I feel qualified to comment on this now that I just played my second long term assassin. My first went 179-4, my second 206-6 (pbf will have to confirm, that's just from my records). Now I'll say I'm good at pk. I don't know that I'm 385-10 good.

I split time between the two. Cainasir was mostly a rank sitter who used assassinate and Nazarates was mostly dedicated to hero range who did not use assassinate *at all*. I felt insanely OP at both ranges. Did sigil help? Sure. Did I need it? No.

Throw is better than any lagging attack warriors get. Their defenses (especially with a certain buki) let me go through warriors like a knife through butter. Kote/kans/axe kick/ground control gives way too much juice. I could go on but it's been rehashed a dozen times.

After Cainasir I recommended some edges be moved and they were. It helped but not enough. After Naz I'd recommend the following:

Remove the following skills:
Endure: make assassins gear for saves an ac if they want it.
Poison darts: make assassins fight groups without being able to confuse.

Move the following skills:
Throw: Move it to 30. Force lowbie assassins to use kicks and trip to lag.
Ground Control: Move it to 42. It completely wrecks the middle ranges.

Radical solution:
Make assassins limited like minotaurs/azures.


Just my two cents. There's a reason why the recent kills list on dios is now 80% assassins. They just have too many tricks for almost every single situation they encounter.

I did find it hilarious when I logged into today to a bard, two shapeshifters and 13 assassins. Bit ridiculious, But I agree assassins need to lose something. You almost never run into an assassin that uses kicks unless they cannot use their throw skill. I also don't understand why assassins even get trance. Why offer them assassinate when you can just use trance eh? Kick why kick when you can throw or use owaza.

Shapeshifters defense forms nerfed into almost every form but two or three being utterly useless because they were too "good", but assassins "nah their okay." Because it's apparently the players that are good with them, not that the class is obviously broken in some way.

Not like that's why there's a 30% (& that's being generous) increase in the number of assassins since people have started these discussions or anything.

I feel like the biggest piece that people seem to be missing is...there's really just very little to be done about assassins right now. Most people in this conversation appear to agree assassins (or their options) could some form of tweak. Just a matter of disagreement as to what, exactly, and the extent. Combine that with the fact that coding time is at a premium, means it is what it is. Personally, if I can manage the ambition, I'm totally aiming for an assassin-killer character.

Attachment #1, ( file)

kote/kanset/ground control/axe kick all do way too much. heck, ground control alone can do too much, it should be more like -4 instead of -8 or stack as 4/2/2 for each.

on top of poison smoke, nerve, their maledicts can be insane.

before trance and dex changes it was vital to have such huge maledictions because an assassin would be gushing or writhing before getting that last break to turn a fight from the appearance of death to winning against strong warrior-type characters. now? trance + maledict is easy mode.

i would halve kote/kanset at hero, but up the chance of screaming shoulder slow, reduce axe kick by 1/4th, and reduce ground control as stated above to be 8 max.

that would bring more value to owaza and kicks, too, by making them more even with the maldection route in terms of other option paths

**edit to note dex changes

You have three types of bone maladicts:

Shoulder, elbow, wrist.

Whatever the source - you can not have more than one of a type on a character.

Kansetsuwaza - you get elbow hyperextended. Now when you get ground control and it's elbow - you don't get maladict, because it's already malfunctioning.

Axe kick - you get shoulder blade broken. Now when you get ground control (incl. owaza) and it's shoulder - you don't get maladict.

Kote - wrist.

This way you have three 6-10 maladicts which is MORE than enough considering you also have nerve and poison.

In the same manner, you don't have maladict stacked if you get shoulder ground control twice. If only applies once.

You risk making assassins into warriors.

I'd let them maladict but reduce their ability to kill when not maladicting.

You just have to time and choose properly.

it is my humble opinion that the addition of martial trance closed up the many needed weaknesses that assassins had. Sure, assassinate monkeys are a "thing" but that's honestly how the class was originally envisioned.

you had to be stealthy, you had to strike from the shadows. you didn't take the "blue pill" and suddenly become a super-fighter to be reckoned with.

People have no issue with getting away from assassins who cannot throw them to their doom.

Maladictions themselves are not that big of a deal--I don't hear people screaming "get rid of dagger/mace" or "dagger/spear" and so on. Most vets do not stick around fights where they are getting maladictions piled on them.

Just get rid of the edge that makes assassins more dangerous than Greeting the Avalanche warriors.

Seriously...

A non tranced assassin vs axe/mace warrior spamming "throw" is going to die.

Throw spam is only a thing because of their ability to shore up their defenses vs unknown weapons using trance (haste/DR on a stick).

If you can write an area you can code. Unless you are doing something massive like putting in the veil, morale, servitors than the hardest part for skills and edges is threading in to all the different parts of the code base.

The biggest problem with assassins is that they can hide but also make it impossible for you to escape when they engage you, regardless of how amazingly skilled a player you are, if you are playing certain combos.

In a low numbers playerbase I think assassins have become OP. Rhyaldrin is a strong PKer but I think assassins take him way over the power threshold.

Keep in mind that we are not counting the fact that assassins are a "persistent threat" that prevent you from moving around freely. As the other party in a 1-v-1 with an assassin stalking me, I have zero options but to avoid being stalked if I don't have detection or camo/duo.

Suggestions from Isildur:

1. Make trance not block fleeing.
2. Remove the part of ground control that perma-lags with throw. "Make throw not permalag"

A rule of CF balance should be: ganging should be the only way to kill a skilled and prepared player from 100% to 0% without any chance of them escaping despite them playing optimally.

>A rule of CF balance should be: ganging should be the only way
>to kill a skilled and prepared player from 100% to 0% without
>any chance of them escaping despite them playing optimally.

Not saying your other points don't have some validity, but...Bash, anyone? Even taking steps to try to mitigate it, who hasn't been perma-bashed to death at some point as a non-mage/shaman/healer. Or what used to be more popular in the cheap shotting thief. Or the fun world of orcs. *Edit - or neurological disruption. Oh, how I have neurological disruption.

Ground control has a *chance* of perma-lag. Current logs are generally assassin's vs other melee, or each other. Glik's logs, for example, show him literally using his abilities to actually *improve* the assassin's chances and viability of throw. Sure, his style works great at a lot of situations, but you've got a matchup where both characters benefit from low auto-melee.

To your "rule", however - a lot of CF class balance comes from having various pieces of the puzzle at different amounts. Paladin's are amazing in a cage match, but little lag or flee prevention. Orcs have great lagging, but like defending with their faces. AP's have tons of options for any situation, but rarely an amazing one. I tend to think assassins have a generally jack-of-all-trades approach, but perhaps a little too much of each piece of the pie.

It isn't just the assassin class, it is specific edges that enhance multiple facets of their strengths.

Assassins have always been good defense against weapons they know, amazing maledictions, decent minor healing over a long period of time, stealth.

With a few edges, you take two skills and enhance them a ridiculous amount.

Martial trance is defenses and damage reduction, add on an edge and now it is defenses against ALL weapons (assassins historic weakness was maces and axes).

Throw is trip lag, decent damage, malediction
Add two edges...
Now it can perma lag, do more damage, and maledict better (or worse, depending on your side)

Skills that do more than one thing are generally go to skills. Pincer for example does real good damage and lags. If you are a mace spec would you rather trip or do cranial? In most cases you go to the same lag skill that also does more damage. With those edges you can not only perma lag someone out you can do insane damage and drop their stats, that is 3 facets instead of just 2. That is why it is too powerful.

It isn't characters having too many edges (though that was a hair extreme, I will admit). It is certain edges were made too strong. Look at when Nep played his wood-elf, those edges were made way way way too strong and then subsequently toned down. No one had played out the ground fighter and nage waza edges yet, they are too strong. If you want to add to the damage they do, or to the maledicts, or to the fact that you can now through other assassins and hand specs (which is all it should be, honestly). Then it brings it back down to earth.

Also, fix edge points.

>Ground control has a *chance* of perma-lag. Current logs are
>generally assassin's vs other melee, or each other. Glik's
>logs, for example, show him literally using his abilities to
>actually *improve* the assassin's chances and viability of
>throw. Sure, his style works great at a lot of situations, but
>you've got a matchup where both characters benefit from low
>auto-melee.

The distinction with throw and ground control, with the edge(s), is that the chance is especially high and there is very little most characters can do to mitigate it.

Bash on the other hand is a lot less reliable or predictable with regard to the lag and can mitigated in at least a couple ways by almost anyone, at least in the sense that if the warrior is smart enough and prepared enough to counter your counters there is a downside involved.

Neurological disruption is similar in that the defense against it is straightforward, if a bit impractical at times since one probably has to give up a LOT to seriously mitigate ND. A ton of SvS + SvP will make a huge difference but if you aren't covering stats or you have a damroll of 20 then maybe the proposition isn't worth it. But that's a different debate.

>To your "rule", however - a lot of CF class balance comes from
>having various pieces of the puzzle at different amounts.
>Paladin's are amazing in a cage match, but little lag or flee
>prevention. Orcs have great lagging, but like defending with
>their faces. AP's have tons of options for any situation, but
>rarely an amazing one. I tend to think assassins have a
>generally jack-of-all-trades approach, but perhaps a little
>too much of each piece of the pie.

I wouldn't say assassins are "OP". To me, overpowered leans toward a scenario where it's practically harder to lose than it is to win most of the time and I don't think assassins are there. But when something starts to go from jack of all trades and master of none to jack of all trades and master of all then maybe it's worth taking a look at. If nothing else, the game is more interesting if more classes get played more of the time and there are a wider variety of fight match-ups at any given time, both in general and at the "top" of the ladder.

For the record, I'm personally more than happy if you want to come over and adjust them, Umi

Gr

Honestly, aside from a blanket nerfing in reaction to Warren (and a few people have fallen victim to Warren) Umiron did a fantastic job.

Stupid emotions

I should note that neuro can be geared against using svpar. In fact, the Sleep spell also falls into a roughly similar category, except is that you can take certain precautions such as not being in an area with a possible summon trap room, having high svspell. The sleep user also needs to approach visibly and attempt to get the first spell off before the victim attacks.

Bash is harder: enlarge/reduce won't stop a skilled basher with a consider target macro. Personally (despite the number of people claiming giant warriors are weak) I think giant bash is still competitive because it is overpowered vs those few combos vulnerable to it (to a degree that there's a good chance that victim cannot do anything, regardless of skill, to survive, once the first bash goes down). It means basically that I will never again play any combos vulnerable to perma-bash.

I've posted a log of being perma-lagged by Krunk over 15 rounds of combat as a prepped/decked Defiance-wielding Fortitude-having 2h elf paladin with 100% evasion and Evasive edge. 15 rounds of perma-lag is a bit much.

If coding were not a constraint I think a good balancing mechanism is to have a counter that increments each time a "perma-lag-possible" move is made, e.g. trip/cheapshot, throw/wind-knocking-GC, big neuro, bash > 2 rounds. Past a certain count, it will be impossible to get a perma-lagging version of the skill landing.

So you might, as a giant basher, be able to count on 6 (for example) consecutive rounds of bash lag, but no more than that. So to get your kill, you have to get your opponent low enough and then unleash the 6-round lag + flurry for the win. To compensate, the chance of a > 2 round bash could go up for the first time the basher uses it.

I think it is far to say that Shigru orc is a little too strong, especially compared to other orcs, for exactly the same reasons Assassin is a little to strong with the right edges. Throw + Ground Control is just too much goodness bundled together. High damage + Malediction + Chance of permalag is a lot like Savage Feeding + Bash + Cheapshot + Willbreaker. The main difference being that at least against an orc, you are *probably* winning the straight melee battle. Against assassin, you probably aren't even doing that since they're defenses are so good and they can choose to fight only with Martial Trance... Even if you are high defence, Throw + GC + Backfist probably eats through your HP in 3 throws all from unblockable damage.

STSF and MT should both lose the cut-off portions IMHO, and throw should lose perma-lag chance and the edge shouldn't make it more reliable. That would make MT, STSF, NW and whatnot all *good*, but not super deadly. MT could also use a downside given that Assassin are a very good stealth class. No hide during cooldown would make sense to me, but that might be too much...

I'd say remove Vanish. They don't need a near unblockable teleport-out-of-combat on top of all that other goodness.

Vanish has like a 1/3 chance of working in combat unless you take the two vanish bonus edges that still don't make it as reliable as it was before it got nerfed.

For me from what I have read and the assassins I have fought the issue is potentially more with how much throw/ground control can actually do:

- For a lagging move it has the highest damage output I have seen (Perhaps I high strength pincer can beat it) but edged throw/GC seems to barely ever miss where as pincer misses quite a bit. In saying this I am considering the damage dealt and how often it can be used. Throw/GC is 2 rounds for almost 2 rounds of lag versus 3 rounds for almost 2 rounds of lag, so either the damage output needs to be tweaked or the success dropped.
- Beyond the above it also does a stackable malediction, I have had 3 stacked ground controls for -'ve 8 dex (IE -24 dex total) so beyond the damage you also have the chance on your tanking being nerfed for 2 rounds before you get out (I believe it should maledict once and that's it) this is what makes it so dangerous in the 1 v 2 fights
- It also has the ability to perma lag

- I realize with all I have said you cannot open combat with it, meaning there is a slim chance people can escape before the first throw
- I have simply focused on throw because it really does seem that most assassin fights I see are
nerve target;throw x5

Is the highest damaging lagging technique in my opinion . When I was chief, I would often hit for an annihilate+maul+devastate (spiked boots).

Agreed ... I totally forgot about Orcs.

But there are ways to mitigate bash and there are ways to make savage feeding (Edges) fire less. So on the whole success vs damage scale it probably averages out to less

Consistent ANNIHILATES.

Really good players are going to be complained about no matter what class they play. Steal classes have more of an edge now as Umi explained in his reply to this. The next time there is a decked STSF sword spec people will forget about naga waza edge and focus their complaints on the seven winds of hamsah edge. That's just the way it goes. I've tooled some naga waza assassins without prepping, because the players didn't have the skill that Naz's player does.

In 4 months everyone will be saying something else is OP. It's like the seasons, they come and they go. If all those feelings were acted upon, all armor and weapons would be replaced with foam and rubber and people would just be "out" instead of dying. I don't want that, I want fields of carrion. Just my 2 cents.

-cheers

Gr

I hear what you are saying but largely discount it ... have you fought Malchazzar?

Fought and killed.

Is that players who play assassins are saying they are op.

Certain players are going to be very successful with almost any class and certainly far exceed the average player with a specific handful, assassin being one. That's always been the case and always will be, and it's certainly not an argument in and of itself for why certain people going 100-1 (or whatever) means something is objectively overpowered. But...

In the case of assassins, I'm inclined to say the class leans a bit too much toward easy mode. A lot of the points people have raised are probably somewhere between mostly and a little true, at least. For example, the fact that assassins can largely ignore mace/axe specs nowadays is probably a bad thing when combined with a number of other factors. I've said before that part of why I don't like the Master of Nage Waza is not because it makes one aspect of a skill too good but that it influences so many aspects of a skill, making it such that far too often the user doesn't even have a choice to make anymore: the correct move is throw.

It'a also worth understanding that different people have different perspectives on what makes something (too) powerful. Is it just how many PKwins can be racked up? Is it how difficult the build is to PK in a solo fight on a road? How difficult it is to retrieve or raid against them? How difficult it is to avoid dying (i.e., avoid) to them? For most of us, it's probably some rarely agreed-upon all of the above. Something is rarely overpowered because it wins or loses in a cage match or even because its popular, necessarily.

The other significant element I think people overlook is how the landscape has changed. Stealth has gotten a lot stronger, largely because numbers have gone down. Your assassin foe is much less likely to have enemies who can see him hunting him while he's hunting you. Likewise, you're less likely to have allies who can see him coming. It's a lot easier to stalk (literally or otherwise) someone when there are substantially fewer people to interfere or distract you, and that means a much better chance of finding your prey hurt and unaware of your presence.

But even in the context of a mano-a-mano encounter between an assassin and something else, and even post edge nerf (good... let the hate flow through you...) I think it's probably worth taking a look at assassins and seeing if, even if the class isn't "overpowered", gameplay couldn't be improved by introducing some changes that force both assassins and their opponents to employ a little more thinking and strategy to how they engage one another than is demonstrated in recent logs.

Master of Nage Waza lets you land throws reliably even if the victim isn't aiming at you. Then you can gang with an axe spec and it's extremely dangerous to even engage.

Without Nage Waza, you could take Keri Waza and do the same with kicks (makes kicks nearly 100% reliable).

I think master edges in general could use a revamp -- some of them make you plain super deathful, others (Ukemi and Kyusho) are super meh.

Nage waza offers just too many benefits (for a mere edge): a simple solution would be if it only made throw work on other assassins/hth specs, but without otherwise improving throw/ground control (chance or damage). *Maybe* you could also keep the auto-throw on missed bashes etc., except it would only trigger a normal chance (not 100% guaranteed) for *just* ground control (i.e. no auto-throw as they already fell on their face).

Likewise ground fighter edge should probably be tweaked to only increase damage & malediction, but not the chance of it landing.

I think it speaks volumes that these edges are now the default go to-edges for assassins.

Gr

and find 100 different reasons to nullify all your points, and these reasons
would make sense, but Nep is not around anymore.

It's been 10 years since I've played an assassin so I can't really
comment on the class, but having played against you, multiple times,
I don't consider you an elite PKer. You're not bad, but you sure ain't
anywhere near the greats. The numbers you posted wouldn't necessarily
imply a broken class. Cainasir never heroed and got 80% of his kills before
40 or so. On the other hand, the playerbase is mucho reduced. So there
might be substance behind what you say. Or the combination of
reduced playerbase and absence of players who can really #### up your
day leaves too much wiggle room for assassins to become a tool
that can be used to exploit this state via extreme opportunism. They sure
have the tools.

I haven't seen the distribution of your current, but being emperor
goes a very very long way, since emperor powers are the best powers
in the game period and that's including old scion powers.

I also haven't played in years and I know a
lot of great players that have stopped playing too. Maybe the opposition
is garbage these days? Who knows.

Not playing the class for 10 years (and not playing years in general) kind of makes your points void. Who did you play against me with and when? I just started here in 2009. When did you play last?

As for Nep I just beat his last assassin's numbers (197-8) using the same build he did. I have a feeling he knew it was OP when he put it together too.

nt

Having played my share of assassins and i am not a great pker but i even manage a positive ratio. I think you underestimate your pk ability.

Sure Emperor powers helped you, nage waza, ground fighter but even without these you would have done well.

I agree throw + ground control is the key to the complaints (which don't seem to be going away any time soon)

Throw on its own is fine. It lags like trip doesn't do massive damage. Your solution of moving ground control to 42 is the key imho.

This will make a massive difference for non hero assassins. Suddenly throw isn't your first choice every time. Sure it will lag like trip and deal more damage but without getting ground control at level 24 it will not deal anywhere near as much damage and players will not land kills as easy by spamming throw. They will start using kicks and other skills more as they will need to deal more damage.

In its current state i doubt many will get nage waza + ground fighter but i would remove both of these. Removing these will prevent hero assassins from being as powerful in the future.

So move gt to 42
Remove nage waza
Remove ground fighter

These changes should bring assassins back down to earth.

gr

This is a great example of how to provide constructive feedback and engage an open dialogue about the state of things.

That all being said, nothing changes unless Scarabaeus feels like doing it right now. And last I knew he had a full plate already that continues to get fuller so I don't see this getting bumped up as a high priority.

You just inspired me to roll another transmuter

Put up or shut up! JK, <3

.

..the thing I'm not sure what the "best" solution is.

As it is, assassins are like Hell/Silent gear In the hands of a newb, they still get owned.

In the hands of a skilled player...Oi vey.

Most people that play assassins aren't.

You could achieve the same analysis with certain facets of any given class. Someone even made lowbie healer OP at one point.

Yes to someone that knows the ins and outs of the class it might seem powerful, to newbies-mediocre players you're gonna get curbstomped more often than not.

he's very good at pk and choosing battles, but hide + assassin skill set makes dying rare, which means easier to maintain gear which only enhances deathfulness.

Only died 12 times as Sindrir, who was a warrior.

You either know when to get out of dodge or you don't. Hide just makes it easier in most situations.

Yes, it's good to know when to get out. Detect hidden helps with that.

Heh.

BRING ON THE ASSASSIN NERFAGE!!!!!

Because if it's Shura then the only thing that was OP about that character was their ability to get prayer beads and staff of striking over and over again at like level 20. Not discounting the players skill level by the way, but lowbies with hero gear always seem to do well against people without said gear-level for some weird reason.

I think there was more than one, but if so Shura definitely makes the list.

The rub of that is the fact that as things tend to play out, 9/10 people in the 11-25 range (and even higher, in some cases) tend to be woefully unprepared for an opponent that can gate. Those same people tend to be woefully unprepared for almost any "PK griefer/level-sitter/whatever" in that range, but gate is a bit of a special case because it dramatically reduces the number of options available to the healer's opponents.

Without the proggy gear a gate-murder healer is a lot less effective, but it's still got a ton of potential because at least half the people you jump for are going to be rocking fine leather, have no word/teleport potions, and likely have poor melee defense. Being able to locate and track victims that effectively at a time when most characters can't mitigate the damage or regenerate movement quickly enough means in the end you're going to win most of the time, and it's the distinction between you and some random warrior/thief/etc.

Plus there's the problem that for many of those would be victims, the only effective defense is not to play which makes the game less enjoyable for everyone. People tend to make this argument about any PK successful low/mid level character, but in this case it really isn't as simple as "go rank someplace else" or "carry a potion".

Props to Shaapa, I guess, if his "success" led to gate being adjusted to be less effective for offensive play, but regardless of whether or not that's actually how it went down I would argue was a logical and positive change.

So that dodging weapons you don't know is harder than at present.

Assassins used to be wary of axe wielders.

Axes should be scarier.

I cant name a time in recent years where any "skilled player" has done a high str mace or axe spec at the same time there has been a "skilled player" doing an assassin. I'd be curious to see how that actually matches up, player skill of both being at comparable levels.

Otherwise you get an axespec against a charged trance assassin, and it's a massacre.

And hilariously Sindrir was last one of them, I think. I don't think they managed to leave a scratch on each other with Jeede, due to avoiding each other, I suppose.

All of his assassin kills were Thilquill who was a complete newb, so that might be telling some.

And his only assassin death was to Farmaur which was a gank.


P.S. I don't think I've seen an experienced high str axe spec in the recent years but Sindrir. I think Horivol and Grundo had some merit, but both deleted too fast to judge.

P.P.S. The very fact of absense of high str axespecs or their quick deletes should be hinting at something though. I can't say I'm not considering playing one of those, but it's way too low on the list.

1) Sindrir was not an assassin killer because both sword and axe are nullified almost instantly by kote breaking a wrist. Now i suppose you could spam overhead but that wasn't an option as a duergar.

2) High str axe spec isn't going to kill any assassin smart enough to take the proper buki edge. Which after Naz I'd hope would be all of them.

3) Mace is better than axe for killing assassins. This is just my opinion but boneshatter and cranial are far more reliable for getting the job done.

GRRRR.

Stupid Buki edges.

PS You really should post that ONE log. You know which one. And no, it's not the one where you killed Twist for the 150238948569th time.

I know it is only one fight, but WM logs on other forum show a skilled axe spec getting killed by an assassin. Now if they aren't both skilled, that means he got killed by an unskilled one, which would also be a convincing point.

That said I think that assassin got his tactics spot on.

And he opted to stick around after suffering a kot crunch by using overhead. I wouldn't exactly call that an MVP level tactical decision.

Make trance 3 ticks?

This will make trance very similar to assassinate, as it will not allow you to sweep through the enemy ranks for 6 ticks, 3 ticks are pretty quick and if you're not able to land your kill that fast - you go and wait more.

OR you try to engage with preps w/o trance.

How about it?

P.S. I remember my times as Zqoemoa, when I've put up aura and stone skin on top of trance, I was able to storm 3 tribbies being a criminal on the Galadon market square, and made them run. That was nuts. The chore of getting preps was boring though.

Because the limitations you suggest don't feel very limiting to me.

Given MT, a lot of enemies will die in one tick.

1 tick death is highly probable on a charged trance. Simple trance is way easier to survive.

Fair enough.

I guess I feel charged trance is common.

Got to say that this thread is reminding me how much I love the unpredictable edge!

I was bummed not being able to take it as Zqoemoa and Kaer, given the number of STSF opponents.

>I feel qualified to comment on this now that I just played my
>second long term assassin. My first went 179-4, my second
>206-6 (pbf will have to confirm, that's just from my records).
>Now I'll say I'm good at pk. I don't know that I'm 385-10
>good.

Honestly, I don't think this says anything about assassins, specifically. I think this says *you* play assassins well. Does marcus' pklist with warriors mean they're broken? Or Amora and druids? Laearrist (Krunk) and orcs? Take any other player and give them the class, and the numbers aren't nearly the same. I'm not awful at CF, and my last assassin went about 10 - 30.

>I split time between the two. Cainasir was mostly a rank
>sitter who used assassinate and Nazarates was mostly dedicated
>to hero range who did not use assassinate *at all*. I felt
>insanely OP at both ranges. Did sigil help? Sure. Did I need
>it? No.

You're understating what you had. Sigil, tactics (auto-trip is good both for sealing kills and running away if you need), evil align gives you lots of options to kill *and* good typically has much less ability to see hidden.

>Throw is better than any lagging attack warriors get. Their
>defenses (especially with a certain buki) let me go through
>warriors like a knife through butter. Kote/kans/axe
>kick/ground control gives way too much juice. I could go on
>but it's been rehashed a dozen times.

This I might give you, as from what I recall, it was pretty reliable to land and has a good bit of damage potential. I think some of the "fault" of assassins that they lose a lot of those skills when attacking someone not attacking them tends to lose steam with smaller numbers.

>
>After Cainasir I recommended some edges be moved and they
>were. It helped but not enough. After Naz I'd recommend the
>following:
>
>Remove the following skills:
>Endure: make assassins gear for saves an ac if they want it.
>Poison darts: make assassins fight groups without being able
>to confuse.

I'm not certain these would make a significant enough difference I see much point to this. Endure's a nice start, but meh. And poison darts? That's a skill that 90% of the time people suggest is useless/needs buffing.

>Move the following skills:
>Throw: Move it to 30. Force lowbie assassins to use kicks and
>trip to lag.
>Ground Control: Move it to 42. It completely wrecks the middle
>ranges.

Throw itself isn't so bad, maybe at some point someone could glance at the damage scaling. 24 might be a bit early for this, but I wouldn't say this is such a top-end power to be hero-range only.

>Radical solution:
>Make assassins limited like minotaurs/azures.

Yeah, no. This does nothing to stop someone someone from racking up kills with assassins, just eliminates the other 12 guys who stink at it.

>Just my two cents. There's a reason why the recent kills list
>on dios is now 80% assassins. They just have too many tricks
>for almost every single situation they encounter.

That just means all the people posting are playing assassins. When everyone *thinks* assassins are unbeatable and plays one, of course there's not going to be any logs except assassins fighting people. Taking Nazarates out of the pk stats, there are only two other assassins in the top 40. That's 8% of the top PK list. Given that assassins currently account for 10% of characters, they're actually not faring as well as they should. Warriors dominate the top pk list with over 50% of the top 40 pkers, while accounting for less than a quarter of characters.

Not that long ago, transmuters were the OP class of the day. Before that, what...evil conjurer? It runs its course, then people figure out it's not as easy as it's been made to look, and move on.

As it stands, now that Nazarates is out of the picture, the remaining assassins in the game have a combined PK record of 79/128. To me, that suggests that you're the outlier, rather than the class in general. This is where rather than rolling up another assassin, someone should roll up a duergar mace spec or such and have some fun.

in that you can't judge a class by an Emperor's performance.

But he's talking about "Recent killers" tab that states top pkers of last 3 years, not the log posters. And it's assassin-swarmed indeed.

5/10 if you focus on class.

if you focus align, 9/10 are evil, 1 is neutral.

Being evil tends to favor high pk counts, as does being in a cabal like Empire or Scarab.

And that's why I almost exclusively play evil. And even if I play good or neutral, it is evil

Lilyth was clearly evil RP btw. She hunted all relentlessly, getting the title as well.

"Choosing to roll evil means never having to say you're sorry".

Or whatever.

Conjie has changed beyond recognition since people complained.

I think you'd struggle to find many players who can pk well with multiple classes that don't think assassins need some tweaking.

We just see different aspects of why that is. Some see edges as the breaking factor, in that assassin edges are more effective than many others. Personally I think there are issues that go beyond assassins related to dex changes, but the combined factors make a big difference for assassins.

For example, now that axes don't hit you that much, you can afford to permalag someone with the new throw edge.

>Not that long ago, transmuters were the OP class of the day. Before that, what...evil conjurer? It runs its course, then people figure out it's not as easy as it's been made to look, and move on.<

Well, transmuters ARE still OP.

And you guys nerfed the hell out of evil conjurers

Same for Scion despoiled air/off shifters.

I'm telling you, they are the mage versions of assassins. Just have more weapons to deal with problems than the classes they are fighting against. Unkillable? Nah, but BETTER than the other classes.

PS Scion despoiled ANYTHING was gross. I went Offense/Air with the last one I ever played and killed a Hero cabal leader pre-final form. Despoiled conjurers or Trannies were just as gross, just without the ease of movement.

There was a reason why 90% of the top PK mages were Scion.

Don't disagree with anything you wrote in principle. Just wanted to add that there's something to be said for taking a class's optimal performance into account, even if only a select few players will ever get there.

That is, if it's fine in the hands of most players but "broken" in the hands of a select few, then you could argue it's "broken" in an all-around sense.

The most convincing arguments (to me) that assassins aren't broken are:

1. They can't easily perma-lag,
2. They can hide but they don't have uber-stealth like a transmuter,
3. They have mark of they prey, but it's harder for them to find people than it is for a druid w/ condor, air form shifter, conjurer with clairvoyance, or any class with old-school locate object.
4. There are a handful of combos they match up pretty poorly against.

This is revealing of how I evaluate "brokenness". To me it isn't "this guy can beat almost everyone in a cage match". If it were that, then paladins could maybe be considered broken. A combo is broken if:

1. For a significant number of enemies, engaging that combo *at all* has a extremely high likelihood of death even when the enemy is skilled and being careful, or

2. The combo makes it relatively easy to find and kill people who don't want to be found, are being careful, and are hell-bent on avoiding a fight and/or escaping.

I'll admit I'm not a great PKer. I tend to play classes that are "broken" in some limited context, then try to put myself into that context as often as possible while avoiding situations where I don't have the advantage. Thieves, in particular, lend themselves to that.

If there's a top-shelf thief around, depending on what I'm playing, I'm at least as scared of that guy as I am of a top-shelf assassin.

With the throw edge they can permalag with some regularity. Also parting block helps to mitigate lag limitation.

I haven't fought a lot of assassins w/ nage waza, but I've played at least two. I found it difficult to permalag people. If the permalag only comes on the "knocks the wind out of them" echo, then I got that on maybe 20% of my throws tops. I didn't experiment much with charged up martial trance, but I didn't think the flee-prevention was that great.

So the needed "perma-lag" is usually only 4-6 rounds

Probably why you didn't notice it as much.

And you get the flee-blocking from about 5+ stalks + trance.

This suggests two fixes:

1. Remove the potential for "throw" to perma-lag with or without Master of Nage Waza.

2. Remove the "flee prevention" effect from martial trance + stalks.

Then give an additional boost to "evade" when in a charged up martial trance (but only against the guy you stalked) to make up for the loss of flee prevention.

This makes the tranced assassin a little bit like a paladin. If you stand there and fight him he'll probably beat you, but he's not great at keeping you there.

REMOVE TRIP

CRAP REMOVE ALL KICKS TOO

STRANGLE KNOCKS PEOPLE OUT THEY HAVE TO LOSE STRANGLE TOO

I think the solution is all assassins need to have 0 skills or abilities and can only walk around CF and RP at people using say and tells, but no emotes. Because emotes are OP too.

Once again, assassins are fine as is.

There are a lot of them, so more people are gravitating towards playing them. There are a lot of them, so more people are seeing more of their abilities used. There are a lot of them, so things seem worse than they actually are with regards to class balance. A month ago this thread was about monk Paladins.

Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is broken. Assassins are survivable and well rounded as far as pvp and pve. Yes people are going to lean towards them when there isn't a lot going on group wise in CF.

That's the point. We're seeing a couple of skills over and over and over and over and over and over again. That's what everyone has been talking about. I mean, did you even read any of the posts? I know it's a lot but try and keep up.

I've played plenty of assassins and still prefer trip.

Yes I can read.

I don't mind being outside of the group either though and don't feel a great need to fit in with the other parrots.

=)

Let me ask you something then. Has anything in this game ever been in need of tweaking or have you only ever answered people's concerns and arguments with, "GIT GUD OR GIT REKT, NEWB!"?

By the way, what does being within or without the majority have anything to do with being correct?

>Let me ask you something then. Has anything in this game
>ever been in need of tweaking or have you only ever answered
>people's concerns and arguments with, "GIT GUD OR GIT REKT,
>NEWB!"?

Yes. And it is usually handled pretty shortly after implementation not 12 years later when everyone jumps on the bandwagon.


>
>By the way, what does being within or without the majority
>have anything to do with being correct?

Ask Hitler.

I rarely find myself using it. Everyone flies. Even ragers, because they're arials, or clouds, or ####ing gnomes with mechanical wings.

Throw's just another drone bandwagon. It's important to stay outside of the box. You can take your 'better, more reliable tactic' and stuff it in your parrot ass. Am I right?

Ironically there was recently a more deadly Emperor assassin than Nazarates..... who was played by a dude who loves trip.

I too prefer trip.

With ground fighter and Nage waza I can't see why you'd trip unless you're opening the fight or someone has throw protection.

If I'm lagging and you're dying edges don't really matter. Run if you want but ima find you with locate mark or spies or rp. Then I'm gonna trip you again because unless you're an arial I'm waiting for it to drop.

NT

Trip is 2 round lag regardless of hit or miss.

One round if you miss.

Hard to say exactly, but it is more than 1 and less than 2.

uhasd

That's new, thanks.

I'm surprised through self-experimentation you didn't notice the lesser self-lag on a missed trip

I just didn't bother to input it sooner. No spamming, right?

I think this is one of very few instances where I've seen someone do the following:

(1) Believe that X is OP.
(2) Play X with an insane PK record.
(3) Then propose that X is OP to the staff.

Much respect. I think you have an intelligence and objectivity when it comes to playing CF, that many less mature players don't have.

I haven't played assassins, but from playing against them and reading logs, I agree that they're OP in their current state.

But yeah, why I'm a fan of Rhyaldrin

You were saying that ground fighter is the key, yet now you propose skills being moved with no mention of edges.

Edges I left out just because no one will put together the list I had again. Which wasn't near as much as what Alex had. I had all the obs/explore bonuses on Naz.

With that being said I feel ground fighter is better than Nage Waza. I think ground control should have a smaller chance in general. It's the best skill in cf.

Why would a throw edge matter at all?

Deathblow doesn't win fights.
Throw does. In fact ONLY throw does.