I'm posting this for...oh, no reason...in case anyone is upset about assassinate being overpowered.

Argument: Assassins do nothing but attempt to assassinate me over and over until eventually the RNG favors them and I die.

If assassins are getting attempts on you "over and over" then you're doing something wrong. Sure, it's unrealistic for you to be so careful that no assassin ever gets a decent shot at you. There are current characters in-game who are super-careful and nevertheless had "decent attempts" made on them. But it's not the case that assassins have spammed assassinate on them "over and over". By lowering the number of "decent attempts" your character will suffer over the course of his lifetime, you pretty much limit your number of assassination deaths to a fairly low number. If you have skilled assassins as enemies and live long enough, odds are someone will eventually get you. But for careful characters it's usually a "once or twice in a lifetime" event.

I'll even cite some examples. Afaik none of these had emperor powers or detect hidden from an item for most of their lives. I'm also omitting classes with chameleon/camoflauge/duo-dimension, since they're notoriously hard to assassinate. Will also omit Tribunals and paladins with templar's vigilance.

Kanaev: 629 hours, 1 assassination (overall vs. assassins: 27-3)
Palmer: 689 hours, 0 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 16-0)
Yuvralin: 419 hours, 5 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 20-6)
Granaak: 319 hours, 0 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 11-0)
Sebath: 239 hours, 0 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 17-1)
Greddarh: 384 hours, 0 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 6-0)
Sylus: 326 hours, 1 assassination (overall vs. assassins: 8-2)
Brinkmun: 518 hours, 1 assassination (overall vs. assassins: 16-8)
Mekantos: 845 hours, 1 assassination (overall vs. assassins: 8-1)
Chrichuk: 472 hours, 0 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 8-1)
Alriac: 505 hours, 5 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 16-8)
Serduk: 316 hours, 0 assassinations (overall vs. assassins: 5-1)

Obviously it doesn't help to be Battle/Fortress, since the majority of "scary" assassins will be in Scion or Empire. Even still, Brinkmun managed to only get hit once (compared to 5 times for Yuvralin and Alriac). Notice all three of those characters still had good records against the class overall.

Argument: assassin's guild is nothing but a haven for one-shot srubs.

This just doesn't bear out. Some hotshot assassins and their total kill count vs. assassination count:

Vens: 289 wins, 88 assassinations
Dulmisa: 227 wins, 101 assassinations
Laes: 165 wins, 49 assassinations
Ktaar: 164 wins, 63 assassinations
Ilmdrin: 154 wins, 93 assassinations
Opoj: 120 wins, 29 assassinations

Of those, Ilmdrin is the only one whose # of assassinations was greater than his non-assassinate kills. Now, I'll agree with you that there are a lot of wannabe one-trick ponies in the assassin's guild, but it's not fair to characterize the entire guild as a bunch of scrubs.

All one-shot-kill skills should be eliminated, because they're not fun.

Dying to anybody isn't fun. Being permalagged by a bashing giant isn't fun. Being slept, spelled up, and summoned into a locked room isn't fun. What's (arguably) fun is the "tension" of existing in Thera and avoiding being assassinated, bashed down, slept and spelled up, etc.

Looking at the best players is stupid. You should be looking at the worst players, people with 7/8 assassinates. Because if I'm an assassin with under 100%, spending time stalking mages and healers is an opportunity cost - it'd be far more efficient to stalk some dumb newb fortress warrior to get my % up.

For me its not that I feel like assassinate is terribly overpowered, the fact is someone with 90s-100 has a decent shot of assassinating you with just a couple of stalks. When it comes down to just rolling the dice and hoping you win its not a matter of tactics but blind gambling. For the record I feel the same way about cleave, PWK, etc.

Look at the average number of assassinates per hero.
Don't just look at the best players in the game. Most
know it can be avoided. But there are people who don't
know how to as well.

I'd be curious to hear what the average number of
assassinates is.

If it's relatively "easy" (by that I mean "without assuming a radical and generally un-fun playstyle") to avoid (or "mostly mitigate") assassinate, but there are people who still get assassinated because they either can't figure it out or are just lazy, then I don't really have a problem with that. So that's why I looked at the powerhouse characters. To me, what really *would* suggest there's a problem with assassinate is if you had skilled players getting popped left and right. People who presumably know how to avoid it, if there is a "reasonable" way of doing so. But when you look at the top guys, they really don't get assassinated that often.

I guess the counter-argument to the above would be to look at how often these characters were assassinated *relative to their total number of deaths*, and compare that ratio to what you see from "less skilled" characters of the same build. So, compare Alriac (dwarf warrior maran) to some other dwarf-warrior-maran (or, preferably, multiple ones) who had much less PK success, and see how "the percentage of Alriac's deaths caused by assassinate" compares to "the percentage of these other guys' deaths caused by assassinate". If it turns out that the "skillfully played" version of that build has a markedly higher "assassinate death percentage" than the less-skillfully-played version, then that would suggest that assassinate, as a tactic, is harder for a skilled player to "counter" compared to other tactics.

gr

Huh?

My point was more along the lines that it'd only matter relative to attempts - which aren't recorded in a PBF. If there is easier prey available to stalk then people will stalk that prey. I'm not going to stalk Hunsobo if I can stalk someone who has little to no chance of killing me unless I absolutely had to because for the first 40 or so assassinations you're just trying to get the skill to a high percentage.

I don't think you're going to find the answer you're looking for (is assassinate overpowered) purely by crunching numbers - at least not without knowing a lot more information like how many attempts vs successes and how many attempts resulted in death of the assassin. Saying a character is 1 vs 15 against assassins doesn't have any statistical significance without knowing who those other 15 assassins were and what the circumstances around their deaths were. Obviously for every skilled assassin there's ten unskilled ones. That'd be like saying highly charged AP's like Ravon/Cabdru aren't powerful because Lariya and Dungard went 1 to 4 against Anti-Paladins. There's a whole lot more that plays into it like % of foes that are assassins, % of them that are skilled, etc.

I've never had much trouble with assassinations. And I sure as hell don't play paranoid. For the most time that is.

Ckol for example, got assissnated once. And I know for a fact that people tried to assissnate me MORE than 15 times.

I'm guessing in those 1000 hours I've played the past year, I've been assassinated 3-4 times. And only one char I played paranoid with and that was Deiha, Scion healer. Never had anyone try to assassinate me with her.

To add to that:
I've never been cleaved.
I've been disemboweled once, maybe 3-4 attempts.
Never PWKed, tried once on me. (And that was Satebos)

So basicly, in 1000 hours hours I've been one shotted 4-5 times, and that I can live with. heh

Ooh, and my list of chars according to cabals are:
Battle
Battle
Battle
Empire
Scion
Scion
Fortress
Fortress

Because it ruins the gameplaying for victims.
True, if they are cautious you won't be assassinated often. However, avoiding civilized places and sitting on the water is not fun.
I would prefer to die twice as many to simpleton bashers but do what I want and walk where I want.
The same apllies to thieves. In general, you lose only your inventory, but if you have to avoid cities, eastern road, etc and be paranoid that is the not-fun-gameplay.

That is exactly why it is bad for me.

My characters generally end up with 0 or 1 assassinates. So it's not like I don't know how to avoid it. It's just that I don't want to have to avoid it. Because when I'm playing to avoid assassinate, I feel like I'm playing on crack. And crack is whack.

That can be extended to other skills as well, though. The Hunt is un-fun because I have to hide 25% of the time. Summon and/or sleep are unfun because I have to avoid areas w/ lockable summonable rooms. Cleave/PWK are un-fun because I have to completely avoid necromancers and anti-paladins.

Actually, those two are a decent example. Nobody just refuses to fight APs and necros because of cleave and PWK. Why? Because they're not very likely to work. In general, for cleave, and "if you have decent saves" in the case of PWK.

Assassinate is much the same. You don't have to completely avoid hideable areas- you just have to not spend a ton of time there, and take "anti-assassinate" measures every so often.

Maybe Brinkmun will comment on the extent to which he modified his play style in order to avoid being assassinated. But, for a warrior with two un-coverable vulns who has Empire/Scion/Nexus as enemies and who has no means of wording or teleporting (to throw assassins off his tail), managing to only be assassinated once is semi-impressive.

Brinkmun's assassinatable lifespan ran from approx. the beginning of January 2007 to September 2007. That means he would have had PK overlap with Ktaar after mid-May, and possibly some overlap with Alarith in February and March. Also some with Nanorab in February.

>That can be extended to other skills as well, though. The
>Hunt is un-fun because I have to hide 25% of the time. Summon
>and/or sleep are unfun because I have to avoid areas w/
>lockable summonable rooms. Cleave/PWK are un-fun because I
>have to completely avoid necromancers and anti-paladins.

Those skills are #### too.

>Actually, those two are a decent example. Nobody just refuses
>to fight APs and necros because of cleave and PWK. Why?

I refuse to fight necromancers because they can sleep me or leave if fail and risk nothing. No, it's sleep, not PWK or cleave.

>Assassinate is much the same. You don't have to completely
>avoid hideable areas- you just have to not spend a ton of time
>there, and take "anti-assassinate" measures every so often.

Assassinate definitely works more than cleave.
And you can't rank, can't RP in public places, can't explore if you have a tail etc. All you can do is running around places where an assassin can't hide or teleport frequiently.
And you don't always know if he is after you, so have to act as a complete paranoid. Hell, I even stalked people on Dragon Sea.

>Maybe Brinkmun will comment on the extent to which he modified
>his play style in order to avoid being assassinated. But, for
>a warrior with two un-coverable vulns who has
>Empire/Scion/Nexus as enemies and who has no means of wording
>or teleporting (to throw assassins off his tail), managing to
>only be assassinated once is semi-impressive.
>
>Brinkmun's assassinatable lifespan ran from approx. the
>beginning of January 2007 to September 2007. That means he
>would have had PK overlap with Ktaar after mid-May, and
>possibly some overlap with Alarith in February and March.
>Also some with Nanorab in February.


Brinkmun was a cloud giant with greeting the avalanche and wielded two weapon types that assassins can't learn. I missed the assassinate once against him, and after watching the ensuing 20 rounds of permalag, I decided the best idea was to use reduce and martial.

Not a bad modification of playstyle all things considered.

Being giant sized and wielding maces/polearms is a huuuge deterrent if you aren't pretty certain you're going to succeed.

I missed an assassinate on Brinkmun once or twice and realized that I think he almost wanted me to try it again. He actually seemed otherwise fairly easy to find and stalk but missing means you're lucky to escape alive. Very good assassinate deterrent ;).