what are you gonna do about mid-late game ad carries and mages killing you under a second? are you gonna nerf damage across the board or what? if non-assassins kill you faster than assassins in general then we have a big design flaw.
Blåbæret23 votesCan't really think of any mages that can kill you as fast as an assassin, even then it's more avoidable and predictable than an assassin standing in a bush oneshotting you without a fighting chance.
Sona x Rubick2 votes
RG Velean6 votesViktor, especially post rework, has a massive delay in the time between his spells being cast and killing his opponent. By the time Viktor kills his target, Zed will already be looking at a double kill. While there are a lot of mages that can burst you out super quick, they still all have cast times. Zed can instantly delete someone and be out by that time.
Sona x Rubick1 votesnop, you start with E so you can get asap the other part of the damage, than Q+ULTI+lichbane AA, all of this in 1 second. You just need the initial part of the ulti damage to kill someone.
Elikain4 votesConsidering that assassins do tend to delete you faster, 1/1.5 seconds of reaction time is enough to leave someone to attempt to fight back or at least make a getaway - which is where Riot is looking to delay damage dealing on assassins in the first place.
Viktor isn't so fast that he can nuke you from anywhere, anytime. He can be quite strong with items just like any champ but it has it's limits. All of his moves are telegraphed and can be combo'd, as opposed with Talon where he simply blinks on top of you and 3 things at once start happening in 0.1 seconds and then you die.
LankPants23 votesI'd say 
, 
and in some cases 
fit that definition but all of them are still fairer than the average assassin.
Laughing Fish20 votesOf those 3 Annie is the only one that could be considered problematic. needs to farm a lot for that power, and he is easy to destroy with multiple people. And is so slow and easy to kite, and if he built enough AP to kill you in 1 combo that means he didn't build as much tank, and can easily be kited to death by a good ADC. Annie is a bitch though.
LankPants6 votesThat's basically why I said sometimes Cho. The state where Cho reaches a 100-0 instakill is achievable, abet somewhat unlikely in a standard game. He's not reliant on some absurd snowball to reach a critical mass, he can be slightly up and capable of oneshotting thanks to Rocketbelt and Luden's. It's generally not a problem but it has the potential to be.
As for Veigar I feel he's the only mage in the game to outburst assassins on similar resources. It's kind of OK because he's so utterly abysmal at everything that's not burst and has no real way to apply his burst against a more skilled enemy but he does fit what I was responding to a tee. He is very capable of 100-0 burst in a realistic scenario.
Laughing Fish22 votes
AcidTheWarlock9 votesUpvoted for Barbossa
Spicy Rice5 votesDO WHAT YOU WANT FOR A PIRATE IS FREE
YOU ARE A PIRATE
Elikain8 votesThat's because there are no one shotting mages that blink into existence on top of you and kill you before you even know what happened. Mages can have the burst damage to kill you in 1 or two spells sure but it's absolutely telegraphed when they intend to do so.
Hyperiön3 votes
Some are Mage assassins, but they are still mages.
LankPants15 votesSome are Mage assassins, but they are still mages.
Mages that are assassins are assassins, not mages. Akali and Fizz are certainly assassins and Diana is either an assassin or a fighter depending on her balance. None of these champions ever play as mages, they play as assassins while building like mages.
Out of the other champs Ahri can burst, but it's more delayed and telegraphed than most assassins, Brand has moderately long cast times on every ability, Cassio relies on almost entirely sustained damage, Lux has a long channel on her ult and Syndra relies on complex setup. All of these factors slow down these champs burst significantly.
bony whimsark6 votesSecretly 
can take 3/4 of your health with e/w/q combo with a moderate lead, although if you can't hit skillshots why bother.
PhantomGG18 votesFor real though, I was playing assassin ahri the other day, and all because i missed my charm i literally got two shotted by a full crit caitlyn.
People say us assassins take no skill, and im not mocking the ad carry position either. But us assassins actually have to land our shit
Zed has to land his Q and position his shadows correctly land shadow slash
Ahri has to make sure to land charm which also doesn't have the fastest missle speed
Fizz has to land his shark or else everything else about him is worthless
Rengar actually has to land his bola or the target just runs away and he gets kited to death
A D carries, especially late game carries, once they hit 75 percent crit, god forbid you miss your shit, or you gonna take a nice caitlyn 1000 guarentee crit to the face.
You mage mains may be calling us cancer, but you will sure miss us once we get nerfd to hell in the assassin rework.
have fun dealing with full crit Caitlyn/jinx
MunchCrunchLunch2 voteswhen her headshot does more than 1.3k damage. she can certainly two auto you late game if she cancels a 2nd headshot. and someone like jhin can two auto you as well. sivir and kog maw and twitch have enough attack speed to land more than 2 autos in a second and kill you.
i've been killed by a kayle with 2 autos.
PhantomGG7 voteswhen her headshot does more than 1.3k damage. she can certainly two auto you late game if she cancels a 2nd headshot.
Is it my fault I missed charm? Yes, yes it was. But it just feels wrong, knowing if you miss, you lose everything, meanwhile the ADC can fuck up, be out of position and just be like
"derp, i right click you"
MunchCrunchLunch4 votesIs it my fault I missed charm? Yes, yes it was. But it just feels wrong, knowing if you miss, you lose everything, meanwhile the ADC can fuck up, be out of position and just be like
"derp, i right click you"
"Derp I have no cooldown. suck on my mouse you filthy non adc player"
Erractic Eick4 votesI can't find it right now, but I read some Rioter's comment that the change will be something like "instead of Zed killing you in .25 seconds, it will now take .75 seconds." The intent is still a rapid, no mercy takedown, but a half second gap allows for at least SOME counterplay.
Assassins are meant to be high skill champions. They'll naturally have a wider bell curve for success in a game.
MunchCrunchLunch2 votes[{quoted}](name=Erractic Eick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=zAtxj4jk,comment-id=00010000000000000000,timestamp=2016-08-05T07:43:28.865+0000)
I can't find it right now, but I read some Rioter's comment that the change will be something like "instead of Zed killing you in .25 seconds, it will now take .75 seconds." The intent is still a rapid, no mercy takedown, but a half second gap allows for at least SOME counterplay.
Assassins are meant to be high skill champions. They'll naturally have a wider bell curve for success in a game.
half a second doesn't allow any window for counterplay what sort of bullshittery are you saying? the only thing you can do I think even if you flash out of an auto in 0.5 seconds it will still damage you.
Resolution3 votesMore or less making Assassins more skill based rather then hitting one button. That there should be thought put into your kills rather then seeing an enemy and hitting your CD's whenever there up for an insta kill.
MunchCrunchLunch5 votesMore or less making Assassins more skill based rather then hitting one button. That there should be thought put into your kills rather then seeing an enemy and hitting one move.
they need to do that for ad carries you know less right clicking on me and more skill stuff like u said
Kaioko3 votesIs it my fault I missed charm? Yes, yes it was. But it just feels wrong, knowing if you miss, you lose everything, meanwhile the ADC can fuck up, be out of position and just be like
"derp, i right click you"
It doesn't exactly work that way - yes all the ADC has to do is click you but they don't have the escapes an Ahri would for example. Not to mention everyone is out to kill them and with the current meta you don't get to build any real defensive items since you typically want to get that 80% crit rate.
An Ahri on the other hand has her ultimate with 3 dashes, a boost from her Q, will typically get zhonyas for the invulnerability and maybe even Rylai's for the kiting and constant slow which works really well with fox fires.
Kingnewgameplus3 votesI can agree with everything but fizz, he really doesn't need his ult to burst a squishy.
YumaS2Astral3 votesI can agree with everything but fizz, he really doesn't need his ult to burst a squishy.
That depends, I've found myself unable to burst down squishies as Fizz if they have something like 
or some sort of magic resistance item
General Esdeath 4 votes{quoted} But us assassins actually have to land our shit
[ laughing in the distance]
The Bearded Bard11 votesOn the contrary, I think assassins have way more counterplay than ADC. ADC are honestly everything Riot doesn't want with the game, but somehow they're the favorites. They're walking stat checkers with added RNG that literally doubles their damage. I never feel outplayed when I get killed because they pressed Heal during my combo and autoattacked me a couple times.
Naag One17 votessome shit champs like syndra annie brand comes to mind
yea rito wut u gon do
LankPants38 votesSyndra doesn't really burst that quickly, she has a huge sum of set-up time before her ult is really a relevant ability. If you count the set up she needs it takes at least 7 seconds for Syndra to have the relevant amount of spheres to burst a squishy out properly.
It's entirely possible to play around Syndra and not engage on her while she's set up, she can't really hold her damage indefinitely in the same way as assassins and when she attempts to she loses control over her Q CD as she has to cast more or less on CD to hold a high sphere number. It also just costs a fuckton of Mana.
Most Syndra players attempt to keep 1-2 spheres on the field but to reach the point where you can burst without hitting a Q, IE with a max range E you need 3 or 4 on the field, that's at least 2 seconds to get Q CD twice.
Pierce The Veal3 votesSyndra doesn't really burst that quickly, she has a huge sum of set-up time before her ult is really a relevant ability. If you count the set up she needs it takes at least 7 seconds for Syndra to have the relevant amount of spheres to burst a squishy out properly.
It's entirely possible to play around Syndra and not engage on her while she's set up, she can't really hold her damage indefinitely in the same way as assassins and when she attempts to she loses control over her Q CD as she has to cast more or less on CD to hold a high sphere number. It also just costs a fuckton of Mana.
Most Syndra players attempt to keep 1-2 spheres on the field but to reach the point where you can burst without hitting a Q, IE with a max range E you need 3 or 4 on the field, that's at least 2 seconds to get Q CD twice.
You're right. A better example of burst would be Sona.
LankPants17 votesSona's total burst including ult at lv 18 with Q powerchord, 899+140% AP
Nami's total burst at 18 assuming a single E proc and no W bounces, 915+180% AP
This is the best case for Sona and the worst case for Nami where she hits her bubble. In short Sona is not a high burst champ, her burst is numerically very low. If she builds Lichbane, Revolver and Ludens she can burst you, but so could almost any champ in the game with that set of items. Those items just deal a lot of damage.
If you want an actual example of a mage who probably bursts too quickly it would be Veigar. Because of how fast his burst can come out with very little setup everything else on his kit has to be abysmally undertuned because a Veigar who's not terrible at everything that isn't burst is a monster.
DeathBot6665 votesNo. A real burst champ is 
.
You can't get bursted any worse than if he physically blows you up.
Zero Skill Tank14 votes"Big design flaw" is existence of class who's whole gameplay is about killing their enemy as fast as possible with lowest possible amount of counterplay. Except for few edge cases like Annie, mages and marksman have incomparably more counterplay than assassins.
Those few low-counterplay oddballs still exist mostly because of assassins existence (as Rito said about her rework, they needed to keep one insta-stun burst mage() in the game where there are so many high-mobility high-damage champions), and their damage is hit hard because of counterplay lacks(i.e. Annie vs Fizz easily yields >1000 damage difference in sheer upfront burst, not including Fizz's enhanced LB procs and vastly superior DPS). It only seems high because most players don't bother to build any defenses. Assassins damage is usually high enough to ignore quite big amounts of defensive stats, as killing enemies fast is the only way they benefit their team.
There is a good reason why Rito releases no assassins champions for almost 4 years now . Extending their burst window might seem odd, but is certainly a good thing for overall game health.
Junkο3 votesWhat counterplay do marksman have compared to assassins? It's literally just don't get into their range or play Yasuo.
Fizz, LB, etc at least have cooldowns and medium range to get their damage in, and they don't have an item that greatly increases the speed of their damage while letting them attack 3 people at once.
And yeah it's a shame champs like Diana, Ekko, etc have never been released.
Zero Skill Tank10 votesWhat counterplay do marksman have compared to assassins? It's literally just don't get into their range or play Yasuo.
Marksman lack powerful positioning and defensive tools assassins possess, meaning they are easily killed before they do their job. They have so much counterplay that literally every single team needs a player or two dedicated to making playing marksman possible at all. Recently there appeared a few marksman that can work on their own, but except for Quinn they all got nerfed to the ground.
And yeah it's a shame champs like Diana, Ekko, etc have never been released.
Diana was released almost exactly 4 years ago, and Ekko is a skirmisher, not an assassin.
Junkο4 votesI know right, Ezreal, Caitlyn, Lucian, etc all lack the mobility of assassins. it's really a shame how easy they are to kill.
Also Ekko was released as an assassin. You know why he is played as a a tank? Because assassins are already so pathetically weak right now even with 100-0 combos because even ADCs do their job better than them. Want an example? Just pick Twitch. His early game is a bit weak but he can kill teams faster than an assassin can kill 1 target.
Serika Zero10 voteswhy is ekko played as a tank: self heal ultimate aoe stun constant slows constant speed ups mobility to get to the enemy back line and land those slows and stuns
the more he lives, the more he can stun and slow the more defensive stats he has, the more value his self healing ultimate adds to his kit
why is ekko not played as an assassin: most damage is loaded in the ultimate, which is very difficult to land on desired target, even more when you die in under 4 seconds ;) you are squishy which means you might die before landing your stun you can at most slow 1 or 2 people per fight
good things about ap assassin ekko: you get a big ass shield does that make up for all the things he loses by going "tanky" or "fighter" build (trinity, frozen mallet, gage ain't tank items, they are fighter items)? fuck no. An utility assassin is flawed by design. If they utility is good enough, people will forsake the assassin part for the sake of utility. And if the assassin part is good enough, then people will forsake the utility part. Big ass shield, aoe stun, tons of slows, self heal = a lot of power budget invested there in utility So -> players will make utility ekko work as there's nothing in his kit that says "I'm an assassin". Maokai is a tank, maokai has AoE knock-up (shorter than ekko's stun), targeted mobility dash (while ekko kind of has 2), and a slow (which ekko has tons) and self heal (guess what, ekko has this as well). Its not like tanks have no mobility. But with even MORE mobility they get to be even more disruptive -> better -> play him tanky ;)
Serika Zero7 votesits not a design flaw that "there is a class designed to kill others as fast as possible"
there's a design flaw because there's very little risk involved for those that play said class. As rito's philosophy for assassins is: they should be able to kill you and they should be nimble, going in and out of fights with ease.
So, lets say Zed goes in and kills your ADC. That sucks, but if you can kill Zed in the next 2 second as he went out of position to go and kill your ADC, then you can still win that fight easy. But no, he just presses R and he is safe -> builds frustration -> builds hate -> and finally builds a huge ban rate
Hinagiku339 votesThe issue there was addressed by Riot actually a while back.
They basically said: If an assassin kills their target in a split second and instantly dies the second after, then nobody is happy. The AD Carry isn't happy because he died obviously, but that's unavoidable. The assassin isn't happy because he just instantly exploded and there was nothing he could do to save himself even though he did his job correctly. The AD Carry's team isn't happy because they just lost their biggest damage source and used a bunch of cooldowns to kill the assassin but didn't have enough time to use them earlier to save their carry. The assassin's tema isn't happy because to them they lost a player to Bronze level stupid aggro even though he killed his target because the lead gained was mostly lost giving the entire enemy team gold and losing the 5v4 advantage to make it 4v4.
The ideal is to make assassins have a way to get OUT of fights safely but only if they did their job. This makes assassin feel better to play and reduces the frustration of having one of your own team as they aren't going to feed the enemy just for doing their job. There was seriously a time (around Season 2 and part of Season 3 if I recall) that teams hated having an assassin as they were seen as useless and taking the place of a far more valuable mage with range and utility.
The other ideal is to make assassins have to take a little bit of time to kill their targets. This has failed horribly for the entire duration of the game because Lifesteal + Crit can negate half an assassin's combo in one auto-attack, plus assassins tend to be melee and get instantly CC'd and exploded by Tanks and Supports the second they try to do anything.
Riot is trying to reduce frustration for the enemy team with the class update - now that players don't rage at having an assassin on their own team anymore - but this is unlikely to happen as long as assassins can be instantly deleted if they take longer than a second to kill targets.
Mercuteio2 voteskha is a good example of the "The ideal is to make assassins have a way to get OUT of fights safely but only if they did their job." because his E (jump) only resets its cooldown if he gets the kill or assist he was jumping in to get and if he doesn't well then you die
Guy Fox Teemo8 votesWhat makes an assassin is not how fast you can burst someone. Its in what ways you can burst someone.
Being bursty doesn't make you an Assassin; What makes you an Assassin is getting your target quick and killing them really fast and getting out as fast as you can. With a Mage your not going to get randomly flanked over a wall, same with Adc's.
Theres a big difference.
WarlordOfBarsoom7 votesI have read almost all of the posts on this board and I feel I need to put in my two cents. I play this game for the assassin role and would quit if it was changed for the worse. I have played every assassin in the game and I believe all assassins can be cancer, but they all have there weakness. I started in season 2 and was a mage main to start but fell in love with the deletion process. Started as Akali went to Kat and finally Evolved into Diana who I spend 90 percent of my time playing. I honestly love this game, I have never played another game as much as I have league of legends.
Akali- levels 1-5 is hell on earth, she is not at all easy to cs with if the person has some kind of poke.
Kat- very weak at the start of the game, Poke her down, force her to not be able to engage. CC her ult.. COMMUNICATE WITH TEAM and Don't Let Her Roam for free. Pantheon went mid and ate my lunch one game so bad I will never forget that game.
Fizz- Has a hard time clearing CS imo, watch for his level advantages and power spikes. Dodge (if you can) the drop on playful trickster.
Zed- Can be hard countered by Zil, Aniva, kayle, kindered. I feel zed is much more balanced after the nerfs recently. Give him nothing, back when you think you are low. Still hate his kit and I still hate dealing with that champ.
LB- hard time with wave clear and against a lane pusher will be forced to use abilities to cs. She will almost always be aggressive. Play safe until you can grab a negatron cloak.
Diana- Missed Q pretty much equals no engage. Especially if they dive in thinking the Q will hit and it misses then its death...
Talon- can engage hard but has no way of getting back out. If he thinks he can all in you then maybe you have stayed to long..
I could do this all day, if you get tilted go watch some videos on how to improve against a certain champ, go play that champ. Learn there cooldowns, learn the damage spikes so you know when to watch out for there engage.
Communicate with team, CC,dodge skill shots or find a way to survive the burst normally will send assassin's packing every time. Another idea is counter build them right out of the gates.. two rings into Seekers arm guard hurts zed bad. Summoner spells!!!! Take barrier, heal, teleport and exhaust is like the bane of a burst character. Crowd Control...Crowd Control... Crowd Control...
Every champ has the potential to deal insane damage in the hands of the right person. Every champ can be cancer.. You guys that hate assassin's with a passion, well I hate tanks with tons off CC that make my life hell.
I honestly have no sympathy for ADC's at all... The buffs to ADC's this season was out of control. I love eating your souls and I never feel remorse.
Mages I understand your pain, I personally thought the mage update and the itemization they came out with was not satisfying at all. Slapping CDR on everything felt extremely lazy to me. It lacked the WOW factor of the ADC changes and Juggernaut changes.
Supports, the day will come where they hopefully won't just band-aid your class.
Good luck in the rift.
Spizzle90004 votesA. I think I can speak for everyone on the boards when I say thank you for the tips on how to deal with assassins.
B. Just from my inexperienced bronzie perspective, the mage update went fairly well-ish except for Vladimir. He's stuck in this really awkward position of being completely awful or being slightly less awful and driving people fucking insane. Even with his current abysmal state, he's still regularly banned. Tbh, I think Riot really screwed up on the Vlad changes.
CasterGilgamesh3 votesvlad is easy to deal with just dont do extended trades strike him when his third Q is down since he needs to get it up to do any real damage and heal. late game its up to the adc's and mages to buy 
. a great item early against vlad would be 
and depending on the situation get 
or 
. if you are a fighter also get also instead of TP if you just really feel like you are in-trouble and you think you cant deal with his healing get 
instead of TP
Killstrado6 votesHey let's up vote someone's ill informed opinion of something based on what a rioter said about one specific assassin whose rework isn't even on pbe yet. You know because delaying some damage for .5 of a second on talon is going to make every other champion OP and increase all their damage somehow....
IS3E531E3F9643914 votesmaybe they make it so they have to commit and can't just blink 2 screens away like leblanc and zed
Hello I am Bird4 votesDoesn't that defeat the point of an assassin?
Their job is suppose to get in, kill, get out, right?
Serika Zero12 votesnop, their job is to just "kill", generally a get in and get the kill but can also be a long distance snipe on a low hp target. riot games added "get out" to their 'vision' of an assassin.
being able to "get out" should be a proof of player skill, not handed on a silver plate
Most assassins are seen as snipers for a reason. They shoot their bullet, get a kill. But then getting out is difficult as you must avoid people being suspicious of you, leaving hair or fingerprints, leaving shells around, etc. Its not hard to take the shot, anyone could do it with a scope and the mental resolution to kill. But getting out of that situation without getting arrested (or worse) requires talent.
Here at riot games, we decided to remove the last factor and just give you a free escape button ;)
LankPants8 votesnop, their job is to just "kill", generally a get in and get the kill but can also be a long distance snipe on a low hp target. riot games added "get out" to their 'vision' of an assassin.
being able to "get out" should be a proof of player skill, not handed on a silver plate
And you just described why I hold the fairly unpopular opinion that Akali and Talon are quite close to being well designed champions and only need small tweaks while champs like Fizz and Zed need far larger overhauls to make them healthy champs.
