Does anyone else think that the idea of an assassin that scales well with items is a little broken?

Woook3r·Aug 15, 2015·2 votes·415 views

I mean, you get a shit ton of gold for killing champions....and getting a shit ton of gold helps you kill champions faster....and killing champions reliably is the best way to win this game because once all the champions are dead its easy to take towers....and so we made a character class whos defining trait is that they kill champions better than any other class? And then we have another class which people think needs to be in every game...and we made that class the most vulnerable to assassins. And we called that...balanced? Is that what we did here?

10 Comments

Akali is SO HOTAug 15, 20152 votes

I think everyone is supposed to scale well with items op.

ValyrianBladeAug 15, 20152 votes

The key point with assassins should be that they're feast or famine - if you don't let them kill you the first or second time, they won't have the items to be able to kill you even if you make a mistake later on. Thus, they could theoretically be balanced (they need to outplay you early and snowball, or you'll beat them late).

The problem I'm seeing is that Riot is trying to prevent 'feast-or-famine' playstyles. Thus, many assassins are becoming feast-or-neutral which doesn't exactly seem fair. I've shown a lot of hate towards Zed overall and in all honesty he's not oppressive anymore at all and can be dealt with most of the time, but he's still a good example of this mentality. Zed farms really easily thanks to his passive and roams really well. So he can kill you in lane, snowball and carry. Or you can prevent his feast in lane, he can roam and kill your bot lane who ignored your missing ping, then snowball and carry. Or you can prevent his feast in lane, your bot lane can listen to pings and prevent his feast out of lane, and he can just farm waves for money and be a reasonably strong split-pusher in to the late game. I don't see the famine anywhere. Thankfully, he's just undertuned so that most champions will bring more to their team than he brings as a split-pusher, but if League ever abandons the 'group 5 mid and push' general strategy and actually accepts splitpushing as a valid strategy we're going to see issues.

Same goes with most AD assassins. Them being AD makes farming easy, as opposed to AP assassins that typically have a harder time farming and thus actually need the kills or else they'll fall behind.

Woook3rAug 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The key point with assassins should be that they're feast or famine - if you don't let them kill you the first or second time, they won't have the items to be able to kill you even if you make a mistake later on. Thus, they could theoretically be balanced (they need to outplay you early and snowball, or you'll beat them late).

The problem I'm seeing is that Riot is trying to prevent 'feast-or-famine' playstyles. Thus, many assassins are becoming feast-or-neutral which doesn't exactly seem fair. I've shown a lot of hate towards Zed overall and in all honesty he's not oppressive anymore at all and can be dealt with most of the time, but he's still a good example of this mentality. Zed farms really easily thanks to his passive and roams really well. So he can kill you in lane, snowball and carry. Or you can prevent his feast in lane, he can roam and kill your bot lane who ignored your missing ping, then snowball and carry. Or you can prevent his feast in lane, your bot lane can listen to pings and prevent his feast out of lane, and he can just farm waves for money and be a reasonably strong split-pusher in to the late game. I don't see the famine anywhere. Thankfully, he's just undertuned so that most champions will bring more to their team than he brings as a split-pusher, but if League ever abandons the 'group 5 mid and push' general strategy and actually accepts splitpushing as a valid strategy we're going to see issues.

Same goes with most AD assassins. Them being AD makes farming easy, as opposed to AP assassins that typically have a harder time farming and thus actually need the kills or else they'll fall behind.

This is what I think.

Make adc the fastest and squishiest class in the game and compensate by removing/nerfing crit. nerfing ranged dmg to towers. buff melee dmg to towers.

The result of this is that adc's stop bitching about peel, melees have a set in stone role to play and have something to offset their kitability. Adc's have to be more aggressive at the same time as well because they cant let the melees die as they are now the ones who destroy structures and must at the same time target the enemy melees. Melee's job is to be tough, survive and build some attack speed. Tank's job? Engage. Set fights up.

Side effect: ad assassins become overpowered (even more so) and must be nerfed...all ad melees will become strong split pushers. Ap burst mages take over the role of assassination and they fit the role better because they do not split push nearly as well..they actually need kills.

Rufus CrabmiserAug 15, 20151 votes

Does anyone think that the idea of anything scaling with anything is a little broken?

Nameless VoiceAug 15, 20151 votes

All champions scales well with items?

The idea of an assassin is that they are supposed to get the gold for those items by killing enemy champions, whereas other types of champions are more likely to get their gold income from minions.

If you want to name something that doesn't quite fit with that paradigm, it's when an assassin is good at earning gold through farming and also excels at killing enemy champions.

Woook3rAug 15, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=oVKAPHU6,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2015-08-15T02:30:23.277+0000)

All champions scales well with items?

The idea of an assassin is that they are supposed to get the gold for those items by killing enemy champions, whereas other types of champions are more likely to get their gold income from minions.

If you want to name something that doesn't quite fit with that paradigm, it's when an assassin is good at earning gold through farming and also excels at killing enemy champions.

so every ad assassin and manaless assassin.

Nameless VoiceAug 15, 20151 votes

Not necessarily. Akali for example is manaless but has rather poor farming ability. Katarina to some extent as well.

But manaless AD assassins are a huge offender, yes.

Woook3rAug 16, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=oVKAPHU6,comment-id=000200000000,timestamp=2015-08-15T17:12:55.760+0000)

Not necessarily. Akali for example is manaless but has rather poor farming ability. Katarina to some extent as well.

But manaless AD assassins are a huge offender, yes.

akali is hybrid and her passive adds bonus magic dmg to her basic attacks. so she is actually a decent farmer.