Melee assassins, supports, and healers in general need addressing, but the balance team seems to only focus on bruisers and ranged assassins. We rarely get anything for the former three.
Some people say Zeratul has such a high winrate/popularity in master because he is OP…maybe that is true, but I can’t help but wonder if the popularity of him is so high because all the melee assassin mains have moved over to him from the other melee assassins that have been gimped and his usage is just bloated right now. Personally I think before the balance team starts whipping out the nerfbat for Zera they need to fix other melee assassins and see how much Zeratul drops.
Melee assassins are not meant to be setup heroes to enable other heroes, that is the job of tanks and supports. Melee assassins are meant to be close combat shredders, that trade the survivability of bruisers in order to have the damage most of them currently don’t have but need to destroy the opposition. This is why they are good in DotA 2 as actual melee assassins rather than, say, a bastardized support like Maiev is, because those other MOBAs have teams that know how to balance them properly. League is iffy in many ways these days, lets just use DotA 2 as a comparison lol.
Generally speaking, they are not meant, for the most part, to be any harder or easier to counter than ranged assassins, even with the skill floor being higher on the MA it generally boils down to picking a hero or heroes that counter the advantages of the melee assassin in question. In DotA 2 Phantom Assassin is a melee assassin considered one of the best heroes in the game, but comes with a very high skill floor to play right. She is countered rather easily by ability damage, so you try to draft that.
Ranged assassins(marksmen) are designed in MOBAs to be weaker, less damaging in AAs and generally less in ability damage than melee assassins because they have ensured damage. They generally require the protection of the tank or support/healer in lane and both in a teamfight to keep them safe because they are usually easy to kill on their own. They are still highly valued though because they provide ensured damage on the enemy that is consistent but kept lower because of that. They also tend to sometimes have the ability to buff nearby allies, though not like a support, more like Raynor with W talented. Drow Assassin is an example of this type of ranged assassin in DotA 2. Marksmen AA is lower because they can reliably hit with it, thus it must be lower to ensure melee assassins have their place and ranged don’t dominate everything.
Melee assassins in MOBAs are designed to be roamers and gankers, though some can be used in lane directly. The tend to have faster movement speed, mobility abilities, very high basic attack damage, and powerful ability damage(though not greater than a mage). If balanced properly, no ranged assassin can beat them in melee…EVER, which is why the the ranged hero should only fight them if designed as a good duelist or with the protection of a tank or support. Melee assassins are designed with very high damage because it is only potential damage, requiring great risk to use properly. Their AA has to be rather high to ensure that when it does hit it really hurts.
Both ranged and melee assassins can be used as a carry in DotA 2. Both with risks and trade-offs.
All ranged and melee assassins are different in a properly balanced MOBA like Dota 2 so that it isn’t just homogenized. So yes, you do have ranged assassins(marksmen, sometimes mages) that can duel and hold their own against melee assassins, which is fine. They just can’t facetank and expect to win. It requires skill on both ends. Queen of Pain is a mage that can duel and kill Phantom Assassin which is melee, but Phantom can also potentially kill Queen. Compare that to HotS with Maiev or Kerrigan trying to kill Tychus or Orphea, lol.
In HotS most of the AA and ability damage, movement abilties, movement speed bonuses, and even some CC have been given to ranged assassins both marksmen and mages, thus gimping what melee assassins can actually do. Most of them have been rendered into bastardized supports with Valeera and Maiev taken not for their damage as close combat killing machines since they usually can’t survive it, but their utility to snare or silence, their “debuff” abilties. Alarak and Zeratul are played mostly like mages rather than true melee assassins.
Ranged assassins have too much of the independence that melee assassins should have. Please don’t try to argue that melee assassins scale better into the late game, so do ranged assassins with higher damage values in the long run because marksmen in this game have too much damage compared to melee assassins for how safe they are really, while some melee assassins don’t have the damage to deal with some mages like Jaina in actual melee range where they should excel. As I said above, melee assassins are not meant to be setup heroes to enable other heroes, that is the job of tanks and supports. Diablo grabs someone, Garrosh throws, Deckard slows or roots, Malfurion roots, so forth and so on. It just the job of a melee assassin to roam…gank…and in a teamfight ensure a kill and use good timing to tear apart the opposition.
The melee assassins, like Kerrigan, that play like true melee assassins are so gimped they are in the gutter. People argue back and forth about whether an Illidan built comp is viable still, but even with Abathur’s buffs…and probably eventual nerfs…is it worth it? Granted you don’t need specifically Abathur but I mean the emo elf has so many counters in the game that with smart draft knowledge you can see an Illidan comp coming from a mile away. It just isn’t worth building, not even for BA-META-BOA Illidan, and that itself is only good against specific comps. Why build an Illidan comp when you can have more burst and CC with other heroes and just wreck face? They overbloated this game with burst and CC. It isn’t as bad in other MOBAs because you can build items, but here you have to suffer it. Well okay it is VERY bad in League, lol. Let us also face the fact that unless you are using Illidan for chase potential as well, you might as well enable Lolblades into Winblades instead, because in most situations TB Varian is a better Illidan outside of BA-META-BOA Illidan of course. I’m sure though that people will argue Illidan is still awesome…no he isn’t…he is easily countered because burst and CC are so prevalent and powerful. Kerrigan even when good has issues with it but at least she whethers it better, again when she is actually balanced.
Let us not forget that Greymane, a ranged assassin with a melee form that picks Wizened Duelist and stacks it can outtrade most melee assassins and beat them at their own game, even against other heroes that melee assassins have trouble with. Even a ranged assassin gets to be a better melee assassin than Kerrigan and some others. Yes…I do know the differences and uses of Kerrigan and Greymane. This changes nothing and no I am not asking for Greymane nerfs…he is fine.
The fact that this MOBA is more team oriented than other MOBAs changes nothing, and many here disregard just how team oriented other MOBAs like DotA 2 really can be. There is alot of teamwork involved in those MOBAs. Even with the shared xp this game has and the emphasis over the 5 mutually assisting each other compared to other MOBAs getting one hero/champ fed doesn’t change the melee assassin/ranged assassin relationship that has been horribly skewed in this game. It isn’t a matter of role or difference for variety, it is a matter of number values and improvements so the designs work as they should in relation to one another, so that one role isn’t overshadowed by another, which is what has happened.
You might actually see heroes like Arthas make a comeback if melee assassins are improved. Arthas is actually a good hero, despite some people’s misgivings, it is just that the hero role he counters best, isn’t really being used. Though Arthas does work good against some bruisers too I suppose, you’re better off with Leoric in that regard because Arthas can be kited easier than Leo by the ranged assassins on the enemy team.
Honestly it is sad to see melee assassins so overshadowed these days because of poor balancing.