Changing assassins to hybrid scaling? Thoughts? Red comment?

ObscureClockwork·Aug 14, 2014·5 votes·986 views

Assassins generally are not very healthy. Some of it is in their kits, they inherently have a lot of "outplay" mechanics and mobility, but another part is how their damage scales. As seen during the old assassin meta, pretty much the assassin would snowball hard, and then be more or less unstoppable due to their burst and snowballing. Nowadays, assassins like Zed have become healthier, but perhaps changing how they scale with items can help promote healthier scaling on assassins as well as potentially giving them access to a set of "assassin-only" tools.

Currently, assassins are generally mainly one type of scaling. I feel this contributes to their snowball potential, and snowball cycle of snowball -> kill -> snowball harder. Assassins are mainly in this cycle because of how their roles is designed; they get in, kill, and get out. Giving them access to multiplicative scaling only exacerbates this problem. In the end, assassins became more or less melee carries at their peak. I feel this is due to multiplicative scaling options or sustain options (pretty much deathcap, bloodthirster, the likes)

Thus, lets switch them to hybrid scaling.

There is space AP generally goes to mages, AD goes to adc, Tank itemization goes to tank. AP + tank go to AP buisers/tanks, AD + tank go to AD bruisers/tanks. AP + AD, or hybrid scaling generally does not go to anyone. Pretty much every so-called hybrid champion is essentially just one or the other, but using maybe one item of the other class.
Hybrid scaling generally doesn't snowball as hard. This is meant to counteract the extra snowballing assassins innately get from their role.
Hybrid scaling is easier to shut down when you are ahead. One problem with assassins, i feel, is that when they get ahead, they stay ahead easily, because they are meant to defeat the forces that would stop them (the champions). In the assassin meta, a snowballed assassin stayed ahead. Meanwhile, a snowballed mage may wreck havoc in teamfights, but could still be shut down by forces such as bruisers or assassins. The flip side doesn't happen often, as assassins that are fed have enough single target damage, and at times resets or aoe, to kill people who try to stop them.
Hybrid Scaling is underutilized by many other champions You can create assassin-specific items. These can range from actives to slow or to give them more time, to passives to help them deal with the heat of the peelers.
Hybrid Scaling lowers tower-killing ability I feel one of the issues with assassins is that some of them have very strong tower-pushing, on top of their assassinating capabilities. Tower calculation is based off which is higher - your AD or 0.4 AP. This lets assassins not be overwhelming as a champion-killing class. This is a clear weakness that is implemented through such a change.
Hybrid Scaling champions have the largest pool of useable items I feel one thing assassins would really appreciate is the ability to customize. Hybrid scaling, if well designed, would open up the entire pool of items for them, not just 1 side. It means we can see combinations such as Botrk with Zhonyas. The large set gives assassins versatility, but not the ability to do everything, as, if properly designed, are unable to utilize one side completely.

There are some cons to consider, however.

Higher entry level Having that much versatility is hard to use. Assassins become less newbie-friendly due to needing a better understanding of the game to fully utilize.
Harder time in lane Without the imminent threat of powerful snowball, assassins' laning abilities may take a hit. While this may be remedied depending on how items are made, it may also be exacerbated by such a change.
Not a full fix Akali will still have troubles with her stealth, 3 dashes, and snowball effect. Fizz will still have his trollpole on low cooldown. Ect... Assassins still need a look on some of their kits to increase counterplay, if riot really wants a healthy, counterplayable assassin.

Regardless, i think it helps towards the healthy niche riot wants assassins to be in. Not only that, i'd envision perhaps maybe 6 items would be enough hybrid items to cement the change in, and more could be added later. The next pre-season is coming up, and that is a good time to implement these changes.

So please, tell me what you think, and keep it constructive, I know this can be a sensitive issue for some people.

18 Comments

67chromeAug 14, 20144 votes

The basic issue with hybrid scaling is this:

You can't counterbuild it.

Assassins can certainly snowball pretty hard, but you can also steam the bleeding with a committed defensive item on anyone. Yi is getting out of control? Thornmail can cause him serious problems. If not allow you to deal with him 1v1, it can cause you to take to long to kill when he goes balls deep. LeBlanc having to much fun? Banshee's Veil shuts down a considerable amount of the kill pressure she can provide.

When you look at the other 2 big, damage carry classes you can also counterbuild them pretty easily. Mages and Marksman are both pretty susceptable to being counter-built as well.

Also - the scaling of hybrid damage has issues fitting into an assassin play style. As you mentioned, it doesn't have exponential scaling like pure-damage builds. Attack stats all scale one-another, magic stats all scale one-another, attack stats just don't scale with magic stats. Good news for keeping a snowball contained.

If it weren't for one other interaction: Offensive power does actually scale the potency of Defensive power. The faster you kill things the less damage they deal to you, the longer you survive the more damage you get to unleash.

There are a lot of hybrid damage champions in LoL. There are a significant number of champions that deal a very even mixture of physical and magical damage. They just don't grab raw AD and AP together. They tend to get magic damage through things like Wit's End and Sunfire Cape, Trinity Force is a core item on a solid chunk of them, and they like Kingblade. The hybrid damage class is fighters. Look at the damage Shyvana causes end-game if you don't believe me. Or Mundo, Warwick, Udyr, and more. Tanky DPS tend to come really close to 50% physical, 50% magical. A lot of tanks do as well - Alistar's 90 AD steroid does a pretty solid job at keeping up with his magical damage.

And tanky champions should legitimately not be easy to counter-build, as most are heavily reliant on grabbing a solid chunk of defensive stats to survive long enough to deal damage in the first place, and defensive items don't exactly improve the damage you lay down. So - the way Bruisers like Shyvana and Mundo tend to remain imposing members of the tanky DPS class is heavily reliant on (pretty impressive) hybridized physical/magical damage. Others are reliant on things like %HP, true damage, and free penetrations to remain relevant damage threats that can't easily be shut down with a singular defensive item.

So, moving assassins to a hybrid damage class has 2 big problems:

Assassins turn into bruisers. We've already seen this with Kha'Zix and Evelynn grabbing Randuin's Omen as part of their core build. Give them damage that has solid scaling (hybrid and %HP for Eve, %HP for Kha) and you just cause their optimal build to no longer include damage.
Bruisers turn into assassins. Considerably worse. This does not need to happen. If not assassins, 4 hours in AD Sions. Champions like Shyvana and Mundo can be just as big of a damage source as pure-offense rolls like assassins, marksman, and mages currently. That's just how tanky DPS is set up to work - it's more a difference of survival mechanisms than damage output between bruisers and those other 3 rolls. Bruisers have tank, assassins have mobility, mages and marksman have range.

I don't see how you could set up hybrid itemization for assassins and not run into either of those pretty massive problems.

Also - only 8 champions in LoL lack AP ratios outright. There's a lot more hybrid damage than most let on. And 2 of those champions till deal some magic damage.

ObscureClockworkAug 14, 20141 votes

I think the benefit of focusing on the assassin class (generally not talking about the melee carries that become assassin-like, which I consider Yi to be part of) are that they are skill-based. This allows them to have hybrid scaling without having hybrid damage.

To clarify, I'm hoping to circumvent the problems associated with hybrid damage through exploiting assassins' dependence on skills, meaning they do minimal hybrid damage, but still scale in that way.

For instance, I feel a good place to start is Akali's passive, where AP grants extra AD scaling. Its a small effect, but give incentives to build both. Likewise, we could see skills that have low AP and low AD ratios, but a generally decent ratio goldwise. Perhaps something of 0.3 AP with 0.6 AD tied together on a spell. with the cost of a deathcap, NLR + BF gives 80 AP + 50 AD, which gives slightly more damage than 156 AP. Furthermore, longer cooldowns and smaller bases can certainly prevent assassins from becoming bruisers in most conditions. Eve becoming a bruiser, I feel, is a result of her focus on DPS, rather than burst, and her kit having initiation tools (her ult and speed boost).

Though, I haven't considered bruisers becoming assassins. However, due to the generally higher bases of bruisers, they mostly would not be played assassin. Some bruisers (like lee) may become assassins, but lee's kit isn't far worse to deal with as an assassin than as a bruiser.

While I understand the other differences, as you have mentioned, between the damage roles, I feel assassins are a very hard to balance group because of the way they scale on top of their survival mechanisms. You don't really stop skill-based mobility, unlike itemization against tankiness or increasing stickiness through stuff like randuins to deal with range.

What I'm hoping is that what prevents the bruiser from becoming the assassin and vice versa is that assassins will have longer cooldowns and generally lower bases and thus a larger dependence on damage-building, while the bruiser has lower cooldowns and having kits that favour prolonged exposure.

What I'm hoping is that assassins relying primarily on skill use allows the damage type to be more-or-less controlled, and that building to become a mixed-damage type sacrifices damage output for its harder-to-itemize trait.

67chromeAug 14, 20141 votes

Perhaps something of 0.3 AP with 0.6 AD tied together on a spell. with the cost of a deathcap, NLR + BF gives 80 AP + 50 AD, which gives slightly more damage than 156 AP. Furthermore, longer cooldowns and smaller bases can certainly prevent assassins from becoming bruisers in most conditions.

Having an AD and AP ratio doesn't make hybrid builds an effective build. That doesn't force AD and AP to scale with one-another.

The biggest problem with AD/AP hybrid builds is that attack stats simply don't scale with magic stats. If you look at it from the perspective of Akali and Katarina, You could go for AP multipliers like Deathcap, Lich Bane, DFG, and Void Staff to cause all your magic damage to really hurt.

Basically, it's a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16

With marksman like Ezreal and Miss Fortune that have AP ratios on pretty much everything, you can grab a pretty solid chunk of attack damage, attack speed, armor penetration, and critical strikes.

Basically, a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16 deal.

If you go 2 offense items and defense you get:

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16

If you mix up AP and AD you're stuck with:

(2 x 2) + (2 x 2) = 8.

So, no - joint ratios don't make that a much of an incentive at all. You kill your end-game scaling by trying to pursue hybrid damage builds. By a really noteworthy margin

There's only 1 reason anyone gets hybrid damage items: They're more cost-effective than pure damage items right away, which offsets there lack of end-game scalling enough to merrit grabbing a single hybrid item on champions with decent scaling in both directions. Trinity Force, Nashor's Tooth, Gunblade, those are all items the likes of Jax, Corki, Ezreal, Kayle, Katarina, Akali, Nidalee, and more tend to get as a first major purchase. And then they ignore hybrid damage and continue with a dedicated physical or magical build in pretty much every case.

So, if you're trying to push poor scaling on assassins - how are you going to stop them from pursuing good scaling?

Mixed ratios simply don't work for that. Only 8 champions in LoL actually don't have an AP ratio. And when you look at forcing AP and AS to scale with one-another, Kayle and Jax are very much hyper-carries due to how strong they scale into end-game.

ObscureClockworkAug 15, 20141 votes

Perhaps, but as i mentioned, a passive like akali's does help give incentives to hybrid builds. This would be the starting point of the shift,. The combination of having champion specific hybrid-supporting scaling along with joint ratios that do not function well on their own are meant to try to push hybrid scaling to assassins.

Hybrid items being added for the assassin class could also give them incentives to build hybrid as well.

The goal is that you will get more damage by building hybrid, but you get a more linear growth of power. Or you can build in one or the other, for a more rapid growth, but a shorter end-game.

I see champions like akali and kat ignoring hybrid scaling for a few reasons

Akali and Kat both have very good AP ratios compared to their AD ratios. Thats one of the problems that would have to be fixed. Her passive is good for her building hybrid, but her AP ratios are too good to benefit that.
They deal mainly magic damage with good AP ratios, so the incentives are for non-hybrid builds, rather than hybrid builds.
hybrid itemization sucks except for gunblade and maybe trinity.

Though, AP with AS is an entirely different beast altogether. I don't think assassins will opt for the AS AP hybrid, and thus my focus is not there.

LneacxAug 14, 20142 votes

How do you force an a champion to build hybrid?

ObscureClockworkAug 15, 20141 votes

Through joint ratios, internal hybrid AD <-> AP scaling, and introduction of new hybrid items

LneacxAug 15, 20141 votes

Kayle and Jax are hybrids. When was the last time they ever built any hybrid stat more than a trinity force? The problem is that in hybrid scalings, one scaling just does better than the other. In Kayle's case, that's AP.

How do you force someone like Kayle to build hybrid?

ObscureClockworkAug 20, 20141 votes

Im not forcing kayle to build hybrid.

Im trying to force someone like fizz to build hybrid

LneacxAug 20, 20141 votes

bad phrasing on my part. The question is: how do you force any champion to build hybrid? Hybrid scalings alone don't work, as the examples of Jax and Kayle show.

ObscureClockworkAug 24, 20141 votes

i mentioned, joint ratios, internal hybrid AD <-> AP scaling, and introduction of new hybrid items.

Joint ratios on all their abilities means each ability's individual scaling isn't very strong if you only look at one side. The problems with the so-called hybrids is that they scale very well with one or the other, and have tacked on ratios.

Internal AD <-> AP scaling are scaling options that benefit the other side when one is built. Which means AD gives something to benefit AP, and vice versa.

New hybrid items could help too, such as items giving extra actives or such.

So while i can't force a champion to build hybrid, you can design the champion so that the hybrid build is the one that does the most damage.

ChaosThiefAug 14, 20142 votes

You can say Kayle is a hybrid. But do you see anyone build her hybrid?

That's the thing. AP does tons of burst damage, AD is more continuous. Stacking them together is a very difficult thing to do, as only jax really does it well enough. And even he isn't a complete hybrid.

ObscureClockworkAug 15, 20141 votes

The goal is to try to promote hybrid builds through the combinations of joint ratios on pretty much all their skills with the introduction of new items and adding internal AP <-> AD scaling types to the assassin champions.

Hopefully the end result is a healthier gameplay with less snowballyness that keeps assassins in a perpetual super good / super bad state

ChaosThiefAug 16, 20141 votes

It's idealistic, but it won't work unless a heavy amount of time is spent on it (to take an estimate, more than 3 years maybe?)

ObscureClockworkAug 20, 20141 votes

I'd estimate, with the amount of work on items done over the season changes, that it could be ideally done in one preseason.

Flying BuntcakeAug 14, 20141 votes

Theses changes sound sound balanced? Something to make assassins snowball less.

Cloud PotatoAug 20, 20141 votes

There are two problems that can arise from Assassins snowballing:

1: Badly designed kits (mostly tied to lack of counterplay and/or speed the combo is executed) 2: Removing an ability from your combo

The first doesn't need much explanation. Any champion you can't outplay will end up being binary (either succeed or failure). The second is the huge issue, where a champion who is designed to have an entire combo (for example, LeBlanc) getting to the point where they can kill someone without using their entire combo (for example, using W to gap close instead of damage but still get the kill). Many many Assassins are balanced when you put their whole combo into account, but if they get so far ahead that they can cut out a part of it a lot of potential counterplay and/or time to execute can be lowered or even removed.

As an example, let's take Fizz. His combo is something like R W Q, with autoattacks and E somewhere in there. If he needs to land Q, E, and R, and several autoattacks to secure a kill, that's fine. E and R both have counterplay available, Q puts him in a predictable position and autoattacks are self explanatory. However, if he's ahead, he can start killing people without autoattacks. That makes him a lot more deadly to deal with. He can also eliminate either E or R if he gets even further ahead, which either means he doesn't have to make a tradeoff between using E for damage or to avoid damage himself, or he is a threat at all times due to not needing his ultimate.

In short, Assassins must have to use all of their abilities properly to get a kill, or else their game health starts to degrade. To actually get on topic, giving them hybrid scaling means that some of their abilities won't scale unless you build multiple stats, which does help curb the snowballing problem. Some kits would need some changes though, for example Talon's Q would be worthless without damage and you could just opt to not build the stat it scales from and ignore it, so that sort of thing needs to be accounted for. Also, AD and AP don't have to be the two stats that Assassins can scale from; we could give them scaling from Attack Speed, for example. Just throwing that out there.

Also, this is rather out of scope of just Assassin balance, but I can't help but feel that Assassins would be so problematic if you didn't require a champion that builds glass cannon in every game, and that instead having one was a strategic tradeoff. But oh well.

ObscureClockworkAug 24, 20142 votes

Well, yes, assassins snowballing can arise from the mentioned problems. But any kit that is innately designed to kill you quickly and escape is designed to snowball.

Kits would need many changes, but for instance, Q could have the bleed change to scaling off AP. Already Q synergizes wtih lich bane or building AD.

In my opinion, scaling off attack speed is the slippery slope of turning assassins into this assassin-carry hybrid. Part of the goal is to reduce their tower-pushing capabilities. A assassin-carry hybrid would have lots of escapes, tower pushing ability, and assassination ability (that actually sounds like nidalee haha). That would be very very powerful on too many aspects