Flavor of the month seems to be Assassin?

I've forgotten which outpost it was, but in Eye of the North recently all of the builds looked to be variants of Assassin. I've only played assassin as secondary so far. Just curious if anyone knows how assassin got to be FotM, if this is even the case.

Assassins are FotG (flavour of the game) when it comes to speedclears (and when they involve other primaries the secondary is usually assassin). You were probably in Vlox's Falls, the starting area for several speedclears of eotn dungeons involving assassins. The reason? Shadow Form. An example is Snoway, a speedclear team for Shards of Orr.

Sins are almost in every speedclear going and in eotn players speedclear dungeons so yes you`ll see a lot of sins especially in umbrals grotto ( vs farming ) but as you said recently it may be a case of a special event with drops - xmas,canthan new yr etc which then you`ll see sins pouring into and out of longeyes ledge doing vaetire farming

Thanks. I think it was Vlox's Falls or the Umbral Grotto. On a side note, I wouldn't have thought of combining the assassin and paragon professions, but that's only an RP concern.

While Umbral Grotto is the most likely for very recent spottings, there is also the possibility of it being Longeye's Ledge, the starting point for vaettir farming. Ele and mes builds work there too, but it generally looks like an assassin's convention over special drop periods such as Wintersday.

I always lol when at longeyes - partly as it reminds me of rata sum when sins used to dominate raptor farming but partly because i rarely see mesmers there - only seen about 3 or 4 excluding my mesmer when she does vaetires.Can be quite amusing when you sit there for 30 mins and see every so often players asking why so many sins.Not bad for a profession that a few years ago was disliked by so many players but now not many players complain about sins as they a big part in most sc`s

With a well complemented team (proper protection, buffs, etc...), the assassin's dagger chain can be absolutely devastating to any mob. Critical strikes is pretty much on par with Soul Reaping when it comes to e-management. Having revisited the profession recently, it really seems to be the one that explodes mobs faster than any other profession, at least to me.

I really want to know what the discussion was in the live team meeting room when they decided to not only give assassins (described up to that point as being quick in, damage spike, then quick out) the ability to tank, but gave them conditional God Mode for 1.5 years.
It became such an integral part of the game that they couldn't even fully nerf it, despite over a year of warnings that they were going to do so.

It's too late for GW1 and this is just sour grapes talking at this point. However, by making profession less crucial in GW2 they seem ready to learn from mistakes.

I think it depends - when they originally buffed sf ( recharge time wise ) which meant you could be "perma sf" and take no damamge there was many of us sf sins who slightly abused it and went keg farming but a huge amount of players seriously abused it for the short period of time before it changed ( they did the 33% less dmg ) and farmed uw - i knew several players who just for that reason rolled a sf sin , got lvl 20 an ascended asap just to ecto farm and get ooby armor in a few days.Even the change to mindblades in uw from close combat to ranged didnt deter not the higher health they had.
Because of that mainly we had the new sf come around - saying oh players abused it in dungeons by anet was a bit bs as the change hasnt really stopped players doing dungeon sc`s with sins.Nor has saying uw/fow abuse as thats just about the same - most sc`s have sf sins somewhere.
You could say in a way its not anets fault on several skills being op but our own fault for exploiting the skills ( sf,ursan,holywrath to name a few ) and if we didnt exploit then maybe ursan may still have been as it was back then - then again who knows.
Do we blame car companies for making cars that at 30 - 40 mph can kill a child when hit or do we blame the driver who was speeding when it happened ?

But after alls been said and players saying about anets skill nerfing and buffing - how dull would gw be , no new builds arising ,no new tactics being thought of , bosses and foes being boring because each buff/nerf can make the game more interesting for most of us.

Your post was a good read spiritz but I don't think players can be blamed for using the most effective tools available to them. Succeeding in a video game is a bit different to running over a child ^^

We want the game to be balanced and abusing something is the clearest way for Anet to realise that it is imbalanced. It wouldn't truly be abuseable if it wasn't imbalanced.

But I agree, buffing and nerfing makes the game more interesting

The original SF wasn't god mode. It was a cute "get in, do your thing, get the hell out before you get killed" kind of skill that fit pretty well with the assassin's design. Then people started using it to farm greens, only needing it to last long enough to kill the boss in question. Then, people started realizing the potential of chaining it. Me/A were arguably the best permas at that point, and perma SF was actually pretty difficult to maintain without screwing up or running out of energy.

Then....Nightfall. Then....GW:EN. Two expansions, each introducing a skill that made perma easier and easier. It really was only after GW:EN's release that perma-SF turned from an energy-intensive but effective farming build, to something that absolutely any idiot could do to stay alive, almost anywhere. There were just too many skills, and not enough consideration given to the creation of imbalanced builds.

A great post, and one that hits home.

Before EotN came out, I remember with fondness farming greens with my A/E. Cast SF, wait for the chance to get the absolute MAXIMUM amount of enemies in one pull, run in, shadowstep to boss, turn on Sliver Armor, and hope that it kills him and leaves me enough time to pick up the green.

I wish I could still do that.