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Hello! I'm Riot Raptorr, one of the designers on Naafiri (the other being Twin Enso), and I've been asked a lot of questions about Naafiri's design, accessibility, and skill curve. Wanted to share some of my thoughts on our design philosophy for her and other assassins.
Enjoy!
How Naafiri Teaches Playing as an Assassin
Naafiri is designed to be an accessible assassin that is focused more on the decision making and strategy that assassin players need to succeed than on tricky mechanical execution.
Naafiri’s kit asks the player three fundamental questions that assassin players need to understand:
- When should I go in?
- Who should I target?
- What angle should I approach from?
If Naafiri can answer these questions correctly and the enemy does not respond appropriately or they do not deny her these opportunities, her kit gives her everything she needs to get in and get rewarded with a juicy kill. If not, she’s likely to die quickly as her kit does not have as many escape options as other assassins. There is a fourth key question: ‘How do I get out afterward?’, but Naaf’s kit makes that easy because her first kill reset gives her the tools to get out after the kill. She just needs to make sure she’s gonna get the kill.
It may seem counterintuitive that a champ designed to be easy to pick up has fewer options for when they make mistakes, but that’s actually the point. By boiling things down to just those three questions, and making them the difference between success and failure, we can hone in on teaching those core skills. When you try to charge in the front and get bodyblocked, it becomes more clear that you should have flanked. When you bounce off a tank or bruiser and can’t kill them, it’s pretty clear you chose the wrong target. When the enemy Milio kickballs you out of your W, it’s pretty clear that you didn’t wait until key cooldowns were expended. It puts in sharp focus what went wrong.
To pay for this reliability, she also has sharper counterplay than other assassins who may be able to sneak behind enemy lines easier or have get-out-of-jail-free escape buttons when things go wrong. Which brings me to my next point:
How Naafiri Teaches Playing Against Assassins
Assassins in League tend to be polarizing. Many players are frustrated by them because they think there’s limited counterplay when an enemy can kill you in 1-2 seconds once they get on you. And those players are right! For many squishies, there isn’t much counterplay in that moment, and that’s because if you’re a squishy target and the assassin is on you, you’ve already failed the counterplay.
Playing against assassins means sticking with your team, tracking threats and playing safe when they’re not visible, warding your flanks, and holding CC until they come in. This means assassins are primarily countered through macro play, rather than mechanics.
Just like Naafiri’s kit brings assassin fundamentals into sharp focus, her kit also makes assassin counterplay clear. If you are alone and split-pushing and are the type of champ she wants to munch on, she will be able to close the gap and eat you. If you’re not tracking her when she goes missing, she’s likely going to surprise you in the jungle. If you don’t hold your CC for when she inevitably jumps into the teamfight, she’s likely gonna chomp your carry and get out.
This is true for all assassins, but more clear in Naafiri’s case. While not all assassins can be body blocked like Naafiri, grouping up and sticking with tanks is still a good strategy. And while Naaf’s W clearly gives her a very long, reliable engage when she finds someone isolated, other assassins have similar tools to surprise you, which might make you start rethinking your positioning and map awareness.
If you learn how to counter and play against Naafiri, it’s very likely those skills will transfer to other assassins that have been frustrating you.
Final Thoughts
While Naafiri is probably the simplest assassin to pilot, that does not mean she is as simple as someone like Garen or Annie, and that’s because assassins are fundamentally a more difficult role to pick up and understand. Learning how to hold back when you want to go in, having patience for the right moment, using your mobility at the right time, and knowing your damage outputs at any stage of the game can take time, and Naafiri still needs to do all of those to succeed.
We’ve really tried to straddle the line between easy to pick up and maintaining room for depth and mastery. She won’t have the learning curve of a Zed or Yasuo, but we think there’s plenty of fun to be had for many many games on Naafiri and plenty of ways to flaunt your Naafy know-how. And if you discover you like the assassin playstyle that Naaf teaches, but prefer more executionally complex champs and want to move onto them, that’s a great outcome too.
Hope you enjoy the new champ as much as we’ve enjoyed making her. Happy hunting!
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