Kayn (Shadow Assassin) is really underpowered right now

fUlBwOlga·7/13/2017, 12:57:50 AM·70 votes·15,355 views

His ult in Shadow assassin does no damage. I know this'll be downvoted by sour people who think he's broken; he isn't. If anything, he's underpowered. His ult scalings in shadow assassin should be buffed because playing him in shadow assassin form doesnt even feel like im playing an assassin.

Note: A lot of people are misinterpreting my post. What I mean is, It would have been fun if going into shadow assassin form actually made him an assassin, but giving him bonus movement speed still makes him a fighter. The only difference is, Rhaast does max hp % and shadow just provides him with a horrible scaling

134 Comments

Shrîke7/13/2017, 1:31:24 AM43 votes

What i dont understand if his ult in darken form heals him and does % dmg shouldn't assassin form act like an execute?

Darkdemon6537/13/2017, 2:16:59 AM37 votes

But doing zero damage as his assassin form is exactly what it's like playing other assassin champions

TehNACHO7/13/2017, 12:58:54 AM21 votes

Didn't he like JUST come out?

Let's not Zac this now, and give it a while.

DoktorKaiser7/13/2017, 1:41:41 AM12 votes

Yeah his blue form is meh, but his red form is pretty broken.

Head Connoisseur7/13/2017, 6:47:16 AM9 votes

How about you let him be played for more than 12 hours on Live before determining if he's under or overpowered. There are 0 people who understand how to play him right now.

Bârd7/13/2017, 7:09:21 AM4 votes

The ult doesn't do a lot of damage, but it does allow him to do quite a bit of damage.

The damage comes not from the base damage and scaling, but from the 44% damage amplification you have after you get out of your ult along with the CD's that came back up while you were untargetable.

While it is indeed too weak right now (until late game, where you can do considerable damage) Umbral Trespass shouldn't be this looming threat of a oneshot from untargetability.

Contrary to the title, the Shadow Assassin is not a full on Assassin. He's halfway in between an assassin and a skirmisher.

Subject 57/13/2017, 4:28:15 AM3 votes

I tried fighting Kayn with Kassadin late game.

He was fed out the ass but it didn't matter, we both had full items and we both were lvl 18.

He had higher DPS and he had high burst than I did, this is including me using Zhonya that I bought. I also had item 3110 because they had a full AD team.

He had no MR, either - and no last whisper. So, from my experience, he is an even bigger late game monster than Kass.

Scary Door7/13/2017, 9:22:49 AM3 votes

I had a Kayn in one of my games today, he absolutely dominated. I didn't really pay attention to which form he was in all the time, but he went 13/2 so I figured that whatever he did it must have been alright.

One game doesn't really mean anything and that's my point. If you feel he's too weak or too strong then just give it some time. People will learn how to play him a bit more and he will either show that he is balanced, or not. Knee-jerk reactions don't really do much at this stage.

Autrah Fang7/13/2017, 7:05:38 AM3 votes

{quoted}

His ult scalings in shadow assassin should be buffed because playing him in shadow assassin form doesnt even feel like im playing an assassin.

well, he's called Shadow Assassin, not Shadow Burst Mage :)

Escheton7/13/2017, 4:33:10 AM3 votes

Did any of you build item 3078 item 3031 on shadow assassin?

Tank Masochist7/13/2017, 1:32:40 AM3 votes

Kayn period is really underpowered right now. He's probably gonna be like release bard/lucian. They'll probably buff to compensate for things he should be doing well

SteelMankind7/13/2017, 3:16:53 PM3 votes

I'm wondering if people are building him properly for Shadow Assassin. Since his passive magic damage is post-mitigation, stacking lethality is pretty important. Let me explain.

Say he's level 16, his spell tooltip combo does 1000 damage, he has 0 lethality, and he's fighting a target with 100 MR and 100 Armor (50% damage reduction against physical and magical damage. The target will lose 500 health from the physical damage of his spells, then take 200 magic damage from his passive, losing 100 more health from it for a total of 600 damage dealt.

Now say he has the same amount of AD, but built lethality items instead of items like Warrior, Death's Dance, Maw, and GA. With Three lethality items he'll have 45 lethality, so at 16 that's 43 armor pen.

1000 physical damage means 637 health lost from the physical combo alone now. His passive does 255 magic damage, resulting in 127 health lost for a total of 764 damage dealt. So 27% increased damage from a lethality build in this situation of fighting a relatively tanky target.

BigBellBrute7/13/2017, 6:11:13 AM2 votes

{quoted}

His ult in Shadow assassin does no damage. I know this'll be downvoted by sour people who think he's broken; he isn't. If anything, he's underpowered. His ult scalings in shadow assassin should be buffed because playing him in shadow assassin form doesnt even feel like im playing an assassin.

Oh so that's just like every other assassin.

SIayton7/13/2017, 3:58:49 AM2 votes

It'd be a lot better if he didn't have to go a set distance out of their body. I think they should change how it functions a bit.

Also agree that he's underpowered. It's hard to get a good power spike on him and his damage is really poor early on. Definitely needs items to even think of doing anything and he's a bit linear in playstyle.

ÂFRÏCÂN GØD7/13/2017, 4:42:40 AM2 votes

I've seen firsthand what late game- lethality- shadow assassin kayn can do to team comps, not just 1v1s.. His darkin form is stronger but if you are facing squishy enemies who often end up in bad positioning or get caught out, say bye to them because lethality and/or crit shadow assassin kayn is one shotting them. He's an assassin so I guess that's kinda the point. His last hit q's are delightful but that darkin sustain is just op especially if you are able to be like 40% hp or below and heal back a good decent amount on darkin ult.

I've been playing with and against kayn literally all day and he does feel so clunky and lacks fluidity in animations and transitioning into skills outside of his w>q. There were many times I wish I was able to flash q and it sorta play out how darius' flash q works. It's like his skills and animations were made without accounting in the variables of other teammates, your own stutter step type movements, advances and disengages, dodging enemies and re-engaging on them (which stormraiders surge is good for but I'm favoring fervor or thunderlords), cc and general movement in and outside of team fights. Which in some moments, unless your team is confident in team fighting, you will feel like once you engage, if you are focused you can get chunked down real easily because your combos aren't as fluid and are very predictable and countered by good cc. It's even to the point where I am simply being focused so hard that E is not enough to get away because they are already casting things on me before I even get to the wall that even if I do get to the wall, I am instantly knocked out. I'm not sure if his e should be invulnerable kuz that may seem too op but at least give him a short window of invulnerability otherwise his e does nothing except delay his death by a full second or two.

It feels like they just gave him simple somewhat godly gap closers and said, "Here, that should be enough.." and sometimes it is enough; like I've gotten out of some really sticky situations with his low cd Q, his E and his R, but overall he feels really clunky unless you are fed and one shotting people. I'm just glad hes not as broken when he is underfed or it would really affect his winrate which technically hasn't been established yet. When he's not fed, hes not a huge threat but boy if you let any form of kayn snowball he can really just keep snowballing, get a GA and then it might as well be GG if he has a good team backing him up. That can be said about a lot of champs but specifically with Kayn, I don't want him to be a champ that is pick or ban.. I like where he is because his presence alone isn't a guaranteed win like how nunu, kass, yasuo, zed, vayne, yi, etc. can sometimes feel like.

Jeanne fan club7/13/2017, 9:34:04 AM2 votes

Nah dude, Let me explain this to you.

I think there is a bug going around with his ultimate where sometimes when you use it, it does no damage at all while other times when you use it, it does full damage. Don't quote me on that but I've noticed that if you press ult to get out of the target before that channel bar even starts to fill you don't do ANY damage, however if you let the channel bar fill at least a little you will do damage. I don't know if its just a failure in the tooltip or what but I find that there are times where it does full damage, and times that it doesn't, its just really inconsistent.

I can tell you from personal experience that Blue kayne is extremely strong if you know what you are doing. I have straight up 2 shot people just by landing W and Q. Blue Kayne was balanced around running a crap ton of leathality.

You want at least 18 leathality from runes. Run 18/0/12 ( I find that warlords bloodlust works the best since you won't be autoing a whole bunch when you assassinate people, also its the only mastery that works on jg camps.)

item 1412 item 3009 item 3147 item 3814 item 3142 item 3033 <-- Build

W Q auto will be enough to kill most targets, if not then you can easily just Ult then Q again when you get out of it to kill the enemy.

One thing I've noticed about how other people play kayne is that they don't really focus on landing their W as much as they should. Landing the W is the initiation ability, there is NO REASON to Q in first. Also, blue kayne can cast W while he is inside of a wall, so its best to take advantage of that.

Sire Hippington7/13/2017, 11:22:56 AM2 votes

His Ult is not there for the raw damage, it'S mobillity+buying time for your Q to come up again and it resets the damage amp of your passive. It's like a reversed zed ult, you first have the pop, then you have 3 sec of amped damage. I really have not much issues with him doing enough damage for bursting squishys as assasin. That said, he still feels a bit on the weak side, his E feels buggy and thus unreliable, his Q is short ranged and his survivabillity is poor. Also, his early-mid is a bit lacking. Though probably a good bit of that feeling comes from the direct comparision to rhaast, who honestly is more on the OP side of things.

SayoriIsBigSad7/13/2017, 1:55:31 PM2 votes

From my personal interpretation, shadow assassin form is really good for ganging up on people and preying on weak people rather than fighting all out. That's why youmous+mobis are reccomended. They Dont want you to be on a fair 1v1 and to be able to oneshot them. (till late game where your rotation does 4k damage) They want you to snowball by roaming to each lane till each lane is afraid of going out of base and ruling by fear.

SmokinSickStyle7/13/2017, 3:23:39 PM2 votes

The problem is that he takes too long to scale, like his passive, also it deals magic damage which means part of his damage gets reduced twice, by armor and by magic resist, AD scaling champ whose burst is partially magic damage is bad.

Being an assassin that scales much slower means that by the time you have enough damage teamfights happen and you are next to useless.

Assassins want to flank, get in, get out, if he gets in flanking with E the only safety tool is his ult, what then, you have no way out, many assassins do, kha jumps away after kill or can stealth, Zed goes where he pleases, Talon can jump any wall if you plan your route right, the list is long.

The only thing he can do best is to catch easily isolated people because his roam is fast with mobi+youmuu+e.

Rhaast is much more reliable, had no problem being a pain in the ass for everyone.

Also SA form E still bugged, it ends early after you get out of the wall even if the ability has the extended duration.

The extra range on the ult is not always that useful since you want to deal damage while being close .

Ult should have higher base damage and passive turned into physical damage, true damage, or needs to be calculated pre mitigation rather than post, or make ult reset his basic abilities so he can do smooth combos such as E-W-AA-Q-R-R-W-AA-Q-E away without the need to wait in ult for cd refresh.

Junkο7/13/2017, 4:08:57 PM1 votes

Honestly there are 2 changes Shadow Assassin needs: -To not be locked for 4 minutes after you 100% get Rhaast first because let's face it you always get Rhaast first -More damage to ult, maybe missing health?

IceMyth7/13/2017, 5:03:22 AM1 votes

To this point when he is on his red form, I dont know what champ can kill him mainly if he is fed. I dont think anyone other than some adc or yasou can (not sure about that too). His dmg is insane and his cd on skills is too short that he can spam them. If anyone can suggest a hero (jungler if possible) can counter him please let me know.