The Assassin-Bruiser Problem

I've been playing this game since the beginning of season 2, and have been low-to-mid Platinum for the last three seasons. I've survived all sorts of ridiculous meta environments, from the atma's "Bruisers have more AD than your carry" shenanigans, to the 3-minute teamfights of the Tank Meta, to the "hope they don't see you first" Assassin Meta and everything in between. Recently, between this season's item, mechanics, and champion changes, I've realized that most of my complaints about the game have crystallized into a clear opinion: assassin-bruisers are toxic.

By assassin-bruiser, I mean any melee champion that has enough damage with decent farm to full-to-zero comparable champions midgame AND has stronger survival mechanisms than simple mobility--shields, heals, bonus defensive stats all qualify. Prime culprits include , , , and , to name a few, though there are many more.

Why are they toxic?

My working assumption about league is that the game is designed to both reward early game advantage AND allow for midgame recovery, given rallying/teamfight cohesion.

There are many champions that become large threats in the midgame when fed early game kills. Champions like and can absolutely steamroll entire teams if left unchecked, but I would posit that these champions are NOT assassin bruisers because they each have direct counters, if not in itemization then in champion abilities and summoner spells. Ignite, Exhaust, Stuns, Slows, Blinds are all extremely effective on these champions, and, with enough coordination, any team of decent skill can come together to shut these champions down in the midgame in the vast majority of cases, primarily due to their concrete windows of vulnerability--you know that a tryndamere that's ulting will be vulnerable in exactly 5 seconds--and your ability to build around them--as they primarily build crit-dps, armor, health, and slowing effects are often extremely effective counters.

Assassin-Bruisers do not have these weaknesses. Between Last Whisper, Black Cleaver, and some even having additional armor penetration options or even (literally) percentage-of-max-health true damage, there is no item counter (for full armor penetration builds, Health-stacking is still not a viable build in the face of Blade of the Ruined King's wide availability). A Riven can always go in--her cooldowns are negligible mid-lategame--and she has a shield, two forms of hard cc, and literally four abilities she can rotate through to move freely while slowed--or even go over walls. A fed Riven can not only full-to-zero you regardless of your build, they are resistant enough to cc and focused damage that they can either escape coordinated counter-attacks or simply charge straight through them, eliminating targets fast enough to completely outpace less-fed champions' damage. While I agree that the possibility for this isn't inherently wrong, the frequency and ease with which it occurs is appalling--it should an extremely rare occurrence to have a single enemy able to 1v5.

While I fully understand these champions can't be eliminated and their core mechanics can't be changed--that they represent a significant part of the League of Legends experience--the itemization and armor penetration changes that allow an all-ad team to spam armor pen and rip through armor-stacking tanks like paper need to be addressed in some way. The counter to an all-ad team is supposed to be stacking armor (as defensive stat choice is the only volitive change one can make based on enemy damage type), but percentage armor shred renders that completely unproductive--between that and percentage health damage, your only item counter becomes trying to out-damage and out-focus them--which is of course a completely futile effort against these champions.

The current counter to these champions is to not feed them, coordinate crowd control, and not get caught out, all things that they don't have to worry about as much as other champs simply because of their kits. I believe strongly that no role should have player skill as their only counter--which is exactly what the assassin-bruiser has become.

Thanks for reading.