Improvements on the Assasin

I've targeted players well outside the aggro range Phades, I have no clue what you're talking about. As for the Guild Lord, point, but as it stands teleports are so much garbage in PvE and that's just not good. Even 110% aggro bubble would work, but for Bob's sake Anet, do something.

Starting to hate playing an assassin-ranger because no one wants to group. I have been stuck in Nahpui for 2 days waiting to get a team for the mission. I leave the game running and every so often spam or directly request to join parties and no dice.

What anet needs to change is how the damage is set up. Up front damage should be about the same as a war except that assassins can't take damage as well, but backstabbing damage should be upped 20-30% imo. It would force people to learn how to play the assassin properly by using stealth and waiting for wars to engage first. Groups would seek assassins out for the potential damage they could do. Otherwise the assassin has nothing to offer.
I know this is a valid idea that would fix a lot of things about the assassin, but I also know that they won't impliment it because it would probably take a lot of programming to get it to work right.

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I wonder , when will we get to a compromise.

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Perhaps we could get a single list of what we problems do assassins have, and 1 or 2 (or more) ideas how to solve that problem and what do we actually want. The thing is, i have no idea which ideas to take , and which not, when you all argue all the time what to have, and what to not have. The thing is, when i sign your idea, the next day someone says that's not the way it should be solved and it should be solved other way, or not at all.
Just please ,at least try getting me a list of what each of you would like. Doing that, don't try to give ideas that simply can't be solved, or which takes lots of time to make by the programmers, the Anet.

Ì do not think there are so much problems with sins. Actually i'm playing one everyday and i really enjoy my char. I can kick some ass, and be killed too... thats the way a game goes. Do you want to be the most powerful guy?
We're just about damage dealing
They must wear light armor ( 70 ) , they are sins... not tank or whatever.
I sure deal lots of dmg in pvp, in one combo you can kill someone. Only problems are guys with evade/block, but youve skill to counter those.

If we need some improvment i would say its about Shadow step...
AoD, etc... are nice and useful skills but not enough. We have to get into the fight with full life, like all sins have to.
So i'm more for a improvment of shadow step cast range.
Like we could teleport as far as a long bow can fire.
Do not forget some roleplaying stuff, i really dont want to have heavier armor etc...

well heres a couple that i can think of, also people said

1 pugs think we suck, so maybe on the "rebalance" they could hype of the sin ?

2 the damage should be up'ed, in pve i have yet to see an occasion where killing something faster was better than the warrior way of killing, espcially vs those afflicted with flesh of my flesh.

3 Critical strikes should no deminish the chances on higher, or decrease on lower levels, you don't see soul reaping lessen when a level 28 dies..

4 Shadow steping, increase the radius, people think it might on balance things, but guess what, shadow step in too early and guess where your party is? Yeah, so it would overpower anything.

5 shadow refuge, it is equal to junk, at least remove the while attacking part, anet should want us to not attack, or at least make it so you don't want to wait around for like 50 health, which is sometimes tempting, but very very bad

6 horn of the ox, in pve the mobs aka blobs, are a lot of times not knocked down, they should remove that condition, its just a stupid one.

well thats all i can think of for now..

first off one of the problems we have here in this board is PvP vs PvE...

In PvP the general consensus is that Assissins do just fine... i concur to that and personally I can relate to why... it has everything to do with the assassins abilities to land critical strikes and how effective they are all the way up to and against lvl 20 creatures/players...

at lvl 20 everything is fine their defences their dmg their critical strikes...

I think one main issue that needs to be addresses is that portion of the character... the character is so highly developed on crtiical strikes and when it comes to that point where the assassin can no longer land them reliably because we max out at lvl 20 and the creatures go lvl 21+ we are screwed...

so my main suggestion at this point is to make critical strikes relative to how dmg is calculated...

through character developement while we meed min requirements on weapons we do a portion of our potential dmg when we reach lvl 20 and once again are still meating the requirements of our weapons we are doing 100% of our dmg potential

the only thing affecting the dmg past lvl 20 is the armor rating on creatures on how much dmg makes it through...

critical strikes should relate the same way after lvl 20 if we have a 38% chance to land a critical strike at lvl 20 creatures that are lvl 25 should not negate that chance it should be the armor of the mob that lowes the dmg our criticals do but not whether we land them or not...

this goes hand in hand wtih how dbl strikes are...we know dbl strikes dont work while activating skills... thats fine but again they drop off the chart when the mobs are lvl 21+

we are using daggers... for the love of... daggers should be swinging faster than swords...

if we are supposed to be soft targets and not hearty at all then their needs to be more escape skills ONE THAT ARE PART OF THE CHAIN... add some dual attacks that active shaddow stepping from the attack...

we have lead/offhand/dual attacks make these escape attack chains a dualoffhand to require following a dual attack or something...

otherwise the problem im having at this point is that whilst fighting lvl 28 mobs even though im not the one agroing and i am shaddow stepping in for a kill i cant even execute an attack chain fast enough to get it off before im targets and SMASHED TO PIECES because againsdt these folks theyare doing 100+ dmg again my shiat armor... so whats up with this...

now again i attribute this to the fact that i can hardly land critical strikes... crits are what keep my defences rolling (the measly 65% block chance i get from crit def) they are what keeps my health from dropping so fast (30health from landing crits with way of perfection) and they are what sustains my energy so i can land my chain one attack after another without pausing

BUT I CANT DO THAT BECAUSE OF HOW CRITICAL STRIKES AND DBL STRIKES NOT WORKING AGAINST LVL 21+ MOBS

and i want to point out something... all classes have their signature methods... and the one chosen for assassins is high dmg low defences... well every other class has methose to break out of the mold... defensive monks... mm necros ss necros etc etc... the assassin doesn't have a setup to become a hearty low dmg attacker they are almost forced into the mold that they are squishy targets and are ONLY GOOD FOR ONE THING... there isnt much playable variaties of the assassin class.. and i agree that deadly arts needs some love... youd thing that atr would be what makes the assassin a DEADLY one yet umm its totally negligable...

during the FPE, shadow refuge did this:

give the +x health regeneration
heal whether attacking or not at end
take half base damage

ANet needs to put the "recieve half damage" mod back into shadow refuge if its going to be the only really usable heal.

Deaths Charge has a 60 second cast time!! andit only gets you like 120 health!

Heart of Shadow has a 15 second cast time and only provides about 60-70 health! Of course, this is hopeing you dont teleport into another aggro or that you even get hit once you use it.

Way of Perfection is pretty much useless unless you want to solo Last Stand on the tutorial island.

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The truth IMO is that assassin as a profession is the least thought out. A unique combination of overbalancing and bad design.

1. Survivability: non-existent compared to a ordinary whammo with -7 base damage reduction, 120++ AL and some decent outsourced self heal. You'll be alright if your enchants won't get shattered, stances broken or if you manage to crit hit (and these happen with surprising frequency). And that as long as you are not the target of heavy or medium degen.

2. Shadow stepping: that's cool. Go on and take head start killing that monk. Okay, now you are focus fired by the whole mob how do you plan to get out?

3. How to defend against assassins attack: surprisingly easy. Assassin is a combination of caster and close combat fiend without sacrificing the weaknesses of either. Your efficiency will drop drastically if you are subjected to the following: diversion, e-denial, backfire, empathy, SS, degen, cripple, blind, block/evasion, enchant/hex removal, kiting, SoJ, elemental damage, physical damage, holy damage, dark damage, funny damage or if foe is being healed.

4. Case sensitivity: You do good damage if you actually manage to deliver it. highly specific conditions are to be met before they go off. It's one thing to have a weakness in your build and another one altogether to have multiple. Come on: to be 3/8 useful for 30 secs just because your lead got blocked, 4/8 useful just because your off-hand condition wasn't met. You get the idea.

Just to name a few. The efficiency and fun of playing pve is sacrificed for the benefit of lore and pvp. Even if the most fundamental problems were addressed the initial damage has already been done: everybody hates assassins.

PvE seems to be the biggest of assassin's weaknessess.

PvP they are the strongest and most widely worried about classes allied monks and soft targets talk about.

But the PvE engine and way of mob after mob just makes it hard for an assassin to find a place

I agree with you, Lambent on your opinions.



Ok, so let's see what do we have here. That's the stuff i'm going to write in Sardelac a bit later.


1) Deadly arts skills mostly unuseful, those needed to be improved

2) Bit higher shadowstepping radius, long bow range should be enough.

3) Shadow refuge, remove the "healed when attacked" to "heals you for" and bring back "take half damage". Since, come on, its only mare 4 seconds, that can save assasins life.

4) Critical defences either take up the duration to 10 seconds, or the recharge to 15 seconds.

5) Daggers should be swinged slightly faster than swords

6) Critical strikes and double strikes are meant to have the same chance vs a 20 lvl foe, and vs higher than 20 lvl foe.

7) Assasins should have an easier life in pve. Almost anything can help.

8) Improve several skills of the assassins so that healers (monks, or rits, or whatever) won't have to heal the assasins so much and be able to concentrate for doing something else (like healing other party members, not only assasin(s))

9) Make several combo skills of assasin to chain with each other better, to remove the opinion that 1 combo is better than another, or that there is one best combo to beat 'em all.
(for example, phoenix->horns of the ox->spider->twisting fangs)

10) More useful mods on armors, so that Assasin armor will be better or equal to Rangers(70 + 30 vs elemental), but of course still worse than Warriors. ( Let's say Sentinels here, 100 + 16 from shields + absorb)

Whoa, i managed a 10:P, mah lucky numba:P

I think that'll do. If you don't like either of those, please just write the number down, and say why you don't like it, or customise it.

they are all fine individually but if they all went in together i think the asn would be overpowered... don't you???

alot of those could be this "or" that

the asn still needs some downsides...

just for example on refuge bringing back the unconditional heal part may be all the skill needs to be more "balanced"

critical strikes and dbl strikes alone with the faster attack speed may be ample so we could do without uping our armor... same goes if we were to have a larger stepping radius

Critical defence may also not need faster duration time or recharge time if we are swinging faster and actually landing critical strikes like i want to believe we were intended to...but get busted by KD's and stuff that would disallow action for 6 seconds...

it is actually my belief that they unknowling have criticals working the way they are against lvl 21+ mobs because they have to only really worry about making sure everyone is balanced pvp wise at a cap of lvl 20

maybe they should revamp the deadly arts in the pve arts :P?

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I agree that if the assassin had all those improvements, that it may be to overpowered. and if ANet did fix important things on the assassin, isnt it already to late?

Not everyone who plays guild wars visits the GWG forums daily, or even checks this thread. So really, how many people would know that the assassin has become better, and would still believe it enough to accept them into groups more? This is of course ASSUMING that people ARE NOT chauvenistic and WILL CHANGE their views on assassins, even IF they are more balanced for PvE.

Note on Deadly Arts: These skills aren't meant to be widely placed on skillbars for various objectives. The whole deadly arts skillset is there to improve the assassin's ability to kill a single target quickly.

This is just more proof to me that assassin's soul purpose is to pwn PvP

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i dont think damage output should be upped..its good enough as it is. its mostly the defence that sucks imo.

the critical strikes attribute basically has the same function as dagger mastery with the added bonus of giving energy on a critical hit. double strike pretty much does the same damage as a single critical the only real spike would come from a double critical. id much rather see some kind of passive defence attribute there giving you an added bonus of being missed or to dodge/evade incoming attacks.

just increasing armor values doesnt solve the problem if you ask me. assassins arent meant to be tanks. youre not forced to play a hit and run assassin but that IS the general idea behind them. then again, teleport ranges are so short theyre pretty much useless. maybe nice in pvp but even in there its not that hard to catch up.

just my 2c.

Well, i think it's time to set those in priority order, and then post it and see how it would do. I hope that Anet would make at least 1 of those come true, and that you can help me with persuading Anet.


Viva la assassins! <lol> ;P

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I think anet knew what the hell they were doing when they made assassins, as they did with every other class. Its the players that gives assassins a bad rep, not the class itself. With PvE armor and a +5 armor upgrade, you have 90 armor while attacking, not bad at all. The assassins damage is already great: The standard pheonix-twisting fangs combo can drop am unsuspecting caster in a few seconds. Even if they have a monk backing them, it can pressure the monk to heal the teams target, and the target of the assassin.

Armor is not really the problem. It's the lack of either a good self-heal or a good stance type defence that makes assassins look so weak compared to warriors.
I'd like to see:
1] A good self-heal that only works if NOT attacking (eg get out, heal, go back)
2] Better defences while attacking
3] Energy refunds for successful combos.

Assassins almost work in PvP, but in PvE they're just weak. The 'all offense' paradigm just doesn't work very well against hordes of AI monsters.

The one thing I would love to see on an assassin:

A skill that shadow steps you to the enemy and that can be re-used more than once per encounter. Nothing more, nothing less. Death's Charge is just a joke with the re-charge it has, and forcing assassins to use AoD as their elite severely limits them.

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