My Problem With ADC's and Assasins

Divine Thighs·2/15/2018, 1:23:56 AM·52 votes·2,060 views

I am a long time Talon main and Talon is not fun right now. I know you ADC players will say, "as soon as your ass gets item 3147 you will hop over a wall and one shot us. After that you will to stalk us the ENTIRE game." Yes this is true, but this type of gameplay is really not that fun for us either.

An assassin job is to pick off the highest priority target. Back in the day this meant that I had to find a way to shut down the most fed squishy. This could be

  1. a mid laner

  2. an ADC

  3. a carry top,

  4. a carry jungler.

This is no longer the case because the highest priority target is now ALWAYS the ADC. We are forced to spend the entire game hunting the enemy ADC.

And when I say the entire game I mean the ENTIRE game. Other assasins can focus on killing their laner early game and then spend mid game hunting the enemy ADC.

We Talon mains can't reach a competent ranged mid laner since our q range is very short, so we have no choice but to roam early. Roaming top is not worth the effort so where do we go? We go bot lane. This contributes to the cancerous party bot lane meta.

After lane phase ends, who is the highest priority target? It is ALWAYS the ADC. Even when the ADC is behind we have to go after them to prevent them from reaching their 3 item power spike (item 3087 item 3031 item 3094 . This is not fun for me as an assassin main and is REALLY not fun for ADC mains.

59 Comments

TreeDayBan2/15/2018, 2:27:25 AM16 votes

I'd argue its more because mages are harder to 1 shot than most ADCs. Most will always have a zhonyas if you are an AD assassin. If you are an AP assassin, they have Banshee's Veil. Not only that, they have levels. Most supports are much harder to kill now that there is so much residual defenses(health/armor/MR) on items, leaving ADCs to mostly have tabi's at best.

Honestly, its one of the reasons Assassins just arent as good now. Its not only the peel, but there just isn't that many viable targets anymore outside of the ADC. Even most supports nowadays are kind of off limits.

I mean you mention the 3 item powerspike, but its not like those 3 items keep you from killing them. There is no defenses on those items. IE/Double Zeal they are as easy to kill as they are on a Doran's Blade.

I don't feel the reliance of focusing on ADCs is all because of their item spikes; they never get harder to really kill until they get GA's/Bloodthirsters/etc. I just feel your actual targets are less and less as the game goes on. ADCs usually remain the only class in the game who can still be bursted out .

Diamond2Kappa2/15/2018, 5:17:55 AM14 votes

This is not fun for me as an assassin main and is REALLY fun for ADC mains.

ftfy

Also working as intended by Riot

https://puu.sh/yjUkp/fa12be87a3.png hehe

Evil Yasuo2/15/2018, 9:19:15 AM8 votes

Dear friend, riot has forgotten about us. They don't like Talon. Live and die by the longsword.

MasterDClone2/15/2018, 2:03:08 AM6 votes

as talon i can see your point but i honestly don't mind just fucking over the botlane all game as shaco i have more options but even when i can kill the mid i find the clean one shot on an adc is more satisfying

TsunamiSS2/15/2018, 5:40:33 PM5 votes

As an ADC main, I appreciate this perspective and completely agree.

Infernape2/15/2018, 3:29:13 AM5 votes

It's times like this when I miss Talon's blink.

Yordle Xayah2/15/2018, 9:13:31 PM4 votes

Three item power spike??

No no, our power spike is TWO ITEMS item 3031 item 3087

And yeah, it's not fun and rather unfair, specially for champs that SHOULD require AT LEAST 3 items but instead get off on just the Shiv and IE, which by the way are really cheap for what they offer.

Steel Blossom2/15/2018, 10:02:16 PM4 votes

As a Talon main I really can't understand how anyone can make an assassin with a 500 unit dash work at all. The entire rework was an abomination, as was the "item update" that split our core stat into five different items and killed all build diversity differentiating us from other assassins. I'd deal with a S3 Renekton any day of the week than play in this current meta, tbh.

AeolusDewshining2/16/2018, 12:38:29 AM2 votes

[deleted]

cocacolalips2/15/2018, 9:42:39 PM2 votes

weird, whenever I play an assassin, I just kill whoever is in front and then do the same to the next person right behind him LOL nobody can duel you besides maybe the 500 armor sejuani, everyone else is so free.

Iffy Jarl2/16/2018, 3:10:29 AM2 votes

So your telling me if there is a fed Ahri and a 1/3 KogMaw your gnna go after kog? If so what changes did Riot make to force u to make this decision?

Teridax682/15/2018, 12:44:50 PM2 votes

I agree with this, and this is one of the reasons why I think making the bot lane marksman the de facto VIP on every team is terrible for player choice. There are actually several more classes besides assassins who want to focus the VIP: divers want to go for a back liner and mess them up, vanguards want to lock down whoever they perceive as the largest threat, and mages want to blow up whoever's causing the most trouble, but on the flipside we also have supports choosing which member of their team whose power they want to amplify, and wardens figuring out which ally it would be most worth defending. A huge part of the decision-making process for most classes is conditional upon them picking priority targets to focus, so when the number of valid choices boils down to just one, a huge amount of depth is lost in the process. As mentioned above, there should be many more potentially valid carries besides the marksman, but even the support could themselves be a valid target, as they can power up and sustain their entire team (which I think counts as carrying in its own right).

As mentioned above as well, I think this also leads into the fact that, whenever the marksman is always the priority target on either team, this hurts marksman players as well. While some may like being the center of attention, I don't think anybody enjoys getting ganged up on constantly throughout an entire match. I don't think it's really fair to have to deal with getting hard-focused by multiple members of the enemy team at a time, all the time, even if there are also allies on your own team trying to protect you. While there should definitely be some games where the marksman pops off and becomes their team's MVP, that shouldn't happen every game, nor should the game force that situation to happen via stark differences in scaling and contribution.

In fact, even in the current framework where marksmen are essentially the only carry class around, this should still be an environment where the MVP changes as the game progresses. If invades or ganks happen early on, it might be worth taking out the fighter or tank first, since they'd often be capable of hurting the most while not yet getting all that tanky (this should also be one more reason why top lane should be afforded more agency over the other lanes early in the game). If teams are collecting in the mid game around objectives, prioritizing the mage or assassin when they're at the peak of their power could remove the biggest asset out of a fight. Afterwards, as games get to a close, focusing the marksman or the support powering them should be equally valid, as they're two halves of either team's carrying core. There's a ton of potential for more interesting tactical and strategic decision-making in League, some of which I don't think would require a huge overhaul to implement, and I think working towards that would be preferable to engineering a game state where fights increasingly rely on twitch mechanical plays in the very first few moments of combat, and otherwise have a fairly predictable and unchanging target selection paradigm.

Madsin252/16/2018, 5:45:45 PM1 votes

I miss the old talon so much. Still to this day I think he was the funnest champ.

I would love the reason why he was reworked.

It took a good talon to get fed(and not feed in the process) in lane and transition that into the rest of the map.

OP Garen Support2/16/2018, 12:35:20 AM1 votes

A grand mage item update is on the PBE. If everything goes well that will mean that ADC'S will no longer be the only carry in the game anymore. We Mage mains will be able to dominate once again and not just feel like a shitty secondary support next to the ADC. For assassins sadly it means you guys will have a hard time against us or it will simply mean its up to skill :P like it used to be. Mages felt shit in the past 1-2 seasons. On my opinion Riot finally doing something to fix the abomination BOT Lane focused meta they created. Since mages will get their itemization fixed, probably assassins will get their update over the season 8 as well.

Ideal power distribution would be

TANKS >MAGES=ASSASSINS (up to skill who wins) >ADC=JUGGERNAUTS >TANKS

Of course ADC+SUPP should beat anyone 2 vs 1

With the nerfing of jungle the Top lane might be fixed as well.

Karn Bishop2/16/2018, 3:40:08 AM1 votes

Riot seems threatened by assassins that can carry/close out games just look at old eve vs new eve to see this effect, if new eve cannot win a fight then she can't really do anything at all, meanwhile old eve in the same situation could split push a lane and force her opponent to respond to her or lose a tower and depending on who they sent the rest of the team could have made a solid 4 v 4 play.