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Assassins' stat focus flawed?

Ceol·1/8/2017, 1:26:22 PM·50 votes·3,761 views

Does anyone else think that an issue with League balancing (especially regarding the tank assassin fiasco) is that the stats that some classes wants/needs are too similar to each other? For instance, LeBlanc's final build typically looks like: item 3165 item 3020 item 3001 item 3089 item 3285 item 3135 Meanwhile, Lux's final build typically ends up: item 3165 item 3020 item 3285 item 3135 item 3089 item 3157 or item 3001 /item 3026 Granted, they both fulfill the burst role; they play completely differently and offer the team different things - yet are stuck building similar/the same items because they only want one thing - AP and Magic Pen. Thus, it becomes more difficult to differentiate the two stat-wise. Why is LeBlanc an assassin? Is it because of her mobility? Or pick potential? Arguably Lux can make great picks...and follow that up with safer, generally larger and quicker burst. LeBlanc, to compensate for this is given incredible base damage values; however, this proves an issue when put into practice, as we've seen from the rise of Tank Ekko and Bruiser Rengar. Obviously, something's wrong. Both Lux and LeBlanc are negated by heals/shields/actives/resistances, but at the exact same effectiveness. A Caitlyn building item 3139 item 3156 negates both Lux's and LeBlanc's damage equally (relatively, of course, Lux is reliant on her q and QSS removes that threat every 90 seconds) because they're interested in AP, 15 magic pen and 35% magic pen. But LeBlanc, whose primary objective (and arguably her only objective) is to assassinate the ADC is rendered less effective than Lux who has better teamfight presence and team utility.

Bruisers - Health and AD/AP (usually some resistance item/s depending if they scale well or not) Assassins - AD/AP and penetration (ADs have better item actives, yet suffer due to being melee most of the time, thus prompting them to build resistances) Mages - AP and penetration

Why not shift Assassin itemisation away from raw AP/AD and into items/stats that help them with increasing their damage on a single target? What about an emphasis on Flat penetration with average AD/AP so that they still are relatively "meh" against tanks who build, generally over 250+arm and 200+ mr but more effective on the Ashe who has yet to build any defensive items? This would probably result in a change to lethality or even all penetration as a whole to balance it out better. Shifting Assassin itemisation towards negating resistances and healing/shielding can push Rito into evaluating "negative resistances" as a viable stat that Assassins can scale with; working as an amplifier for their own damage against a target. This can allow them to lower their base damages and put more into their scaling to prevent tank/bruiser builds being more effective than actual assassin builds (see bruiser rengar). Assassins currently, apart from a few Assassins (Leblanc ,Katarina ) aren't exactly shining as the glorious Assassins they should be. Instead, we're seeing Rengar build tankier to survive for the extra moments he has to spend killing his target and actually functioning better because of it. So, we have to improve their itemisation without buffing mages/bruisers and completely destroying supports (who, honestly, are a little obnoxious at the moment with item 3190 ,item 3107 but otherwise aren't necessarily the primary issue.

As examples (based on old penetration - thus, before lethality):

**Rune Glaive - **2550 gold

  • 60 AP
  • 25 Magic Penetration +5% Cooldown Reduction +5% Movement Speed [Unique Active: Sharpened Tip - For 5 seconds, all damage dealt by this champion penetrates shields by 35%] [Unique Passive: Grievous Wounds - ]

Cutlass of Demise - 2400 gold +50 AD

  • 25 Armour Penetration
  • 7% Movement Speed [Unique Active: Sharpened Tip - For 5 seconds, all damage dealt by this champion penetrates shields by 35%] [Unique Passive: Grievous Wounds - ]

Cloak of Darkness - 3150 gold +30 AP +30 AD +10 Magic Penetration +10 Armour Penetration +5% Movement speed [Unique Active: Absolute Power - For 5 seconds, your highest form of damage (physical/magical) ignores shields by 50% on a targeted enemy] [Unique Passive: Killer's High - Upon killing an enemy champion, grant a buff decaying over 5 seconds that increases movement speed by 50%]

*Only one shield penetration active may be functional at a time

TLDR; Shift Assassins towards itemising for penetration

64 Comments

TequilaZombie1/8/2017, 2:49:22 PM27 votes

IMO it's not that Assassin are lacking good items (hell, item 3147 item 3814 item 3142 item 3100 item 3146 are all awesome in concept), but the main problem is that those items are not as strong as they could because other classes can abuse them by inserting one or two of them in their build.

I believe the biggest problem with Assassins is that they are the only full offensive class without a third damage scaling. "WTF is that?" you ask me. Gonna make this as short as possible:

ADCs scale with AD, AS, and Crit (unless we look at the Penetration Era). AD gives them raw damage output, AS and Crit Multiply AD's value.

Mages scale with AP, Mpen and CDR. AP for raw damage, Mpen as a sort of multiplier to it's damage (and to boost their high base damages) and CDR to allow them ot use their abilities multiple times in a team fight.

Assassins scale with AD/AP, and Lethality/Mpen. The core difference here between the Assassin and the Mage is that the Assassin, in a team fight, is NOT looking to use his abilities time and time again, but rather use his full rotation ONCE and get out, so CDR does very little for them once the mid game is over and they are not roaming anymore.

IMO this leads for a bit of a subpar scaling and any form of defense is able to greatly hinder an Assassin's offense, simply because Defensive options scale in the same manner as Assassin's offensive options (Health+MR/Armor vs AD/AP+Lethality/Mpen).

If Assassins were given another sort of scaling, they'd be able to do their jobs without requiring stupidly high base damages (which makes easy for them to go full tank) or stupidly high scalings (which makes them snowball too hard).

It would need some field testing (or too much math time for my liking), but one thing I thought about is something along the lines of the following passive:

Kill the Weak (unique): If your target's armor value against you (their Armor - your Lethality) is lower than X (Base value + % of your Lethality), you do x% more damage to them.

For AP champions, just swap Armor for MR and Lethality for Mpen.

After such a thing has been implemented, we can have our fun with nice actives and passives that gate the Assassin's damage so they have to plan things out a bit more.

Marked for Death (active): Choose a target. After 5 seconds, you ignore X points ( % of Lethality/Mpen) of their Armor and MR for 2 seconds. (2000 units)

Or something to help against shields

Precise Striking (passive): Whenever a target you've hit is shielded, X% (based, once again on Lethality/Mpen) of your damage ignores the shield.

The one thing to notice is that those actives could never be based on AD or AP, as it would give ADCs, Mages, Bruisers, and Divers reasons to buy them. By making it scale with Lethality, you avoid ADCs buying one of those items and then going for the regular Crit build to deal massive damage to everyone, or a Darius picking it up and then going Full Tank to enjoy the massive boost he will get once his passive kicks in.

In short, I think Lethality and Mpen should be explored more by Riot and become more of a core to Assassins.

ArnoldSchwarzens1/8/2017, 5:23:03 PM9 votes

Made my own post about that some time back and why I personally think that lethality / flat Mpen is somewhat meh atm: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/NEeK3pNH-some-suggested-changes-to-lethality-and-flat-magic-pen-considering-their-current-state

tl;dr:

  • Both lethality and flat magic pen suck right now because minions, most monsters and towers all have 0 resistances which means that penetration doesn't increase damage dealt against them, whereas pure AP and AD does. This means that taking it in runes makes lasthitting/clearing pretty hard early on and buying these stats in general is useless when it comes to late game tower pushing / wave clearing. Possible solution: make it so that you're able to penetrate past 0 with lethality and flat magic pen or give minions, towers and monsters more armor but less health in return.

  • Duskblade contradicts itself - on the one hand, it gives lethality which penetrates armor and wants yo to deal close to true damage against squishies but on the other hand it already has true damage which takes armor out of the equasion completely, which means that lethality is wasted on it. Possible solution: let its passive be more total damage but change it to physical damage instead of true damage.

  • Liandry's contradicts itself - on the one hand, it gives you flat magic pen which you want to buy against low MR squishy targets but on the other hand it has a passive that is good on poke champions, CC champions and a passive that you want to buy against tanky targets instead, so the flat magic pen doesn't really fit on the item at all. Possible solution - remove flat pen from Liandry's and Haunting Guise, replace haunting Guise's flat magic pen with a weaker version of Liandry's DoT, and Liandry's 15 flat magic pen with 20 AP to make it a 100 AP item. In it's place, release an item with flat penetration that caters to the needs of burst mages and magic damage dealing assassins, similar to your suggestion.

Pale Pirate1/8/2017, 3:59:30 PM7 votes

The AP item update was terrible for AP assassins. It took their main items and turned them into defensive items (item 3157 , item 3001 ) and it also added CDR everywhere. Fortunately, RIOT has said that they didn't make AP items because they didn't want to try more than they can like at the mage update. Whether they recognize the problem, though, is debatable. I don't think any of their guys plays AP assassins.

TheOnlyJoe1/8/2017, 4:52:09 PM5 votes

We just need an AP assassin item tbh, they removed deathfire grasp, the AP burst item and reduced AP across the boards Something with a melee / short range active so that mages don't abuse it

Sire Hippington1/8/2017, 2:35:40 PM3 votes

LB is like ahrie a mage/assasin hybrid, it's not exactly supprising that she has similar builts like burst mages.

For the items: i'd prefer shields/heals to be adressed in generall rather than with a item that kinda becomes must buy because of how stupid shielding/healing gets. And for the pen items, you have to be very carefull because many mages have huge basedamages and thus like pen. Brand or Zyra would escalate quickly with an item like runeglaive.

HongChongDong1/8/2017, 1:49:24 PM2 votes

I like the post and always love the idea of new items for asssassins but let me critique 3 things:

1 Why does "Eye of Infinity" grant passive true sight? Unfortunately this would be a fairly pointless passive on an assassin. Copying over the AD items passive would be better.

2 The AP item needs CDR, not Movement speed. Assassins (especially AP assassins) want/need 40% CDR so by not putting that in it forces the champion buying it to have to buy other CDR items to fill the gap which might lead to items that they don't need or possibly items that would lower the overall AP they could get in the game.

3 As with every item added you NEED to think about who will be using this. Sure, make an item for assassins and it'll be great but unless you somehow gate the item to being viable only on assassins then other champions would just build the item as well and potentially just do even better with it. If the item turned out to be too unbalanced on the other group of characters using it then the item would get nerfed and the assassin class would just end up in the same place.

ZephyrDrake1/8/2017, 6:57:44 PM2 votes

well AP assassins' build are pretty similar to other mages because there really aren't any AP assassin items

Incarceration1/8/2017, 7:33:03 PM2 votes

Why don't we just make a damage amplification to abilities? Most assassins have a damage amplification like Leblanc's passive, Katarina's passive, Zed's passive, Fizz's w, Rengar's ult, Kha zix's q, etc. If we could make an item that is like Rod of Ages, but is more damage and penetration focused, then they could possibly make that their stat. They could be alot like ADCs.

Destiny's Hour- 3703

  • 40 AP
  • 10 Magic Penetration
  • 7% Movement Speed +15% Magic Penetration Passive- Gains charges upon killing 6 minions at a time. This item gains 2 mana per 5 seconds, 4 magic penetration, and 3 ability power up to 10 charges.
    Unique Passive- Stalker: Amplifies the damage of a passive in your kit after a spell has been casted. Unique Passive- Spotted: Gains charges upon moving. At 75 charges, your next spell ignores 10 magic resist.
    Unique Passive- Destiny's Blade: After an ability has been casted, your next basic attack deals (50% base AD) bonus true damage (2.5 second cooldown).

Builds out of Destiny's Hourglass- 1500

  • 10 Magic Penetration
  • 10% Magic Penetration
  • 20 AP
  • Unique- Monster's Maternity: 30% of damage taken from champions gives them 100 health back (75 second cooldown). Builds out of Sheen- 1050 Builds out of Aether Wisp- 850
kirbyzama1/9/2017, 12:01:48 AM1 votes

You know, I had a thought. ADC are complaining about being weak. AD assassins complain about being weak. What if the solution isn't to make new assassin or adc stuff. What if AD as a stat is just too weak or armor as a stat is just too good. If the stats get buffed together than even if adc becomes too strong the AD assassins as well should be strong even if they only use a few of the same items. It just strikes me as interesting that the only people in the community complaining on any significant level are champs that build AD. Tanks and mages seem more or less content. However like you said penetration I think is at the heart of what is wrong with AD champs. I mean Camille seems to be working but she does obscene true damage.

Yalathanil1/9/2017, 1:22:44 AM1 votes

Two words: MasterYi

wuju care to hear me out? Here is a build that turns the master into a backline destructive machine

http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/100-critical-strike-chance-40-cooldown-reduction-6-24-444058

By itemizing into AD/AS/Crit/Lifesteal and some CDR as well, you carve squishies like butter as your team is taking care of the bruisers. "Ohh look, tristana has her bloodthirster shield up... nvm let me 3 shot her.

Note: this is a very late game build, but those triple kills are so satifying

Vesemir1/9/2017, 7:15:42 AM1 votes

AurelionSol with item 3030 item 3116 item 3157 item 3151 item 3009 and item 3135 or item 3001 or item 3089 depending how the game goes wrecks everything. Dealing insane damage and being tanky.

TeCoolMage1/9/2017, 9:12:17 AM1 votes

multiplicative scaling is broken and assassins are made in a way right now where they get a certain amount of AD/AP/Lethality/MPen/ whatever and have enough damage to kill the enemy ADC unless they build tanky.

Why? Because ADCs have relatively the same amount of tankiness the entire game, and their job is to keep building damage so it scales upwards exponentially with the enemy top's tankiness. Meanwhile, Assassins have mostly linear scaling with a few powerspikes in lethality but they reach a certain point where the ADC, at their peak tankiness assuming they don't start building Frozen heart or something, will never be more than an assassin's damage.

This a huge problem, assassins are either able to afford to build tanky, useless until they reach that threshold, or able to start killing tanks easily as well.

When your main purpose is damage but all you can do is overkill and nothing else when you get it, balance becomes a huge problem where these useless stats start having side effects like damage to non-ADCs/mages or they just do nothing.

HollowMimic1/9/2017, 10:25:46 AM1 votes

What if they could differentiate itemization in the shop for certain champs (based on role)?

For example, Assassin-Mages would some similar and some unique items to use that typical Mages cannot exploit and the same can be done with Assassin-Fighters and Marksmen or Tanks; giving Assassin items on non-Assassin Marksmen is a bit annoying tbh (or even thinking of buffing Assassin items like item 3147 for the sake of certain non-Assassin Marksmen like Lucian).

It can done only for the balance of ladder, so people that want to have fun in Normal Blind/Draft or ARAM can still do it.

Kitten of Evil1/9/2017, 6:23:15 PM1 votes

How would shield penetration help solve the problem? You're just making it harder for supports to do their job, since no ADC has an innate shield on their kit. If anything, wouldn't this punish tanks like Naut and Malph, who are more reliant on shields?

I think if you want to target squishier champions and not affect tanks, the better option is: +X% base armor penetration (does not affect bonus armor), melee only.

JRobin311/9/2017, 6:33:41 PM1 votes

RIOT put a lot of effort into eliminating niche item builds and creating item uniformity champion to champion.

Their philosophy was that if not that many players build an item, then they should change it or eliminate it.