Are Assassin Inherently Flawed?

DISCLAIMER: Tried to make it shorter, but failed miserably and instead added an extra paragraph or two. There is a TL;DR by the end, of course.

So, I was just asked this question. I've been giving some thought to it for a few weeks and made a huge wall of text about it. It's pretty damn big, but I'd like to know what you guys think on the subject.

> Are assassins just inherently flawed as a concept?

If we look at the root of all MOBAs, before the WoW mod or WoW itself, we have the RPGs. 4 to 6 players would sit their asses around a table with some paper and lots of dices to roleplay their characters through a campaing made by en evil genious (a.k.a the GM, the Dungeon Master, the fucker who will make you afraid of attacking a couple of old people... sorry, I got carried away). Those characters would stick together to get through the challenges the GM had thought for them, using cunning, strategy, meta gaming, and even some rudimentar mechanics (seriously, look at the people discussing how to solo a Tarrasque). Sounds familiar?

There are 4 classes that are the core of a RPG party. You have a Tank to draw aggro, you have a Crowd Crontroler for CC and peel, a Healer for sustain, and a Damage Dealer for Sustained Damage. Things like Bards, Assassins, and Burst Mages are largely superfluous to a well functioning party. This 4 man party ensures a functioning Tank n' Spank playstyle, which is the fail proof method of advancing in a RPG.

In League, things change a bit due to the lack of aggro. Tanks are given the Crowd Controler role as well, so they can have an artificial aggro tool. The Crowd Controler is changed into a secondary Damage Dealer with more utility and a different type of damage. The healer and the Damage Dealer are still unchanged.

Then we get to Assassins. They are largely redundant in a PvE scenario for most of the time. They are too squishy to deal with front line aggro, and provide too little DPS to take down large mobs. However, they really shine when a moderately powerful enemy is around. They pack enough burst damage to take those targets down before they can become a real threat to the party. They are the ultimate Anti Damage Dealer class. Totally superfluous in an RPG, but fun to play and useful in their own way.

When we bring that to League, they still pack their RPG principle: take away a powerful target before it causes too much trouble for your team.

However, a team comp in League can't change equipments, prepare a dozen different spells, carry a few scrolls, and pack a few different amulets just in case. The parties in League are much less versatile, so having an Assassin instead of a core role is a big trade off. You either giving up on at least one of those Tankiness, or in AoE, or in Sustained Damage, or in Buffing Power and always giving up on Utility.

Assassins in League stay very true to their RPG counterparts. They go in, kill a target, hopefully get out, and then become useless. To balance their playstyle out, the targets they kill must be exponentially more useful than then. Not only that, but that target must also be a stronger member of the team than the one the assassin is replacing. This means that if the Assassin goes for the ADC, the ADC must be a stronger teamfighter than the Assassin AND a stronger team fighter than a Mage, because by picking the Assassin you gave up on a mage.

Assassins conceptually make the team fight a 4v4 instead of a 5v5, with the option of choosing who they are going to take away from it.

And this is were the problems begin.

If Mages are just as strong as ADCs, picking an Assassin will have no impact on a team fight. You kill the enemy ADC and blow all your CDs. Now the fight is between the enemy's Tank, Mage, Fighter, and Support vs your team's Tank, ADC, Fighter, and Support, making the balance between the two teams equal and your only contribution is making the game less enjoyable for the ADC.

On the other hand, if the ADCs are stronger than the Mages, there is no reason to pick a Mage instead of an Assassin. You kill the enemy ADC and blow all your CDs, being essentially useless. But now that the battle is between the enemy's Tank, Mage, Fighter, and Support vs your team's Tank, ADC, Fighter, and Support AND ADCs are stronger than Mages, your team has a lead and, technically, a free win.

This is what makes Assassins a hell to balance. They are not only balanced around themselves, but rather balanced around themselves AND the relation between the Damage Dealers. Not only that, they are balanced around taking away another player's impact on the game in a way that leaves little to no counterplay to their targets (but we will get to that by the end of the text).

In a PvE game, this is completely ok. In a PvP that has it's focus around being fun to play with and feeling fair to play against, this is not so ok.

Assassins are part of the whole "Which class is stronger right now" problem, but, as they are the most niche one, they are the first to get their asses kicked by the balance team.

If Riot insists that Assassins are the class supposed to "Get in, kill their targets, and GTFO", while trying to keep the "Everything is fair and mechanically counterplayable" design concept, they are never going to balance Assassins. They will either need to say "Ok, ADCs should sit besides the Tank or the Support at ALL TIMES and make the counter to Assassins being game knowledgeto prevent them from snowballing thus making Assassins a smaller threat in mid to late game (but still a pre 6.22 threat with full build) or they need to give Assassins something else to do other than 100-0 someone and jumping away.

The first will imply in what we had before: the Assassin will either be reliant on Game Knowledge mistakes to snowball, making them OP on low ELO and UP on high-ish ELO, or he will be able to kill people even when they are not alone, resulting in Zed levels of fun to play against.

The second, while objectively better, would take probably about a full year (or even more) to be created, tested, and balanced, so I doubt Riot will see it as a viable option.

"But wait, you made this fucking huge wall of text and didn't answered the question! Are Assassins flawed or not?"

To put it shortly (for once) it depends. As a concept, they are perfectly fine. You give up utility and AoE for the ability to take away one core player of the enemy team. While it has the whole Mages vs ADC problem going on, the champion diversity we have in LoL more than makes up for it.

Now, if you put them in the current context where EVERYTHING is bursting squishies, they aren't balanceable. Ironically, the current levels of burst is too high for Assassins to be healthy. As virtually every Damage Dealer can burst everyone who's not a full tank in 2 to 5 seconds, Assassins have to burst people even faster to be useful, or they are going to be bursted by their target. Ever engaged a Vayne as post-rework AD Shaco? You don't have over the top burst, so the Vayne will burst you. Ever engaged a Vayne as post-rework AP Shaco? You have some ridiculous burst, so you will burst her down before she can even Tumble away.

And this is the problem. By having everyone dealing so much damage so quickly, Riot has forced Assassins to deal damage even faster or be useless, which results in an unbalanceable state for the whole class.

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TL;DR (because this fucking wall of text deserves one):

Assassins, in theory, are fine. What makes them unhealthy is the overloaded amounts of damage that everyone does in this game, making Assassins either kill things in the blink of an eye or be useless.

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PS: This is the thread in which the question showed up, the OP puts a good point and there seems to be some nice discussion going on there: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/hBPVgf6G-assassins-stat-focus-flawed