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Statistically, assassins suck in the preseason

Koechophe··3 votes·659 views

Riot's whole "Assassins are going to be better now!" was blown out of the water by a few things.

  1. Assassins need wards just as much (if not more) as they need the enemy NOT to ward. Lack of warding this season hits them hard.
  2. Zone control mages are the bane of assassins, and they have all gotten extremely popular and powerful this season.
  3. Tanky champs are also more popular, especially top and support, and can peel the assassins easier than a potato
  4. AP itemization was slammed across the board, particularly the stuff used by assassins (luden's, zonya's, deathcap). AD itemization for assassins was also decimated (no more brutalizer or LW to rush, BoTRK slammed, etc).

The result is this (Win Rates from Champion.gg) Shaco: 52% Fizz: 51% Rengar: 50% Talon: 50% Evelynn: 49% Akali: 48% Kassadin: 48% Katarina: 47% Zed: 47% Ekko: 46% Leblanc: 45% Kha'Zix: 44%

Of the 12 champions, only 2 maintain win rates above 50%; Shaco (because he is the only champ in the game that can easily solo the rift herald in a short amount of time) and Fizz, who's only above by 1% and who gets a lot of complaints for being OP. Even Leblanc, who's the poster child for assassins at the moment, sits at an abysmal 45%. It's not just the AD assassins that are suffering, they're all doing really bad in the preseason. Assassins, as a class, need some love.

9 Comments

WoonStruck4 votes

Lb has had a low winrate, despite being great for solo queue, for a long time.

The majority of people are just bad at assassins. They can't win with them unless they get a cheesy early kill and snowball hard. Those people bog down the win% a ton.

Only AD assassins are in a really bad spot atm with the exception of Shaco and Rengar. Talon is situational. He excels vs some teams, and utterly fails vs other. Most the time 'teams' being defined by a single support champ (or player if they keep the map lit up) or his lane match up.

But considering their snowbally nature, they should be around the win%s they are. They're supposed to be high risk by definition. If their winrates were any higher you'd see nerfs to all of them.

Don't complain about assassins until their patch comes. Their entire concept is getting a total overhaul, and they're getting real itemization at some point as well.

Koechophe2 votes

Riot has already stated that immobile mages are next, assassins won't get their "rework" for a long, long time now.

  1. If LB was great for solo queue, she wouldn't have a bad win rate in solo queue. There is no logic behind your statement. Yes, she's high skill cap, but even experienced players don't have a good win rate with her.
  2. A lot of people are bad at every role. If being an assassin is more difficult than other roles, it should be equally more rewarding, but win ratios for experienced players doesn't reflect this. In my opinion, assassins are only "harder" than other roles atm because they're less powerful atm. Why play an assassin when you can play anivia and chunk people for 870 + 250% of your max AP every time you land a Q? (not an exaggeration, Q + E + 2 seconds of R = those stats).
  3. High risk should translate to high reward, and therefore a decent win ratio. If it doesn't, that means the risk isn't worth it and the class is underpowered. The only time when a low general win rate is balanceable is when it's in contrast to a high experienced-player win rate, or a high competative win rate. Neither of those are true for assassins.

I'd rather not see an entire class of players sit in the dumpster until riot gets around to reworking them, which may or may not happen (how many times have we been promised the infamous "AD caster item rework" that's literally never happened?)

WoonStruck1 votes

{quoted}

Riot has already stated that immobile mages are next, assassins won't get their "rework" for a long, long time now.

  1. If LB was great for solo queue, she wouldn't have a bad win rate in solo queue. There is no logic behind your statement. Yes, she's high skill cap, but even experienced players don't have a good win rate with her.
  2. A lot of people are bad at every role. If being an assassin is more difficult than other roles, it should be equally more rewarding, but win ratios for experienced players doesn't reflect this. In my opinion, assassins are only "harder" than other roles atm because they're less powerful atm. Why play an assassin when you can play anivia and chunk people for 870 + 250% of your max AP every time you land a Q? (not an exaggeration, Q + E + 2 seconds of R = those stats).
  3. High risk should translate to high reward, and therefore a decent win ratio. If it doesn't, that means the risk isn't worth it and the class is underpowered. The only time when a low general win rate is balanceable is when it's in contrast to a high experienced-player win rate, or a high competative win rate. Neither of those are true for assassins.

I'd rather not see an entire class of players sit in the dumpster until riot gets around to reworking them, which may or may not happen (how many times have we been promised the infamous "AD caster item rework" that's literally never happened?)

  1. She is great for solo queue. She's not just an "all-in every time ult is up champ" like people seem to believe. If you actively ward, especially the enemy jungle, you make picks, buff steals, etc all over the map with very little risk. The large majority of players just sit near mid all game and hope they get enough kills to snowball. Not to mention they don't know how to farm without skills so even if they get 5 kills, then end up even with the enemy laner due to CS anyway.

  2. Assassin is not a difficult role, its a misunderstood role. It has nothing to do with experience. Some people get it, others just hope they can get an early kill and snowball. Its personal mindset. Not relative to the champion. Its how you think.

  3. High risk does come with high reward. I'm sure you've seen how assassins can snowball a game with very little the enemy team can do about it.

Immobile bruisers sat with nothing to do for a long time. More than half the ADC class sat around with nothing to do for a long time. Assassins are next.

Sightless662 votes

If LB was great for solo queue, she wouldn't have a bad win rate in solo queue. There is no logic behind your statement. Yes, she's high skill cap, but even experienced players don't have a good win rate with her.

Her winrate has always been around this level, no matter how strong she's been. Seriously, she peaked at 48ish% when she was the number one most contested competitive and solo queue champion. Just using winrate as a final measure isn't going to get you an accurate picture of the champion.

Popular champions often have this effect, particularly if they are somewhat difficult to play. They are played in situations that don't necessarily fit them because people find them fun. You can see this represented in her relatively low playerbase experience distribution. Inexperienced players definitely bring down her winrate. If you look at the winrate for people with 125+ games, she's a bit over 54%, which is pretty average for champions in general and above average for highly played champions.

High risk should translate to high reward, and therefore a decent win ratio.

There are too many other variables that have to be taken into account for that statement to be true. Maybe the reward only comes to experienced players while newer players fail to use the champion properly, bringing the winrate down if there is a high amount of inexperienced players using the champion (which is true for her). Maybe it's a fun champion to play, leading people to play it even in situations where it could be easily countered, bringing the winrate down. You can't take those kind of things into account only looking at winrate.

The thing is, I actually agree with you that AD assassins are kind of weak right now (AP assassins I'm not buying), and I'm really hoping that the new AD caster item coming out soon will help them (although I doubt it will do the job by itself), but your logic about winrates just doesn't take everything into account.

Koechophe1 votes

If people were actually rewarded on these champs, we would be seeing a decent win rate for players with 125+ games on them. The fact that we're not shows a serious problem.

Sightless661 votes

Leblanc is. She has a 54% winrate on 125+ on champion.gg. That's average, and it's certainly quite good given the non-power factors driving her winrate down. An assassin without those factors, such as Talon, can manage an even higher winrate.

You're oversimplifying it quite a bit.

Hayaishi23 votes

Only their mains miss them anyways.

Slamurai Jack2 votes

I think you'll find other people start to miss them too when the enemy team starts picking Jinx, MF, and Draven every game. Like it or not, assassins provide an important counterbalance to just how powerful immobile adcs are if left unchecked.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

I can't speak for ap assassins but AD assassins were just affected by brutalizer split, LW nerf and tiamat nerf I like the changes but I suggest

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/yYBm9rXq-i-honestly-love-the-changes-placed-in-however-i-as-well-as-many-have-a-few-suggestions

19, 20 and 26 would solve alot of it, and we can go from there and see if anything else needs helping with ad assassins

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