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Why Duskblade Is The Most Broken Item In The Game

ZILLAGULA·11/24/2017, 6:12:30 PM·129 votes·7,317 views

No, this is not another assassin nerf post. It's not about the damage duskblade provides.

What makes duskblade INCREDIBLY broken is the "Nightstalker" passive. No, it's not the damage portion.

The thing is, at the bottom of your screen (above your abilities) when you have duskblade you can see if Nightstalker is up. Let me quote the passive: "After being unseen for at least 1 second, your next basic attack against an enemy champion deals x"

I know alot of people don't know about this, but I've abused it for a while. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'll tell you exactly what's wrong. This passive allows you to go in a bush and you will ALWAYS be able to tell if its warded or not.

If the bush isn't warded, the Nightstalker passive duskblade provides will be at the bottom as per usual.

if it IS warded however, your passive will start fading away. You may not be able to break the ward like you can with the "Blackout" passive, but this means it becomes WAY easier setting up ambushes. You will know where the enemy team has warded the entire game after buying this item.

And yes, this passive is broken. Vision is incredibly powerful but duskblade negates that. Assassins that knows about this interaction are always safe standing in any bush as they can see their Nightstalker passive being up.

72 Comments

flibitydoo11/24/2017, 9:12:38 PM100 votes

item 2421 I thought the broken stopwatch was the most broken item because it is the only broken item

Troll for Trump11/24/2017, 7:51:56 PM49 votes

"assassin mains hate him!"

Alkis911/24/2017, 6:44:19 PM23 votes

SHHHHHHhhhhhh, don't let riot know....

iLBGAMing11/24/2017, 9:58:39 PM8 votes

I thought item 3056 was...

Fedoran11/24/2017, 7:05:44 PM7 votes

Stop giving away our secrets!

The Space Cowboy11/24/2017, 10:50:51 PM6 votes

Agreed although now they can just make the passive invisible to the player to fix that hack. I also don’t think an item should be able to do 33% of a squishy persons hp but that’s off topic

Daunt11/24/2017, 9:40:32 PM6 votes

Alongside giving all the stats an assassin could want. They just need to remove the item completely and actually balance assassins properly. Same goes with Gunblade.

Mokuto Bunshi11/24/2017, 8:23:59 PM5 votes

Iv'e known this for quite some time, thing is, I don't play assassins so I never really make use of it. For those who do, this is a OVER POWERED tool.

YuGiHo11/24/2017, 7:46:35 PM5 votes

Right, no we just need an ap version with the same passive and then everything will be right in the world

IdveYsUfSK11/27/2017, 8:29:29 PM3 votes

its is an incredibly unhealthy item that is way too cheap. super strong burst along with a passive that tells you if that area is warded or not. you generally can snowball out of control and close the game if you get it early before the enemy can get their core item.

rtbf7610927111/25/2017, 4:04:14 AM2 votes

I've always thought that the damage passive shouldnt work while you don't have the nightstalker passive going, and the item should be re-balanced around that

Zed genius11/25/2017, 7:07:00 AM2 votes

But being unseen is part of being an assassin. Now you could argue that AP ones don't have a duskblade counterpart, but were it to be implemented it would break the game more

ApexInTheCircle11/25/2017, 11:53:05 AM2 votes

I play alot of wukong mid and top, Duskblade is usually the first item I get since it's damage passive mixed with wukong's W makes for a very nice chunk of free damage. That being said, I agree that this is a glitch and needs to be fixed.

Seenan11/25/2017, 5:54:15 PM2 votes

Imo, I think it should have been halved for Ranged. Why it's only something like -20 damage from melee to ranged is beyond me. You Vayne ult and Q, you're heading towards 1000+ damage late game, esp if the crit procs, assuming she buys it.

SithesisLord11/25/2017, 8:02:30 PM2 votes

'Member when Duskblade had that passive, but it scaled off of 200% Lethality, was an actual assassin item and was perfectly balanced?

Riot sure doesn´t, because apparently they think current Duskblade is better.

PrinceOfStorms11/25/2017, 12:16:47 AM2 votes

Or maybe put Nightstalker on a shared CD with blackout.

Spoofghoul11/25/2017, 11:19:45 AM1 votes

i thought it was Sion leg

junglerboy1611/26/2017, 12:00:34 AM1 votes

Yeah this is true, even before they changed how it worked and it only had a crappy damage proc I used it for the vision protection.

You can do the exact same thing with khazix, except unlike duskblade his passive doesn't go away after re-entering vision, which makes duskblade way more powerful in that respect.

Lit Corn11/25/2017, 1:12:51 PM1 votes

yeah i totally abuse that tho , i otp zed and ya know you can roam far more easily with that , you know if ennemy has vision or not literally every time even when the passive that disactivates wards is not up ... you get a youmu for the move speed with that and not only you will destroy your ennemy 1v1 ( post level 6 i know few champs that beat zed in a straight up 1v1 in midlane matchup ) and then you push lane insanely fast with one W combo and ... roam again , so you snowball over and over abusing small things adding up together and ... i mean in over 75 game now my win rate is above 65 % and since preseason i played like 10 games and didnt drop a single one because the snowball increases even more in the current meta , not forgeting stopwatch still dropped his bann rate while beeing usable only once and not giving any bonus stats ( also pretty easy to wait he gets out and burst the guy anyway ) so i recommend you to abuse him in solo Q . You can do that too with talon , he has lot of kill potential in lane and is definetly one of the best roamers , tho zed is more versatile so a safer pick imo . But yeah anyway , duskblade really op , insane bonus dmges really early on , no cd but just ennemy has no vision , and you can know 100 % of the time if ennemy has vision or not where you are . And even the moments when they do you just disactivates the wards . You can get so many catches that way ...

Il Conte Eiacula11/25/2017, 1:44:45 PM1 votes

I think they have to change the passive from "after being unseen" to "after using stealth or camouflage" to reduce the list of champions that can abuse the item, also, they should get rid of the ward revealing passive, if someone wants to spot a ward, he has to buy the red trinket, or a control ward.

O Fallen Scholar11/25/2017, 4:17:01 PM1 votes

dude u cry about marksmen then u cry about this? what's there not to cry about?

Pierce The Veal11/26/2017, 12:22:39 AM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tejs Forfang,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=dQRWUbW7,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-11-24T18:12:30.940+0000)

No, this is not another assassin nerf post. It's not about the damage duskblade provides.

What makes duskblade INCREDIBLY broken is the "Nightstalker" passive. No, it's not the damage portion.

The thing is, at the bottom of your screen (above your abilities) when you have duskblade you can see if Nightstalker is up. Let me quote the passive: "After being unseen for at least 1 second, your next basic attack against an enemy champion deals x"

I know alot of people don't know about this, but I've abused it for a while. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'll tell you exactly what's wrong. This passive allows you to go in a bush and you will ALWAYS be able to tell if its warded or not.

If the bush isn't warded, the Nightstalker passive duskblade provides will be at the bottom as per usual.

if it IS warded however, your passive will start fading away. You may not be able to break the ward like you can with the "Blackout" passive, but this means it becomes WAY easier setting up ambushes. You will know where the enemy team has warded the entire game after buying this item.

And yes, this passive is broken. Vision is incredibly powerful but duskblade negates that. Assassins that knows about this interaction are always safe standing in any bush as they can see their Nightstalker passive being up.

Also works with kha'zix passive so there's that. He's been able to do that for a while.

SociopathFriend11/26/2017, 4:31:03 AM1 votes

There's a few tricks like that in League, Kat's ult is one of them as IIRC it lights up whether you see the opponent or not.

Namitu11/25/2017, 10:17:44 PM1 votes

you probably play adcs like you can build deaths dance tabi and ga sit beside your support and they cant do anything

if anything they need to nerf fucking tanks, ezreal and every other adc that is broken, supports item costs, and the game would be greatitem 3812 item 3047 item 3026 item 3156 item 3046 item 3371

LordGeovanni11/25/2017, 11:08:03 PM1 votes

its both the damage and what it can be used for

Yosuke Apperu11/25/2017, 7:14:46 AM1 votes

Khazix has a passive that's kind of similar, it can be abused in similar ways.

Dengeden11/25/2017, 9:26:03 AM1 votes

So what? You still gimped your team by making armor incredibly efficient to itemize and by going for poor waveclear.

z63XnLCMwX11/25/2017, 9:40:18 AM1 votes

Incorrect. item 1001 literally almost every champion buys this item.

Shaydrox11/25/2017, 9:42:25 AM1 votes

Tbh I would be sorta fine with it if the item didn't give that 320 bonus damage on an autoattack. As a Talon main it feels stupid killing someone even halfway through my combo since I get so much extra free damage for doing so little.....before Duskblade he felt a lot more interesting tbh (this goes for pretty much all ad assassins)