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If Assassins are supposed to jump in, pick off a target, then get out...

Z3Sleeper··5 votes·2,758 views

Why do they not have items or effects in their kit that reflect this?

Kha Zix and Zed are the only AD Assassins that really embody this. Zed uses his ultimate to escape after and go back to looking for another target.

Kha Zix is over-specialized in this regard (probably another reason why he's the best assassin right now). He has both jump resets and manually activated, (technically) non-damaging ultimate that grants true invis + ms boost for escaping post-kill.

Duskblade really missed the mark here the most. It doesn't favor Assassins who can assassinate, get out and come back in for a new target. It favors champions that can stealth mid-assassination to reactivate the effect in a single combo (ex. Khazix ).

My suggestions?

Make item 3142 passive out of combat movement speed refresh after a kill and stay active for ~1s after (so you don't immediately accidentally go back in combat and lose the MS via lingering AoE or DoT damage).

Make item 3147 reactivate only after both being unseen for 1s and out of combat (~3s minimum) (probably buff it up again since this version will have nowhere near the old one's abuse cases).

Make item 3814 automatically apply the spellshield again after a kill (up the cost or lower the stats, this is a significant buff).

I don't know why all the Assassin items give nothing but tools for engaging when their strength is supposed to be their assassination and post-assassination escape.

Directly buffing nothing but their damage numbers isn't going to solve any of the core issues Assassins and their items have.

(Note that this really only pertains to AD Assassins. Every AP Assassin has post-kill escapes built into their kit).

12 Comments

Spoofghoul4 votes

Maybe a bit off topic, but my issue with assassins lies in their binary playtyle

Either they are strong, which means they jump in oneshot you and get out. Or they don't It's a really toxic situation because getting oneshot out of nowhere is really toxic to play against but if they cannot then all assassin mains cry because their champion is beyond useless

Not sure why this class has been created the way it is but maybe this is something worth looking at

But to get back to the assassin item topic I wouldn't mind your changes But perhaps we could use more assassin item's how about an item that increases your damage to target the closer it is to your health value kind of like an inverteditem 3034 Or an item with an active which allows you to bypass shields entirely with your damage for x seconds

Z3Sleeper1 votes

My problem with this is power creeping. Damage is high enough in the game as it is. Assassins are strong damage-wise, it's just that currently supports are "stronger" (but that's a different issue). Any squishy not receiving 2k in shields/damage reduction/etc. is still gonna get 100-0'd by an Assassin with ease and even some higher health low resistance targets as well.

The failure to kill issue is more a problem with their target's and their allies' defensive options rather than the Assassin's offensive power.

Like you said, different topic. But I really don't feel that damage is the issue here. Afterall, like you said, getting oneshot despite allied efforts to prevent it without the Assassin reasonably outplaying the team's efforts or the team screwing up creates a feelsbad situation on the opposite end.

The end goal is to make both sides feel good about their options for successfully assassinating/preventing assassination and feel fair on both ends.

I'll let Riot tackle that primarily numbers-related issue, I just wanted to bring up a different, somewhat related issue that contributes to Assassin's overall effectiveness.

(Also a class entirely focused around non-%health flat damage 100-0 burst is gonna be binary by default, sad truth.)

Spoofghoul2 votes

I dont want powercreep either

but just threw some idea's out for potential items, the way to combat that powercreep would be to cut power elsewhere make it a choice etc etc like you can get his anti shield item but it doesn't give any lethality or penetration nor a lot of AD things like that

anyway

I think i do have an idea for the binary class situation

assassin would need to have other strengths besides oneshotting important targets. One idea is to do this through utilities like grievous wounds, get rid of mortal reminder essentially and make an assassin gw item And other such item related utility because that would allows success cases if counter picks and or play/building happen

Or other strengths in their kits like siege potential or strong vs neutral objectives

Z3Sleeper1 votes

Ah my bad I jumped to conclusions on the powercreep deal dunno what I was thinking. Separate items, takes up an item slot, gotcha.

As for niches, it's hard to really push (AD) Assassins into specific niches since there are so few of them and they all need to fulfill the Assassination part. Their niche for the most part is how they go about Assassinating where one champion can perform it against a certain team or champion more easily than another.

That being said, with all the power budget being allocated towards Assassination (so it's actually possible to kill the target), there's not much left for rest of the budget to be meaningfully used for niches like siege potential and whatnot.

I'm sure there are ways to make it happen though, I'm sure.

Big Lincoln3 votes

there's nothing toxic about 0-defense champions being one-shot

Teridax682 votes

I think the issue isn't simply with how assassins were designed (though I agree that's a big part of the issue), but with how the state of defenses, protection and damage in the game have made their playstyle more binary. Right now, a big part of the reason why assassins either one-shot or die is because it only takes a fraction of a second for a team to dogpile onto their own marksman with shields, heals, peel, and other dedicated defensive utility. If the assassin can't kill their target within that fraction of a second, they therefore have to contend with a target that's several times more durable and slippery, in addition to having to survive a team whose combined damage can kill them much faster, while also being able to lock them down very quickly. This is also why assassin mains often react so badly to delays in their damage, not simply because sometimes those delays are forced upon their kits in an unnatural manner, but also because even the smallest delay can suddenly make them unplayable against certain teams. This, I think, is the crux of why assassins have been excluded from pro play for the last few years (incidentally, the Assassin Update happened that same amount of few years ago).

Because of this, while I really do think we need to take one-shots out of assassin kits, we also need to start working towards an environment where assassins don't auto-fail when they do that once a team gets organized enough. Decreasing the strength, availability and reliability of defenses, and moving some of that power into more offensive effects, could go a long way towards not only creating more openings for assassins, but also giving them a more realistic chance of doing their job even when up against tightly-knit teams, as was the case in Seasons 3, 4 and 5. This should specifically focus on adjusting enchanters to be less reliable, but more versatile, so that they don't have to feel like they're useless unless they're point-and-click shielding/healing their marksman for hundreds of hitpoints at close to 100% uptime. Similarly, I think we need to take a look at how CC overall interacts with melee champions, especially when applied by tanks, because right now it's often far too easy for even just one tank to be able to stonewall any approaching threat. Right now, walking into the enemy team as a melee champion is often considered suicide, even though that's what a huge number of classes are meant to do in teamfights, because the sheer amount of damage and CC that can be immediately and reliably applied in response at that range is enough to kill said champion in moments. Part of this likely stems from damage creep, but I think there's also a fundamental problem of a lot of counterplay evaporating at melee range (skillshots become more reliable the closer your target is to you, for example). None of these are easy fixes, but at least exploring these different issues, and working towards solving them, could help give assassins a much healthier place in the game, along with pretty much every other melee class (divers and skirmishers would likely not need to be so overloaded to thrive, for example).

LilBadWitch2 votes

I genuinely wish this "assassins are underpowered" nonsense would die.

Go to op.gg's stats for NA for the last month, and a great deal of the assassins in plat, diamond, and master tier have winrates in 55%+ and some in 60%+.

Not only that, they have massive playrates too. Pro-players may not play them competitively, but in solo-Q AP and AD assassins are still oppressive in mid and jungle.

Outliers may exist, but assassins as a class don't have any objective reason to be more oppressive and unfun to play against than they already are.

Z3Sleeper2 votes

I don't think they're underpowered at all and I agree that I wish those posts would kindly go away.

Daddy Ants1 votes

{quoted}

I genuinely wish this "assassins are underpowered" nonsense would die.

Go to op.gg's stats for NA for the last month, and a great deal of the assassins in plat, diamond, and master tier have winrates in 55%+ and some in 60%+.

Not only that, they have massive playrates too. Pro-players may not play them competitively, but in solo-Q AP and AD assassins are still oppressive in mid and jungle.

Outliers may exist, but assassins as a class don't have any objective reason to be more oppressive and unfun to play against than they already are.

In my opinion the fairest Assassin's to play against are Kassadin Talon

Assassin's are performing well across the board.

Snowman Arc1 votes

Good post, also, about Fizz, he naturally builds into Zhonyas, so he can E in, kill someone, Zhonyas and then E back out.

Z3Sleeper1 votes

I'm a top lane one-tricker posting about the state of Assassins, I'm a bit out of my element sorry lol. Thanks tho I'll just cut that out.

Purgë1 votes

sad how this community thinks no wonder we have a balance team like this

assains are the legit aids of lol, the only thing that screw leauge is not adcs or tanks , it's the stupid assains one shoting everyone with 0 counterplay adcs where the main target and bruisers top lane still get one shotted by assains even early on , so riot pushed tanks top lane and made adcs have full hp sheilds and heals legit the only problem with this game is the stupid assains and ranged assains right now(adcs)

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