@Riot: What are your thoughts on an anti-tank assassin?

darkdill··2 votes·810 views

Assassins primarily have one role: kill squishies. Between Rengar, Talon, Evelynn, etc., there's little deviation from that. Now, since marksmen were reworked to each be more unique, I say assassins need someone who breaks the mold and goes instead for heavyweight targets, not squishies.

How could this be done? Well, you could have this Champion deal % health damage, give them less burst in exchange for DoT, make them CC-resistant, etc. But those are just basic ideas. You'd need to get some really cool mechanics together to make something like this work. But if it were made, it'd certainly add new levels of strategy to the game by enabling your assassin to pick off that annoying Rammus or Nautilus before a teamfight breaks out, leaving the enemy team's squishies wide open for the rest of your team. But at the same time, send this assassin against a Graves? Expect to get blown to bits.

Is this doable? Or does it result in "Burden of Knowledge" errors for the players?

27 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar3 votes

I don't think this is a good idea for two reasons. First, it breaks the rock/paper/scissors of team comps too much. Second, I don't see any way to make an assassin that CAN kill tanks and CANT kill squishies.

Unless you straight up give him damage penalties for attacking squishy champs, that isn't going to work. And that sounds horrifically not fun for the assassin player, nevermind how much fun the tank players are having there.

darkdill1 votes

It could use mechanics similar to the Giant Slayer item, perhaps. If your target has higher max HP than you, you deal more damage. If they don't (or are only slightly higher), your damage is weaker.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

That won't work.

If they're an assassin, they are still gonna have enough dmg to deal with squishies afterwards. You're talking about building a character that can take on any role. No champ can do that, and no champ should be able to. What's his counter in that case? You can't have a champ with no weakness.

AyRe CoNteMpT1 votes

darius can. garen can. master yi can. fiora can. none of them can instagib tanks but all of them can kill any champion with relative ease

YumaS2Astral3 votes

[{quoted}](name=AyRe CoNteMpT,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=fHKNaEKB,comment-id=0001000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-27T00:29:32.005+0000)

darius can. garen can. master yi can. fiora can. none of them can instagib tanks but all of them can kill any champion with relative ease

That's because they are duelists, not because they are assassins. A duelist is a champion that can 1x1 other champions no matter how tanky or damaging they are. Darius will 1x1 anyone that can't kite him or that isn't a duelist himself.

ModKnightsKemplar3 votes

That's the thing, though. They can't instagib tanks. That's what the OP is calling for. Don't you agree that would horribly break all of those champions?

Ralanr1 votes

Aren't mages supposed to be the class the counters tanks?

Why should they make an assassin that counters the entire class that counters assassins?

darkdill3 votes

Other way around. Tanks counter mages. It's marksmen that counter tanks (as a rule of thumb).

Ralanr1 votes

I thought tanks counter assassins, who counter ADC, who counter mages, who counter tanks.

And supports eat popcorn.

darkdill1 votes

Yes, tanks counter assassins.

But that does not mean there should not be a Champion who does the reverse of the role's usual purpose. It'd be the exception, not the norm.

YumaS2Astral1 votes

{quoted}

Other way around. Tanks counter mages. It's marksmen that counter tanks (as a rule of thumb).

See the post that I just replied to Ralanr

YumaS2Astral1 votes

{quoted}

Aren't mages supposed to be the class the counters tanks?

Why should they make an assassin that counters the entire class that counters assassins?

That depends from the mage.

DPS/sustained damage mages (Brand, Malzahar, Vladimir, Ryze, Swain, Cassiopeia, Rumble) tend to counter tanks. Burst mages (Lux, Ahri, Annie, Xerath, Orianna, Lulu, LeBlanc) tend to be countered by tanks. The thing is that tanks can't really deal with sustained magic damage due to the lower overall amount of magic resistance avaliable, and they can't afford to stack too much magic resistance against a sustained damage AP champion because that leaves them vulnerable to the ADC; 99,9% of teams will have at least one AD champion.. On other hand, against a burst mage, you don't need to stack a lot of magic resistance. Having a lot of HP also negates a lot of their burst, so usually one Banshee's Veil is enough of a magic resistance item, and all the HP you gain from other items after that will just lower their burst more.

It is the same reason why AD assassins fare poorly against tanks, but ADCs fare well against tanks.

BluePolarizer2 votes

tanks counter all burst due to their own burst and their immunity to burst. Before saying that mages counter tanks, you have to ask: why would they? what do tanks like to do? starting a fight with upfront damage and CC, soak burst then kill you when your stuff is on CD. literally every tank has rather significant burst and some sustained damage for doing just that. Amumu Nautilus Maokai Sion TahmKench Malphite what do mages do? burst champions before they can react and then their stuff is on CD. It is exactly that tanks counter mages.

what tanks are really weak to is high sustained damage and lifesteal since they get wittled down very fast (melted, not bursted) and they can't do anything back - AKA, ADCs and bruisers. Yes, bruisers absolutely destroy tanks.

Ralanr1 votes

I imagined it was because of AoE.

BluePolarizer1 votes

tanks are not scared of AOE at all. Why would they be? AOE spells with 1000 AP deal around 800 damage before MR. To have an idea of what that means, thatis is Mejais+Deathcap Veigar level. Tanks usually have 150+ MR and 3500+ HP. they aren't even scratched by AOE. These AOE spells have 10-120 second CDs meaning that they are very unlikely to be used twice in a single fight.

Meanwhile a 4 item ADC can crit for 800 damage a hit 3 times per 2 seconds to melt tanks.

That's why it's called melting tanks and not exploding tanks. Tanks, you see their HP bar melt away. Squishies, you see their HP bars disappear.

YumaS2Astral2 votes

{quoted}

tanks counter all burst due to their own burst and their immunity to burst. Before saying that mages counter tanks, you have to ask: why would they? what do tanks like to do? soak burst then kill you when your stuff is on CD. what do mages do? burst champions before they can react and then their stuff is on CD. It is exactly that tanks counter mages.

what tanks are really weak to is sustained damage and lifesteal since they get wittled down very fast (melted, not bursted) and they can't do anything back - AKA, ADCs.

There are sustained damage APs too. Vladimir, Cassiopeia, Ryze, etc. They all can beat tanks with relative ease.

Tanks counter the burst mages, however.

BluePolarizer1 votes

Yep but most mages (all except Vlad, Cass, Ryze, Karthus and Azir) are based on flat damage burst, not sustained damage.

YumaS2Astral1 votes

{quoted}

Yep but most mages (all except Vlad, Cass, Ryze, Karthus and Azir) are based on flat damage burst, not sustained damage.

Which is on a very low cooldown and is spammable and that's why their damage is sustained.

Desiderium1 votes

The character would need a lot of percent penetration and percent health damage, while being dissuaded from building damage so they won't hurt squishies...it's not going to work as a concept.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

[{quoted}](name=I am Zed IRL,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=fHKNaEKB,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2015-12-27T00:03:45.523+0000)

The character would need a lot of percent penetration and percent health damage, while being dissuaded from building damage so they won't hurt squishies...it's not going to work as a concept.

You could give them low scalings and scale off AP?

Or have their percents scale off AP.

On second thought, just go Dev --> tank Vi.

Rebonack1 votes

The champion(s) you're looking for is AD Vi and/or AD Jarvan.

They can both annihilate an Tank's defense in a matter of moments.

darkdill1 votes

Both still instakill squishies, though. My thought on an anti-tank assassin would be that it doesn't do as well as traditional assassins against squishies.

ZephyrDrake2 votes

{quoted}

Both still instakill squishies, though. My thought on an anti-tank assassin would be that it doesn't do as well as traditional assassins against squishies.

and how would you do that? you have to give them such massive penalties for attacking low max HP, armor/mr champions to the point it won't even matter. Making it DoT won't do much against tanks since they'll just regen or be shielded/healed before the DoTs could do anything against them specially since DoTs aren't meant to blow up anyone which is what an assassin is, someone who blows people up.

For a champion like this to exist it requires so many things to the point it will either be blowing up EVERYONE or nor blowing up anyone at all and therefore making it be pointless to pick as an assassin. You are way better off making an AP mage that deals with tanks than an assassin since mages have a much better kit design and concept to deal with tanks than assassins

Rebonack2 votes

{quoted}

Both still instakill squishies, though. My thought on an anti-tank assassin would be that it doesn't do as well as traditional assassins against squishies.

The only way something like that would work is if the anti-tank's abilities all scale based on the targets bonus resist and bonus HP.

It would be a weirdly specific design.

YumaS2Astral1 votes

{quoted}

The only way something like that would work is if the anti-tank's abilities all scale based on the targets bonus resist and bonus HP.

It would be a weirdly specific design.

Also, such scalings would also need to have little or no base damage and scale better as you buy more offensive stats. Kinda like Fiora, her true damage is on a small amount but it scales with her AD and she also has poor base stats.

If you don't do that, you are encouraging such a champion to be built tanky.

The only reason why people don't just build Fiora full tank is because she has very poor base damages, very poor base stats, and her max health true damage scales with an offensive stat, in her case, her AD. You need to build AD to make that max health true damage actually deal significant damage.

It's also why nobody builds Vayne tanky, you need attack speed to make Vayne useful, and a tanky build would rely too much on her W to do damage, and Vayne can only proc it on every third attack. Thus she would need to hit a single target a lot of times to actually kill him - with an ADC build, however, she can melt anyone.

YumaS2Astral1 votes

{quoted}

The champion(s) you're looking for is AD Vi and/or AD Jarvan.

They can both annihilate an Tank's defense in a matter of moments.

There is also Fizz.

His insane burst and his Seastone Trident both allow him to kill tanks fairly well.

Quepha1 votes

Vayne

%health true damage to kill tough targets as quick as possible ranged to avoid melee autos and short ranged abilities mobility to avoid skillshots and stay at a distance for kiting

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