Boards›Gameplay

Burst does not define assassins

jawd55·11/13/2016, 11:25:04 PM·3 votes·1,092 views

Many people are complaining about the lackluster burst on the assassin reworks. However, an assassin should not be defined by their burst potential. Mages, in my opinion, are meant to have higher burst than assassins. Assassins should be defined by their ability to get to and kill high priority targets by outsmarting and outmaneuvering them and then get out of the sticky situation they've put themselves in provided that they completed their job correctly. To me, the fantasy of an assassin is one who is a constant threat to vulnerable players on the map due to an ability to find unique ways to get to their target and a variety of tools to outmaneuver them. Most of the assassin reworks accomplish this! Talon has his wall hop, Katarina her shunpo and blades, Leblanc her blink and unique ultimate to trick players on the map. Rengar is a bit of an exception due to a fantasy of a master hunter rather than a strict assassin. In short, high burst potential is something that assassins want, but aren't defined by. Them having less burst than mages is not an issue because they have more unique ways to reliably get to and attack their target.

I do very much understand the issue of late game ADC's potentially being able to auto attack assassins to death before they can get to them, especially for Leblanc because her burst window is the longest. I think that each assassin can work around this, with either fast enough burst or in Leblanc's case clever use of her ultimate and mobility but it that doesn't mean I think its in a balanced place.

I congratulate Riot on their work in the assassin update. I never was an assassin player but I'm very excited to try them out now!

12 Comments

Calabok11/13/2016, 11:27:54 PM5 votes

Burst defines assassins.

Astôlfo11/13/2016, 11:28:33 PM5 votes

Uh, no, the whole point of an assassin is to burst a squishy carry down instantaneously (within 0.5-0.8s) because they will be the ones to die first instead if they can't, let alone even worrying about killing the carry at that point, which they won't be able to.

Limmie11/14/2016, 1:52:58 AM4 votes

This is a lot like communism. It sounds cool and dandy in theory until you see it in practice and realize it's actually the stupidest thing mankind has ever imagined. People aren't going to play this complicated sneaky smarty assassin that will more likely than not get blown clean away by their targets. They're just gonna play divers and burst mages instead, since they do the same thing assassins are supposed to do (eliminate high priority targets) more efficiently and with a lot less risk and effort involved.

Sims161911/13/2016, 11:34:01 PM2 votes

I think the problem is that pre-rework assassins would burst down targets in under a second which lead to people feeling like there was no counter play. The rework was to extend burst windows to make it less frustrating to play against them but, baring a couple exceptions, they may have overshot that goal which leads to people feeling like assassins got gutted.

feryvunny11/14/2016, 12:59:12 AM1 votes

Actually that's a really good perspective on it! I didn't think about it that way.

People always equated burst with assassins, but forgot that mobility is also equated with them.

Personally I do feel the frustration of late game adcs that can just shield/life steal through all my damage. But I also know from the adc's perspective it's scary as hell and feels really bad when you invest all this gold into BT/Steraks/GA or something and still get 100-0'd. I'm kinda seeing tank rengar go around and that stuff just looks ridiculous. Riot definitely has some fine tuning to do.

l Dárius l11/14/2016, 6:53:05 AM1 votes

HIGH BURST=LOW TIME TO KILL IF YOU THINK MAGES SHOULD BE KILLING QUICKER THAN ASSASSINS YOU MUST NOT BE THINKING