Now That We’re in Season 7… Which League of Legends Assassins Are Actually Worth Playing?

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena video game, developed and published by Riot Games. In League of Legends, players assume the role of an unseen “summoner” that controls a “champion” with unique abilities, and battles against a team of other players or computer-controlled champions. The goal is usually to destroy the opposing team’s “nexus” — a structure which lies at the heart of a base protected by defensive structures.

Each League of Legends match is discrete, with all champions starting off fairly weak but increasing in strength by accumulating items and experience over the course of the game. It was inspired by the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne mod, Defense of the Ancients (DotA).

This pre-season Riot Games wanted to do something new with the assassins, and updated them with two goals in mind: push the thematics/play patterns of the individual champions, and increase the overall game health of the class. They wanted to bring new functionality to the class as a whole, as well as ensure they have the systemic tools they need to succeed. They wanted to make sure that assassins have items that suit their class strengths. Finally, we’re revisiting stealth, a mechanic which has traditionally belonged to assassins.

Riot Games believe that assassins should have the ability to massively outplay their opponents, which also leaves them open to being outplayed. Overall, we want them to have strong success cases, strong failure cases, and clear ways for opponents to attempt to avoid dying. They also want to make assassins fairer, which isn’t the same as reducing assassin damage. In some cases, that means giving you more ability to fire back. In other cases, you need to be able to see an assassin coming and try to escape them. We want the Ashe who just got styled on to think “welp, I got outplayed,” not “that was bullshit.”

They also made some changes to different aspect of the assassins:

Assassin Itemization

Current AD assassin items barely do more than increase the raw damage output of their wielders. While items still need to pack a punch so assassins can close out their kills, we’re updating them to include more tricks to help assassins set-up, stalk, and ambush — not just burst. Also flat armor penetration has been changed to Lethality. While they’re pretty much the same thing, the bulk of Lethality’s penetration scales with your opponent’s level. This makes it less snowbally, meaning we can give Assassins more of it than we could flat armor penetration!

Camouflage

Camouflage is what they call ‘strategic’ stealth. It’s strongest when used to get around the map unseen, moving from one victim to the next. Evelynn’s had this mechanic for a while, and it’s being extended it to Rengar and Twitch as well.

Control Wards

Now that Rengar and Twitch are in the Camouflage camp, they’re able to give power back to stealth champions. So, Vision Wards have been updated into a more focused anti-vision tool: Control Wards. Control Wards still grant their own vision, but also provide strong vision denial — they reveal and disable nearby enemy wards and traps — but they don’t reveal Invisible champs.

Best Assassins

Shaco

Shaco with his burst damage and stealth is a nightmare playing as a jungler. Also the changes to his R now dropping three boxes at the same time when the clone dies is a serious deal.

Katarina

Katarina now has gameplay relying almost completely on throwing and grabbing her dagger, increasing her mobility and tactical play needed to be deadly. Keeping her burst damage and also decreasing healing. She tends to be more dangerous on bronze, silver and sometimes gold due to the lack of skill to cast crowd control on you to avoid your deadly ultimate.

LeBlanc

LeBlanc with her possible big damage and amazing mobility is an assassin really scary for enemies when played right. She allows more possibilities for different kinds of situations, but also she demands a higher level of skill than with the other assassins to unlock her full potential.

Rengar

Rengar is a jungler to be feared in the hands of a skilled player. The changes made to him allows a more skill dependant gameplay, exactly what Riot Games wanted and allowing yourself to be a tactical predator.

Kha’zix

Kha’zix became a serious threat in the jungle now with the possibility to heal  himself and how destructive he is with isolated targets. The possibility to lower the cooldown of his Q dramatically, restart the cooldown of his E, and also the possibility to get even more stealth time when he enters in a bush makes him a deadly assassin that requires a higher skillcap now.

Honorable Mentions: Fizz, Ekko, Zed

These three assassins are pretty good but lack the destructive force in comparison that the others have, which is why they are honorable mentions.

Despite the assassin you decide to master one thing is sure, you will be deadly using any of the assassins listed here, but you will need to practice a lot in exchange. That simply makes the gameplay with assassins what it always should be… a deadly demonstration of skill.

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