I've noticed an assassin strat that's been really annoying and wondering if anyone has a counter for it. Having never done it myself, I can only speculate how it's happening, but here's how it goes down. The assassin doesn't do any upgrading early game, and just kills bots + pros until can afford juice or it happens naturally (easy since they juice so quickly). At which point they run into our base and wipe out all of our turrets. It seems like this is done within the first minute or two. The speed with which the assassins move combined with the juice and cloak means they're damn near impossible to kill before they destroy the turrets. This combined with any support from their team pretty much results in the game being over since we have to wait for the turrets nubs to restore and in the meanwhile have to play a defensive game to prevent the bots from killing the moneyball. Short of just having an all around more competent team (which seems pretty rare in quick matches) is there any strat against this?
I've had some success by limiting the amount of turrets I build in the first place and pairing a shave with a 3.3 LB. Both have to be upgraded and preferably hacked, even better if you can get a FB in the mix as well. Even then you have to be vigilant and try to take her out in the process. Sometimes I just say eff it and go shave, shave, shave, shave so at least I get some lulz while they slo o o o w ly move from turret to turret and don't speed up. Also cussing at the screen seems to help me a ton. One of the newer support guides (sorry not remembering whose) has some tips for a good base defense setup to deal with juiced sin's in the comments/replies. including the turrets they buy and where to place the FB for maximum kill streak breaking. If I continue to have 0 success than at some point I just bounce and leave the base open with no turrets and go push lanes. If there are no bots coming in there's no real problem with not having turrets until you hit OT (plus they don't get a $ reward for taking them out). The 'throw up your hands and bounce' tactic really relies on someone pushing the other lane unless you can hold both of them down yourself. Also inb4 crowd control and grapples.
Assassins get juice really fast from killing bots. They don't necessarily need to upgrade their skills either, so they just buy gremlins at the start, usually killing a pro, or turret at least. The shaveice is about the only useful turret to help combat this, but early in the game, you're not going to have $700 for the lvl 3 turret, and another $850 for the lvl 3 hack making it powerful enough to protect itself. When I see this happen, I abandon the base, urge my team mates to not build any turrets. If you can keep bots from entering your base, you're going to be fine. More turrets just help the assassins chain their juice and waste your cash. Firebases are effective against bots, and don't reward quite as much when they are destroyed. don't cost anything but time to re-deploy.
This is what I usually end up doing, if your shields are up then go push lanes and keep the bots from bringing the shields down. If you can keep the bots out then the sin's not gonna be able to juice your moneyball. Just watch what your teammates are doing. If some of them are pushing one side go ahead and go the other way, its not gonna do any good to have 2-3 pros in one lane while the other is completely open.
