Mages vs assassins and the middle ground? Where is it?
two classes are iconic for mid lane, three if you divide one into two
Ap assassins Ad Assassins And mages
#As of late we are seeing mages being pushed out of mid lane, and assasins making a re apperance. But why is that?
1-Mages as a wh ole got globally nerd in mana 2-A lot of mages had their damage nerfd 3- Lost chapter is now much more expensive 4- Early game junglers are hard core meta, who specialize in ruining a mages day, due to their lack of mobility, a mages main way to escape a gank if they are out of position is to either cc your, or kill you, running away isn't really an option for them. 5-Early game junglers work exceptionally well with assassins and duelist, due to the fact, that champions like xin, Jax, Udyr, and hell even graves now, offers some form of soft cc, decent damage, and pair that with the chase and damage of an assassin, you're going to create all the ingredients for a snow balling laner.
All of these things spell death for mages
#However what was life like before this? And what caused riot to make such extreme changes to directly nerf mages?
Well the answer is simple, in both casual play and especially pro play, mid lane had evolved into some of the most boring game play that mid laners had ever seen, and it began during season five, where season by season, assassins were becoming worse and worse, while mages simply got better and better. For many people, the idea of roaming and being a global map terror, even at the expense of your own cs, is very fun, the idea of brutally out playing and lane stomping is fun, and even playing assassin vs assassin as you keep searching for little advantages to give you that win in lane. That is very fun.
This is why a large majority of the really good mid laners, will say their favorite champions are assassins. Fakers Zed, Dopas Fizz, Xpekes kassadin, notice how a good chunk of the most iconic mid laners, are often iconic assassin mains. Their is no coincdence here. Assassins are just out right fun to play, and you can see it in Yasuos play rate as firm evidence among casual players.
But despite their popularity mages were become basically better at assassinating than actual assassins and much safer to play. It felt like their mana costs were none existent, they offered amazing crowd control and wave clear, and while they may not of been the best of roamers. Many of them with hard core nuking ultimates like Syndra, and Veigar just said. "I do exactly what an assassins was designed to do but even better and more reliably"
#Assassins were being pushed into none existence to some it up shortly. So came season eight, and we saw mages being hit and hit patch after patch. If a mage even showed themselves to be slightly competent, a nerf was issued the very next patch.
This was without a doubt to directly alter the mid lane meta and bring back assassins, to appeal to the assassin fan base.
However now mages, now find themselves in a situation where they can't sustain, and they can't burst. What really differentiates the two classes is the following.
Assassins: Mobile and bursty Mages: Crowd control and bursty.
One goes for mobility to help them kill things, one goes for crowd control to help them kill things.
But that was where the advantage became clear for mages. It became clear, that with team fighting, mages were objectively the better class, because they had crowd control, a beyond useful tool, that can help you win team fights. For even if you the mage can't kill your target, someone else on your team probably can, if you simply land your stun. An assassin is not given this option in a team fight, for an assassin since they have little to no crowd control, IT HAS to be them who kills their target. IT MUST be them, for they don't provide the cc, for their team to follow up on. So assassins in general solved this weakness by becoming very strong split pushers. Saying to themselves.
"Well if i suck at team fighting, i'll just split push and force people to one v one me" But than something else happened.
#Duelists and most juggernauts became far better at split pushing than an assassin could ever hope to be, and very often far better at one v ones. While it is possible for a 
to out play a 
or 
. Unless that Zed has a solid lead, on a even same equal gold fair fight scenario, i'd bet my money on jax or tryndemere, for their auto attacks are instant, they hurt, and they both have very solid ways to survive zeds all in.
So in the long run, assassins were being countered by two different classes
Mages: 
who provided heavy cc, and the near same if not even better burst to kill targets
Bruisers/juggernauts: 
Who had either cc or certain abilities to allow them to survive burst, as well as beyond solid and painful auto attacks that are technically impossible to avoid. While one can simply side step a zed shurriken.
The final result=Assassins while seeming fair on paper as a stand alone class for mid lane candidates, became a horrible long term idea, for actually winning the game. Their objective became to win early, and win fast, before their clear weakness become a major problem. For the way you stopped this weakness for killing them, was by allowing them to be decent laners, but when they were strong laners, they were disgustingly OP and a strong assassin player would win literally by himself as he killed your mage mid laner over and over again to than snow ball that lead into bot or top. To than become this split pusher who was so strong it would take at least three people to stop them, and if they decided "meh ill just team fight" it resulted in a entire team getting nuked.
Because of this, assassins across the board had their lane phase nerfd into the ground.
#So fast forward to today.
The issue assassins have, is they are "bursty and mobile" while mages are "bursty and helpful" and it turns out "being helpful" is the better long term plan.
How do we make both fan bases happy? Honestly I believe both classes have two really different issues.
Mages: Use to have a term called "Burst mages" Mages dedicated to bursting, but during season 7, i'm going to be real. Every mage was a burst mage, for they just dealt so much raw damage. To fix mages we need to really sit down and define every mage, and ask ourselves "what type of mage is this suppose to be, and what is their play style suppose to be like" Do we want aniva to sustain and farm, or do we want her to be highly rewarded off landing q and immediately kill them. Do we want syndra to be focused on killing people, or do we want her to be this solid wave clear mid with great cc.
#Burst mages by default: Should lose mana faster, in exchange for their damage Control mages by default: Should do less damage, but have more mana. I feel the core flaw with the mage class, is we had a whole season, where their was no major difference between burst mages and control mages, they were both bursty, and they both had lots of utility. Sit down and solve which type of mage play style a mage is suppose to have and design it to have those strengths and weakness. Mage players across the board would love this, for what i had was disgusted with riots global mage mana nerf. Is they almost treated all mages as if they were exactly the same. As if their was no difference between control mages and burst mages, and were all nerfd in the same levels, with no real calculations on the long term effects this would have on the two classes and one would remain more relevant than the other, while one gets left in the dust.
As for assassins? Honestly the issue has and always will be itemization, and this is a much harder issue to fix. The problems assasins have, is for both ap and AD is that their items are shared with other classes. So whenever riot wants to give them a new toy, they are also giving mages, marksman and bruisers new toys. Personally I feel the next major move riot should research into doing is how to do "item lock class sets". For fact was, when lethality was introduced, many marksman were using it better than actual assassins. which is ridiculous. Frankly I always been a firm beliver, that classes need to stop sharing items and if we did this, champions as a whole would be much easier to balance.
#Skarra literally just did a video saying, how the runes cause more problems than they do good, for champions now have to be balanced around runes. Well in honest truth the same goes for items. The fact I can create an item, and every champion in the game is given a chance to use it, creates so many factors that riot has to consider before buffing and nerfing a champion directly, or buffing and nerfing a item. These large list of factors could be simplified if we simply stopped sharing items.
So yeah that's my thoughts on the two classes that are the most iconic in mid, me giving a brief history lesson on what happened, and why it happened, me defining the classes to the best of my ability, and me just trying to throw in my two cents in how to fix it.
Feel free to discuss and rip me apart : P
main I welcome the return of assassins.
