I'm wondering why you can't use either of these skills while still bloody from PK?

Martial Trance already has the 20 hour timer on it, so I guess I just don't see why you need to wait an additional 7-8 hours, or whatever it is, to use trance if your timer ended while you were fighting. I assume this was put into place to prevent someone from missing an assassinate, fleeing to trance and coming back. If that's the case, why not just add a couple hour timer after a failed assassinate?

Poison darts is kind of the same thing. It already has a timer for missing and you can't use it on the same person twice.

It kind of feels like if you are in a long drawn out battle, you lose a chunk of your arsenal and options.

How about make it so that if you can sleep, you can use the skill, instead of if you can enter your guild you can use the skill? I think that would accomplish a lot of the same things the restriction was put in place for to begin with. Thoughts?

I don't think assassins need any help at all. They can hide, they can blind, they can poison, they have tons of maladiction, some of their kicks dish out heavy damage, they can lag, they can break wrists. They can see hidden, invis, and if they get a mark on a ranger, they can see them camo'd. They. Can. Kill. You. Without. A. Fight. Whatsoever.

Now, my frustration with assassins stems from great players, I've also stomped on assassins and gotten stomped on playing an assassin, but a well played assassin is one of the toughest things I've ever gone up against in this game. There have been assassins so adept at assassination that I never saw them fail an assassinate on me. There have been assassins so skilled at melee, that my warrior never took them down, nor made them run. I have a lot to learn about fighting assassins, I'm done with the days of thinking my toughest opponents should be nuked, but assassins don't need help. They're one of the most versatile classes in the game and in the hands of a great player they're like a ninja. IRL medieval warriors, wretches, wizards < ninjas. This is a fact of life.

We all know that wizards are real.

On two characters I have played, a failed assassination was a death sentence for the assassin more often than not. With warriors I play against assassins, I find it often ends with a stalemate. They land the wrist break or slow and I flee and quaff, or they fail them and flee and quaff. It always comes down to lagging right when the battle turns. That being said, I'd give warriors a much bigger edge over assassin's if you exclude assassinate.

Poison darts generally has a much shorter "bloody" timer than guilds. Like hiding for an assassin, it is designed to have a short timer of this kind of civilized areas and a longer one in wilderness areas. However, there was a bug or design flaw where in a couple terrain types that poison darts' code didn't consider either, you could have a full-guild-length timer. I will fix this.

That aside I think poison darts is pretty fair as-is.

The design intent of Martial Trance is that in a fight you pick (even if maybe it's with someone who can see hidden), you can gain an advantage. I'm willing to consider a shorter "bloody" timer than the current one (the overall reuse timer was lowered from 24 to 20 about 2-3 months ago so I'm inclined to leave that alone for now) and would like to hear arguments for or against.

As far as poison darts goes, that is great. Thanks again for looking into the code. It's possible that what I was experiencing was on a terrain you mentioned. I was definitely able to hide but not able to sling a dart and it seemed to be a few ticks since the last battle. Otherwise I think it's a neat skill. I do have one of topic question about it. I can't figure out what kind of damage acid darts does. Is it like a HP drain like immolation for a few ticks?

If I may advance one more argument for shortening the bloody timer on martial trance it would be most assassin's base HP. After looking through a bunch of PBFs it looks like the base HP for all assassin races with the exception of felar are <700 at hero with some <600. Being a melee class that needs to dress more for dam, str & dex, instead of like a mage who can go for hp and have ABS, I'd argue that being able to trance a bit more often is not just a perk but almost necessary to compete at hero in certain situations.

One of these places was probably at the entrance to the Battle Cabal, because I could hide there and it'd still give me crap about not being able to hide there...

Regarding Martial Trance

The main reason I am not a fan of martial trance is the following scenario:

I see a tough PK and choose to fight them, so I martial trance.
I walk up and hit said PK.
Opponent quickly sees how much damage they are dealing, so they know martial trance is up.
Opponent flees, and hits and runs until martial trance is down or just knows the timer count and waits until he knows it is off and I can't use it again.
I am now way outgunned, so I tuck my tail and run.
My last assassin had this happen quite a bit..


Now lets say we remove the bloody timer, and maybe make it so that you have to use it above a certain percentage of your health.. lets say 50% to make it interesting.

I see a PK and choose to fight them, so I walk up and hit said PK.
Opponent sees the battle as potentially close so I am able to get off a malediction or two.
I see I am approaching the point of losing trance and likely need it,
so I flee and trance.
Opponent chases and hits me, I now have the upper hand so I try lagging with a kick.
Opponent potentially wins with a burst damage skill, or maybe dies, or maybe sees the damage differential and flees.
The fight was at least now close and interesting.


I am not sure what the RP justification would be, but it would make assassins much more interesting for hit and run tactics.

Also, I would still want it to be impossible to assassinate then after failure trance - "Your focus is too spent after your recent asassination attempt to try to calm your body" or some such.

Make martial trance give damage feedback to the assassin as normal (when in trance)

But when in trance the damage feedback it gives to the attacker hitting the assassin shows full damage output (even though he is only hitting for 50%)

That way the trance is still functioning, and the opponent thinks he is hitting the assassin just like normal, but the assassin is really in the trance and "the assassin may shrug off blows and terrible damage to their person which would kill or incapacitate a lesser being. Pain means nothing to an assassin in the perfect calm of the martial trance."

The only way to realize the assassin is in the trance is to fight long enough to realize the amount of damage being given is not reflected in how hurt the assassin is becoming. By then, it may be too late.

I'd be fine with that as an alternative as well, though I would guess it is the more difficult of the two to implement. (n/t)

Oddly, the same idea occurred to me for the first time while reading this thread yesterday.

....but how often do people use martial trance when they've accrued some stalks on the victim?

I know it dramatically increases the martial aspect of the ability (I remember once someone talking about an assassin that was doing STSF-like things because he had like 6 stalks before he martial trance'd) but I'm not sure any other member of the playerbase really even uses it that way.

If I have six stalks, I think I would rather try the assassinate rather than trance (even if the % to land it is low).

Cabal item retrieval where the defender won't leave the cabal.

12 stalks, martial trance, BAM

(n/t)

Well, one of the reasons.

Assassinate is such a big tool in the arsenal of PK that it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to give them even more weapons.

FWIW, one of the situations I might use trance is if I am stalking someone for a while and then they join up in a group. Trance to allow for the dam redux after I smoke the person I wanted to kill (allowing me to either try and kill the other 2 or just being able to GTFO).

I wouldn't base an entire argument around the fact that I personally like to try for the assassination, especially considering the rate of success I generally had.

You can't trance then assassinate someone. You can't try to assassinate someone and then trance.

You have to know when you are going to fight and then use trance.

If you had been saving trance but got into a different fight. You're ####ed. Can't use it.

If you had been saving trance but someone hit you first. You're ####ed. Can't use it.

If you are in a cabal raid. You better use it at the beginning or you're ####ed and you cannot use it.

It sounds simple in theory. But the skill is not as easy to deploy as it sounds. CF is a fast paced game and you can't always use it when you need it most. In my opinion, the way it is right now it is very similar to assassinate. It's a great skill but with a very limited window of use. Why do that twice to assassins? It's effective but extremely situational.

>You can't trance then assassinate someone.

This is actually not true FWIW. Especially when assassinate % starts getting up there.

If you mean that you can martial trance (which burns/converts your stalks) and then successfully assassinate someone while martial trance is still running, I don't see a way that you can.

Assassinate would miss anyway, so why bother.
Especially if you're facing a bashing giant or the like.

That is all.

Assassins already have huge advantage in fight selection and some of the greatest ability to catch someone with their pants down. The fact that they have such a powerful built in dmg redux skill is another huge boon. Why should an assassin have the advantage of not 'wasting' their CD skill when other classes need to invest their own time/gold/rods/pills/staves/scrolls into prepping where someone can just walk away from them?

Any class with rods can also keep them up almost constantly, something assassin's can't do. Assassinate is awesome, but is hard to land especially if the person can move about magically. Sometimes I wish they were more specialized into either assassination and stealth OR martial arts. As they are now, they can be made to shine but I don't believe they are that strong at hero to not warrant some love.

Total myth.

Keeping aura and shield up almost constantly isn't that bad. Considering you can flee and put up barrier at will, and your total damage reduction is far superior to an assassin's, I think mages have it better. Even if it sucks to find your wands.

Assassins don't need the reduction as much as mages. They have more hp, evade and dodge. Martial trance might be necessary to compete with a mage with abs but an unprepped assassin will probably beat most mages if unprepped, and has the opportunity to find them that way.

Really depends on the mage whether they can handle them unprepared. I'd give malleable transmuters, some shifters, and some conjurers even odds. I guess I am not a person who thinks hide means you should be that outgunned. Maybe I am just better with the mages I do play and have faced and worse with the assassin's I have played and faced ?

I'd be fine with MT working as you suggest if Assassins were subsequently forced to find randomly placed MT components which vary wildly in difficulty to obtain from "Total joke" to "You need a Hell group". That way assassin players can feel the total disappointment of realizing they'll have to play out their character without a form of damage reduction their opponents probably get easily.

I actually like the alternative suggested below mine better. Wands still provide better and more consistent damage reduction than an assassin's can get, granted they are harder to find. Anymore, as long as you aren't an evil jerk you can probably get help finding your wands.

Flavor-wise, you can't focus enough to trance when you're worked up from fighting, but more to the point, sanc on a stick for a melee class should have some drawbacks, and frankly, a not-even-that-long timer seems pretty fair.

As for poison darts I'm just happy that it's been improved. I always felt that the effects were a little lacking, but kicking them up and keeping the timer seems fine to me, considering that a dart landing is pretty much just a bonus.

My counter to your flavor-wise point is that if you are calm enough to sleep, you should be calm enough to trance or throw a dart.

I suppose in my eyes, being able to trance for 5 hours once every 20 hours, plus being calm enough to sleep, is still a pretty big drawback. Isn't the 20 tick timer the penalty for having such a nice skill? And just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting taking away the 20 tick timer. I just suggested shortening the bloody timer. The way it is right now is if you are constantly being engaged, you have to use the skill before any fighting begins, or not at all, because you effectively have a skill with 2 timers on it. One of which isn't set and because of the length (5 minutes RL?) it can be quite continuous.

With the 20 tick timer you already have to be judicious on when to use the skill.

As for darts, why do they have to be a prayer on the wind skill?

Really, the points I am arguing to apply mostly to cabal raids, where you don't always have the option of disengaging. Right now, you can only use these skills before the fighting begins and I think it would be nice to have access to the full assassin skill set a little more frequently during long drawn out battles. Why should assassins be handicapped for long battles?

Why should assassins be handicapped for long battles?

I imagine because they are so bad ass for instantly ending a battle before it even begins. I agree with you on darts/trance, but I don't know crap about assassins. Just thought the answer might fit the question.

Ha, yeah I suppose it could be.

Too bad you can't assassinate entire groups. Now that would be bad ass :) I can just see it now - something out of a bad B action movie where the dude jumps out of the shadows and whacks 3 armed guards on patrol before they can even move. Hey, why not? Both are fantasy!

I like it.

Tenchu style please.

I think I'm with you regarding the flavor points.

That said, I struggle because assassins are damned formidable and this feels like a pretty meaningful uptweak power-wise.

Maybe a compromise? Allow use of trance on the sleep timer, but up the re-use timer by a few hours to offset. That seems reasonable to me.

So instead of 20 hours, you'd have a say 25 hour timer and can use when you can sleep? I probably could see a compromise like that.

Another idea is make an edge for it?

It ends way too fast.

For it to have any effect, you must enter it right before combat, but it has a two round lag associated, so you are likely to miss your opportunity. As a felar, I never got it past 89 and would sometimes fail to trance 3 times in a row while my groupmates were being pounded on.

(That's one reason why I liked drow assassin so much - perfected trance early and got Kuma Buki, complete with a bigger HP boost than humans or felar.)

Also, if you are in a guild and the guild is attacked, you can't trance because you're "bloody". Not that I care about it mechanically, guildsitters might just as well suffer.

I think trance is mostly fine...it makes for a decision point on whether to use it or not at the start of a fight or save it for later - which is cool.

Darts though I do see as being a problem - mostly because confuse darts still don't seem to work and they get hit with a 'double timer' (timer on miss, timer on adrenaline).

Let darts be less restricted.

When was the last time you tried confusion darts?

Edit: I just tried them and they worked.

On a conjie. Conjie mm'd them to open between fleeing like 5 times without hitting their servitors. Maybe I still don't know what they do.

There's basically 4(?) use cases where I'd want to use confuse, maybe 5 if I have some reason to fight Tribunals, but basically all involving them having lots of pets and me confusing them so that they have a difficult time opening on me or pull their own pets into battle. Is there something weird with NPCs where they get a reduced chance to engage them or is it just bad luck?

It makes you randomly pick a not-you person for any targetted commands.

So if you are in a chase sequence with a conjurer and they are casting before their servitors catch up, and you two are the only ones in the room, it will not do anything. but you apparently can hit your own servitors by accident as I learned.

Looks good to me.