How is this game going to change? a non-negative rant trying to make sense of 6.23

So the new rework to armor pen, which is lethality, It scales higher against Higher level enemies, which means that it in theory will eventually be used by hypercarries over what assassins traditionally are..

So what is the role of an assassin? Well generally speaking, assassins play for the mid game, attempting to weaken the enemy through ganks and snowballing, they in theory should get to a higher level and full build first, but once others catch up they should be weaker right?

Well this mechanic does not fundamentally support that playstyle, instead it supports something that i believe will just change the build order on the champs who abused the assassin stat of armor pen, and once more people get familiar with these changes, we will start to see them built on fighters, bruisers, and ad carries once more

but assassins will then lose their function again, generally speaking when in their healthiest balance state, an assassin seeks to get an early kill and cs lead, and then to roam in order to keep getting kills/assists/objectives thus snowballing their team when played correctly. your average assassin is supposed to carry the torch early and pass it late. which is now skewed.

To prove this point before i had posted it i played around with the assassin items on champions they were not intended for, notably . Due to the variances in his scaling from the scaling of assassins i found that he was significantly stronger than your usual AD kled builds, i played maybe ten games on him, not counting the first 3 (My first three games on the champion) i've found i can carry with him even though he is considered weak and i honeestly suck at the champion.... as such i tend to attribute this to the items being viable on any Mobile AD Burst caster.

The new duskblade built on champions like Kled, Graves, lucian, and even potentially ezreal(test pending) is seemingly more effective than building it on champions like Zed, Kha'zix, and Talon because of their late game scaling and generally compatible build paths.

Night's edge now creates a third anti-mage item for any AD fighter which works perfectly with either maw or Mercurial scimitar, a bursty fighter who also grabs a black cleaver and a frozen mallet or steraks will, depending on kit, also be able to counter any mage in the game because of a third item in this category.

Ghostblade no longer applies the attack speed that allowed assassins to split push so effectively because they wanted to give more gankyness to it.

In addition i've seen people building Nights edge and Ghostblade on a few AD champions and then not building boots... but they were able to easily keep up with anyone because of the movement speed granted by the stacking bonus. Test pending on a crit build with two zeal items and IE+BT on an adc.

So now that we have a new item, and the reworking of various other items in the AD pool, my synopsis is that Mobile AD will dominate for a while, simply because of the wide adaptability of AD items and effects.

This leads us to the inevitable secondary cast of champions, Hard CC mega tanks, Nautilus, taric, sej, alistar and a few others are going to pop into games and be a nightmare, these will be perceived as the main problem because of how effective they are at shutting down Mobile AD, the reason for this is that the counters to these champions are generally countered in turn by who they are picked against, and dont serve enough purpose to really overcome the main issue of too much generalist capacity in the AD pool.

We don't see this with the AP pool or the Tank pool, most AP casters are stuck on a single build, whereas AD champions are becoming viable at two or three builds per champion with similar success rates, so if that AP caster has a build countered he can't adapt as well.

this to me is because AD items are harder to specialize, simply because they apply to all AD scaling abilities including the basic attack. wheras an AP champion needs to build a specific item to actually gain that capacity... and if they have enough counter build against their burst they will simply be out dpsed and out sustained. I'm not saying that champions like Leblanc and Ahri wont pop up, they always find a way, but that's because of the utility in their kits, I'm saying that we're going to see a massive drop in champions like Victor, Ziggs, Xerath, and various other AP mids, with very few AP junglers remaining viable (Outside of certain tanks), we're likely going to see teams that can be beaten by a mildly drunken full build taric with exhaust and dead man's plate.

so tanks are gonna come back, be scapegoated, and forced out, then we'll see nerfs to assassins through items

What happens then? well then the immobility high sustain meta will be back until mages displace this and anti AP comes back And it circles and circles and circles sometimes skipping a step, but never completely ignoring the cycle

so what's the solution?

well there is a current design philosophy of nerf the strong, buff the weak. And an idea that champions need to be specialized. This is the core issue. It puts more emphasis on Pick vs personal skills, In my argument the item pool should be extended and each item should have at least two items which negate its effects but have very little synergy, IE One for tanks, One for AD, one for AP. these items should be balanced against each other.

and each existing item should have at least two counter items made for it, or should have two existing items re-geared towards countering it.

Every stat needs a counter, this should include CDR

and off meta/off purpose builds should not be retaliated against by nerfing or reworking champions, but the strength of the items themselves should instead be measured by their effects on unintended marriages.

I think the idea that a yasuo or a fizz is willing to build tank if he needs to is actually very healthy, because at the end of the day this is a team strategy game and battle arena, and things which foster more strategic options also affect how battles happen.

So TL;DR in all i personally think this patch is a failure, not because of the reworks, but because i think that the approach to balance has an inherent flaw, champions they design to fit a role are supposed to always fit that role, and that can not be achieved without lowering strategy, which means that the creators must chose between generalization of builds or pigeonholing of champions, which brings to the argument that item stats would be basically nothing positive about the game.