User blog:Poisonshark/PS's ideas on classes 2: Ability kits

What is this again, PS?
Well, some more pondering for me. This revolves around the kits associated with each class. By some odd chance, I won't even have listed all the kinds of abilities that exist. Don't hold that against me.

So, PS, what do you say?
Well, this is an opinion. Only an opinion. And I'm adding "melee carry" to the classes. If you're not down with that, well tough luck.

Tanks
Well, tanks are there to soak up damage, so the most of their kit will be focused towards two things: Since they're usually melee and extremely durable, one or two of their abilities could tend to be self-casts or point-blank AOE; at least moreso than assassins or mages. But since they're so high on the durability totem pole, their kits tend to be rather weak.
 * Defense: Mostly soft defense spell since tanks are sturdy enough on their own, hence the term "tanky". They still have defense boosts.
 * Crowd control: Preferrably taunting since the tank gets to take damage instead of the precious carries. Some tanks can't afford that and gets softer stuff.
 * Mobility: A tank needs to be able to position himself to dish out his crowd control. More often this is a steroid on movement speed but tanks can have dashes or blinks.

Supports
The poor guys at the bottom of the ladder who stay there to help their team. Which means of course that they've got different focuses. Supports rarely do damage, but offensive and damaging supports exist. There has been a meta with kill lanes, what with or.
 * Healing/Shielding allies: Every support, even secondary, has several abilites that behave so. Heck, and  have abilities that help their allies and they're not even treated as supports (for  i can understand, but ?).
 * Crowd control: This is the only thing supports will be doing by themselves late-game, and even then it's far from being a specialty, and they will roughly providing as much as a tank. Not too shabby, but not too shiny.
 * Buffs/Debuffs: The third, oft-ignored attribute of supports. Usually a tank's healing and steroids will be self-targeted and won't affect the allies. A support can just do this and buff his teammates.

Melee carries
I've already received some conversation about it and usually we don't see these guys because they need an amazingly strong kit. Note that their kit needs to be extremely strong to compensate for low range and natural sturdiness. Plus more often, the range on the abilities themselves is rather short.
 * Mobility: These guys need it. If a melee carry doesn't have one dash, he'll need tankiness, and then we don't call that a melee carry, we call that a fighter.
 * One clutch defensive ability: This can be anything. Preferrably something that isn't active too long but has a strong impact on how much he can do before imploding. This is capital, otherwise your carry will instantly implode and never work out.
 * Damage Steroids: Well, to maximize the damage they deal and make you a priority.

Fighters
They're not right in the middle for nothing. They're supposed to have everything, yet for some reason, Rito is trying to say that fighters just need stats. So I'll try to separate fighters as a class of their own, those who have chosen to be close-range tanky auto-attack dishers, rather than mobile melee carries or tanky tanks who don't deal damage. Fighters being more resistant than melee carries, almost to the level of tanks, their kits aren't this strong. Depends on the direction you want to take.
 * Steroids: No matter what your fighter lacks naturally, if he lacks damage or anything, he must be able to acquire some more stats. Mobility? Attack speed? Whatever. Gain some stats. Cause Rito said so.
 * Crowd control: Even though fighters must dish out the pain rather than take it, they still must take a page or two from the book of tanks, much like they take a page or two from the book of melee carries for their steroids.
 * Sustain: Not as much as tanks and not as little as carries, but they should have one ability at least oriented towards healing/shielding themselves to save their own hide when the time comes.

Marksmen
Those pesky guys who decided to take it easy, dishing their damage via autoattacking from 500-700 units away. Since they're reliant on autoattacks and kiting, raw mechanics, they don't really have much in their kit. Since their raw DPS without abilities tends to reach over 9000 when they've built enough items, their abilities tend to be shabby, just like Tanks and Fighters.
 * RANGE: Since these guys have long range, they also need a huge skillshot poke that has at least 150% the range of their autoattacks. Said poke scaling with AD since they're Marksmen but I didn't play Captain Obvious. Some Marksmen have global ults, the very quintessence of this.
 * Steroids: They're carries. They need to deal damage and auto-attack a whole damn lot, so this is a key part of their arsenal, ramping up their power some more. Not everyone has that.
 * One defensive ability: Marksmen usually have an escape or a self-heal or one crowd control. Just one though, they're not so good at mobility control.

Assassins
My new bane: these guys who can stroll in, one-shot you before you realized they're here, and get away scot-free. Assassins are probably one step away from being melee carries, and that step is going damage over time instead of bursting.
 * Mobility: Assassins generally have either extreme movement speed, or sometimes they even get stealth. Or both. They need to be able to quickly pick on their target and leave after all.
 * Single-target burst: They need good stuff to deal more damage to their targets. If your assassin deals splash damage, this will greatly hinder his ability to drop his target. But an auto-attack steroid, a targeted ability; anything goes as long as your Assassins can burst their one target down.
 * Kill synergy: Assassins usually get rewards for kills and assists from their kits more than their teammates. Or they just have one skillshot that's an execute. Really, I didn't know what to put there.

Mages
And then there's these guys who are constantly watching their cooldowns, just to see what kinds of unholy nukes they can unleash on you. Since a mage's stats are generally useless, especially in tankiness and damage, they very often have incredibly good kits and strong abilities.
 * AOE damage: NUKES! Your mage isn't a mage without the ability to deal high damage to a high number of targets. If your thing deals damage over time, that still counts.
 * Crowd control: Your mage will probably one of your vital sources of CC, when it isn't the support. But mages use crowd control to save their slow hides, rarely ever mobility.
 * Range / Tankiness: A mage's kit can have either one of those. Some mages have in-built survivability to compensate for low range.

Bottom line
This is far from being final. This is just a bunch of reflexion taken out on paper "just like that". But I thought I'd analyze kits before getting to a point where I have 10 unfit champions to rework.