Presenting, an AD Skirmisher Assassin Item, the Chronopiercer

With the recent preseason changes, Riot has taken it upon themselves to reinvent assassin items with some minor modifications and two new additions, and I felt inspired to create some of my own ideas! Now, I have a few, but what is probably my favorite is the Chronopiercer, an assasin item for AD skirmishers, and I hope you guys enjoy! Any advice or ideas is also apreciated, and I will discuss it further below with a tl:dr

Chronopiercer

• 2900 gold

+250 Health +45 Attack Damage +10% Cooldown Reduction

UNIQUE Passive: +15 Lethality UNIQUE Passive - Counting Down the Chimes: Upon striking an enemy champion with 4 unique attacks or abilities, gain 15 True Movement Speed for 5 seconds (45 second cooldown). UNIQUE Passive - Temporal Drift: While Counting Down the Chimes is active, exiting 125% of your attack range from all enemy champions triggers Temporal Drift, extending Counting Down the Chimes's duration and gaining +30 True Movement Speed and Camoflauge (120% attack range radius) for 3 seconds. Additionally, passage of time is accelerated for the user while unseen.**

Okay, so, this is pretty much the full picture. I've tried to carefully balance the item, and it is about 96.7% gold efficient without considering the passive, so I'll discuss the stats first and foremost:

In order to make sure this item was most appealing to a skirmisher playstyle and not some sort of upfront burster, I had to reduce the AD and Lethality. 45 AD makes this the assassin item with the least damage, and 15 Lethality puts it close to having the least penetration. I wanted the player to have enough damage to still be an assassin, but not enough to burst instantly, rather relying on an extended fight to be able to kill an opponent.

After some debate, health was included in the stats because any skirmisher is expecting a drawn out fight, which will surely include more lost health than usual. Cooldown reduction is also practically a necessity because an assassin relies heavily on abilities, and if I'm going to be asking them to fight for longer than they're used to, they're gonna need at least one way to get them back quicker. More on that later, though.

Now, on to the elephant in the room, the passive. It's relatively straightforward, of course. Gain camo while in combat, which allows you to reposition and reset some cooldowns. Requiring you to trigger Counting Down the Chimes with 4 attacks means you have to really dedicate yourself, and be ready for an extended fight.

True Movement Speed, my own creation, is conceptually flat movement speed which cannot be reduced or removed in any way, (through slows, or by natural inhibition). I wanted this specifically because I felt that giving percent movement speed or normal flat movement speed might be able to scale too well into an assassin's kit, but it also means that this gives you a bit of effective slow resistance as well.

However, the camoflauge. And, in particular, that last statement about time acceleration (almost there). I know invisibility and camo can be a bit of a problem to play against. Of course,t hat's why I favored camo, but part of why I wanted invisibility at all is because I felt that by including it in an item like this makes the item far more unique, and allows you to adjust your playstyle with virtually any assassin to be more about long fights, which is kinda rare. I know most people are just gonna want to burst squishies, but I felt that introducing this item would allow others to engage in fights differently. Perhaps you feel that the enemy team can counter you really easily? Sacrifice some damage to allow you to adjust midfight and attack again. Or maybe the enemy team is a bit too tanky for one strong burst to cut through? Now you can include a burst and a half, which, while weaker, might be enough to kill a tougher target.

**Finally, however, let's talk about that time acceleration shindiggery. To be honest, this is probably my favorite aspect of the item. But, also, it may not really be necessary, but keep an open mind. Conceptually, what I had in mind was that the player, while camoflauged AND unseen by the enemy, would be able to pass time by quicker (about 2 times as fast). What this means is that every second spent unseen translates to two seconds in your kit, up to six for the total 3.

This is to say, every second passed unseen, ALL your abilities' cooldown one additional second. And this isn't limited to abilities! Every second passed, an additional second is ticked off the cooldown of your items - passive and active - as well as your summoner abilities and even your health regeneration (natural or from pots or passives). You can exit combat quicker, gain the effect of Duskblade of Drakthaarr's passive in half a second (something to keep in mind for new builds), but are also affected by enemy effects quicker. For example, ignite and other DOTs will tick to completion faster, as well as Death's Dance. Slows and roots will run out in half the time.

Conceptually, I wanted this to be a real impact mid game. Time is in fact passing by quicker. You are bleeding faster, but you have a chance to prepare your abilities (mainly) to do a counterstrike. However, if the enemy gets close enough to see you, or reveals you with a pink ward, the effect is broken. So there is a bit of counter play. Also, so it cannot be abused by ranged champions too much, the radius of camoflage scales with your auto attack range.

TL;DR: This here is an assassin item that sacrifices some upfront damage in favor of survivability and cooldown reduction. I added camoflauge while in combat to allow the player to reposition midfight, with accelerated time passage allowing for cooldowns to reset quicker for champions that typically have limiting ones.

This is my little magnum opus, and I hope you guys will read at least the item description. I'm happy to discuss it and any criticisms below, and we can talk about how it could be put in the game or how it never should be if that's how you feel. Thanks for your time!