Here are some numbers for various assassins:

kjrorh          183     100%
susubienko      63      100%
ktaar           63      100%
ilmdrin         93      100%
lakoaf          18      85%
opoj            29      95%
ramora          21      93%
mizfara         13      88%
deas            19      89%
jil             61      100%
lohoq           44      94%
xligro          37      93%
sivyh           69      96%

Name, # assassinates, final skill percentage.

Was I just cursed? Some of those are pretty old, but not all. I had 25 more than Lohoq and a whopping 2% to show for it. Ktaar perfected with only 63 and he was felar. Xligro was also felar and he was within 3% of my final total with 32 fewer successes.

Sometime along the way I began to suspect that the chance of improvement depends on the "strength" (read: charge count) of the victim. Is that just purple crack?

Some commentary:

Int doesn't matter.

It's harder to improve assassinate the higher it gets.

Tougher opponents are, yes, somewhat more likely to yield an improvement than very weak ones. This isn't a huge factor but probably will feel like it has more weight the higher assassinate gets since it can get so hard to improve.

As a player I've gone streaks of 20-25+ without an improvement if it makes you feel any better.

...one, according to Jalim when we still talked outside of CF, he told me that a while back they changed assassinate. He didn't get improvements for like 20 straight assassinates. Now, the point of this, is I think that was a partial fix by the IMMs that finally went truly live and bug free about two months later. IE If you assassinate someone you recently assassinated (never a problem for you, but still) you won't see improvements.

Two, Nepenthe commented on Balrahd's death thread about how Ktaar had the greatest luck of all time with assassinate improvements.

And finally, Three, Vens (aka Shapa) is the most unlucky bastard ever. You think you were unlucky? Vens had roughly 100 assassinates and STILL NO 100% in the skill.

Feel a bit better?

Edited to add: You had 13 assassinates on Mizfara with a % of 88? Dude, you can't ever complain about bad luck since that's the craziest run of luck I've ever seen. Every single assassinate (assuming no skill-ups for various reasons) gave you an improvement!

>...one, according to Jalim when we still talked...

He said the same to me. But check out Lohoq and Xligro, both of whom were contemporary to Sivyh. That is to say "way after Jil".

>Two, Nepenthe commented on Balrahd's death thread about how
>Ktaar had the greatest luck of all time with assassinate
>improvements.

Susubienko had the same number of assassinates and same final percentage, albeit with arial intelligence instead of felar. If intelligence matters.

>And finally, Three, Vens (aka Shapa) is the most unlucky
>bastard ever. You think you were unlucky? Vens had roughly
>100 assassinates and STILL NO 100% in the skill.

Not sure why I didn't add him to the list. Probably because he was too old. Vens had 88 assassinates and ended up at 99%.

>Edited to add: You had 13 assassinates on Mizfara with a % of
>88? Dude, you can't ever complain about bad luck since

That's not too far off what Ramora and Deas experienced.

I just never posted his stuff.

Nanorab being the other (eewwwww, Yhorian).

gr

I might have had Mizfara's luck with the improvements because without looking, I think I actually mastered it at around 50 - the last 10 or so successes to my recollection were with assassinate at 100% (side note, assassinate is sick at 100%).

I read your and TMNS's posts on the way into work today, and thinking back, I wonder if I'm always extremely lucky the first time I play powercombos. It seems like things always lean my way in terms of success with these combos -- to the point where I'm absolutely convinced they're OP in some way and won't play them again out of lack of interest -- whereas I still can't make something like a high-PK elf ranger work (for example).