Assassin itemization lacks versatility and is uninteresting.
Let me preface this by saying I am not looking to increase the amount of burst or Lethality available, these itemization changes would have to be introduced along with a lethality cap or other means to discourage non-assassins from building them while not making assassins overpowered
If you look at the win rates of AD assassins you'll notice that most of them are doing fine, but the same was true for most mages a few patches ago and they received an item update. Why? There were no real choices in itemization, and neither is there any for assassins.
Assassins currently do not feel very rewarding to play. You're mostly there to snowball your bot lane, instead of holding the opponent down. This is because current itemization makes it hard for Assassins to adapt their playstyle, and forces them into the same gameplay regardless of the game/meta.
Currently, Duskblade is a must rush item and performs well regardless of what your gameplan is (dive in 1v5 to get a carry, clean up fights, split push, catch people out). Riot is looking at nerfing the item and that's a step in the right direction.
Ghostblade and Edge of Night actually have a more specific purpose (catching people out and diving in respectively) but they're being overshadowed by Duskblade. Edge of Night also suffers from having a random amount of health tacked on that doesn't help Assassins much.
Besides Lethality items, there aren't many Assassin oriented items available. Most Assassins currently just tap into Bruiser or ADC items, which often lack explicit synergy with the role.
I feel like there are many avenues waiting to be explored in terms of itemization, such as items that help cleaning fights, increase splitpush potential (while being lacking in team fights) and expanding on current options. Giving Assassins broader itemization options allows them to be in a healthier state and makes them less vulnerable to meta changes because they get to explore multiple options depending on the state of the game. Even if there is a clear optimal build within a meta, it would still mean assassins wouldn't be left behind when the meta changes.
What do you guys think?
Posted Mar 4, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC
They need to remove lethality and bring back old armor pen. Buff the assassins as compensation for the removal of their actual burst (duskblade) and see where they land.
Lethality is by far one of the shittiest stats in the game simply because it forces ad assassins to build it so they actually deal damage. How does that make sense? That's not what the class is supposed to do.
I don't understand this comment. Tanks have to build health or else they will be squishy. Mages have to build AP or else they won't do damage. I do not understand the point you are getting across.
Tanks who want to get beefy can buy Spirit Visage, Omen, RG, Sunfire Cape, Deadman's Plate, Adaptive Helm, Stoneplate, Thornmail and Warmogs
Mages who want AP can buy Lich Bane, Void Staff, GLP, Gunblade, Protobelt, Liandry's Torment, Ludens, Archangel's staff, Meme Hat, ROA, Morello, Unholy Grail, Spellbinder, Nashor's Tooth, Rylai's, and Banshee's Veil.
AD assassins who want lethality can buy... duskblade, ghostblade, night of edge. 3 items. Three. Every other class has loads of choices (except maybe ADC, but even then they have enough choices to adapt to the game), but assassins have only 3, and I can't remember the last time I've seen someone buy edge of night.
e: Jesus some of these replies are hostile as shit. Just to clarify, I know why they changed arpen to lethality, and I'm fine with it, but AD assassin itemization compared to literally ever other class I played is super stale.
I think that's overly narrow thinking. By that logic, ADCs only have 6 items they can build because that's how many items give crit chance.
In practice, assassins can also buy items like Cleaver, Scimitar, LW, Hydra, or GA to increase their damage alongside lethality.
That's still limited itemization. Mages and tanks are the most diverse atm but even ADCs have more choices than assassins.
If you treat crit as the core stat for ADCs, they still have 6 items to choose from. If crit is core for ADCs, lethality is core for assassins and they only have 3 items.
ADC is a dps role. You buy Attack Speed, On-hit, Crit and Attack damage. ADCs can therefore build:
IE, Shiv, Rapidfire cannon, Blade of the Ruined King, Phantom Dancer, Runaan, Essence Reaver, Guinsoo, Wits End and have the same defense options as any other AD champ - Maw for burst prevention, Mercurial for qss, GA for revive. On top of all that some will even go into lethality or bruiser items to further optimise their build. So situationally Triforce, Gauntlet, Cleaver, Youmuu, Frozen Mallet etc. It is also very possible to take Bloodthirster or Deaths Dance in case on needs extra sustain.
Realistically, AD assassins have 3 types of items they want. Lethality, %Penetration or Armor Reduction and AD+defense. So:
Edge of Night, Youmuu, Duskblade, Cleaver, Last whisper upgrades, GA, Mercurial and Maw. You COULD go for Shiv or PD but you'd usually replace boots for them which isn't that good of an option if you aren't in a lead. Very rarely will an assassin go for Hydra or Bloodthirster/Deaths Dance because scalings have all been nerfed to a point where pure AD means next to nothing to them.
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Well, penetration is core to an assassin to get high amounts of damage. They don't have to stack it, they could stack AD items and still deal a lot. But lethality is what makes them hit harder. That's just how it works, I'd be okay with more lethality options but certain ones have linked lethality so you could only have so much lethality or something like that...
But wanting more options to do more damage but not penetrate armor is insane because how did you expect do do damage then if they build armor?
Like "I want to be able to one shot someone even if they build armor and not have to build armor pen" sounds ridiculous.
The problem is that lethality is far more effective against adcs than % armor pen is against tanks, at least from an assassins perspective. In an ideal world assassins could build either anti squishy items or anti tank items, maximizing damage for a specific type of enemy. But in the current patch you won't be able to threaten tanks in a meaningful way, you can build cleaver+dominiks+botrk on Zed and still don't have enough damage to get through the 4.5 k health of a tank because you are not a dps champion and all you have is a single burst combo.
Do assassins not build Last Whisper?
Boots, 3 Lethality Items, Cleaver +1 item. It's either LW (shit against squishies and assassins dont go for tanks anyway) or defense item.
Did you read before you started typing?
and then your response
They should also look into stealth on assassin and how to properly balance it.
Bring back pink wards please.
By telling low level players to get better. Stealth is fine, nobody has long enough stealth to beat proper warding and none of the stealth champs have enough outright damage to pick you off if you play well unless you feed them at which point what do you expect them to do? Red trinkets do plenty to reveal and grouping together does plenty to deter.
Legit, Kha'Zix can actually stealth through half the map and walk stealth from the bushes at redbuff/entrance by the wolves, straight into midlane. Stealth is fine on most champs, but definitely not on him I'd argue.
Same with eve
I don’t have a problem with kha. If his stealth was truly a problem, wouldn’t he be pulling ahead of a 50% winrate?
Sorry but relying on your teammates to have some braincells is something I cant do. If red trinkets revealed them instead of only the shadow, then I would say they are balanced. Atm it just feels shitty, they even nerfed the duration of Shaco to make his stealth weaker, because they couldnt balance him otherwise.
Yes but proper warding is insanely team reliant
I feel like HotS' old (?)blur effect would suit league fine since both game have a very limited way of gaining vision of a target.
I remember old hots blur effect, it was so incredibly hard to see if you weren't playing on max specs that I had my teammate tell me where their invisible champ was cause I couldn't tell myself.
Said that I don't know how a permanent blur would work in league, it will shift invisibility from a way to reach the target without being seen to a tool for avoiding targeted dmg like autos.
That would be somewhat useless. You're either invisible or you're not.
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Yeah no, I was called a hacker constantly because I could see invisible people like that, it's basicly just another skill to learn that takes nothing but time.
Time and attention. Are you really constantly looking at your ward in the tribrush for the blur? The biggest thing about HotS stealth was characters not showing up on the minimap.
Old armor pen was abused by adcs its not easy to balance it
Abused on what?
Draven, Lucian, Graves, Miss Fortune and possibly Varus
Graves is no longer an adc
Lucian is in a horrible spot and would probably become decent/good
Draven could use a love tap if he's deemed problematic
Miss Fortune still abuse the items so no difference
Varus was a mid laner at the time so we have no accurate data on whether or not he'd be abusing the items or if he'd still be playing on-hit
Abused on jhin Lucian draven graves mf
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How was it abused on Jhin when Jhin was released after lethality?
Since Q nerf Varus has never been able to use maxing Q effectively, meta would have to shift to adc doing things from afar because they fear getting destroyed in order for Varus to max Q again and build pen
Varus in preseason was the best adc pick going lethality and q max with comet.
Don't forget Armor Pens bff Jhin
Possibly Varus, lmao.
Possibly
Twitch as well. Old Ghostblade was a crazy first item.
He probably wouldn't build the current iteration since it doesn't give AS or crit.
Draven or varus with old armor pen were nightmares. Same for cheesy MF or Draven pen builds
It's actually quite easy. Have different numbers for melee and range.
Literally this. I don't know why Riot doesn't explore this more. It's already on Hydra, Sterakk's and Hurricane. Having Melee only and Ranged Only items, or even the same Treatment they did with Wit's End makes it much easier to balance.
And if they really wanted to, make exceptions for champs like Quinn so she doesn't get shit on.
Riot have said that they dont like to slap the melee/ranged tags around simply because of diversity or something like that. Sad part is the game would probably be in a much healthier spot if more items were melee/ranged only.
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Melee-only ArPen/Letha items, problem solved.
Make a new batch of Ranged-only ArPen/Letha items to compensate, then smack the Ranged-only ArPen/Letha with nerf bats if the ones using it become overbearing. AGAIN.
Nah don’t have ranged flat armor pen items it’s that simple. They will have last whisper and cleaver.
Just balance lethality items with diferent stats for mele and ranged champions.
What is the difference between armour pen ans and lethality? I thought they only changed the name
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No, that's how it was originally.
They originally made it scale with target level to reduce snowballing, and reduce how shitty you are if you fall behind. But ADCs abused it because everyone else is always a level or two up on them.
Then Riot changed it to scale with the level of the owner of the item, which went directly against the original intention of reducing the feast or famine playstyle.
Then people cried when assassins actually snowballed with items that become win-more when ahead, so they nerfed the Lethality values.
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Give this man a medal and make him a captain of riot's balance team
Why not just change the formula? Make it .7 or .8 instead of the .6 it's currently at
Because we shouldn’t have to be doing math equations to tell us how much pen we are getting this isn’t an issue magic damage champions have to deal with why do physical damage champions get the short end of the stick?
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So double buff them since old armor pen is better than lethality?
The buff to damage is compensation for the removal of duskblade because that adds damage to their burst combo. The indirect buff by changing garbage lethality back to pen is to push them back into the meta.
Though this only makes lethality ADCs unhealthily strong again. Which means you’d have to restrict that armor pen to Melee which actually kills a playstyle for ADCs.
Make flat pen melee only. Boom solved the problem in 1 simple step. Armor pen is still available via cleaver and last whisper as it should be.
Now I’m going to preface this with I totally agree with you and think lethality is trash but I think that making a champion build an item or a stat to be useful is totally fine. Yea assassins need lethality to function but most adcs (excluding kog maw because of his w) need crit to function and do damage. Most bruisers need triforce to do damage. Should those items be removed or changed by that logic? Only playing devils advocate here I do actually think lethality is trash.
Also bring back old LW.
Please let ad fighters have something to build against braindead armor stack, cleaver got way too overnerfed.
lethality is better for assassins than arpen was tho? makes em way more relevant late game
Oh yeah because when I start a game Im thinking of that juicy 40 min dmg who gets literally denied by solari and a ¨E¨ of a shield champ.
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Higher damage lategame makes very little difference for assassins. You do enough damage to 100-0 a carry at level 6. At late stages of the game it's hard to be relevant just because teamfighting is so awkward as a squishy melee champion.