Assassin changes needed

This is based on some of the skill/function changes that have taken place in the past and are still in effected for the assassin class. Read on if interested.

First of all, i want to mention what i think has stuffed up assassins...
Aftercast delay for shadow stepping - .75 secs sounds like its not a lot but it has a massive effect on assassins (imo anyway). All shadow stepping skills kinda suck now.

Reasons:
- Shadow stepping is supposed to be quick and catch people of guard WITHOUT notice. In the DEVELOPER UPDATES this was the sole reason why they applied this aftercast .... "oh look!!!, here i am, you might as well prot yourself up since i cant do anything instantly".
When spikes are executed in GvG's for example, "is the opposing team supposed to know who's being spiked?!!?!!".

- If aftercast is an absolute necessity, at least apply some kind of snare to it. if the person starts kiting before you do anything (if your lucky you might get 1 hit in) ... well that's a shadow step wasted already (shadow step recharge is long enough already).

- And when your an assassin in PvP, u want to get in as fast as u can and out again right away after finishing ur combo because your base def sucks as it is (make assassins live up to their name of being "top priority to kill")

- Also when your a sin that relies on shadow stepping to take out someone, when you unleash your combo on someone, the downtime is massive for that one player .... rendering them useless for like 15-18 secs. And slowly running into battle is not an option for a sin that can barely defend itself simply because the skill bar is occupied by all offensive attacks to make the combo worth executing, without having to rely on a monk.

- Try catching a Ranger by surprise now! If the ranger noes what hes doing (and in most cases do), all u get is a whole lot of whirling defense in your face and another dodging skill chained after it.


Ok moving on to an old old skill change (it has only really occurred to me now how useless it has become)...........

Horns of the Ox ... ill outline all of the negatives then justify reasons why it should change a little bit.
.... in comparison with Trampling Ox, i find Horns of the Ox useless.

Horns of the Ox
- weak damage
- high recharge, 12 secs
- knock down condition (if target adjacent to ally target isn't kd'd)

....now Trampling Ox
- Stronger damage
- lower recharge, 8 secs
- KD condition (target must be crippled for kd and cripple is always VERY nice on target when your a sin)
- u can fit cripple condition into a combo so easily (hex + mantis thrust + jungle strike + trampling ... so on, so effective already)
- whatever u could do with horns of the Ox, you could do 2 times better with trampling (snare + high damage = more pressure, limited kiting)


when you take everything there into consideration, which would u choose.
if you ask anyone in-game which skill they'd use in their combo, chances r they'd say trampling ox.
i guess all i'm trying to say here is that, these skills that serve the same purpose differ so much, and the one that has more negatives than the other got nerfed to do even less damage.

I'm a big fan of assassin and think that a few things should change.

feel free to argue against me OR bring to the spotlight other negatives

*sorry about my spelling beforehand, it has become a bad habit as well as the Balding of words*

You're seriously arguing for the return of shadow-step instagibbing?

No thanks.

Insta - whatever, but there is a point here. Assassins are supposed to be unnoticed, otherwise they are nothing other than squishy melee characters..

well thats the thing, they cant be unnoticeable, that would make them unstoppable. thats why adding sins to the game was a big mistake

Pretty annoying post to read really.

.75 isn't a long aftercast time so read the developer updates to see an explanation of why this was added.

If anything needs a nerf, it's exhausting assault.

The entire concept of ignoring the positioning aspect of game play was flawed to begin with. The way Guild Wars PvP is structured, positioning plays a rather large role, and allowing one class (or anyone who takes it as a secondary) to completely ignore an aspect of it is bad. I don't mind instagib builds, however, I do want to be able to prot against them. To be honest, it's easier sometimes to spot warrior spikes than shadow step spikes, EVEN with the aftercast.

Horns and trampling were nerfed to reduce the amount of damage insta-gib sins were putting out. The ability to suddenly appear, and demolish (just about any class) is once again, bad for game play. However, the fault there lay mainly with the ability to suddenly appear and unleash your chain before the person could react.

I for one am entirely against the reversion of Shadow steps, I feel that they were a broken concept, and still are a broken concept. There are still plenty of ways for an assassin to kill people, unblockable enchantment stripping comes to mind, as well as having one of the highest dps outputs in pve.

As for your ranger argument, any half-decent ranger would have hit natty stride the instant you showed up anyway, the 3/4ths of a second is meaningless. (The better rangers would have d-shot your lead)

Depending on the format of pvp, you can still get sneak kills without a shadowstep (hint: go attack people that are already occupied). However, you can solve the 'low armor going to get my face bashed in' problem by paying attention to positioning. Don't overextend, and target people who are overextended. Unless you have no idea how to play the game with the positioning aspect, and thus require the means to bypass it with shadowsteps.

Everyone knows that sins are for PvE Farming (hehe). Why do you think they made Perma-Form even easier than what it was. As for PvP Sins the delay isn't helpful but think about it being from one place to another in a 1/4th of a second and still a decent amount of unnoticeable time. Before it was every sin had one so it was even more predictable, oh look that team has a sin and I'm a monk better put up guardian or shield bash because hes coming for me.

With the after cast it has make some sins move away from them and using other builds like caster sins, and other well thought of sin builds that req. weapon swapping and such. Just use your brain find a skill bar that works for you and stop the QQ.

~Zidane~

So what exactly is your argument here?

Obvious troll is obvious.

ive read all comments and have taken em on bored.

just want to throw an extra comment out there about sins having such great dps though.

Reason y i believe sins are as strong as they are, are coz:
- they r squishy indeed and combos can be interrupted relatively easily (putting them out of play way b4 any huge dmg was ever dealt)
- for the amount of dmg they put out in short bursts, makes up for the time lost while recharging ur combo up again as well as energy (depends though).
- and for all energy lost you r sure to expect some sort of result.

AND My main argument is to revert the .75 aftercast back to nothing

one question --- "Why dont ppl use assassins in GvG?"
and dont say dps coz thats a positive lol. if anything, theres more negatives now.

I am greatly against this terrible idea

From my veeeery limited experience, armor would be the answer. Your Assassin frontline puts a lot more of pressure on your own backline simply because they take far more damage than Warriors would. And Warriors also have extremely good DPS, don't rely on enchantments as the other melee does, it pretty much sums up why Assassins aren't as popular as a Warrior in GvG.

Plus the if the other team uses Warriors they can lineback the Assassins putting you in a pretty hard position.

at the moment thats not a valid comment, a justification would be nice with it.

Perma-Sin doesn't use PvE only skills, so use that for GvG. :O

I personally don't use a Sin in PvP, but even in PvE I rarely use Shadow Steps. I learned what enemies to attack, and when to attack them. Even when using hero+hench, I know how to make them aggro first so I can pick my target carefully.

Only reason I see a change needed is because people want a way to play an imbalanced build. Imbalanced gets nerfed for a reason.

I main an assassin and I haven't even noticed the aftercast o.o.
Thats probably because I don't bother with meta builds and come up with my own, but the idea of instantly killing somebody without any kind of skill isn't good for any profession.

I've got a better update. Delete the Assassin profession from PvP.

OP, stop posting. You don't know anything about competitive balance.

all they need to do is nerf Hidden Caltrops again and we're pretty much there.


/signed

Delete monks: they heal people so I cant kill them

Delete Eles: They cause AoE and whipe my party

Delete Warriors: They have to much armor and health

Delete Rits: Spirits kill the game

Delete Necros: Invincy MM's ruin AB

Delete Mesmers: Hexs and interupts are lame

Delete Rangers: Touchers are so noobish

Delete Dervs: Just because



Lets all play Paragons!!!!!

Uh... what...?

Ignoring obvious troll above, this idea is terribaed, because Shadow Stepping takes positioning out of the game, which is very important.

TL,DR: Shadow Steps need to stay dead

Well I'm not really a fan of shadowstepping either, but when I look at how assassins were designed it seems to me that they were designed to overextend for a short period of time to deal damage (thus the large armor-ignoring dps), but be punished for trying to do too much (thus the low AL); shadowstepping seems like a pretty important concept to the class if my logic is somewhat valid. That said, the aftercast was added because it was being abused... but maybe there's a way to make both sides happy?

How about removing the aftercast effect and instead creating a sort of longer precast delay? The skill description for a shadowstep would read "In 1 second you shadow step to target foe..." Then, during that 1 second delay something would show up in the effects monitor of the target indicating that a skill was used (something like Tengu's Gaze that says "An assassin is shadow stepping to you.") I don't think it should be a hex, but rather a non-removable effect like TG... this would encourage teamwork in organized pvp (the targeted player would have to call it to alert his prot monk), and would still allow the skills to be used through holy veil or hex breaker. The model would already have an in game precedent, too, so implementing it might not be that much of a problem.

I can't say for sure yet since I can't really test it, but I think this could still provide the targeted person and/or their team a window to react (like the aftercast was intended to do) without detracting from the assassin's designed intent. I could maybe see it being abused in lower level pvp though (RA especially since people tend to ignore enchants and hexes on them anyway), so anyone have any thoughts?

Raul, your idea could work, but the 1 second 'effect' indicator would make it even harder for sins to spike a monk, and even easier for a ranger to d-shot the sin's lead. 3/4ths of a second before you can attack them is fine. Like I've said, I'd rather have shadowsteps removed from the game entirely.

As I've said, and other people have said, shadowsteps are broken. In fact, the assassin as a whole is somewhat broken. It does not have a definite role for it to fill other than splits and ganking.

as for this:
People don't really use assassins in GvG anymore because, as far as I know, warriors can pressure and spike, while sins only really can spike. The sin as a class was broken, AoD sins can still be used, but the current meta-game does not seem to favor sin-splits, thus you don't see many assassins. I haven't seen many dervishes either, but they, like the assassin aren't terribly good at pressure, whereas the warriors are the kings of pressure.

KD is a powerful mechanic in the game
less QQ, more pew pew
/notsigned

The best post

Well...I have been playing only sin for about 1 and half year...all updates didn`t bothering me but aftercast was the end (now I stated ranger :P )...As I see it, point of sins is to quickly strike (kill) and escape...thats why they are so fun. And Anet has added aftercast to nerf warrior shadowstep builds, but with that they have destroyed most fun part of playing sin...my opinion at least...btw, idea of warrior with tons of armor who is shadowsteping is hillarious

First, there are shadow step skills that did not get the aftercast (that is Augury of Death, Beguiling Haze, Ride the Lightning*yeah, an ele skill, still worth bringing up*, Shadow Fang, and Scorpion Wire *that's just to foes*), want a shadow step so badly now? try them out.

.75 seconds isn't THAT much anyways. Although .5 seconds would be a bit more fair for the sins, or maybe a hurt on non-assassins because I think that was the biggest problem.

Yeah, Horns could use higher damage, in comparison to Trampling Ox.

I hope to god you are joking.

how about this... if a ranger has whirling defense or a monk has a warrior blocking stance and your finding it that much of a problem, go /N and fit rigor mortis in its what i do... Also to the monks complaining about protting yourself...hit tab if you see an assassin maybe you should pre-prot yourself instead of just whining...blah blah i couldn't tell he was by me blah blah
.75 isnt that bad considering if my chain works i can take a monk down in 8-9 seconds. i think no class should be perfect any time or always... i think .75 is fine

/notsigned

I might've actually taken that seriously if you could actually spell.

I don't particularly like shadow steps in PvP because it removes positioning and mobility from tactical play. Adding aftercast, which you wish to remove, was a step in the right direction. I would much rather see them removed or reworked entirely.


Please use a spell checker if you have diifficulty spelling. Random bold tags are annoying.

Sins need a buff. They are just a weak melee class now and with so much reliance on chaining skills they are too fragile and inferior to other melee classes. Dervish/adrenaline skills dont necessarily need to be chained and so attack skills being disabled/blinded/blocked suffer much less consequence... so what are sins good for now? A 123 unblockable chain? Yeah.. that's about it. Shadowsteps are dead but i agree with the aftercast. You can deal with the aftercast by using shock or iron palm but both have big drawbacks (long recharge + exaustion). Having low armor and fragile attack chains leaves a limited style of play. So what can you do? backline/ganking overextenders? Sins are weak in pvp imo

Moebius sins were decent until they decided to kill the damage on dual attacks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vallisahllirium The best post And Anet has added aftercast to nerf warrior shadowstep builds, but with that they have destroyed most fun part of playing sin...my opinion at least...btw, idea of warrior with tons of armor who is shadowsteping is hillarious

That’s the primary reason for shadow step nerf, most people just assume sins were too powerful and it needed nerf.
If you fail to notice a sin chewing on you back in pvp environments then learn to be vigilant, observer your surroundings.
Even before the shadow step nerf, you could hardly see sins in gvgs.
It's was only due to secondary classes started to take advantage of assassin skills, e.g. wounding stike ragers, criplalsh/hammer, crit scyth sins, all with shadow steps.
Noob Gladiators was one of top gvg guilds abusing sins in secondary classes(rather fun way), however you could hardly see them in gvgs any more.

I used to love playing assassin and shadow step skills are staple to majority of sin builds (imo).

It's a shame, just to stop secondary classes from using core assassin skills they've crippled sin profession for what it used to be.

lol, oh and whats an invincy MM ? Are they the necros that take a few seconds longer to kill after you interrupt their skills?

ppl who say warriors have lots of health make me rage.
they have the same amount of health as any other class except dervish!
RAAAAGGGGEEEE!!!!!!11one
also ur whole post was baed.

Yes, that was a joke. I'm sad that you had to ask though

Shadow steps don't need to die, they just need to be made less degenerate by placing conditional restrictions on them.

-Shadow steps that return you to your original location ( AoD, shadow walk, meld ) Should fail on the return trip if sins are not in casting range of where they first teleported from.

-Line of F***ing sight. Seriously. Assassins shadowstepping through walls and bridges is nonsense and bad for the game.

-No more of this "push button, teleport, 12345" nonsense. Add conditions. Like "if target foe is using a skill, you shadow step to their location." or "if foe is below 50% health".

i would like to see it that any form of shadow steping is limited to the sin...

Well, it is sad to ask... but some people really are just that dumb to make comments like that (like the OP).

Luckly, most regular posters here know that you aren't one of those people Magma.

Moving AoD, Meld, Shadow walk, and deaths charge to CS with 75% chance failure with 2 or less would also be good.

The only reason why I said I hope your joking (which was not a question ) is because of this:

Yeah... that doesn't really fit with the description of Critical Strikes. Although they don't do much for Deadly arts either I guess. But with a % failure of 6 or less would be good for Assassin secondaries (and 3 or less for Assassin Primaries, for the low level assassins to enjoy their Death's Charge).

what difference does it make for secondaries if a primary skill is % chance to fail at 1 or 16 ? They still cant use it.