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Error Margin and why Zed is the most 'healthy' assassin

YossarianSensei·2/5/2016, 5:14:28 AM·13 votes·1,025 views

Disclaimer: I don't particularly like Zed, I find him extremely annoying - however I find complaints about him being less toxic than alternative assassins to be faulty and ill informed. The last thing I want is for Riot to take these nonsense ramblings floating around the community about 'high risk high reward' assassins seriously

Assassins are an extremely difficult class to balance, those of you who don't remember Akali/Kat/Talon in their primes should consider yourselves lucky. The entire premise of an Assassin is a champion who's basically worthless other than for killing other Champions reliably, which implies that the Assassin's team is at a disadvantage until they can kill someone.

This is fairly evident in 'normal' assassin:

  • They have essentially 0 CC/utility
  • They are extremely squishy
  • They have inferior waveclear and poke (yes, even Zed)
  • They can't do anything without going all-in
  • They have almost no pressure outside of their potential to kill you

As you can imagine the qualities you want in a 'pure' Assassin are reliable assassination (AKA point and click with absurd upfront damage) so that they can easily capitalize on opportunity, as well as and a huge amount of base stats and snowball potential to offset the possibility of being useless. Because of the black and white nature of of "you either clicked on them and killed them or you didn't", these kits are balanced on a hair's edge around numbers which leaves very little margin of error - you either have the stats to be a monster or you're worthless.

**In comparison Mages are probably one of the easiest classes to make 'healthy' because they probably have the hands down largest margin of error. ** Being largely skill-shot based is a double edged sword that rewards good players and punishes nooblords. Unlike Tanks/ Assassins/ Bruisers who are balanced around a straight forward ball of stats that Riot deems as 'good enough', Mages are balanced around Riot's approximation of what % of spells a mage is expected to land. As a result, if you're ahead on a mage but suck at aiming, you're just as useless as a feeder. On the converse, if you're a huge feeder you can make up for your failure by sucking less and landing more spells as the game goes on.

  • Mages have huge marginal value. Their job isn't limited to rigid guidelines like 'Be tanky enough to frontline' or 'kill people instantly', but rather 'do as much damage as possible' and 'cc as many of them as you can'
  • Even if ahead, a mage can be outplayed (e.g. dodge shyt)
  • Even if behind, a mage can outplay (e.g. aim better)

So what the fk does this have to do with Zed? What I've been getting at is 'margin of error' is a huge part of what makes a kit healthy. It allows players on both sides opportunities to counterplay and make comebacks, whereas static kits like Talon are for the most part extremely straight forward and balanced on eggshells.

However, because he's an Assassin and not just another mage, he needs other sources of forgiveness than 'land more spells'. What comes is as a result are Riot's 'LC$ Mechonix' balanced Champs: Zed Yasuo LeeSin Ahri Ekko

Instead of revolving around pure numbers, these champions have unique mechanics (namely high mobility) that give them power in forms outside of stats, but ironically players seem to hate these champions for the very reason why they're probably less toxic than their alternatives. It's really pretty hard to add too much counterplay into an Assassin without making them useless (and Zed already has an exceptional amount of counterplay) so the next step is just to make them mobile and forgiving

  • Mobility allows them to extend further and play riskier, which compensates for their relatively low stats
  • Delayed damage / skill-shots / wind-wall/ whatever weird mechanic gives more counterplay options to both sides
  • Safety/ utility/ poke/ range/ whatever give these champions marginal value rather than simply 'OP vs useless'

TL;DR: I don't think all this Zed QQ is merited. You could ask him to have less poke or be less mobile, but what you'd probably end up with is 'Zed presses R to deal half your health'

I think these mobility champions have enough flexibility and counterplay in their kits that they can afford to be slightly overtuned or undertuned and not be gamebreaking. They're really not broken and I really don't want Riot 'fixing' them.

42 Comments

Hayaishi22/5/2016, 5:46:19 AM7 votes

10/10

If you only they had seen the abomination release Diana was.

Zed is the best assassin we have, cherish him because if you played against Akali, Katarina, Eve, Talon, Diana on their prime you wouldn't stop QQing until they were deleted.

SwapShadows2/5/2016, 6:00:15 AM5 votes

Yea it's quite amusing that every player here magically forgets that other assassins exist.

FantasySniper2/5/2016, 6:59:32 AM4 votes

There is so much wrong with this.

They have inferior waveclear and poke (yes, even Zed)

You must have been thinking about Akali and Kassadin when you said this. Leblanc, Fizz, Ekko, Nidalee, etc. ... Zed's passive compensates wave-clear anyways, and his poke is in fact on par with Ahri and Xerath. Especially since it doesn't cost anything long-term.

They have almost no pressure outside of their potential to kill you

Is there any kind of pressure that isn't related to being killed?

The "skillshot indexing of mages" is not really double-edged. For every mage that fails to land their skillshot, there's another person with such bad positioning that they're impossible to miss anyways.

If Talon is balanced on eggshells, Zed is balanced on a tightrope made of pencil lead. Zed's shurikens are massive poke and a primary source of his damage. Why does an assassin with massive mobility also have ranged poke that hurts more than his melee-range ability? Talon only has his minor passive, while any change in Zed's damage output - and I mean any change - is compounded by his ult's massive damage steroid. Talon actually can't risk over-extending. Zed can not only "risk" it, but also laugh in your face while doing it because he can dive and escape so freely.

Making an assassin's playstyle "forgiving" means making them impossible to punish. Talon is considered the poster-boy for assassins because he has that clear weakness in his kit. Zed is considered cancer because he's impossible to counter if you don't have 10 CCs lying in wait.

I'm not one to jump on the Zed hate-wagon, but if you're actually going to defend his playstyle, could you please do it properly?

Malix Farwin2/5/2016, 10:52:03 PM3 votes

Just because you make a wall of text doesn't mean its true, there is not assassin in this game that adhere to these points:

They have essentially 0 CC/utility
They are extremely squishy
They have inferior waveclear and poke (yes, even Zed)
They can't do anything without going all-in
They have almost no pressure outside of their potential to kill you(pressure is pressure, it really doesn't matter how you give it.)

The closest being Katarina and she has decent wave clear and poke

Then you follow it with this bullshit:

Mages have huge marginal value. Their job isn't limited to rigid guidelines like 'Be tanky enough 
to frontline' or 'kill people instantly', but rather 'do as much damage as possible' and 
cc as many of them as you can.(So many things wrong here, there are mages with very little CC and there are some who have CC as a means to survive NOT   to "cc as many people as they can". Furthermore, burst mages are a thing and they are designed to "kill people instantly")

Even if ahead, a mage can be outplayed (e.g. dodge shyt)[except for the mages wit hpoint and click spells right?]

Even if behind, a mage can outplay (e.g. aim better)[aiming better doesn't make your abilities better nor does it somehow hinder someone's ability to dodge. If they got ahead of you due to missing skillshots(which most likely they didnt) then you are probably out of luck. They have pretty much the same outplay as anyone else who is behind]
Desiderium2/6/2016, 5:49:29 PM2 votes

You're correct. Don't worry, as time goes on people will get better at the game and will stop complaining about a champion that is as well balanced and has as much counterplay as Zed.

LaserDeathBlade2/5/2016, 7:41:46 AM2 votes

You can't reason with haters, people always gotta blame something for their losses

Let Rito bring back the real assassins and see how quickly these boards change their minds about how ideal Talon is

Karma Deified2/6/2016, 6:07:07 PM1 votes

Good post. Just going to point out, Zed will probably be less playable when mages get their update.

It helps to have counterarguments to the Zed qq. If these guys had a huge influence...

Zed would be nerfed heavily. Mage update would come and potentially remove the itemization flaws for mages while directly buffing some mages. Zed would either be left unplayable or overbuffed for compensation, causing a reaction nerf that kills him.

SwapShadows2/6/2016, 6:24:51 PM1 votes

Zed get's complaints from people who aren't very competent.

They complain about energy despite it being one of the worst resources past laning phase.

They complain about his ability to teleport out despite the fact that once he teleports out he cannot do anything for a long time due to energy gating him and unless he is insanely ahead his W+E+Q will not be as effective as what other assassins can do

there is so much that people complain about because they understand little. The fact is that mages are always going to be top tier in midlane, Zed will never ever rule midlane because champions like malzahar, anivia and others exist that just point and click and auto win lane. If most of the players on league where in plat+ zed would get almost 0 complaints, truth.

Ellphi2/6/2016, 7:46:49 PM1 votes

I think a lot of Zed QQ stems from his strength in laning phase, but this game isn't a 1v1 and Zed's early power falls off quickly.

People shouldn't be expecting to go even in lane vs Zed with a mage when mages have a much stronger influence in other aspects of the game.

WarlockLaw2/8/2016, 7:44:42 PM1 votes

Imo an assassin should only have 2 of the following:

Reliability - the ease for them to kill their target. Safety - ability to get away after being caught out or after getting their kill Poke - ability to poke or even farm from a range without committing Cc - any cc aside from minor slows

Zed has 3 of them and he has them better than most assassins. He can get out without getting a kill while kha/Kat need the reset. He has probably the easiest laning phase out of all assassins, compare akali to zed on pre 6 laning. And he can harass most mid laners without entering their auto attack range unlike almost every other assassin.

Dominick Destine2/10/2016, 3:59:55 AM1 votes

Zed is the most healthy assassin

[slayer-jinx-unamused]