Assassin Ahri was the closest League had to a healthy assassin- look at her for assassin designs?

TL;DR at the bottom.

It's something that just occured to me today. Think about it. Why are assassins frustrating? It's usually for the following reasons.

• Huge damage with no counterplay: damage that's targeted and/or technically missable but still very easy to hit. ( )
• Extremely forgiving mobility abilities means you can't kill / punish them. ( )
• Untargetability ( )
• Waveclearing that's a little way to good for an assassin. ( )
• Assassins which can kill you before it's LITERALLY PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE for you to react. ( )

BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyways, the above points can be summarized with the following :** There is no window for you to fight back against the assassin.** Even if they make a mistake, most can poof off. And those who can't disengage easily have ASININE damage even for assassins, and have a lot of damage that is impossible to avoid.

But the assassin Ahri, from patch 3.13 to patch 5.4, wasn't like that. She had to 2 CLEAR levers of power opponents could work around. Her Charm and her Ult, Spirit Rush.

Charm used to amp Ahri's damage by 20%. Charm had, and still has, a 12 second cooldown and costs 85 mana. If Ahri missed, she was vulnerable because of the high mana cost, moderately high cooldown, and the significant lost in damage output to a single target.

Ahri's Ult, Spirit Rush was not changed at all from 3.13 until her second mini rework in patch 5.4. HOWEVER, her Q also didn't have that insane movement speed burst attached to it. Spirit Rush was Ahri's only mobility. This means Ahri was vulnerable to ganks without it. Not only that, but with Spirit Rush on cooldown, Ahri was not able to chase you to kingdom come and kill you.

Ever played against a competent or as an immobile mage? Even if you land your stun there's still a good chance they can catch up to you and just throw themselves on top of you for the kill.

...If Ahri was ganked or made a mistake and had to Ult away, you actually had a meaningful amount of time to breathe in the lane. It sucks to be in lane vs a Fizz and land your spells on him only for him to troll pole away and have the pressure of his mobility spell 10 seconds later. Same with Leblanc or Zed.

TL;DR: Assassin Ahri had two levers on her power: her reliance on her skillshot Charm's damage amp, and the strong but very conditional mobility of her ultimate. She had windows of downtime the enemy could exploit, unlike the other assassins in League. In the future, Riot could benefit from looking at Assassin Ahri when trying to create assassin champions, because she was actually fair to fight against.

Discuss?