to predict where he placed it and go somewhere else and I can see it moments before it is activated. AND I have constant vision of where his ekko is as to know where he will go if he ults so all I need to do is not stand there and there is a zero percent chance I will get hit ny his ulti. what a perfect champion.

warpenguin5556/26/2016, 5:57:31 AM1 votes

Kha'Zix and Shaco's situational burst. Kha needs you to be alone and shaco needs you to look away for them to deal max damage. However in the case of Kha'Zix i feel like he should give an indicator when visible saying if you are isolated or not (in most cases its obvious but not always)

qnkxsovc6/24/2016, 8:36:48 PM1 votes

Invisibility is a good example of a mechanic that the developers should be really careful with. Making people buy either a pink ward or a red trinket, both of which have cooldowns/limited supply, makes it very hard for people to deal with the champions that they can't see/attack.

Still, it's always nice predicting the Rengar jump!