User blog comment:HeresyHorus/Syndra, a tale of a lost potential/@comment-15244341-20131030092305/@comment-15244341-20131102132217

Seems like many of my points went over your head. My argument was assassins can farm, but there is a stage, much earlier than most mages, they want to resort to killing enemy champions. Assassins scale poorly. Go watch any pro, guide, look at facts: their ideal situation is 1v1 or a number advantage so that there is target saturation and they can go in and hope to run away without being focused. Late game, these situations are far too strange. Yes, you can pick straddlers, cleanup after a teamfight or whatever. You still can't survive a five man focus, since you are frail and dangerous. Top level players regard Yi as unviable because his reset mechanics are far too easy to fight against. Get a GA and you reset champion is dead. Not to mention that when champions played by competent people have almost fulll build they will be hard to kill in one combo, since resistances and health screw burst characters. Mages, as said, have something that makes them scale well. It normally is CC, but sometimes are things such as Brand's passive, low cooldown AoE spells, and all that stuff.

Assassins are a 100% item dependant champions. Period. As I play LeBlanc, let me tell you I have timed the exact periods of time by which I should have each item. If I don't have them, chances are someone has more MR or health than I can burst without Ignite or some spell like that. Since her cooldowns are awful, it's sink or swim, I get a kill and get further ahead or I fail and lose the chance to get more AP to kill stuff. Try it and you'll see what I mean. You NEED damage more than any other character in the game. You cannot afford utility item because there is burst you need to apply, so there are very rigid build paths for it. For example, as LeBlanc, mi first item is always Haunting Guise followed by a needlessly large rod. Period. Any less means no bursting.

Assassins Kits are not more versatile. I fail to see one assassin that has the chance to poke well, spellvamp, push hard, protect themselves and stun and inmobilize like Morgana. Same with many others. Most assassins have soft CC such as slows or CC made to fuck mages shit up (silences) since they are their counter. Actually, most silences are in champions that are supports or assassins. I don't believe this to be a coincidence.

I think you misunderstand what I mean by farming. LeBlanc has godawful waveclear, and her autoattacks were only recently buffed because she had been harshly nerfed and needed something to fall back to if she couldn't kill champions. As in "blow your 8 seconds CD escape to even try to farm" godawful. Most players will push the shit out of the lane of a roamer/assassin so that they stay in lane or lose towers and give freefarm to the enemy midlaner. Fizz, Zed and midgame Kassadin are in a far too good spot right now regarding farming. That much I agree. Akali is not. Her early is really weak if you play a lane bully since she is a low damage melee champion with really weak spellvamp/lifesteal. Harass the shit out of her, same as Kassadin. If she blows E farming have a gank and get 300G because some people are that generous. And BTW, you actually have a pink ward in lane from the first back, I hope, so the stealth is not there. Zed, as I said and any high level player will say, is utterly broken in lane since he has at most 40-60 MU he can survive by farming. Fizz is one I actually have not much trouble with. Swain is actually believed to be a champion Fizz counters but I just harass the sit out of him pre level 3 and then hope he is an idiot and dives me or wait for a gank.

Nidalee is not an assassin by my standards, BTW. Still she has no CC, maybe you are confusing her traps with Cait's.

LeBlanc has silences she actually needs to comit to, since they ARE her damage. The silence was good when you could get 6 seconds of it and that was fairly hard to do, but hey, it was nerfed so now it is far less rewarding to play the champion. Now, the root is bad. It is evadable and matters not for kills for a highly mobile champion such as LeBlanc and has one of the wonkiest hitboxes in the game plus it is slow and easy to evade if thrown randomly. Ask any LeBlanc player how many times a minion a foot away from the chains' path ate it for the champ. Also, do note something: SINGLE TARGET. Yes. This is your damage and it has CC added to it, but it still lets you kill a grand one person or CC two and kill no one. Not saying the root is bad, just pointing out it is much less good than it sounds. Kassadin has a slow (short range AoE, needs to charge up) and a silence (single target). That is bad CC. The problem lies in a OK damage low cooldown mobility skill. Ahri has a single stun which is 100% maxed last (single target, now a must for her to kill anything). That skillshot also telegraphs badly and is blocked by minions. Again, she is too good because of her mobility and poking capabilities. I'm not even going to bother to answer to the Talon thing since he has exactly the same as Kassadin. Do note that all of these skills are made TO DEAL WITH MAGES. Zed is the one assassin that can deal with bruisers or tanks, because he gets a ton of %HP damage from the combo of his ultimate plus BotRK.

Interestingly enough, you forgot about assassins with no CC or weak as tits CC. Maybe Zed, Akali, Nidalee (since you mentioned her), Kha'Zix, Yi (which I actually believe to be a bursty AD carry, meaning Graves but melee so I didn't even mention him in the farming part), Fizz (whose CC is in literally one skillshot that is half your damage so the point is not CC), Poppy, Evelynn... So those above are the best assassins in CC.

Compare to Zyra: AoE root, HUGE AoE knockup, consistent slows that can hit more than one taget. Orianna: shield (not CC but utility), AoE slow/speed up, one of the most gamechanging ultimates (AoE). Lissandra: AoE root, AoE slow, stun. Syndra: AoE stun, AoE slow. Karma: AoE slow with huge damage, root (if chosen to be empowered, it heals for a load of health) and her shield is not CC but great utility too.

Conclusion: they have better teamfight orientated support abilities and CC. Assassins are better 1v1. When do you believe is better to have an AoE knockup? If the answer is "in the middle of a teamfight" then there you have: a reason why assassins are worse lategame.

And if you say Brand has as bad CC as Ahri, I'll say he has a shitton of AoE damage that is fairly spammable and unlike say... Akali, he has no need to be in melee with a level 18 team sorrounding her to get a kill or unlike the new Ahri his damage is not gimped if he misses. And the champs with CC are most of them. Out of the gate the only champ I believe has ZERO CC is Mordekaiser, which he compensates with bullshit 5v1 shenanigans. Which are really hilarious to watch, to be honest xD

Swain strongest point in the game is midgame, and he falls off because he needs both damage and tankyness and he can't get both. Syndra is a lane bully (which means early game) and a lategame source of long range AoE damage an stun plus a high damage ultimate on top of that. Lux is a midgame monster and lategame a safe source of long range burst and long range CC. Brand will reduce the closest thing to him to ashes, murder the lifebar of anyone close enough and make the game a 4v5 unless someone can kill him before a teamfight or before he does his combo. So his passive plus Liandry's Torment makes him scale like a boss. Orianna is pretty much regarded by most people in this game as the best mid laner at the moment (or even champion) and is hard to argue with them. She has literally no MU in lane she has a definitive disadvantage she cannot cover thanks to her shield and amazing long range poke and farming. Lategame a good Orianna is the last thing I will ever wish to see in the enemy team. She is scarier than any Zed.

Those two items you have mentioned as not being efficient are, actually, awesome. Void staff gives 35% MPen. This makes mages with weak scalings and good bases (Elise, for example) awesome by their own means. And if you look at Liandry's Torment and think "this is not an efficient use of my money" you might not be getting that the passive is all sorts of awesome and that it gives MPen, health AND AP, which is three stats you will never regret getting. Say, might that 15 MPen make the base MR of all champions with Sorcs? Indeed it does. This could have something to do with the whole sorcs are expensive, don't you think? Because mmm... zero MR if the other dude is a ranged champion with no MR runes or close to zero if they do means almost true damage. Please, don't go around saying that those items are bad.

And "mages should be burst oriented" is YOUR opinion on the matter. I'm pretty sure that people that play poke mages or utility mages will disagree with you and will be perfectly right. Anyone plays what they want as long as they can play it at the same level as someone else. That is something to think about. I've seen midgame Zyra and Lissandra do so much better than the opposing Zed and Akali it was hilarious. Zyra got the jungle Yi three kills against Zed by utility alone and made us win all the objectives we forced them to fight thanks to CC+plants+ult and I saw Lissandra roam better and with more success than Akali plus diving the enemy team with great success, all that after destroying her in lane.

Also mages are a good source of CC because they don't have their damage in the CC. Since assassins need more damage than mages (since they, you know, burst people by definition) their CC is tied to damage skills. Best example is the new Ahri. Her CC makes her damage now, so you can't just use charm for the sake of CC and taking the bruiser off the face of your ADC. Syndra has no big part of her damage in E, so she can initiate with it. She can slow anyone and switch targets. Swain can Nevermove Bob and go kill Kathy because Nevermove can be okay for peeling. LeBlanc has to make her Q's mark explode for damage. Fizz has to ult to kill unless so far ahead he can Q+W, auto and then E. And then it is your team's fault for not taking his snowballing seriously. Kass needs to stay in melee range and needs to silence not to get killed, since you SHOULD be ahead of a Kassadin with his horrid laning fase.

Maw is too expensive (read, not saying not cost efficient) because of the bad passive (not the 400 shield, the "be dead and better"). Lifesteal needs crits and attack speed to work. Healing 50 per 0.865 hit every second is no argument to make lifesteal is too strong. Healing 150 every second is, which is what ADCs do. As a matter of fact, merc treads give the same MR as Hexdrinker (the actual good item, since 250 shield at low level IS a lot) and are a better buy because of tenacity, since most assassins will never survive getting slowed or stunned. And the bad passive is the % of health being AD. If you are a lifesteal based AD champ (Olaf) the item could be a good one. If not, Hex is the good one and mercs the ideal buy. In assassins with a shield (mainly Riven) Maw is amazing. In Zed, you'd better go mor MPen. Also of note is that poke champions (Karma, Lux) can pop the shield, ignore it and then go for a kill. Since you seem to play mainly burst mages, this might have something to do with your perception. Or maybe I'm bad and Maw is great, which could be an option too. I'll give you my reasons why is bad and accept your reason why is good. I'm just too much used to having to scrounge every penny I get into damage with LeBlanc and hope to kill before getting killed. Damage is just so much important.

Also, the two autoattacks you mentioned hurt because: Zed has passive+most likely BotRK and is an AD. He actually has autoattacks in his combo if he wants to kill. Kassadin has a SKILL that makes his autoattacks hurt and builds Lich Bane 100% of the time. He actually has  52. 3  (+3. 9 ) AD and LeBlanc has  51 (+3. 5 ) per level, and you didn't say her autoattacks hurt. LB is actually what makes some champions good (Fizz and Twisted Fate being the best examples). This is not autoattacks being overpowered. This is them having good synergy with items. And AD champions having the perk of autoattacks at the cost of some of their skills scaling out of bonus AD. BONUS AD means 100+ less damage to calculate %. Pantheon is shit unless so far ahead he can one shot you because he scales of bonus AD. Renekton buys tanky and deals no damage because he is too squishy without tankyness and he scales of bonus AD. Mages build AP and deal a % of that always. No giving or taking somethin away.

Again. Most mages' spammable skills are far less risky to spam than assassins' are since they are usually ranged. They also will get peeled for (ideally) and assassins are supposed to dive to kill the backline. Which is hard. On the 40% CDR: yes you are. The most popular mana regen item, Athene's Unholy Grail, gives 20% CDR and highly desirable stats combined with the best mana regen. Get blue buff or a blue pot. Congratulations, you are at 40% CDR. Morellonomicon also gives 20% CDR. If you don't like any of those Death Fire Grasp+4% from masteries (14%), Ionian boots of lucidity+4% from masteries (19%) plus blue buff put you, again, really close to max CDR. Nashor's is situational, but goes on some champions like cheese and crackers. Spectral Wraith if you are a lifesteal mage (Vlad, Morgana, Fiddle or goddamn Mordekaiser) is higly recommended. Mejai should never be bought unless you are smurfing and playing against 5 dudes that have just started playing, but hey, CDR. As Zyra you can even get Banner of Command now. 30+ CDR is easy to get. My example again: I play Swain and buy a mid-late AUG from an early Cup. Then I get blue because I'm Swain and burn through mana like Anivia or even worse. I don't NEED CDR, but as a byproduct of my build and mana needs I get it. As Syndra, which I play too, I very much prefer Morellonomicon or AUG to Tear just because 800 range, 2.4 seconds CD, decent AoE damage is stupid good.

Funnily enough, 2v1 Swaining someone is far harder than it seems. And it requires these items: Rod of Ages (2800G), Zhonya's Hourglass (3260G) and Chalice (880G) plus your flavour of boots. This has to be done before 24 minutes are over and preferrably to squishy champions. Not to mention that Ignite is a must too. An preferrably, level 10 so that E is maxed and some skill has more damage. Not to say he can't, of course. But it is a bit harder than you seem to make it, same with assassins. Being far ahead the power curve of five other champions is much harder than "pick Talon, ROFLstomp your way to Challenger".

I'm also glad to see other mage mainers. I actually have a friend that mains Lissandra and she does quite well with her against bot assassins and mages.

I'm going to say that I don't think I can convince you by words alone so I encourage you to play LeBlanc. I know you might not like her at all, but it will give you a good feeling of how assassins work. She was regarded as one of the easiest to play champions because by the time you had DFG only fed bruisers or tanks will be able to live trough a combo. Now, she has to play so much smarter than the average assassin by virtue of having worse midgame. I encourage you to do it at high gold if you are there too. See how bloody hard it is to snowball like you say. Or pick Akali against a strong mage and try to farm as easily as you say. As Syndra I giggle with joy whenever I se Kassadin or Akali. Q their faces to death and enjoy.

I'm pretty sure you'll have counterarguments again, but I really really really encourage you to try every "bullshit/easy game/gg" assassin in ranked at higher levels and then evaluate you experience. Chances are Zed or Ahri do well, and if you are good or your jungler camps your lane Kassadin too. Anything else will get either counterpicked or someone will buy Negatron/Chalice/Seeker's Armguard first item and push your lane, take your tower on the first roam and ward every bush possible so that you roams never go unnoticed and get harshly punished.