Sinclair Assistant Potential Rework

[thecockshitter]

I've been hearing a lot of people talking about how one of the most unbalanced and unfun to fight abilities in the entire game (predominantly in the laning stage) is Sinclair's 2, the spectral assistant, which currently reads:

Summon an Assistant at the targeted location. The Assistant attacks whenever you fire your weapon, dealing Damage.

While the Assistant is out, you can press [2] to swap positions with your Assistant.

Casting Spectral Assistant also reloads your weapon.

Given what I've played against and witnessed in matches across all ranks, I'm inclined to agree that this ability, in its current state, is pretty unfair. This boils down to a few reasons.

• Low Risk - There is never much risk involved in using spectral assistant to get damage in the laning phase, as you can just place it and run away, attacking from massive range without any potential recourse from the enemy. For an ability that effectively gives you unlimited range for poke and burst in lane, there's not enough risk involved in getting it set up.
• Feels bad under Guardian - In the current state, Guardians in lane don't keep you safe from Sinclair 2 at all, since Sinclair himself never has to go near enough the tower to be aggro'd to place an assistant. If Sinclair even gets a mild lead he can just shove you under Guardian and make your life hell. While most characters have to back off somewhat if their opponent is pushed under their tower, it's business as usual for Sinclair.
• The reload is too strong now - The reload felt fine back when Sinclair's gun was terrible, but now it just feels like it's overloading the ability and giving people who aren't paying attention to their ammo a get-out-of-jail-free-card if they accidentally use their 2 at a time where they have no ammo, which should be a punishable mistake.

My proposed change would be something like:

Teleport a short distance forward*, leaving a Spectral Assistant in your place.* The Assistant attacks whenever you fire your weapon, dealing Damage.

While the Assistant is out, you can press [2] to swap positions with your Assistant, consuming the Assistant.

Casting Spectral Assistant grants + ~10% fire rate for the duration.*

*1: like 5-10m, something like that. not a huge dash, but the ability has a lot already
*2: you leave it where you teleport from, not where you teleport to.
*3: there's an approximate symbol cause I'm just not sure what the number should be exactly, not cause it has some weird scaling or something

I think this would do a lot for the character. It would firstly give him some more traditional mobility, which he can profit from, and it also forces him to take a risk if he decides to place it under tower, since he would have to go under tower himself now to do so.

On top of this, however, it gives him a dive tool, as you could quickly teleport under the tower and try and kill your opponent, then go back. This, however, is more predictable and counterable than him sniping you from a distance while you have no recourse. So he gains new options, more versatility, but he also becomes less oppressive in the ways that he is now. The revised assistant would likely be stronger in the late game than the current one, which is fine, as most of the balancing issues with Sinclair lie in the laning phase.

Ability upgrades could remain mostly the same I believe. Let me know what y'all think. I just thought of it recently and I'm sure improvements can be made, but I think overall this would be a positive change

 

[fennekandchu]

Couldn't the idea with this change forcing Sinclair to go under enemy tower be circumvented simply by facing away from the tower (like down the stairs) when placing it?

 

[Dr.Fox]

you know you could just have said damage fall off for the assistant