Assassins beware the "love" is brewing!

As a monk, I usually play a protector. It's the only way to keep newbie players alive. There are many casters who try to tank, warriors who try to tank without any +armor/stance skills (a warrior without those is the same as a caster with some damage reducing/avoiding enchantment). If a particular guy keeps charging in, I find it best to just let him die. Most missions can be completely fairly easily with 5 or 6 competent players, and wasting energy on someone who will die anyways will make the monk useless too. Rather have one useless guy than 2.

ok all proffessions are good but i see wut u mean, i for one have a assassin but they die too fast and u gotta keep rezzing em and stuff and this also really annoys the heck out of the assassin too

So I guess its fine to play an assassin or anything else without regard to keeping yourself alive? I mean, why should you need to, when you've got those faithful monks back there.

I honestly haven't monked in GW:Fs yet, but I am sure that an 'Sin being able to play their class will be much less of a problem for the monks, and therefore less of a problem for the team, compared to the Whammo 'sin. If your monk has to use more mana/time to keep the 'sin alive than they should have to, they can't use that time to keep the rest of the party alive, which will often = failure.

Assassins are great however YOU HAVE TO USE THEM RIGHT.

The key to using an assassin is making up for their crappy defense. Try using a defensive stance or you could try teleporting to a nearby monk when you get in trouble with warriors and other assassins, or even better you could use both.

However thats for PvP. For PvE I think that assassin should run in after the warrior has gotten the group to attack him. However I'm not sure about PvE assassins because I haven't played one.

nice reply did lots for the discussion NOT :b

Op
A lv 15 assassin join me in the Wilds mission last night and I was at the point of ripping my hair out. Poor Vana my Lv 20 monk struggled to keep him alive, how are new monks going to manage? But I am not worried the problem will probably fix itself with the new profession being better understood after a few weeks of play.

A lot of assassins are stupid. But I play mine right, I get in (with aura of displacement), kill a few casters with weapons combos, then get out. (if i take heavy damage I get out before that). But monks also have to learn to take advantage of the assassins fast attack speed. Vigorous Spirit should be your new best friend if you have assassins in your group.

From my experience, assassins are no worse than any other class when it comes to leeroying. As a healer, im usually yelling at an ele or necro that think they are tanks but why be mad at an assassin, he is a melee attacker, what else is he supposed to do? Should he just wand the enemys to death so your job is easier? OP grow up and learn to to be a monk.there are a lot better things to bitch about in this game than your inability to heal properly/bad luck in a pug/both. Get over it.

PS PLEASE revolt, most of you bitchy monks are worse then the new healer hench anyway. save me the trouble

I have an assassin and i agree with your point that they are NOT TANKs. I tried to just teleport in and start owning....was i wrong. The assassin class will defeintely not be full of noobies this time around unless they like getting owned.

The problem isnt simply with the inexperience of play, but with the build itself. The build requires one to be in close proximity to do damage. It is a reach out and touch someone build. To kill their foe they must kiss them regularly and kiss them often. This is coupled with armor and defenses that do not adequately protect them. A real assassin is a real warrior or espionage agent. They may poison the food in infiltration. They may kidnap and drag the hapless victim out into the desert and beat them to death slowly. They may fire their ranged weapon at 150 to 750 yards. The game assassin is halway modelled after fictitious beings invented so a guard who fell asleep on his post would not get beheaded when someone snuck by him and real warriors fighting in non-chivalrous methods. By taking the half-way approach the game assassin is not what it should be to make sense ina game environment.

Any touch combat character must tank. Don't believe me - ask a touch necro. I know a couple. Ask a Mes with Illusionary Weapon build if they don't tank. My monk runs Heal 16, Divine 13 just for when my friends want to tank these classes. Because the assassin build is inadequately armored for their style of fighting they are going to suffer likewise.

Also, the level of play matters. I play all 8 classes. Even though I manage 8 hours a day playing, I am still a casual player. My assassin has yet to get any shadow art that will help her escape. (She may not until Mid-July now that ANet has frozen my account until NC Soft bothers with production.) If I were playing her right now you would be bitching about her not teleporting back to where ever you are. That is not always possible. One must have the skills. One must not be blocked by twigs, rocks, ghosts, and peasants.

However the greater value is in getting the assassin to be what they are in reality and virtually. Assassins are tanks. They are simply tanks that do not play fair - in reality and virtually.

Fitz

The only Assassins I have grouped with (and I usually take henchies) were some of the best players I ever played with.

You guys complaining are probably taking Firestorm on your monk anyway, so, you know.. Do not throw the arrow which will return against you.

I'm sure we'll all do just fine taking Sister Tai and Jamei over some whiney little monkey

Aura of Displacement is perhaps one of the greatest pop in and out tools the assassin has. You can use it to very effectively leap into battle, and when you start getting major damage, remove it and pop out. Before I had it, I kept Return on my bar and would madly select a monk and use it to get out. Either way, Assassin is very different. And I know the grief (not from healing so much, haven't been using my monk a lot right now, but from the assassin end). There is a saturation of Anime/ninja fans out there that are making assassins. And they want to play them just like their favorite anime/ninja character. This doesn't work, of course, and they end up dead. I do know though, that Assassin's don't have a high threshold of pain.

It is a learning process for such a class. The style is so different from what we've had before. Hopefully, things will improve with time.

Such a good post! Helped the discussion move forward : b how about some positive suggestions as to ways to help the new class improve.

Apparently the healer henchies are also going on strike...

I was out with another assassin lastnight trying to get some quests done and we decided to grab the henchies. The healer was doing a semi-decent job healing everyone except us. Both of us were totally aware we weren't tanks, used teleporting, etc ... and it was like she just didn't care about our health.

I've been using recall on the monks and allies so I can get in and out when I start taking alot of hits and it seems to be working out fairly well! In most cases, as soon as I get back to the monk I'm healed and able to run right back in and start taking out another target.

As far as making the wammo a priority goes... if I had $1 for every time a wammo has caused the entire party to die because they rushed things and failed to understand that others don't run on adrenaline, I'd be pretty rich! Even when the monk(s) stand there spamming their energy because it's too low to do anything, some like to just keep on dragging more in. Some will get so upset that the energy dependent players need a few seconds to regen that they will bail. Is that really the type of player you would make a priority over another? Don't get me wrong, there are alot of excellent warriors out there ... but each profession has their idiots. If you refuse to heal assassins because of them, you might as well refuse the other professions as well! (if you decide to go that route, please stay out of my parties or delete your monk all together - a dead assassin is useless, but so is a healer that doesn't heal)

*coughs* Anyway, assassin still a new profession... while some have started to get a grasp on it, some are taking a little longer. Refusing to heal or verbally assaulting them (seen it way too much recently) on a mission isn't going to help them become better.

*wanders off*

I think gross generalizations should be avoided.

I've played through Prophecies first as an N/R, then as a Mo/W. Now I'm an A/N. Speaking as a monk, I understand the anger directed towards noobs who shouldn't be tanking. Speaking as an assassin, I understand the need to tank if the opportunity allows me. Assassins can be very good tanks if you know how to play them. And they can be awful tanks if a player miscalculates his or her target, and has bad timing or an useless skillset.

It all boils down to the player, and quality of assassins thus varies wildly. The same can be said about warriors, mesmers, necros, rangers, ritualists, eles, and...monks. I'm sure everyone here has partied at least a few times with a monk who simply had no clue how to heal or protect.

Spreading ill feelings towards assassins helps build prejudice against an entire class of players who are probably very different. Some of them are certainly quite good, and it would be a shame if they're not allowed into a PUG because some people stupidly infer they suck because of their profession.

Flashing Blades is a must have for PvE assassins, its simple. While you attack you have a 50% chance to block attacks. It makes you die slower. USE IT!

there are now two types of players in factions right now. there's the prophecies veterans, who understands the intricacies of GW battle mechanics. then there's the newbies, who do not. the fact that the difficulty level of factions shoots up MUCH faster than prophecies, and that you can conceiveably have a level 20 char by the time you reach the mainland does not help at all. what we're ending up with is a two-tier player skill community: we have the veterans who can play the new classes effectively, and the newbies who get squashed left right and center.

think of it this way: we probably all went through our personal "wammo" phase when we first got into GW. now the newbies are going though the same, except they're against level 20 mobs that can frigging SPIKE. this is painfully apparent in assassins, who are essentially elementalists with kitchen knives, spamming a few cheap circus tricks.

yes, the shing jea monastery is a much better training ground that presearing, but i fear that it's not enough. if we're going to expect everyone on the mainland to know stuff like armor and aggro control, we need to make the monastery more comprehensive.

'Tis why I don't group with any assassins whom I don't know personally. And all of my friends know how much I dislike the class so they're not too suprised if I'm.. a little... late with a heal.

Sadly I concur.. And yes, I play a W/Mo predominantly.. but I'm not an idiot.

But just a few days ago I was trying to finally finish up the Ring of Fire quests (don't ask, never got around to finishing the last two missions with this char). I ended up in a PUG with the very definition of the Leroy Whammo idiot.

A completely infantile name. Full Knights armor. The very second the mission began he cast mending and charged off into the fray. For the rest of the mission the SOB never stopped ONCE. I'm not joking when I say it was like a parody video making fun of these types of people. The monks were screaming at him to stop all the time. Hell, everyone was screaming at him to stop most of the time. Thankfully, he wasn't much of a talker, and oddly enough, he didn't get himself killed every 3 seconds either, so it wasn't unbearable. But it was incredibly ridiculous. This guy was playing like he was on crack. Constantly running ahead. He would never stop for anything. He thought he could take on the whole world.

/signed

and i dont think they're going to learn - wammo population got 2nd fav char

I predict that sins will improve roughly a week after wammos finally figure out that mending isn't all that it's cracked up to be and monks finally stop spamming healing breeze.