how to fix assassins

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@ 1 and 2: Finally, it speaks. How ironic is it, that I favour Trampling because of its higher damage. As for Breeze: you wouldn't believe the shortage of half-decent Monks. When I did come across one, of course I boarded in Impale several times (as if a 'testing build' would not be subjected to experimenting) but so far, at 3 DA, I have been less than impressed.
I have already said I always end up with a War in my party, and they always have a better DW available than I as a Sin.

@ 3: maybe you misinterpreted? Where did I deny anything? I was merely explaining the build from personal experience, I never claimed it was flawless. Fact remains that you made some unsupported (and rather rude) statements, which weren't helping anyone. Only now have you begun to make any sense. So no, you're wrong on that one.

EDIT: BLS is really not necessary. But swapping in Disrupting and HotO might be good for a laugh. So thx for that.

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I wrote a very well detailed (IMO) long post, and well....I lost it, because I wasn't locked and was in quick reply T_T.
I'll try to put as much back as I remember.
If you disagree with anything I said, say something.
If I rehash things I've previously said, sorry.
If your going "Oh lol, we know this shit" sorry...
_____
Assassins would not benefit off-hands being usable outside of a chain.
You could put anything pre-cautions you want such as,does not count as an off-hand, or it has reduced damage, or you suffer from weakness, or you don't get this special effect...
Doesn't help. Essentially if an assassin is gimped, well hes screwed anyways.
As dual attacks require an off-hand, using that Off-hand out of turn for utility, would just shut you down anyways until that off-hand recharges, not usefull at all.
We also loose diversion immunity T_T

Lead attacks are weak, not just in physical damage but all around generally.
we can take many lead attacks and list faults for thim, or I can concentrate on just 3 to show to you.
[card]Unsuspecting Strike[/card] This skill was made to spike a full health target, unfortunately the skill is actually not good, it's also semi-retarded.
Unsuspecting Strike cost 10 energy and is able to deal around 100 or higher damage to anyone at 70 Armor level or below. That may sound fair right? I don't think so.
Unsuspecting has a 2 second recharge, it doesn't need this, assassins don't have the energy (or expertise attribute >.<) to use this skill whenever they want. if you are blocked, wait 2 seconds and switch your target, this skill is ready to go, big deal. This skill is only worth its 10 energy on a target who is over 90% health, any time else it is really worth 5 energy. This skill could be changed to 4 or 6 recharge, it doesn't matter, no one really spammed this anyways.

This skill simply is not good, it may seem like it on the exterior, but 10 energy for a essentially one time use skill, doesn't mix well.
You can say, "you'll only use it on a target once anyways, because you should have them dead anyways", not entirely true, If the thread was not how to fix assassins you'd be right. Fixing this skill to have better use is just one step in a good direction. It doesn't need 2 second recharge, who gives a crap if its changed to 3, or 4 recharge? If the rest of your skills aren't charged any good monk or rit (even a healing paragon) has just healed that while you waited for the rest of your skills to catch up.
Increase the recharge for this, and do something to make it better.

[card]Disrupting Stab[/card] This is actually an okay attack skill, the problem is that its a lead attack skill. If it were a melee skill, it would be great, use it in the middle of your chain to interrupt someone before they cast that spell that will make your spike for naught..awesome! Its not that however. At 14 dagger mastery this gives 10 disable if it hits a spell, but it last 10 seconds.
This skill is to slow what it was intended to do in todays current day in age.
Many skills that you really want to interrupt, execute pretty fast now (of course those must interrupt 1 or 2 second spells exists), its just not fast enough.
Another thing to mention is that its essentially 10 recharge, unless you have another lead, or a lead-skipper that recharges faster (or moebius strike) the rest of your chain is backed up, until this recharges.
It's already known that distracting shot is a very,powerful skill, and making this like it would be wrong. Distracting stab may look okay, but it's not, it needs something added to it or changed to it.

[card]Jagged strike[/card] I hope you all understand why this skill is bad but I'll go in detail. jagged strike for one does not need a one second recharge, currently thats probably one of the reason's to take it, because it recharges so fast, somewhat okay in pve. Even in pve however this isn't a good skill, pve mob's are usually much higher level than you and thus your base dagger damage does little to them, jagged strike uses your base dagger damage and thus the bleeding is its niche. in PvP you have little reason to go around spamming Jagged strike, and doing so probably makes you an idiot. Jagged strike in pve is replaceable with much better skills, and novices like to use it, sadly Jagged is like a warrior using mending without Echo, pathetic.

three Lead attacks, each with problems, each which with buffs could make the assassin better.

Lets look at O-D-O-D now.
For example a fully charged Blades of steel ( doing +60, is it?) + 60 damage per hit, on top of your daggers base damage. which means its about 130 damage at least. With twisting fangs (which will lets say deal +21 per hit) is 144 damage (dw included) which = to 274 damage+ bleeding (at minimum). We also have your lead skippers adding to this.
Black Spider strike giving Poison so (-7 health degen) and around 30 damage when we factor in base dagger damage, so we are at 304 damage
GPS then factors in and gives damage making about 336 or so damage.

Now this math is off, it's going to do much more damage then that, as we all know.

Now lets say the damage to these off-hands is nerfed.
This combo looses aroung 40-80 damage.
Thats enough to make nerfing the damage worth wile.
Because we have bleeding and poison while all this is happening, the target generally dies without a finishing blow needed.

So I propose going to nerf the Lead skipping off-hands
Black Spider strike and Golden Phoenix strike.
HOWEVER, in order to be fair to these skills
BSS should return to 5 energy, and it should do something when it follows a lead attack (maybe add damage?) GPS should follow the same example as doing a little extra something if it follows a lead.

[card]Moebius Strike[/card] Now what do you do to this, it, is also a bit of a problem unlike the final non-eotn lead skipper (I dont want to mention eotn) [card]Palm Strike[/card] Is affected by IAS's, recharges all your Attack skills if a condition is met, and offers around +32 damage at a 2 second recharge, great synergy with Death blossom.
I cannot think of something to do to it at the moment, perhaps some of you can.

[card]Palm Strike[/card] This lead skipper is a skill, not a dagger attack and has 3/4 cast and after cast delay if I remember correctly. It has around 75 armor ignoring damage at decent critical strikes and has 10 recharge. I would actually like to see a buff to this skill, make the skill a bit stronger in some way and watch its playtime go up (not imba buff plz). This skill should see more play time.
It's also an elite, which takes away from some of the O-D-O-D problems, as they loose their elite for this (and it doesn't refresh attack skills, which moebius does).

[card]Shattering Assault[/card]A 10 energy 4 recharge Dual attack, that strips enchantments, cannot be blocked and deals about 40 armor affected damage.
this skill
1) can be amplified by things that weaken armor or give armor penetration, such as shadowy burden.
2) This skill costs a chunk of energy for an assassin
3) This skill is very weak against things over 70 AL and pretty weak against 70 AL as well.
A previous form of this skill had its power at about +70 damage, sounds imbalanced right? That damage only happened when it removed an enchantment and only the hit that removed the enchantment.
This means if a foe had one enchantment and shattering removed it, you only did the +70 damage once, but if they had 2 enchantments you did it twice!
when you did not you did basic dagger damage. In its previous form, some people requested it had some form of unconditional damage perhaps +5....15 or so, instead we got this, perhaps it is more balanced this way..... >.< Doubtful.

Assassins have alot of skills that punish people for running away
[card]Crippling dagger[/card][card]Scorpion Wire[/card][card]Hidden Caltrops[/card][card]Leaping mantis Sting[/card][card]Enduring Toxin[/card][card]Shameful Fear[/card][card]Wastrel's Collapse[/card]
Wastrel's collapse somewhat does punish people who kite, kiters sometimes do not use skills for a decent while, which lets WC kd them, but why do that when Scorpion wire does a better job?

Unfortunately these generally blow.
Crippling Dagger is inferior to Siphon speed in almost every way.
Siphon functions as a snare and an IMS, that is not a projectile thus its effect happens instant, it also has a better duration and its a hex..
Crippling dagger is a projectile, has a lame duration in comparison to siphon speed, it must hit a moving foe, it deals a weak amount of damage it inflicts cripple but no speed boost. There are ways to make crippling dagger better.

Enduring toxin while potentially lasting forever, has a weak effect that isn't much. You need a large investment in Deadly Arts to give it some strength, and even then its not actually....good.

Shameful Fear is 10 energy,, 2 activation and 10 recharge, on an assassin? It's not really great. on a kiting foe who is suffering -10 degen, Shameful Fear can really put pressure on them to stop moving, however you still need a decent amount of investment in DA to make it good, its very easily interrupted by any one with an interrupt, its 10 energy and thus a rather large amount of an assassins energy to be utility and it has 10 recharge.

Hidden caltrops, needs your foe to be moving for both the damage and cripple to take place. It has an 8 recharge which is nice, but its not great sadly. Buff's in this skill could give it a lot more use Whats good is that even if it ends they take the damage and cripple ,its an okay cover hex but nothing special. It could use a small buff to see more play.
For fun times use with Bulls strike, for an okay spike, KD and cripple.
It also synergies perfectly with Shameful fear (to bad that stinks >.>)

Scorpion wire, has a rather unappealing 30 second recharge, and is half range.
To execute it you must leave aggro range of your target, or them to leave aggro range, it looks like a really cool skill. However the half- range restriction, the 30 second recharge, the one second cast, the unappealing duration in comparion to recharge and the 100m requirement make this skill...need work.

As you can see many skills I posted need work, Leaping Mantis Sting is a lead attack.,,,and we all know Lead attacks could use a little something.

Your probably tired of hearing me talk about skills that need buffs.
But heres a skill that may interest you (but perhaps you heard it before).
[card]Augury of Death[/card] This skill allows DW thats easy accessible to casters, and is one of the problems in caster sins and casters using /A as a secondary.
This skill doesn't need the deep wound, there are other it could do, it also does not need the shadow step.... its pretty moot. If anything Augury of Death can be a awesome version of [card]Mark of Death[/card].
Lets make Augury have scalable heal reduction (perhaps scalable duration too, or make it something like 10 or 20 second duration), this reduction could reach a maximum of 60% (16 deadly arts), this may be over powered and I'd like you toknow im just throwing an idea out there. however instead of causing someone to get spiked, it makes killing just easier instead of flat out killing. A monk/rt/paragon/derv/whatever would want to remove this hex, but they can probably power through it for a bit in emergencies, through the use of protection, and then remove it.

[card]Mark of Death[/card] If Mark of death were to be inferior to Augury of Deat, then lets give Mark Of death -2....4 health regeneration.
Giving -2...4 gives this skill a bit of a mesmer vibe,maybe also buff the duration or reduce the recharge (if they were to that, they'd have to chose between recharge or duration).
This skill would also apply pressure on healers by making their job a bit harder without shutting them down, but also give degeneration which helps in killing also.


[card]Deadly paradox[/card] One of my first ideas was to make it affect hexes and enchantments only to prevent it from being Dancing daggers/signet spam. I don't want it to affect all assassins skills, and killing it seems like a cowards way out.
So lets put it back to 5 energy, but find something for it to do. It was also brought to my attention that my idea would make it so that skills have to be balanced around it, which is a bad thing for the assassin and the game.
One problem with this skill is also its damn name, its supposed to be a paradox.
Giving it functions that are also a paradox are a headache, a name change could really help this function out. However perhaps a paradox is that its not really a paradox....that would work would it not?

[card]Feigned Neutrality[/card] This Skill before the nerf to paradox and its own nerf could be maintaned all the time letting an assassin get off nearly scot free.
A solution to this would be to revert, to 20 recharge (was that it?) but when in it you walk 33% slower, this allows more time to be pounded on and kill the assassin when he's not attacking.

Many skills an assassin has have to much energy cost, or recharge.
One example is caltrops.
Its 10 energy, and 20 recharge for a half-ranged skill. This needs looking at.
Blinding powder also has a recharge I dislike.
[card]Temple Strike[/card] This skill can be powerful. however 15 energy and 20 recharge feels a bit much and you probably know it feels a bit odd. 15 energy is alot on an assassin who only has 25 base energy, which reduces them to a sniveling 10 energy, this also requires a lead, which all require 5 or more energy, reducing him to 5 or 0 energy. Then your dual attack which reduces your energy to
0 0,-5,or -10.
Of course energy daggers and radiants exist.
But then we see the recharge.

[card]Golden Skull Strike[/card] Does not apply bleeding like Temple strike, and thus is far more one sided on who it's trying to shutdown, however it is almost fully maintable with high enough Dagger mastery and silencing daggers. It is also fully maintable with if you attempt to make it so.


Many dagger skills could use some reductions in recharge for today's metagame.
Twisting fang's once rivaling and/or compared to [card]eviscerate[/card] was top of the food chain once in an assassins must have skills. If you look at Twisting Fang's in comparison to Impale, at 16 dagger mastery vs 16 Deadly arts
at 16 DA, impale dose 105 earth damage + DW, thats 205 damage!!
Twisting fangs does 142 damage (basic) and then with base damage of daggers including it can go very high as well, however to compare you must critical hit, which makes TF damage luck based at 16.

Also since 16 DM means your using the Health killing superior rune....

Anyways, TF should be moved to 10 or 12 recharge and impale increased to 16 or 18 recharge.

Horns of the ox, is weaker than Bull's strike which is fine, warriors are not assassins and vise versa.

But for what it is, Horns could take a recharge dip to 10 maybe even 8 recharge.
That or a small damage buff to

+2...12...16
This would not pose a serious threat to the game, if the damage was boosted by such a small amount.
With it being reduced to 10 seconds (shaves off 2 seconds)
Horn's is faster on the usage
,its possible to put it to 10 recharge and +2...13...16 damage

It would mean +26 damage every 10 seconds or about 40 damage if you include base dagger damage, every 10 seconds with a KD.
at 8 recharge it would need no damage buff.

[card]Desperate Strike[/card] Desperate strike is pretty weak for a lead attack. You need to be dying to use it well, essentially if you want to use it....your bringing a skill that says "my monk won't support me well enough so that I dont have to use this". On top of that for its effect its not great, Desperate strike could make damage amplify as you loose more health.

Such as
If this hits you strike for +5 damage
If you are under 90% health you deal an additional +7.....17 damage
If you are under 70% you deal an additional +5...17 damage
if you are under 50% you deal an additional +5...18 damage
If you are under 24% you deal an additional +8....24
or something around that
Making it one of the strong lead attacks, but requiring a decent condition (dying)
Changing it to an 8 second recharge.
, making more lead attacks

vary from 3-6 recharge would allow them to attack more.
The trade off is that 5 energy is still enough that spamming skills is unintelligent.
Off hands being 5-8 and duals being 6-12
Thats just a rough idea however (and there'd be exeptions)

I've been doing some math on critical strikes, the primary attribute and its ability.
1% critical strikes, should be boosted up, assassin damage is typically unstable, the same with their energy-management. Warrior weapons are stronger than assassins by a good amount, getting a critical with their weapon is also just icing on the cake. Assassin damage when not using skills is based off luck, in-short, an unstable gamble. Lets look here http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Critical_hit
Please take notice of the critical strikes table. Following Ensign's numbers assassin Critical strikes with daggers is 21.1% or 18.3% on a linear scale. I'll be using the linear scale.
With 13 dagger mastery and critical strikes, an assassin has 31% chance to critical, better than other classes, but far to unstable in my opinion. My proposal for this attribute, critical strikes, is to increase the innate critical chance this primary gives to either 1.6% or 1.7%. I will use 1.7% for my calculations.
Assassin's dagger critical strikes does about 32 damage on a 60 AL target (weaker, or stronger depending on your points in dagger mastery).This 32 damage happens 31% of the time at 13 critical strikes and 13 dagger mastery. This damage is fine, the way it is, however lets say critical strikes critical per point was increased to 1.7%. This creates 22.1% (22% rounded down) to critical at 13 critical strikes, on top of 18.3% from the linear scale at 13 dagger mastery, an assassin would have 40.4% to critical, still luck based, but more stable.

An assassin's dps is also augmented by his points in Dagger mastery, for each point he gets a 2% chance to dual strike with auto attacks, on top of the base dagger % chance to dual strike which is 2%.
Thus at 13 dagger mastery an assassin has 27% chance to dual strike. Now assassin dps cannot be too stable, but I would propose that this chance is increased be increased to 2.3 per point of dagger mastery.
At 13 dagger mastery this equals to 29.9% (rounded up to 30%) to critical, with the innate 2% chance of daggers this equals to 31.9%, (or 32% rounded up), at 14 this becomes 34%, 36% at 15 and 38% at 16.

This makes assassin auto attacks, still less stable damage than a sword warriors, and not as strong as a dervish's. However this gives them a better role in the frontline.
This change also helps for PvE players as monsters level reduces the chance to critical strike, this buff makes life easier for PvE players, however an assassin playing warrior in PvE is still likely to die.

In conclusion
Dagger skills should become more frequently available, not by off-hands not needing leads, but by shorter recharges I suppose

Lead attacks need buffs

Hit Offhands that skip leads to weaken Duals, if possible perhaps make them inflict weakness if they don't follow a lead, (things that would make O-D-O-D Still usable, but weaker)

Some skills just have to much of an energy cost.
Some require too many attribute points to be of any use at all.
some are just inferior to other skills...that the class already has... and its not a core class with many skills either.

I'm not saying make them do everything super well, or at least im not trying to.
Thus I'll say now, Im just giving out rough outlines, and things to take note of.

BTw im deleting some of my previous posts, since this one hopefully sums up more than they did.

Umm...well that was a lot of stating the obvious, with some misinformation, but you get an A for effort :P.

Basically, ensoriki what you say is true, but lets not kid ourselves here. As long as assassins have to attack in chains and dedicate their whole bars to purely instagibing or w/e, they will continue to /fail.

Sins should be balanced around purely L-O-D(and nothing more), but these skills (at least 1 0r 2) having independent effects that are not related to the chain, so that sins can have more utility and actually serve a real purpose. But I just get the feeling that the efforts on this forum are not being taken seriously, so perhaps we are just hoping for something that will never occur.

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