In light of the upcoming Duskblade nerf, I think it's time to reevaluate assassins

This is a little self-indulgent, 'cause nobody cared about this idea the first time around, but it'll be fun anyway. Heads up, this is gonna be longer than anyone wants to read, and probably poorly formated to boot.

#Intro

Here's my hot take for the day:

##Assassins shouldn't be balanced around securing kills

Now, before you down vote and close the thread, let me explain:

Basically, assassins exist to remove an opponent's ability to effect the game, without anyone on the enemy team being able to prevent it. Because their goal is so binary with such little middle ground between "success" and "failure" (nine times out of ten, an assassin that fails to kill their target has failed to accomplish anything), there's no fair outcome when both sides play correctly.

When a mage and their opponents play well, the mage does decent aoe damage without dictating the teamfight

When an ADC and their opponents play well, the adc does solid sustained damage without focusing priority targets or securing kills.

When a tank and their opponents play well, the tank soaks up meaningful damage, cc, and cooldowns, and prevents free access to the enemy backline, but probably dies without killing anyone.

When an assassin and their opponents play well....either the assassin kills their target, or they don't. And neither option is fair, or balanceable.

#My Suggestion

##So, what do we do?

Balance assassins around succeeding without needing to secure kills. Balance assassins around neutralizing and crippling priority targets without killing them, and make them even more slippery and difficult to pin down, and maybe more durable.

Examples of things assassins could do other than damage to neutralize a priority target:

• Apply Grievous Wounds
• Apply slows/grounds
• Shred shields
• Remove/block steroids
• Apply attack-speed slows
• Apply silences
• Shred defences

Assassins could be retooled to focus on prepping a target, making them vulnerable and isolating them, removing their protections and escape tools, and it could become the job of a diver or mage to actually secure the kill.

Instead of Divers+Assassins desperately charge the adc+support and statcheck all the shields/heals, we could have the assassin acting as an anti-support, and having to coordinate the attack with the diver, while the adc and support try to coordinate defense. Instead of assassins needing to snowball early to have any chance of winning, they could finally become the answer to a well defended hypercarry - instead of the far less thematically satisfying role of excelling at killing undefended targets.

I could go on for pages with specific ideas and how I think this would round out roles better, but I think that's enough for now.

Edit: Here's a very rough dample kit to show what I have in mind:

Poise the Toxic Piece of Shit Passive: Blinding Poison. Every x seconds, Pois's next auto attack against champions makes them nearsighted for y seconds Q: Tiring Poison: Pois throws a dagger quite far in a straight line, stopping at the first champion hit and slowing them by 10%. If the opponent stands still for 3s at any time, the effect will end. Every 50 units the champion travels, they will take X damage and be slowed another 10% W: Farming Poison: Pois throws a cask moderately far, doing a fair amount of damage in an aoe which keeps doing progressively more damage to enemies that keep standing in it, which should really only be minions. E: Poisonous Travel: Pois jumps up to really far away to any champion poisoned by him, stabs them with an auto attack applying any on-hits, and jumps away up to half the maximum first jump distance. This has a high cooldown in lane but goes down quite low later. Ultimate: Shit I dunno. Poise does something that makes enemies other than his target fuck off. I'm out of ideas. Bonus: item changes. Lethality now shreds shields by x% instead of giving pen, Duskblade now applies grievous wounds instead of more damage (long duration but with cd)