Yeah I did a mixture of both, I just don't like how selective you have to be in the combat fights. When you're an Imperial you pretty much don't get any cabal powers, and every rager is going to have axe, mace, or polearm it seems. If not they have sword or hand and flurry/pummel ####s assassin's.

So it makes you have to judge wether you can fight or not like all within the first four rounds; and you have to stay or flee after that I personally felt like. That's the key thing I hate about assassins, because when it comes to raids/retrievals, I don't have time for that, I need to to business and have a good shot not completely based on the rng of kans/kot landing quickly. Aside from warriors though, I really didn't have any problems with any other class.

As far as assassinate goes, I never had problems with it. I assassinated ragers with 9 ranks on me even. I think I kind of have it easy in that department though because as a baby cf'r I was watching NbM play Jhalstruvv and telling me his secrets, then when I learned much more about CF down the road I was watching him play Lokaoan(sp?), Khobedi, and Ilmdrin. So I really learned the in's and out's of assassinate and all the nifty tricks quickly from him.

Assassinate is fun as hell, and I've never felt more adrenaline than when you decide to hit that button after you'd been stalking for 5-10 minutes waiting for that perfect time to strike. The playerbase is just too low for me to get that much enjoyment out of it now.

All in all, I'd rather play warriors. Although, I've never played an assassin into hero range, and I imagine martial trance + DSK + Owaza + a Buki edge would have quickly changed my opinion of them in combat. But like I said, Empire was just too OOC and big for me at the moment.