Why Nocturne is an example of how League of Legends assassins should be designed.

This is not at all about Nocturne's current game balance, too strong or too weak, does not matter.

What this is about is how Nocturne is unique and does more than just damage, he has ways to always be useful for his team no matter what. If Nocturne is fed, then he is a great and effective assassin. If Nocturne is not fed or behind, at least he has utility effects like his global darkness and fear to be useful that way, so Nocturne is never useless at any point.

Now look at literally every single assassin in the game. They are all about their damage and nothing but their damage. They have no uniqueness to them, they are just reskins of the same thing and some are ability power and others are attack damage, still all the same thing, with no utility to help them be useful for their team if not insanely snowballed. There are other exceptions as well, very few, like Ekko where he has stuns and slows allowing him to be useful even when behind.

This is what an assassin rework should accomplish, is giving assassins something unique about them that helps their team in some way and not just be about damage. This does not need to be crowd control, like what Nocturne and Ekko have, it could be other utility like shields, heals, vision, walls, zone and/or map control, etc. Could also have things where one can literally cut a team in half so this group of champions are over here and the others are over there. You should get the point, having an assassin that is useful for the team no matter what is better than the multitude of reskinned assassins all about their damage and when behind are the most useless things and you were better off to pick a marksman instead or a mage.

P.S. Nocturne mid is pretty fun and his roams are very strong, gets more gold to feel out that assassin fantasy a lot better, restrictive to when you can play this as he is a melee champion still so varies based on who your opponent is if you should pick him or not, but his wave clear and health sustain is very strong. Just a little side note.

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By the way, when an assassin has other things useful about them then their damage does not need to be so high and offer more counter play against them - in non-fed scenarios.