Assassins overpowered?

well i do sometimes play the a heal monk over a boon prot just because i don't have ot deal with boon sapping energy.

CoP is overated. its an energy hog and is still a situational skill. i prefer setting up Holy Veil before the fight(and i can remove hexes on the team) but i know your talkin about CoP as a condition remover and in that respect its even more situational.

and i dont have problems with migraine mesmers because i can see it comin. Temple Strike has a unrivaled surprise factor.

its fine if it doesnt get nerfed i guess but if it doesnt its gunna take over CA/TA easily

Unfortunatly it is the only really good skill that they have. It also only interupts spells btw, not everything. To take it a step further, you have to mix your strikes in order to pair it up with another 12s skill in order to cycle it effectivly. It does no bonus damage and the condition duration is rather short. Using temple strike makes it difficult for the assasin to also have a snare. The most convient snare while using this skill happened to be found within the deadly strikes skill tree, which is also follows a lead attack. This makes timing rather complicated to say the least. The rest of the snares are dependant on hitting with a melee attack while the target is hexed, hexing the target, or using caltrops spell which gets kinda energy hungry.

Well gee we should just get on the nerf wagon and do eviserate next. By comparison its a lead attack and hits tons harder. You dont need blind/dazed if the target is dead.

And the boon/cop users just laugh as it gets wiped away as fast as it arrives. It is really hard for an assasin to kill anything in a short period of time compared to other damage spikes.

You mean ranger primaries with the assassin secondary. Primary assasins can not just spam this skill. Also, if you also stero type builds, it will be on a 15s reuse not 12. There is not much sense in having a interupt skill follow a 6s daze, nor does it make alot of sense to not use the disrupting strike in a build like that. Both lead and off have to hit as well. Assasins are very easy to disrupt compared to wars and rangers.

See above in reference to the re-use time. If you really want to gripe about something, look at a different eliete that always applies dazed, for longer, if the target has exhaustion. Essentially thats like making an eliete that states "monk is useless", but for elementalists.

Blind, blurred vision, sympathetic visage, spirit shackles, any snare, ward against melee, CoP, most energy denial, ageis, guardian, weapon guard, spiteful spirit, empathy, i could keep going but if you havent figured it out yet they are rather easy to stop.

Other than temple strike there are only 1 or 2 even noteworthy skills. Most of it is rather trashy, unless you like knockdown skills that only work if no one else is around, or posioning skills that only work if they are knocked down, or a hamstring equivilant skill that only works if the target is hexed and so on. I think the biggest joke of the lot is the wild blow that must be the second attack in the line, cycles faster than any lead attack, doesnt auto crit, doesnt auto hit, and uses the same energy cost. There are a few other skills that are interesting with other profession primaries though, but nothing too special. Return for a monk or other backline character is one such example.

Actually compared to say healing touch, id say healing touch is over rated but many healing monks take it. Temple strike is a counter to your "healing" monk who is overfocused on hex removal.

First of all, yes I know there are counters to it. But not half of the ones you listed will stop it effectively enough. Sure if you're set to stop temple strike you can get it, but you shouldn't have to load up on every manner of snare/blind skill just to get the assassin the hell away so he won't use this one skill. I have no problem with eviserate because hell, it's just damage. Damage is just about the easiest thing to overcome in this entire game, for any class. Blindness is really the only skill that will effectively stop it from happening. Snares would, but christ assassins can teleport to you as well.

Also, based on skill description and memory it interrupts if it hits. Not if it hits a spell, the skill description reads "Must follow a lead attack. If this attack hits, target foe is interrupted, Dazed, and Blinded for 1...7 seconds." I don't know about you, but that's pretty damn good. It's hard to get in a 4 line combo sure, but not hard at all to get in two hits.

Also keep in mind of course there's condition removal---but in something like the random arenas, that's not going to happen. Also, one of the most common people it's used on is monks, you can't remove that if you're the one trying to get it off yourself! (Unless of course you bring purge signet, but I rarely ever see that.)

As a whole, when compared to the daze abilities of other classes it's beyond overpowered. It's not hard at all to "spam" the skill, christ I watched multiple times as it was used on me, assassin would switch and use it right again on the next guy. Easy as hell, to no cost at all to the assassin. Could use a longer recharge time or having to interrupt a spell if nothing else.

Yeah, and mesmers and necros are overpowered too, because in random arenas, no one can heal the hexes/conditions they put on you.


Honestly, a 7 second daze isn't that bad. Did you complain when you were hit by Backfire and couldn't cast anything without taking 100+ damage? Or when a warrior was hit by Spirit Shackles, and became unable to attack without losing all of their energy in 4-5 swings?

Good, soft target far away from healers and is snared. You back up and he dies. I did this rinse and repeate for 2 days now with zero healing on a elementalist and a mesmer. It always took 2-3 assasins to kill me or 1 assasin + another profession with the other profession doing the majority of the damage. Even then i always took at least 1 assasin with me. As a monk, i just had to laugh becuase the damage is so pituful that even through the dazed state they could not kill me. The skill is not overpowered for the weapon it is delivered with. If you were to compare it to a ranger or a warrior who is doing over twice the damage per hit, then yeah the parity goes out the window especially since rangers and warriors attack faster with IAS than assasins do without. It is also somewhat akward to fit a re-useable IAS into an assasin primary. Put frenzy into the bar and well, you go squish rather fast. Flurry just drains the energy more and makes you do less damage. If your team had a rit with union, well lets just say you wont even feel an assassin beyond some conditions. Considering you cant keep the dazed on permenantly, i do not understand your argument at all. It would be akin to saying blackout is overpowered. I think you need to take a slightly wider perspective on the situation.

It must follow a lead, so its the second attack obviously and there really isnt much you would want to follow it with. If they are dazed and you can hit them, there is not much point in knocking them down then posioning them. You could do twisting fangs for bleeding and deep wound, but that is 22 energy spent in 3 attacks as a assasin primary assuming a zealous upgrade. That is not something that is going to be repeated often. As a ranger primary, its a whole different ball game though, which is why the skills needed to not be energy based anyway, but that is a different subject.

In practice the skill wont interupt things like say those 5s spirit casting times. We can also talk about power block blacking out all skills of the type and not just spells, while also the blackout not being dependant on the skill actually interupting something. That is just skill descriptions for you though.

CoP is the bane of everyone's existance. If you are a monk and go into 4v4, i dont think that there is an excuse to not bring it. If not, have fun against the blackout version of this skill that is a hex and is not based off of combo attacks, while being in the same skill denomination as expunge enchantments. With the hex version the assasin can also easily deliver the crippled condition and not be required to be a ranger primary to make it work.

Considering that other professions hit alot harder than the assasin, you cant compare it. Considering things like blackout or gale cycles is a total shutdown and allows for damage, there is no argument to something removable like this and has no bonus damage while being on an energy hungry class that will lose a fight to a wand user without using a combo chain. It also does have a cost and it is substantial. If the assasin is doing anything other than just lead hit-> temple strike, then they will run out of energy. Now if you say assasin and mean R/A, then id say that its a skill that should not be allowed for a ranger to use.

No, the other dazed options are underpowered, and I hope Temple Strike is an indication that they're getting a buff. Nobody takes Concussion Shot, not even in Random Arenas, because you can do so much better for less energy to just spam Savage/Punishing/Distracting. And Skull Crack would be bad if it did Eviscerate level bonus damage, let alone the way it is now.

Assassins like piling on conidtions incredibly fast. Therefore, Melandru's Resilience just got useful again. At the very least, it'll let you survive Temple Strike plus whatever else long enough to pound that assassin into the dirt.

You're underrating Assassin energy management but that's understandable considering it's so random. Basing how much energy you have available on the random number generator is a very bad idea, IMO. You can do an Assassin run on a target twice and have a vastly different energy situation depending on how many criticals you get. It's a serious wild card and as you hinted, I expect that if it remains unchanged, E/A and R/A are going to be much more popular due to the more consistent energy they provide.

Regarding Expertise, the answer to that isn't to have Assassin skills use other mechanics, it's to balance Expertise.

The way it seems with the "bonus" energy managment, is that whenever you crit as a result of the extra % from the primary trait, then you get +2 energy. Getting +2 energy roughly 11% of the time is not what id bet money on. That is like trying to count on a ranger hitting through blind in order to interupt someone using res sig every time. Its just not going to happen regularly enough to really give it cause for realistic use considerations. I even tried using critical eye with it at high critcal hits skill and still came up dry over time, which would result in +3e per critical hit.

I seriously do not see E/A doing the combination for dagger skills. Even so, the only difference is that the ele can do combos longer, only to wait longer before being able to use them again in a long set of repeated chains. Rangers with a zealous mod on the other hand can use the skills indefinatly for all intensive purposes.

If you rebalance expertise, then you have to rebalance all of their skills as well, which would just make the ranger skills more usable and the net change would still be low if it still had any reduction to non-ranger skills at all, due to the existance of the zealous mod amplifying the regen rate making the actual cost almost null for most skills used.

Assassins skills all need energy, while a warrior can use adrenaline or energy based attack skills. You can easily get rid of blind and you can easily hit an evading enemy as a warrior. And mobeus strike(sp) is pretty much a useless elite it may sound good. But the sad thing is even with the energy you get from crits you wont be able to pull off another long combo. They have the same armor as rangers and less damage on their weapons. They arent overpowered in my opinion, same as any other random pvp game there is no dominating team theres always someone out there that can rape you. The only skill i'm thinking thats overpowered is the enchantment stripping one, you could run through the entire team stripping any enchants, ouch. :[

Expunge enchantments is definatly usable. The blackout time on the skill bar is minimal, so it isnt crippling to the user. Considering the nature of many enchantments, the enchantments will be refreshed faster than expunge will be. That being said, i think it is a good skill all things considered and is a real alternative to removing enchantment stacks compared to rend enchantments. I also think the ritualist spirit that removes enchantments has potential too, but i havent played with it myself yet.

Trapper pwn Assasin anyday ...
they just rush in and starting hacking @ u right away but ...BOOM ! bleed,knock down,set on fire and blind ...look @ them running away lol

Well well, I tested too the temple elite of assassin, and honestly, it's cool, but well, not overpowered at all... Even with maxed signet of shadow after, even with lot of things I tested, even with Ranger/assassin... My Ranger/Warrior Hammer is doing much more damage, and is more flexible...

This week end, I found assassin all but overpowered...

Here is the combo I run in CA.
Expose Defenses --> Dash --> Black Mantis Strike --> Temple Strike --> Twisting Fangs

Energy: 10+5+5+10+10 = 40 total
Conditions: Cripple -> Interrupt + Blind + Daze -> Bleed + Deep Would

Needless to say, monks loved me.

In my opinion, temple strike is waaaay underpowered. Why do i even have to combo 4 skills to kill a monk, should be made into a one hit - one kill skill

I can understand not wanting to warrant the energy given from critical hits, but if you give an assassin a pair of zealous daggers... well they've still got 3 arrows of energy regen to go along with the zealous effect. Even if you're not hitting all the time, any 5 energy skills that hit gives you back a 20% return... with a 60% return on crits (my chain was based mostly on 5 energy cost skills). Once I realized this I ran zealous all day and energy was never a problem.

I also did enjoy how I could run down to kill the NPC revive priest in less than 10 seconds with one full chain, then come back to finish up the battle.

Energy was never really a problem with a Zealous upgrade. Heck, I even used Tiger's Fury to gain back my energy before I readied my next assault.

And if everyone's crying for nerf on Temple Strike... I may have to agree somewhat. If it hits... any caster is in a world of hurt. But there's so many ways to prevent it it's not even worth it. One of the arguments against is that it can be applied on very quickly. Well, one option to make it "fair" would be to make it into a Dual attack. Then they'll be no excuse not to avoid it. It's probably why Twisted Fangs hasn't been called on for nerfage. Because ZOMG that's like Sever Artery + Gash in one skill! [/sarcasm]

i think they are a little overpowered, best way to kill an assasin seems to be to trap them (i.e. get them to chase someone whilst a team member who has traps lays a load of them down on a choke point like a bridge or something). this gets the assasin nearly every time because theyre so damn fast that they just run straight through the traps, becoming crippled, blinded, burned, wounded etc and pretty much die within seconds (espec when you add poison into the mix).

took a whole team of A/?s out doing that, had 2 ele's casting area spells onto the choke point aswell as the traps from 3 trappers and 2 warriors melleeing them but its still a bit of an extreme method to have to take, and if any of them saw the trap then they could have just teleported past it (another assasin skill that i hated, teleporting in and out of the fight was a pain)

Assasins overpowered? are u kidding me?

I thought they were underpowered

Assassins overpowered? Not sure. They have certainly potential, and are a force to be reckoned with.

Here my story. PvP event starts, not many guildies online so I can't really tombs. I decide to boon-prot some faction in RA.
I get served hard in my very first battle. Hard. I retry another RA match, same pattern.
My face:
Initial response: 'monking just lost its fun...those spikes were sick'
I am not the greatest player around, but know when something is not 'normal'. Usually I do a better job at monking then what happend at those matches.
I tab while lying dead through my opponents again: A/N...Mo/N.....N/W...Ele/A

Quickly I pick up the premade to see what this is all about. After playing the premades, I understand what is happening, and log back on my prot-boon.

I start to pre-kite more actively, especially when i know an E/A is on the team. Now knowing that Assassins are able to 'melee-spike', I start to run and slip quick RoF's to stay alive and try to slip in Guardians when able to break their combo's.
I get hit with Temple Strike (didn't knew the skill when it hit me, just saw the conditions suddenly popping up to my suprise). I'm not sure wether it was the player or the skill, but I realise the daze means two options:
1) run till daze wears off. this suprisingly only lasted a few seconds...
2) slip a quick RoF (0.5 casting under daze)

I choose the first usually, because the consequences of being interrupted can be nasty. It worked out well, the sting was taken out of the premades...

In short: predict what you'll face, and you'll know what to do.

Later that day I also made fun of assassins with a build much like Mavis's one:

This neutered the assassin. Not only that, but the Assassin on MY team thanked me for spreading the hexes. He had an easier time to combo...

I won't say the Assassin isn't overpowered. I think its to early to make any call at it. People don't know how to play the class, and people don't know how to counter it.

Especially the 'people don't know how to counter it' was very obvious.
I tried the Rit/Mo premade. I was STUNNED how little harrassment I got.
For many games, my spirits were left unchecked. I was not attacked. Quite a change from playing a Mo/X, where one gets all aggro. You furfill the same role in the team (healing), but suddenly you are not attacked?

The assasins were, if anything underpowered. The only skill they had that remotely affected me was the aforementioned temple strike. Since temple strike's effects are conditions I just plague touched most of them right back to the source, a tactic that worked extremly well with most of the novice assasins this weekend. I accrued enough faction off of the assasins in CA to unlock every non-elite ritualist skill, which is a profession i see much more potential with (think r/rt trapper).

I lost only once to an assasin in 1v1 combat all weekend, and for the life of me i wish i knew how to translate Korean to tell you who it was, the player was quite skilled. With my n/me i was able to take two assasins at once most of the time as well.

Just think as they add more and more classes, eventually you're just not going to be able to be good at stopping but a few. Just gonna have to get used to you will no longer be uber elite, something is going to pound you silly (monks included). It was actually fun for a change not having to spend the entire battle trying to kill a monk. Glad to see Assassins have a monk killer ability.

I also don't think Anet balances the game based on what happens in 4x4 events. Especially random which is just that, so, random anything can win given the right settings. I saw so many A/W full teams and Ritual teams over the weekend it was funny. I still wish they would work on some kind of grouping que for random arenas. At least make a monk/ritual que seperate from the other ques so there is at least and/or only one monk/ritual per team.
Some of these battles go on forever when you have 2 healers on both teams and I've even seen a 3 on 3 healers on both teams.

Rangers are also getting a new dazed elite in chapter 2. Non conditional. And rangers can bury the dazed under a wall of conditions almost as fast as your average assassin.

Setting of a combo chain with multiple 10 energy skills takes up HORRIBLE amounts of energy, even if you use zealous daggers. It's not something that can be spammed very often. 2 or 3 times and your average assassin is out of commision.

And there's the problem: they pack one hell of a punch against unsuspecting targets, but they have no staying power, horrible dps, horrible defenses and even worse self heals. Arena assassins are dangerous in the first 20 seconds of a fight, and after they land their initial spike(s), they'll be crawling back to their healers or begging for a rez.

I really think the problem isn't going to be any of the Assassin skills. The only one, as has been mentioned is Temple Strike. But as time goes on people will adapt and take it as a given and switch some skills and be able to counter it.

Get over it, the meta-game is changing.

The real problem is going to be the use of those skills when combined with other classes' combo skills. I'll take a few examples from each right fast:

Mesmer: Fragility, yes it has been reduced in power, yes it has been stopped as a FotM. But, but, when combined with skills that cause a condition and deal damage it becomes a problem again. Not to mention the enchant removal available from the two classes. And this would be a perfect class to form a Power Block caster shutdown build with.

Monk: like a warrior this combination benefits PvP mostly with the smiting line. Strength of Honor, Judge's Insight, Holy Strike. Definitely not a nice combination when you take into account 4 pips of energy regain, knocking them to 3 if they use Strength of Honor. They also have a skill that allows them to use Holy Strike for massive spike damage when combined with a relatively short chain.

Ranger: Serpent's Quickness drops their skills recharge times to around 8 seconds per chain. Top that off with Ranger primary with Expertise to reduce cost to 5 or less and using Zealous weapons. Not to mention throwing Tiger's Fury and other support skills that have been relegated to gimmicky or specialized Warrior templates.

Elementalist: This is the class that will allow the Assassin to have great armor with using only 2 skill slots and the energy to actually efficiently maintain that armor. Kinetic Armor and Stone Daggers. All you have to do is use 5 energy every 7-8 seconds. Vulnerable to enchant stripping but when used with the teleporting shouldn't have a huge problem with being killed. Ever. Or maybe they will be used for a quick PBAoE spike then recall out to recharge and be healed.

Necro: Much less obvious, and along the same lines as what the Assassin can accomplish by itself is total condition spam. But akin to the Virulence Warrior, the assassin needs only one skill to start the conditions. Combine this with shadow step and a few other high damage Assassin skills you have a VERY lethal quick strike pressure build. Such as an AoE condition pressure build, using A/Me and A/N to blaze in cast Fevered Dreams then throw Virulence and other conditions around, then recall. Not to mention Rigor Mortis to stop evade stances/enchants and Plague Touch to remove Blind.

Warrior: The problem can be two fold here. Strength as a Warrior primary with the dagger skills used will hurt, ALOT. And now, scariest and most deadly, we finally have a use for Flourish. Energy based, 12 second recharge time attacks benefiting from Strength. The only thing holding this back is the lack of max energy with a Warrior primary. Except it works to recharge skills at 0 attribute points, which means a A/W can use it still gain a small bit of energy, one per skill recharged, still enabling an A/W to spam their skills near indefinitely if they have a battery necro nearby.

Ritualist: Basically the Weapon Spells will be the main problem with them adding high end burst damage via Splinter Weapon, 5-41 AoE damage on next attack, or smaller but probably more versatile and more enduring DPS with Brutal Weapon or the life stealing one. Time will tell with the Ritualist but I don't think it will be near as deadly as the other class combinations other than Monk.

hey man do you forget the skill-------- i will surive, as they give you much condition they help you to heal up, so what is the problem after all????

They are balanced, in most aspects. Is there any other class so easy to counter? All you have to do is make one attack miss and the rest of the chain fails. That's why temple strike isn't overpowered: Make the lead miss and it's just a worthless spot on your bar. Since no one has UAS for either of the new classes, I really doubt you can make a lot of decisions. There are plenty of counters to both, especially one so easy as a melee class.

Hey, over the weekend I messed around with the assassin profession and came up with a build I like to call the 7 second killer. Here are some videos of my experiences:

(Warrior + Monk)
http://media.putfile.com/GW-Assassin

(Dual Assassins)
http://media.putfile.com/GW-Assassin2

(Ranger + Mesmer)
http://media.putfile.com/GW-Assassin3

(Mesmer + War + Necro)
http://media.putfile.com/GW-Assassin4

They aren't overpowered.

They are balanced.

They one of, if not the easiest, classes to shutdown and kill.

With their ability to attack 2.5x faster than sword/axe warriors they die 2.5x faster to empathy, spiteful spirit, price of failure. Infact, they can die as fast as 3 seconds to them. So if the assassin doesn't pay attention and stop attacking and have someone remove the hexes or remove them themselves it's dead assasssin.

IF they do stop attacking with no way to remove then you jsut took them out of combat. They can no longer do anything.

Shackles also owns them. Any skills that make them miss own them.
Sympathetic visage and them not paying attention can shut down their teams monks!

Assassins are very powerful. They are also melee with weak armor and less and worser self-heals and keep alive skills than any other class has. Plus the best damage dealing assassins have access to no skills that keep them alive.

You just have to learn to play. They are really balanced in how they are so easy to shutdown. I can't say the same for ritualists.

My build to 118dmg assassin: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=112042
The only assassins that aren't easily shut down don't do a whole lot of damage/disruption.

Temple strike isn't overpowered. Skull Crack is underpowered. Maybe Temple Striek could use being changed to dual attack and having each hit do one of the conditions, but that's it.
Also aparently there is a bug with twisting fangs doing a double fragility hit. But that's a bug if it's true.

Also flourish is still bad considering it has a 1 second cast time.

The Way of the Fox skill allows your next attack to hit no matter what. That is a built in counter to stances and such.

Now take that and Wild Blow. Bye bye evade stances, you just hit for a critical, and now you can hit them with your chain.

And conditions are very easily removed, especially on your melee fighters, since they are the bulk of your damage dealers.

EDIT: And who would target a A/W for interruption for the CHANCE to hit a 1s cast spell? And 1s of casting compared to 5 or 6 of waiting for your skills to recharge.... Hmm lets think that one through...

If anyone didn't notice, he was able to go psychotic spamming attacks because he was a ranger primary with zealous daggers.
R/A very likely are overpowered. But not A/?
Actually, all of the same counters still apply, and he was fighting idiots. So maybe they arent either.

heck no.

Assassisn can gain 4 energy per attack(you'll average 2.5 when built right), making 5 energy skilsl cost 1, and quickly gaining their max energy back after a few hits.

R/A makes 5 energy skills cost 2, and only have 3 energy regen bars, and they can't use assassin runes.

Assassin primary is definantly better for doing daggers/crit. Keep in mind critical eye is a BUFF not enchantment. IT can't be shattered, stripped, anything. IT's isntant cast. With 12 crit you can have it always on. It's energy cost is nothing considering how much you gain from it.

ALSO that guy had a teamate putting SoH and judge's insight on him. From what i saw the build wasn't very impressive damage wise.

If you take 2 different skills just to remove stances, you're either going to have to give up attacks, defence, or shadow stepping.

The bonus energy from the crits does not happen that often. Expertise reduction happens all the time. Id go with a 5e cost reduced to 1e cost after expertise and zealous mod any time opposed to randomly getting 3e back roughly 10% of the time.

The only way and assassin is capable if gaining 4 energy on a hit is if they had Critical Eye active, Zealous daggers equipped, and hit with that roughly16% chance critical that recovers energy (criticals from weapon mastery apparently don't give energy).

Actually all you need is one skill. Rigor Mortis. That cuts through everything.

But back to what I posted originally, actually you are only using one skill slot for stance counter, Way of the Fox, since Wild Blow is an attack, which should be recharged by the end of your chain enabling it to be used again for more damage. Hence you only lose one slot. To counter something that stops your damage. Fair Trade.

The bonus energy from crits happens alot if you build that way, which you should do if you are planning alot of energy.

I have done 10 crits in a row rarely, and 6 in a row often with the build i linked.

Adn yes rikimaru, and with zealous that's 1 per hit ALWAYS. And double striking is 2 attacks in the time of 1. Assassin attacks once per second.
So that's 2 energy a second from double striking, up to 4 per second.
Even with jsut 16 daggers, no locust strike, your double strike chance is 32%. Consider that 32% chance to gain at least 2 energy from a normal attack and 32% chance to gain 8 energy from a normal attack.
When you play an assassin see for yourself. 2-5 and you're at 15-max energy on average. That's just 3 seconds out of your attacking, less so if you use something like frenzy.
There are so many ways to get energy with assassin, and at the same time lose it if someone sympathetic visage and/or spirit shackles you.

Seriously, what is the point in doing a bunch of damage if you run out of energy right away? Your build is useless if you have no energy.

There are many ways to insure hits.. and many ways for the enemy to insure your insure to hits don't work too.

Actually without SoH and judges on me I can still kill a target in 6-8 seconds, this way just makes it quicker. Ranger primary imo was much better than assassin, sure you get more crit hits etc, but this way I can spam combos without worry.

At less than half health and with 2 21 damage spirits on me I was able to kill an assassin full hp before he could take me down

http://media.putfile.com/Assassin-Dead

Harder to kill? You have to be kidding. I was shredding them all weekend with my mesmers/necros.

You must have seen the death combo I developed . Anyways, it was 6 conditions and I wasn't even using Apply Poison. Yes, I was able to kill most classes in one combo if everything went flawlessly, but at the expense of nearly all my energy (could only pull it off with the Zodiac/energy armor), so it took me a bit to recoup before I could really even fight again. Also, if the combo failed due to healing/blocking/no knockdown, I had to retreat and come back for another pass after I recouped. Personally, I think the high dps/condition hit and run tactics that good assassins have to use to be effective is not only fitting of the class, but fairly balanced as well.

Their heals in my opinion are some of the worst in the game, rivaled only by Aura of Resotration. They either put you next to an enemy (bad) have a realitively long delay after casting (very bad) or rely on the pure luck that you are going to make a critical hit (bad again). The only R skill I used on my A/R was Troll Unguent because it was cheap and provided good healing on the run.

Not to worry. Good tanks are still hard to find and well valued. Also, the way assassins stay alive typically involves running/teleporting away from the enemy so they are most certianly not going to be able hold aggro and act as a tank. Since Warriors can stand their ground WHILE doing damage, there will allways be a good spot for them in my groups just so long as they can do their jobs properly . Lets also not forget about some of the new skills that will come out with Factions that will most likely be tailor-made counters to the new classes.

I'm having trouble finding the thread and am kind of thinking it was removed/trimmed, but one of the posts covering the CGW preview of Factions had example skills that would be coming out for the old classes. One of the skills I remember reading about was a Ranger bow attack that dazed the target when it hit. Anyways, the conditions from Temple Strike only last for 7 seconds, compared to Skullcrack which is 15 seconds and Concussion Shot which can last up to 20 seconds. Yes, it is one of the nastier elites, but if you don't have a team that can cover you for 7 seconds, you may need to rethink your team build.

All-in-all, I think the assassins are fairly well balanced considering their limitations. If you want to complain about balance, I'd attack the Ritualist healers. Alone they are balanced, but throw a Boon Healer into the mix and it just becomes stupid. That, and since the binding rituals don't count as spells, it's kind of hard to shut them down if they are using anti-interrupt skills.

This was a beta event for a reason, it's a test. It has become apparent that certain skills need looking at; Temple strike and Anguished Was Lingwah to name two. No doubt by the time it hits release things will be altered.

A friend of mine likened the assassin as "The mesmers of melee", nevermind for a second that melee mesmers already exist from IW. They are very good at countering specific builds, and doing one thing and doing that well, but they aren't the omfg hax class that people thought they would be. I was pleasantly surprised and relieved that the new classes are actually quite well balanced for the most part, discounting a few bugs and tweaks that need to be made.

Assassins will be the king of orders when they come out. Under a 33% boost (say frenzy), and locust's fury we clocked about an average of around .5-.6 seconds per hit because of the double hits; orders and SoH along with rigor and/or some good enchantment stripping and a water ele will lead to some pretty high dps for ganking.

My only problem with the Assassin, is that they have four energy regen, and, correct me if I'm wrong, but an armor rating slightly above the ranger? Maybe it's me, but, a Warrior, with slightly better armor, only has 2 energy regen, so among my first thoughts were that the Assassin should have worse armor or less regen...


I didn't have much time to play with them this weekend. Tournament.