13 Jan 2009 at 20:48 - 82
Why assassins suck.
Classes are largely defined by their primary characteristic. If a primary characteristic is unused, then the entire reason to run that class as a primary is lost. The description for Critical Strikes states “The chance for critical hits increases 1% for each attribute point spent in Critical Strikes. For each critical hit, the Assassin receives one energy at rank three and above, two energy at rank eight and above, and three energy at rank thirteen and above.” This attribute works with attacks, both skill attacks and auto-attacks, the assassin is an attacking class.
While an assassin can use any type of weapon via sub-profession, look at the weapon: the dagger. First look at some auto attack numbers. Wands meeting only the base requirements, which at 9 in any caster attribute is already met by any caster, deal 13 damage per second. An axe at 12 + 1 + 1 costing 97 attribute points deals 23 damage a second. Daggers at 11 + 1 + 1 and critical strikes 11 + 1 costing 154 attribute points deals approximately 22 damage per second(*). Wands receive no further damage increase aside from meeting the weapon requirement, I feel these numbers are important as a no-requirement baseline. Daggers, despite having a much higher attribute point cost, still fall behind the damage of the axe.
(*)Dagger damage, is dependant upon double attacking and critical hits from the dagger mastery and critical strike. I have had this damage vary by over 500 points during a three minute period. At a total damage of around 4,000 and the 500 being a good 1/8 variance, which just did not appear with wand or axe, I did not feel like exhausting as many tests as it would require for a definitive test, but the numbers did appear to converge at 22 and I stand by what I wrote.
Raw DPS is certainly not the whole picture, now look at skills. Wands have no attack skills. Daggers have only energy based skills, further arranged by lead, off-hand, and dual which make up the attack chain. Axe predominantly uses adrenaline. The more a warrior hits the more adrenaline they have, the more an assassin hits the more energy they have, seems fair enough. However a warrior with more adrenaline gets off more adrenal based skills, an assassin with more energy does not get off more energy based skills as those skills are limited by recharge.
We have yet to address increased attack speed. This will obviously increase raw DPS and will increase base DPS proportionally When this is combined with the energy vs. adrenal nature of the weapons the axe will be able to get off even more attack skills while the dagger is still limited by the nature of recharge. Increased attack speed will also increase the skill based damage of the warrior, but will not increase the skill based damage of the assassin. Worth noting is that warriors have multiple IAS skills and the assassin class has no native IAS skill, requiring a commitment of the sub-profession and locking out any possible other sub-profession abilities. Also worth noting is that the assassin’s primary attribute is already applied into its raw DPS, but the warrior’s main attribute adds extra damage on skill usage.
Attack commitment must also be considered. A warrior is only as committed to a target as his physical relation to another target. Simply how long it takes him to walk to a new target. An assassin is committed through the attack chain. There is no way around the attack chain and due to the limited number of skills on a bar only one attack chain can viably be brought. Additionally an assassin also has the warrior’s limitation of target commitment and must be next to the character they are attacking. The assassin has the shadow stepping tool (more on this later) that can circumvent this. Shadow stepping is not free, costing both energy and a skill slot. A warrior will switch targets sometimes as often as once a swing and with enemy targeting shadow steps at the lowest recharge of twenty seconds, shadow stepping just cannot keep up. Any defensive ability, not necessarily limited to protection prayers, in effect on a target will usually force a change in target. For a warrior this is as simple as movement and an adrenal skill lost to block is a loss of that single adrenal skill. The assassin has the same movement issue as the warrior, but an assassin skill lost to block is the lost of not just the rest of the chain, but any further chain until that skill recharges.
At this point it should not be hard to conclude one very important thing about the dagger weapon: Daggers simply cannot effectively be used to pressure.
What is left for the dagger? The attack chain, or more generally called the spike. This is the unloading of damage, in this case attack skills, in a short time window. The assassin’s spike will do one of two things, either kill the target, or not kill the target.
If the attack chain will not kill the target, then it and by association the assassin will be regulated to spike assist. Now any class can spike assist, but it seems odd for the assassin to be a melee regulated to spike assist and having to spend three, four, or five of their skill slots on spike assist. While their assist on the spike is much larger, as well it should devoting more than usual skills to spike assist, it also takes much longer for all of the assassin’s skills to play out resulting in a larger window for the target to receive assistance. This larger window often contrary to the fundamental idea behind the spike.
If the attack chain will kill the target then the assassin is capable of an unassisted solo kill. Any thought and aptitude in creating the assassin’s chain has been exerted prior to placing the skills on the bar; existing chains can simply and effortlessly be copied. Once the attack chain is on the bar executing the chain merely requires activation of the skills in order. This is to say pressing buttons in order will cause the imminent threat of player death.
Look at this in regards to the history of the assassin. The assassin saw very little use in eight versus eight combat, but was abundant in four versus four arenas. In the smaller arenas an individuals skills weigh more heavily, the attack chain makes a greater threat, and there are less people to rely on for support. When assassins have been brought into the eight man arenas their intention is to split their opponent into smaller groups akin to the smaller arenas. The assassin’s threat in eight man fights is terrible, it is and has always be forced to fight in situations with lower numbers (I will address the few exceptions in a moment).
A killing chain takes only as much skill as it takes to activate skills in order and this creates the threat of a kill. If nothing is done a character will take a death. This requires no real skill to create, but it takes skill, the identifying of the chain and the coordinated reacting to the chain, to counter. The further people involved in the combat, the more important the actions of the individual and the more powerful the killing chain. The reward is high, the skill level required is low; a very bad combination for a competitive game.
In arenas with lower number of players, the killing chain is more effective and as a factor of skill versus reward horribly overpowered. It is only seen in eight man arenas when attempted to reduce the eight men to fewer numbers where its attack chain is overpowered. As such a weapon that is overpowered low number skirmishes, and fundamentally underpowered in full eight versus eight situations is a poorly designed weapon. Daggers by design, suck.
Aside: Here is the footnotes of the assassin builds seen in 8v8 themed builds. The permeations of A/D which will be covered in the next section and the shattering assault chain. The shattering assault chain is unblockable and strips protective enchantments. This does two things, first it not subject to a large number common defenses that will stop the attack chain and require target switching, second it removes any enchants the most common on an attacked target to be removed supporting any other characters spiking that target.
Now an assassin does have the option of wielding weapons belonging to its sub-profession. This innately puts the assassin at the disadvantage of not having runes or headpieces to support the weapon and begs the question of why use an assassin primary in the first place. The only possible answer is to use critical strikes. This has seen use almost exclusively with the dervish’s scythe as the critical damage from scythes is huge and only in pure spike oriented builds. This isn’t a question of the assassin’s balance, but of the scythe’s balance. Scythe damage has raised issues of balance, but that is a question of the dervish and is beyond the scope of this post.
Shadow stepping is a mechanic that allows instant teleportation to a target. Prior to its introduction movement and positioning were of top importance. Crippling shot had its energy increased from 10 to 15, yet never saw any reduced use in play. Teams could mitigate tons of damage by proper positioning and kiting. Against top teams a warrior could not venture into the backline without receiving some sort of damage mitigating hex/condition. This was skillful play being rewarded.
Shadow stepping removed a significant bit of this. Assassins or any melee class with an assassin sub-profession could immediately shadow step into the backline and no amount of proper positioning on the target’s part would allow for more time to react. That was the entire point of positioning, a warrior headed into the backline was targeting the backline. After shadow stepping was introduced a melee could immediately switch from linebacking to full on offensive spiking without the movements that give it away.
While shadow stepping skills themselves were placed upon a large enough recharge that they cannot be used for general pressure switching, their use during powerful spiking, team pushes, and attacking targets away from the group makes the times that positioning was most important be unaffected by positioning. It took a skillful element from the game and not remove it, but make it largely unimportant.
In reacting to this we have had a switch from active defenses, which include positioning, to more passive defenses and the “defensive web.” I am not going to go into a discussion of the defensive web, but I and many others consider it to be a symptom of the poor health of a competitive game.
My argument is that shadow stepping is a poorly designed mechanic as it removes the advantage of positioning at the time positioning is most important and it supported in creating and requiring a defensive web. Shadow stepping, as a mechanic, sucks.
Assassins also have a variety of spells including enchantments and hexes. This creates a conundrum as a casting assassin is an assassin who is not attacking and vice versa. The most appropriate time to be casting is paradoxically the most appropriate time for the assassin to be attacking. Target hexes and self buffs give away the attack chain and can often reduce the chain’s effectiveness more than it supports. Other spells and effects may best be most opportune to cast while the assassin is in the middle of an attack chain and must abandon the chain in order to catch the opportune cast. This is largely why casters are casters and melee are melee, it is often just practically not possible to do both at once. This is not to say that assassin casting skills are not useful. However this is saying that if assassin spells are useful, they are more useful on a non-assassin caster.
To further confound the problem exists the skill deadly paradox. This skill has no use upon a dagger wielding assassin, but creates problems with all non-attack assassin skills. Part of a spells balance is derived from its recharge time. Spells that are strong without deadly paradox can easily become too strong with it. Other spells might not be strong enough until pared with deadly paradox. The skill is correctly labeled as it does indeed create a paradox the more viable spells the assassin has, the less balanced the class.
A melee assassin with spells is a conflicting interest, so why not just have an assassin that is only a caster? Deadly arts and Shadow arts have no wands, staves, nor foci. The assassin primary attribute is just outright bad for a caster. The only advantages would be headpieces and runes for the attribute lines. So far there has been only one template for caster assassins, it acts like a ranged attack chain, relies entirely upon deadly paradox, and other than using spells instead of attacks, shares no other caster characteristics. These assassins are not casters.
The assassin was designed to be a melee, casting fundamentally conflicts with the nature of being melee. Assassins themselves make poor casters. The assassin spells fit better on non-assassins. Assassin spells are poorly designed, assassin spells suck.
In conclusion every aspect about the assassin class is flawed at a fundamental level. No amount of numbers tweaking is going to change it. The only thing that would is a complete ground up redesign. Assassins suck.
