An addiction to damage

So here we are again. You know the drill. Assassins assassins assassins, an obsession over damage to the complete and absolute neglect of everything else.

I feel like I'm repeating myself now, and that I've been repeating myself for over a year. It's been tiresome for about as long, and the fact that so many people subscribe to the all in all AD melee damage and nothing else mentality is beyond disturbing. The fact that nobody wants to do literally anything else but damage is beyond disturbing. The fact that a massive chunk of the community will outright neglect 99.999% of the game and its increasingly complex mechanics JUST to focus on damage is beyond disturbing.

And it's just getting worse! I'm busy trying to get as many champions as I can to Mastery 5, but very quickly am I running into the black hole of encountering a whole mess of players who only want to damage, and I'm torn between being the one team player and picking a champion that will compliment or compensate for my allies, or going along with my own meta objective and ignoring our glaring weaknesses.

On top of all this, the guys who are all the damage on the team, which is to say everyone, simply refuse to attack or defend objectives. The closest they get to defending a lane is dancing just out of range of the enemy team as they tear apart one turret after the other (and then Zed learns the hard way that he's not the l33t dodge master his name claims he is). I've seen too many times my allies just sit and watch as all the lanes get crushed in less than a minute, completely uncontested. At the same time, I've seen entire games go without anyone on our team so much as tap the enemy turret. Part of the reason why I've been going ADC so often lately was so at least someone is pushing the lanes, and people won't bitch at me for it.

Seriously! With four AD melee assassins including the ADC, you'd think they'd be tower smashing gods. Nope. Even Yis need some serious coaxing before they even begin to consider a split push. If I'm the ADC, I take any and all chances to shove the lanes to the turrets and smash them with everything I have. I've smashed more turrets as the support than most people will do as a hyperfed Vayne or Tristana; imagine what I'd do (and what I have done) if I had their power.

As I've pointed out before, the overfocus on dealing damage and nothing else usually concludes in failing to do even that. Vayne will constantly condemn enemies away to safety (more often than not right as the support has them dead to rights), thinking it's some sort of instakill move or they are supposed to get magnetically attracted to the nearest wall. Lee Sin will hop around like a spaz just to show off, and then get his head caved into his chest cavity when he suddenly has no energy left to fight. And Yasuo will think he's completely invincible and uncounterable right up until the point he gets caught in Veigar's stun and is nuked off the face of the planet (and then complain in allchat how broken and uncounterable Veigar is, and how you're a nooblord for playing him). That doesn't even mention all the junglers who attempt to rush Sated Devourer by ignoring the lanes for the first fifteen minutes (and then the other guy getting it first anyways while doing his job properly, without the 5 stacks from dragon).

So if you refuse to do even the most basic things because you want to be the killfastest killfast of Killfastia, and you consistently fail to do even that because everyone else wants to be the killfastest killfast of Killfastia so no one ends up having any utility, range, crowd control, magic damage, etc (AKA the things that help you get the kills)... what the hell are you doing? You made yourself extremely easy to counter by conforming to the assassin meta when we already have three other assassins who will also do nothing because the enemy has two tanks that I guarantee you will never be able to kill unless you get a massive headstart, and you will collapse like a souffle under their crowd control. Then despite all the kills you get, you will refuse to push any lane or grab any objective and continue to farm even when you are at max build with a 4000 surplus. I don't care that you are 28/0; it means nothing unless their nexus gets destroyed.

Case in point, the one for all games lately. I had some very shitty pairings where, naturally, everyone wanted to go Yasuo and picked into a very terrible combination like facing a team of Blitzes. I pushed the lanes. One game we were on the serious losing end of a 2:1 score ratio, but we won. Why? Because no one on their side was pushing or defending objectives, and we were. I was. I knew fighting them head on was going to suck so I focused on being able to deal damage to the turrets and I rushed Zz'rot portal. Whoever thought of building Zz'rot on YASUO? Well I did, and my decision ended up winning us games that should have been total failures.

Objectives matter. Understanding all the mechanics of the game is important, not just the one that matters to you. Diversity and self-awareness is important. If you can only be the killfastest killfast under very specific circumstances, and only if your allies carry you hand and foot the entire time and the enemy is dumber than a bag of sand, then you need to rethink your life. If your favorite champion is invincible and uncounterable to everyone except three fourths or more of the entire roster of 130 champions, then you need to rethink your life. And going on Youtube or someone's Twitch stream to watch tutorials or whatever isn't going to help. You are mimicking another's movements without internalizing why something works; it's the difference between saying 2+2=4 and knowing how to count.