Seems like they pushed him towards it deliberately with a lot of these changes, particularly his W changes which I hated.
Is it really that bad for an assassin build to be viable at this point? Anything besides tanky damage builds are sub optimal on him right now.
TheHappyReaperz1 votesRengar doesn't really fit the Assassin "meta" that Riot is going for, with delayed damage. He also doesn't really fit thematically with being an Assassin.
Rengar, was, and still is, too a degree, about jumping in, out of stealth, and inst-gibbing a carry as fast as possible. Which is unhealthy. Its no fun for a carry to be deleted without any time to react, and its no fun for Rengar players to be shutdown half of their games, to allow for the games were they can insta-gib squishies. That resulted in Riot trying to delay Rengar's damage, by making his Q no longer instant. However, that really was just broken, especially with the buffs Bone-tooth gave. Realizing that slowing his burst, but giving him more damage wasn't healthy, Riot nerfed him. Still, he wasn't fair to play against. Part of that, is his kit. Rengar has no escapes in his kit, its all about diving in. He also has hard CC, something you don't see normally in Assassins. Leblanc is the only real exception, but she is half-mage, so that makes up for that.
Thematically, Rengar has some bad fits. For example, his old passive. It used to be that you could stack it off killing the same person over and over again, which Riot changed, partly because, it just didn't feel like you were a hunter searching for the strongest prey. You were more just beating up the weakest link, over and over again. Then there is the Assassin play-style with hunters. It can be argued that hunters are stealthy while taking down prey, but the dip in, dip out, is not how hunters work. It is much more thematically fitting for Rengar to be a Diver, than an Assassin.
To summarize, Rengar's current kit and thematic don't fit the Assassin role. He will likely never be balanced as an Assassin, and it is pretty likely Riot will either rework him to be a better Assassin, add an actual escape, remove the CC, or up his base stats, change his damage a tad, and make him a Diver.
Troy2426211 votesRengar doesn't really fit the Assassin "meta" that Riot is going for, with delayed damage. He also doesn't really fit thematically with being an Assassin.
Rengar, was, and still is, too a degree, about jumping in, out of stealth, and inst-gibbing a carry as fast as possible. Which is unhealthy. Its no fun for a carry to be deleted without any time to react, and its no fun for Rengar players to be shutdown half of their games, to allow for the games were they can insta-gib squishies. That resulted in Riot trying to delay Rengar's damage, by making his Q no longer instant. However, that really was just broken, especially with the buffs Bone-tooth gave. Realizing that slowing his burst, but giving him more damage wasn't healthy, Riot nerfed him. Still, he wasn't fair to play against. Part of that, is his kit. Rengar has no escapes in his kit, its all about diving in. He also has hard CC, something you don't see normally in Assassins. Leblanc is the only real exception, but she is half-mage, so that makes up for that.
Thematically, Rengar has some bad fits. For example, his old passive. It used to be that you could stack it off killing the same person over and over again, which Riot changed, partly because, it just didn't feel like you were a hunter searching for the strongest prey. You were more just beating up the weakest link, over and over again. Then there is the Assassin play-style with hunters. It can be argued that hunters are stealthy while taking down prey, but the dip in, dip out, is not how hunters work. It is much more thematically fitting for Rengar to be a Diver, than an Assassin.
To summarize, Rengar's current kit and thematic don't fit the Assassin role. He will likely never be balanced as an Assassin, and it is pretty likely Riot will either rework him to be a better Assassin, add an actual escape, remove the CC, or up his base stats, change his damage a tad, and make him a Diver.
Well right now he's not doing too well at either role, judging by his win rate. I don't agree that Rengar's theme is inconsistent with being an assassin, though. To the contrary, I think it's thematically unfitting to watch Rengar club carries over the head with his knife repeatedly while tanking damage and ignoring CC.
In terms of mechanics, what was aids was his leap into instant snare into instagibbing. They've effectively addressed that.
Counterplay Added
I don't think asking for a damage build to be viable is really unreasonable. They would probably need to drop a few of the diver/bruiser aspects of his kit, but given that he's supposed to be an assassin, he never should've gotten them in the first place.
Rengooo2 votesWhat you say is quite true, but went completely unnoticed by Riot when they were reworking him.
They essentially fixed some problems but made a whole lot of new ones by giving him even more tools, just to try and preserve the assassin in him.
I really don't think hes in any better of a spot now than he was pre-rework, and in the process of reworking him his kit changes have tilted 90% of Rengar mains because they are so wildly different (and feel horrible to use / clunky).
Personally I think they should just revert his rework and put a few measures in place to prevent his abusable aspects (e.g. making it so his Q can't crit which was a alot of where the one shot issues were coming from), and leave him like that until they are ready to rework him again.
This would at least please a lot of Rengar mains, in stead of leaving him in his current state until they rework him again, which I think they will because he still has far to many broken aspects to his play (see all his nerfs post rework as evidence).
N3mO061 votesWhat you say is quite true, but went completely unnoticed by Riot when they were reworking him.
They essentially fixed some problems but made a whole lot of new ones by giving him even more tools, just to try and preserve the assassin in him.
I really don't think hes in any better of a spot now than he was pre-rework, and in the process of reworking him his kit changes have tilted 90% of Rengar mains because they are so wildly different (and feel horrible to use / clunky).
Personally I think they should just revert his rework and put a few measures in place to prevent his abusable aspects (e.g. making it so his Q can't crit which was a alot of where the one shot issues were coming from), and leave him like that until they are ready to rework him again.
This would at least please a lot of Rengar mains, in stead of leaving him in his current state until they rework him again, which I think they will because he still has far to many broken aspects to his play (see all his nerfs post rework as evidence).
Old q never critted, just the aa portion that could do that
Rengooo1 votesYes I realise that..
What I mean is a crit basic attack + Q bonus damage all in one from stealth lead to unhealthy situations (one shot - no counterplay). Much like say Camilles Q, I think crit is to abusable on it and should not be do-able.
N3mO061 votesRengar doesn't really fit the Assassin "meta" that Riot is going for, with delayed damage. He also doesn't really fit thematically with being an Assassin.
Rengar, was, and still is, too a degree, about jumping in, out of stealth, and inst-gibbing a carry as fast as possible. Which is unhealthy. Its no fun for a carry to be deleted without any time to react, and its no fun for Rengar players to be shutdown half of their games, to allow for the games were they can insta-gib squishies. That resulted in Riot trying to delay Rengar's damage, by making his Q no longer instant. However, that really was just broken, especially with the buffs Bone-tooth gave. Realizing that slowing his burst, but giving him more damage wasn't healthy, Riot nerfed him. Still, he wasn't fair to play against. Part of that, is his kit. Rengar has no escapes in his kit, its all about diving in. He also has hard CC, something you don't see normally in Assassins. Leblanc is the only real exception, but she is half-mage, so that makes up for that.
Thematically, Rengar has some bad fits. For example, his old passive. It used to be that you could stack it off killing the same person over and over again, which Riot changed, partly because, it just didn't feel like you were a hunter searching for the strongest prey. You were more just beating up the weakest link, over and over again. Then there is the Assassin play-style with hunters. It can be argued that hunters are stealthy while taking down prey, but the dip in, dip out, is not how hunters work. It is much more thematically fitting for Rengar to be a Diver, than an Assassin.
To summarize, Rengar's current kit and thematic don't fit the Assassin role. He will likely never be balanced as an Assassin, and it is pretty likely Riot will either rework him to be a better Assassin, add an actual escape, remove the CC, or up his base stats, change his damage a tad, and make him a Diver.
It's not fun for the carry who builds no defensive items. It's interesting to see that assassins have to build at least 2 defensive items to try to do their job, while a carry can't build a defensive items if he is playing against a class who counter him. You know they changedthe Ga for this reason, so there is no point to keep this delayed burst from a non steath ultimate.
Troy2426211 votesPretty sure they gave him more tools to facilitate healthy design, because it'd have more "levers of balancing" to tweak.
Ironically, I think it left him in a position that is impossible to balance because he's now a mobile assassin bruiser diver that wants to be tanky and have CC while doing damage.