Quote:
Originally Posted by BahamutKaiser
Assassin is basicly a spiker who has to be point blank to use dagger skills and suffers from counters even more than other attackers because his combo attacks rely on eachother.
Assassin is ment to be a Hit and Run class, and is simularly difficult with Mesmer for required skill to be effective. But the obvious truth of that is that it isn't balanced, if it was balanced it wouldn't take a master to make good out of it.
Just because a combat master can kill with a spoon doesn't mean that the spoon somehow becomes as good as a blade. Assassin can be used effectively in the hands of advanced players, but the obvious fact that it requires an advanced player to make effective use out of assassin means that it isn't as good as warrior.
Assassin doesn't have the natural damage and armor to do anything without skills, so it automaticly makes it a harder class to play, but many of its skills are completely gimped making them useless to bring and making Assassin very limited in technique. If he is ment to be a hit and run class than obviously he needs effective hit and run skills, but all of his advancing teleports have long recast times, which means that this kind of technique isn't provided. The only way to make good use of advance and retreat teleports is AoD, it provides both in one skill, but it is an elite, which excludes all other elite options from a good hit and run build.....
Assassins retreating teleports are effective, Recall cost too much for a class who needs a great deal of energy to chain, but Return is great. If Deaths Charge was reduced to 15 seconds, than we would be able to advance as often as we can retreat, making it much easier to get "In and Out". And if Dark Prison was reduced to 25 second recast, it would match perfectly with Black Lotus Strike, making it a very powerful advancing technique. Too powerful?, no it isn't, it is powerful enough to compensate for Assassins lack of Defense, it is neccessary to make it balanced. Is Dark Prison going to be too powerful because it provides a slowing hex and teleport?, no, your using a class who requires close proximity to be effective wile not having the proper armor to stay in close proximity, it is a natural neccessity to have frequent teleporting, Dark Prison does less slowing (33%) than cripple, Imaginary burden, and Ice hexes, and has a max duration of 6 or 7 seconds, it needs a 25 second recast to be balanced.
Assassin takes more damage, it needs to deal more damage, that is an obvious equation. He has less defense, he needs better skills to avoid damage, that is obvious balance.
Right now Assassin is GW set to Hard Mode, it isn't an acceptable class in the hands of a newb or even an average player, not because they are soo much worse with Assassin than other simple classes, but because Assassin hasn't the tools to be used effectively outside of certain builds in the hands of an advanced player. Remember that every time you tell someone Assassin is ok, it just needs to be used a certain way, that is a weakness.
I have come to the conclusion that Anets claim of game balance describes the restriction of overpowered builds and unfair advantages, but it doesn't recognize the weakness and deficiency of certain ability or lack of class build diversity certain classes have with their skills, it can't. And to make it much worse, Anet is considering NOT adding new skills to Assassin in future chapters, I don't know if they will add new skills to this chapter instead, but without new skills Assassin will basicly stay the way it is, with no new opportunities for improvement.
I couldn't honestly agree more with you since this fully and clearly encompasses most major assassin deficits. Some food for thought: even though primary assassins would direly need these improvements to be competitive at any level there are assassin secondaries. If skills were improved to cover the fundamental flaws of assassins how would it affect gameplay if those skills were coupled with primary that is less flawed?
