Lag, good damage, and stackable maladictions seems out of alignment with other melee abilities.

Assassins were already nerfed to a state when noone plays them on lowlevels.

Ground control is cool in that it has possibility to permalag. But so does cheap shot. Other than that - starting midlevels you can prep against throw almost as easy as against trip.

If by "no one plays them on low levels" you mean level sits and murders their PK range, I think that was the point. But that nerf did nothing about their high level power.

You name a skill that can permalag like GC as if that made your case.

Cheapshot does not give/stack maledictions or cause anywhere near the damage of GC. Nor do most (if any) thieves have the melee ability that assassins have even when not in martial trance.

It is an easy mode class DESIGNED to be easy to play and newbie-friendly, its focus being ability to choose your fights and having an upper hand when initiating combat. Of course when skilled player plays the "easy mode" class, it becomes very strong. But the fact that you need to initiate to have the upper hand as an assassin is still there.

Assassin w/o martial trance is as good as dead. I've played/killed quite enough of them to know. And trance is available only 1/6 of the time with severe restrictions.

The rule of thumb is simple. If assassin strikes you when you haven't initiated it - GTFO. It's amazingly easy. In other cases - prep against throw, it's easy.

..all this mythic and legendary permalag ground control. I'm pretty sure everyone saying ground control permalags either doesn't know what permalag is or doesn't know how ground control actually works.

I'd encourage anyone that has ever said 'ground control permalag' in the same sentence to play an assassin up to ground control and reap the benefits of said ability for a week or so then come back to the reality of this discussion.

One of them being extra half round lag. It requires extreme luck to actually permalag with it, meaning you have to land throw. IF throw works, ground control then needs to go through. IF all that goes through, you then need the lag effect.

Rare cases it can. 99% of the time it won't. You would need all the above to happen 3-4 times at higher levels.

Edit: here's a link to a log.

You knock the wind out of Aehake, that's the lag echo, I'm fairly sure.

http://www.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?3,1072556,1072556#msg-1072556

..and I'm an idiot.

I had a special forum moment for the duration of this thread.

You are correct. Owaza permalag is definitely mythic.

NT

I didn't say anything about the purpose of assassins. Nor do I need strategies to fight them.

I merely pointed out that your mention of cheap shot did not make the case that the subject of your post suggests should be obvious to all.

And if it was almost as easy to counter as cheapshot as you say, no one would be complaining about it nor would anyone care if it was nerfed.

Trip/cheapshot counter is obvious. Throw is not. But even not being obvious, it's easy.

What do you mean not every class gets it?
Well not every class gets throw either!

I do love that CF is now "I must have 4 limited preps just to fight you solo".

I remember going there with Kraldinor and a third party to gather my black rod. He died because he couldn't heal the curse/scourge and didn't have the moves to make it to a healer.

nt

I've had characters at all ranges in PK for the last 2-4 months.

I fight people without preps all the time, but I'm stupid and don't care too much about win/loss. Most of the people I fight with or my allies on the other hand overprep.

Ironically, the people who tend to lug around the most preps are the ones who don't even end up using them. Makes me wonder why they bother collecting them in the first place.

I consistently had 3 each of ABS.

I would only use shield/aura in solo fights, and sometimes not even aura.

I would only use ABS in solo fights against badasses or in group fights.

No lie, I used most of my ABS gathering more...ABS.

Edited to add: I'm a fan of 50/50 fights.

Edited a 2nd time to add: I also don't like mowing down newbies/Tanzer so I tend to try and fight the most powerful characters.

NT

I think I've actually held that prep maybe once in my life?

My prep vs. throw = bash.

Of course...that's *pretty* much my prep vs. everything, so...yeah
...maybe it's good I'm a Battle Imm.

On a more serious note, I'm pretty certain the extent of my prep list amounts to the following:

fly, detect invis, teleport, word of recall, enlarge, slow, any one of the stone skin preps with super-nasty side-effects, and...yeah, that's about it. Mages, obviously ABS where possible.

95% of the time I don't feel the need.

It's very rare that I feel the need to have stuff like Accelerate/Aura/Shield/Barrier/Sanctuary/Stoneskin/Wraithform/Resist Pos/Neg/Resist Elements/Resist Metal/Duo Dimension/etc. First, it's a pain in the ass to gather. Second, most of that #### is limited and the people that gather it are meticulous and the type that don't die. Third, it's rare to actually need it.

And that's not even talking about Silent Tower and it's one-stop shopping for uber-affects.

>And that's not even talking about Silent Tower and it's
>one-stop shopping for uber-affects.

It's really not, assuming you want to have those affects stay with you outside the Tower...

Generally there's a lot of help for characters in the Tower that doesn't carry out, although obviously there are a couple fun things you can take with you, one way or another.

But I just remember tongni and my brother telling me you could pop out of there with haste/sanc/etc and go to town on people.

Now remember, this is before my bro through his bitch fit.

You didn't Vanish! I was worried. I always did like you Nep, no matter how much #### you got. I've strangely had fun getting my ass beat by your morts. Nabighah sticks to my mind as the most recent I can think of.

Notice how your list includes one of the anti-throw preps lol

I'll offer folks a glimpse behind the curtain for some context. Whenever a character dies, an immortal of sufficient level sees a notification (if they choose). That "death channel" includes the who, where, how, etc., as well as a list of the preps the killer was affected by at the time.

This, combined with snoop (which lends a lot of observational data about not just deaths but also fights of every kind) demonstrates to me that plenty of people are fighting and dying every day with minimal prepping and a generally devil may care attitude toward PK. That isn't to say some people don't prep or that certain players don't obsess about preps (including farming preps they never end up using), but I would assert that some of the things I'm reading on the forums related to preps and PK just aren't based in reality.

Players may take that for what it's worth to them.

If I hit hero, I'm aiming to kill cabal leaders, not level 43 guys who are ranking up (well, unless I'm a Maran or chaotic evil killer type).

Generally speaking, the top 5% of PKers in this game use a healthy amount of preps. ####, I'm probably that guy you keep seeing who gets the preps but doesn't use them, because half the time I forget or just don't feel like using them all.

Final thought: Part of the reason I tend to gather preps is downtime. When you log on to 1 person in your range who is an ally, that's gather preps time (because honestly, you other option if you are hero is to explore or quit).

It has the possibility of doing all those things, its not a guarantee. It also requires being thrown. Yes I agree its a pretty cool skill and that it can turn the tide of a fight. I don't think that its SOOOO good that it needs to be adjusted though. Especially since there are ways to work around throw (just like bash).

Or assassinate you.

Or maledict the ever-loving #### out of you.

It's not that ground control is OP, it's "Why the #### do assassins need more cool #### again?".

There's a reason I've been saying for 4-5 years that assassins and transmuters are too strong. It's because while most of CF is a paper-rock-scissors game and if you're lucky you might have 2 of the 3 in your arsenal, those two classes have 3 of the 3.

Stealth
Lag
Malediction

No other classes allow for such combinations. It's probably not coincidental that both classes can heal themselves as well.

Anywhoo, just my thoughts. I just think assassins should be split like many of our other classes (warrior/ranger/thief/shaman/paladin/shapeshifter) in that you should either be a ninja (so kicks/vanish/mals) assassin or an assassin-y (poisondarts/trance/assassinate) assassin.

Ninjas would be a bad option for CF, they'd be OP. They'd have kicks/vanish/mals/poisondarts/trance/assassinate/rangerskills.

Don't mess with ninjas.

Make throw+ground control always trip lag?

There are many many options to kill an assassin that is bothering you before coming to complain about pk deaths on officials.

This just makes you the poster seem like you aren't quite sure how to pk yet.

But the skills you mentioned do not do all three, and few can lag and damage as effectively as ground control.

Two throws, two dex penalties. I sure wish boneshatter stacked and lagged. Or would you consider that to be overpowered?

gr

Nt

If you're gonna try and come up with ways to beat assassins try ones that don't suck

Damn Jalims...you're losing it. Getting banned on Dio's repeatedly. Lost your IMM hookup.

Might revoke your Forum Master status.

Things have worked fine for many many many years and then people die to them and bring it to officials to 'have another look' at the OP skill XYZ that they died to. It happens every so often and it makes no sense every time.

Sure ground control is good, but there are a TON of skills and abilities that absolutely rape assassins and there is no need to start nit picking the things that kill you because you wish you hadn't died to them. I've died as an assassin a LOT. It is very possible to kill them.

I don't think repeated bans on dios actually count if they were reversed because someone holds a grudge against you and bans you.

Plz do not revoke my FM status I paid $50 for the certification letter.

I'm Tom Petty dammit.

But seriously, we both know a well-played duergar flail spec will eat up assassins at low ranks, so it's not like I'm pretending there isn't counters.

It's just transmuters and assassins are CF PK easy mode. It's kinda imbalanced.

Edited to add: What's funny is that it constantly shifts (CF PK easy mode) so that's kinda cool. It used to be Giant Sword Specs were just too easy (I mean hell, I distended and had a 90% PK ratio with one, so yeah). I think before that it was dopple, or rangers with bears, or lowbie bash specs, or necros before people learned about save gear.

That being said, I've been waiting for the next shift but it keeps moving in favor of the strong combos not against them

Ground control's been around for what...20 years or something, and I don't think has seen any changes that I can think of, and suddenly it's magically overpowered now?

Admittedly, there's other changes throughout the years that may have helped assassins in other areas, but the only thing I can think of that might even directly impact ground control itself are edges. At that point, you're argument turns into whether assassin edges are out of line.

Of course, every time I play an assassin, I'm always reminded of how exceptionally fragile their hp as I get pwnfaced while attempting to rock out their awesome moves. So, it's possible I just suxxor with them.

That makes a big big difference.

> Admittedly, there's other changes throughout the years that may
> have helped assassins in other areas, but the only thing I can
> think of that might even directly impact ground control itself are
> edges. At that point, you're argument turns into whether assassin
> edges are out of line.

IE: Edges involving throw/ground control might make a huge difference, but at that point I feel the argument isn't whether ground control is too powerful, but whether the edge too powerful.

he was just checking.

by identifying which of the mutually-exclusive edges gets taken the most. I'm pretty sure Nage Waza is the king.

The spread is actually pretty even across the various master of X assassin edges.

For obvious reasons.

You cannot conclude something isn't overpowered because everyone doesn't choose it.

I never chose Master of NW on my assassins specifically because I felt it a bit too powerful.

It would be on par with the others if it just increased damage a bit and nudged up the chance of landing a GC.

But, I didn't like that it let you throw those normally immune to it. Especially other assassins that could not return the favor.

If you intentionally don't pick something because other people have said its "too good" then how do you know if its actually too good? Not to say that NW is not a good edge, but all of the master of X edges are incredibly good and do great things based on player preference.

Why other edges/skills have been nerfed so heavily when these are left so strong.

It's pretty obvious.

I've fought other assassins who had it with my assassins and a warrior.

Even without that limited data, I'd be skeptical of any edge that allowed one to use a major skill in combat that his foe of the same class could not.

And while my opinion may be ill-informed, that one can hold it and not choose MofNW was the point I was trying to make.

I swear it was only one paragraph when I read it! Doh