Assassin discrimination (with guide on page 2)

I'm actually very fond of the new classes, and of Mesmers. I always make room for a Mesmer in my party (if there's one to be found). They are quite possibly the most over-powered class in the game.. and yet no one seems to notice because so few have figured out what it is they really do.

A well played Assassin is an asset to any group, in any PvE setting. They can hex, bleed, poison, and spike all the squishies into nothingness before your ranged allies can get to them, without taking much or any damage in the process. Ritualists are misunderstood, as well. I've run my Ele with my Fiance's Rit, and we've sat here and compared the damage flashing across our monitors. The damage output by his Channeling Rit far exceeds the damage output from my Ele running any sort of nuke or spike build. On top of that, he has faster recharge and lower energy costs, and NO EXHAUSTION! Needless to say, if I ever want to "nuke" I'll be making a Ritualist and leaving my Ele as I intended (Earth Prot).

The problem is not that no one knows what Ritualists do, or that there are no talented Assassins playing the game. The problem is that there is a pre-conceived notion that the Assassin class is sub-par. There are some skills that need tweaking, but that hasn't left the class useless in the meantime. Some people also need to remember that it IS still a new class, and some are slow on the learning curve (not everyone who plays GW scourges the internet for tips & hints on how to play a class). Put plainly, they'll learn faster playing with other competent players than they will playing with crappy AI. Take an Assassin along with you once in a while, and ease your own worries by asking them about their build (maybe even offer some tips?) before you head out into whatever mission or quest you teamed up for.

I've actually started to see a lot of this lately where a duo of a monk and assassin will be looking for a group in a mission spot. I guess guildies are helping out their assassin guildies, which is a pretty smart idea. It's either take the monk and the assassin or keep spamming for a few more minutes to find a monk.

I agree with most of what's been said. The Assassin is discriminated against but that's the fault of a lot of Assassins. I run an Assassin myself and I do enjoy playing an Assassin. After playing for a while, I've been able to boil down being an Assassin to one statement: if you're going to play an Assassin, act like an assassin would in real life. If you can, avoid taking on the bodyguards a.k.a. Warriors and go straight for the target a.k.a. Casters and then get out. Rinse and repeat.

That is a very brave and honorable thing for the monk to do. The leader is also cool for kicking out the intolerant tank

Its good to see some people disciminate less near the end of Factions.

oh in very late missions it's safer to assume that peple are at elast marginally compitent (reguardless of class), than in earlier ones. Bad ragequiting suicide assassins rarely make it outside the imperial section of the game.

Ok I have to say I was playing the asassin class. I died alot. But long the way I started to get really good. I have learned what anet had in mind for this class. This class rocks. Has anyone seen the movie electra. Well this class is for someone who is skilled! you have to think about where you are going to go. Where you want to be. If you want to rush in like a tank you can but you have to think about the skills you have to take. I would not rush in like a tank, i would you use the teleports.

If anet adds more health armor to the class I would welcome it. however it is about trying to master the class.

On the other side I love the throwing daggers skills, For the asassin class I would also like more skills where you can throw stars, and darts.

One thing that often leads to the discrimination against Assassins, besides the obvious number of people who simply don't play them well, is the lack of understanding as to the role of a 'sin.

I have played my 'sin as a quickstrike hit and run spiker, a ranged hexer, a monk bodyguard, an off-target monk and mesmer killer, a condition generator/spreader and many other roles, some successful, some not.

The key to avoiding generalized discrimination is, as one poster above me put it, selling the build. If you are playing a hit and run character and you are looking for a group, post that in chat: "Hit and Run Spike Assassin LFG".

It won't stop the simply oblivious players out there from discriminating against you based purely on your class, but it will let the more competent players who are forming parties know that you have a firm grasp on your role, and understand your limitations. The great thing for the Assassin is that the less competent people will continue to discrimintate, and teh better players will recognize your value and send invites, increasing your chances of getting into a quality group.

Heck, if you somehow manage to convince one of the less competent (read: discriminating) party leaders to take you along, you may find that you were better off with henches anyway. Conversely, you may actually teach them a thing or two about the value of a 'sin, making the world a better place for all of us.

I've seen a lot of Assassin discrimination while palying through factions.

The worst part was at Boreas seabed, where I was kicked from 3 groups and spent 4 hours trying to get a group before my guildies logged on and helped me.

Boreas Seabed is one of those missions you can't hench as a melee class or Ranger, otherwise I would.

As a point, when playing through the game with henchies, I found it much much easier as an assassin than with any of the other classes I've played through as (War/Ele/Rit), although that might be just because I know all the missions..

You know, it's a shame that people get stuck with a few bad players playing a certain class and then refuse to group with w/mos or eles or assassins or mesmers or rangers or necros or ritualists just becuase they had bad luck and got a crappy player playing that class. Sure, some people suck at playing their class, or playing with any class (sucking at the game in general) and not everybody is worth trying to teach.

Know what helps? Ask someone what kind of build and strategy they are running before you start the mission. If they don't answer, or just say:
"I am an ubar tank"
or "I am an awesome nuker"
they might be a good player, but there is a much higher chance that they are not skilled with their class and/or are going to be spamming "U suck n00bs" and "heal me st00pid monk" than if they say:
"I sprint in, draw aggro, body block, and use my hammer for knockdowns and interrupts"
or some other simple explanation of their play style. I don't particularly like redoing missions over and over, so I'm going to choose the people who take the 60 seconds to tell us what they do when they play. It really is about someone being a crappy player or not that is going to make your group have a cakewalk or a nice little stroll through hell. Talk to them and see if they sound like they would make a good addition to your team and if they have any idea what they're doing, and you get a much better percentage of decent players.

I completely agree with this. Imho its not so much class discrimination but many ( if not most ) of players who play sins are just naruto kids who have no clue how to play their class.

If you know you are going to be 1v1ing a warrior, you can win it with almost any class if you tweak the build. I'm not familiar enough with ritualist to guarantee it, and warrior is to constrained to try to specialize anti-warrior. But with an assassin, I can win against warriors easily - all it takes is 13 critical strikes, 8 illusion magic, zealous daggers, and distortion. Or go assassin/ele with blinding flash and conjure lightning. Or glimmering mark. Or water snares and kite like mad. Or go A/Mes with signet of midnight + signet of malice. There are so many ways to win a 1v1 with a warrior its not even funny.

thats true. In Alliance battle, I specificlly go after the warriors since they are mostly easy kills for my assassin. trappers on the other hand seems hardest to kill because whenever i get close i am on fire/blind/crippled/bleeding... warrior at most usually only put on bleeding and deep wound which can be removed with plauge touch (nec skill) and you are free to continue your combo. with high enough crit strike and zealous dagger you should almost never run into energy problem.

I agree with you there. WAY too many people don't bring any form of teleporting and just charge in. Not only that, but the fact that energy denial severely cripples them due to their MINISCULE energy pool doesn't help either.

Assassins are like watered down warriors IMO. They have:
A. less armor
B. more energy dependence (that doesn't help since you have a small pool)
C. less protection from Spiteful Spirit, Empathy, Clumsiness, Mind Wrack, Spirit Shackles and all forms of hate because you have less time to react to skills that activate on hit
C. more dependence on enchantments (shadows refuge shattered continuously = dead assassin)
D. one mandatory skill to not die every 10 seconds: return or aura of displacement
E. more vulnerability to skill disabling because of combos
F. more newer users playing them since it is a newly released profession
G. crippled literally when crippled

Ur right, assasins have shadow arts for a reason

yea I think my assassins cool and all but many ppl think they suck when they do their job. I am not a tanking type of assassin and if i die once they go crazy, but personally for alliance battles, id go with a warrior

All I can add is... whatever. Assassins may be the red-haired orphan of the month, but most groups will happily take a badly played assassin over a finely played mesmer. I am dreading having to bring my Mesmer across to Cantha. Finding groups will be a soul numbing experience. I'll wait and see if chapter 3 even requires Cantha before I do. Alliance Battles are good enough for now. That same Mesmer has earned enough amber to outfit all my toons with Kurzick top shelf armor.

Other intersting posts in the assassin forum of GWG:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3054880

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3055208

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3043557

The bottom line is that the assassin is perfectly balanced for PvP at the expense of PvE. Deficient self-healing, soft melee armors, high AI-target priorty, rapid fall-off of critical strikes vs. high level monsters, only two worthwhile elites (AoD and Temple Strike -- barely elite-worthy), etc... all lead up to one very unproductive, high maintenance PvE class. Many are already starting to become dissolusioned at their assassins. I know more than a few player friends who have permanently shelved their assassin toons.

The class has problems, but ignoring those issues and waiting for the learning curve and more strategies to develope doesn't seem to be helping. The limited skill set makes the assassin a fragile spike damage delivery toon and nothing else. I can see why so many are giving up.

I've already finished the Factions campaign with my assassin and am almost done with Hell's Precipice. I see little or no chance of ever entering Urgoz's Warrens or the Deep due to lack of assassin PvE groupability. The present skill set and L70 armor simply don't work well in L28+ areas . PvP assassins are fine, but their PvE world isn't.

I wish Assassins were never created. Just when the common W/Mo started to understand the game, the Assassins came, and ruined everything again, just like the Warriors did. Sorry, but I hate Assassins, and to be honest, I can understand why those people don't invite Assassins, because it's about 95% chance that they'll suck. I don't like discrimination most of the time, but sometimes, it's for a reason.

Assassins shouldn't whine though, as Mesmers, which usually are the best players of the game, never get invited, just because noone knows what Mesmers are capable off.

I think the main problem is that players judge the assassin by the henchie assassins. The problem with that is that the henchies are stupid. I had to say when my assassin was down to the last two missions, I had to say that I knew what I was doing. I was even told that he should just go with his secondary skills. (He is a ranger for a secondary.)

My tactics, whilst I may not be the worlds best player I have spent time learning my assassin. Just capped Assassins promise and it has now allowed me to do what I feel an assassin should be doing.

I seek out the softer targets, but the softer targets are usually the key to most battles! Take out the monks, mesmers, necros and then rangers and last of all the warriors. Hit and run is the main thing, I load up with way of perfection first then shadow of haste and then deaths charge to my target, hit them with dancing daggers which also counts as a lead attack, then kick in assassins promise, then fox fangs for my off hand and then deaths blossom as my dual attack, if they are not dead by then I can usually get off anothe dancing daggers before teleporting back. Most of the time they are dead by then and my skills are fully recharged thanks to assassins promise.

The one thing about my main skill set is that apart from shadow of haste all the skills cost 5 energy.

I do change around if I'm working with some guildies who happen to be mainly rangers! Since they use brambles I take some knock down skills instead.

I had issues when I was not using any skills to get me out of the middle of a fight! I have ranger as my secondary and really only use it for my pet. The assassin seams to me to get body blocked on a regular basis even with my own pet! That is why I use dancing daggers as a mini ranged attack, I can then if need be do deaths charge to get me past any blockage.

Do not get caught up in the heat of battle and think you are a tank! It is easy to do. Concentrate on the weaker targets, when I say weaker I mean less armour and melee damage skills.

I'm not going to stand up and say I do X amount of damage with my build and I own most of the things out there! I do however like the balance my character gives me.

My guild tolerates Assassins, still get the oh no an Assassin quips but provided I don't have to be resurrected in the game then I don't see it being a problem!

Having the low energy output worked very well prior to having assassins promise and I intend to look at some of the higher energy skills to see if they fit just as well.

One thing that I also like to do in areas with several bosses in is to equip distraction skills.

Most classes have problems getting into certain groups, until the assassin or should I say the people using assassins start using them in the right way, then it will be difficult to get into some of the groups.

I remember when I first started, I used a necro and found it difficult to get into groups at the earlier stages of the game. At higher levels of the game MM tend to not have many problems getting into games infact most variations of necros tend to be welcomed with open arms now. I hear the same was for mesmers, what do they do? Unless you see people actively fighting by your side I guess it is easy to overlook what these characters bring to the party.

My skills are maximized for my assassin skill set the rest went into beast mastery for my pet. Other than that I do not use anything else but pure assassin skills. I was the same with my necro, I only used necro skills until recently where I used mesmer as a secondary for the arcane echo.

I think it will be a few more months before you see people asking for assassins to join a group. If your build allows it, then try and pack some skills that help manage health and energy, become relitively self sufficient and then people will start to see they do not need to spend all their time resurrecting you. If you have no shadow stepping skills then get in there do 1 full combo, lead, off hand and then dual attack, then get out of there. Most of your skills will provide some sort of additional damage and early on in the game this will help you to finish them off.

I still dont see their use in pve... even in pvp they are soft targets....

pretty useless..

Just completed factions with my assasin and it was tough for he last few missions to get into a group. Then on the last one no one would take me so I took 7 henchies and beat Shiro.

Then I had to do it again with a PUG as I forgot the 75k for the imperial armour lol.

I think I'll take my assasin back to tyria where it should be pretty useful as most of the enermy (until the late mission) aren't over lv20.

Why do people assume that when preference is shown that it must be some unfounded bigotry? The kid who was picked last on the playground normally is the one who is expected to contribute the least to the team. The assassin similarly brings with it the greatest liablity without huge benefits, so people tend to avoid them.

Assassins don't hold aggro.
Assassins don't hold aggro.
Assassins don't hold aggro.

A good warrior will aggro hold the aggro and tank while dealing damage. A good assassin will do his attacks and run away. When the assassin runs away, any other aggro drawn at melee range is running towards your backline. If you do have an assassin holding aggro, you might as well bring a tank who will take less damage and require less healing.

I like assassins in PvP since they fill a niche that is largely empty. Good pvp assassins are effective at quick strikes and are difficult to kill. I am sure that assassins will always have a place in some PvP builds.

never seen this problem when doing PVE

Assassins either port away or if they back off, the aggro is on the tank



how often do people see aggro chasing assassins ???

PvE uses = Kill squishies while tanks tend to other warriors.

PvP uses = pretty much the same, but you'd be better taking recall + death's charge or something.

People who discriminate against sins/messers etc are pretty 1 track minded and allways go with the 2 monks, 2 tanks, MM, 2 nukers line up.

Very nice, except for the constant 15% DP. At least, it plays in the assassin's strength : dying (sorry).

As a necro, I love the double reusable bomb Death Nova Assassin, Animate Flesh golem, Vengeance, Death Nova Flesh Golem, repeat. Even with tough mobs, this provides one extra corpse per cycle (Anet corpse mathematics are strange this way) -> raise minion ? putrid explosion ?

Thing is, it might not be very fun for Mr Multiple Grenade ..

If you don't retreat before you hit the 100 points limit of monkish power lavished on you. Thing is, you have to keep your eyes on more than your skill bar and ennemy health. When your own health bar starts stuttering back and forth, and little enchant icons start blossoming, it's time to fall back before your local dwayna outlet short circuits.

It's the dance, I tell you ...

I honestly think the bigger issue with assasins is that...there is waaaaayyy too many of them. In some areas it's nothing but Ritualists and Assasins trying to find a party to get into.

Yes, I'm sure some group leaders won't take a particular class (this happens to a lot of professions, not just assasin), but poor play and squishability isn't the only reasons why assasins aren't allowed into groups.

As a monk, I discriminate against assasins.
First, few bring self-healing
Second, Any class who believes they should be able to take every blow is wrong. Even warriors need to retreat.
I am having difficulties with missions on the kurzicks side, mainly the one where you defend the forever trees. You get assasins who think they should take down seige turtles, however, once they shadow step to the seige turtles, they need massive healing(WoH, Heal Other, Orison of Healing, Healing Beeze, Remove HEx, etc) and the healer henchmen aren't good either. They do what I should do, focus my energy on the squishies who keep me safe.

LOL....I don't know about that. I just finished running my Mesmer through Factions and didn't have much of a problem getting into groups. Heck, when looking for a group I'd spam "Mesmer LFG....at least I'm not an assassin" There are plenty of missions where a good interrupter is highly sought after. Assassins have been a blessing for Mesmers because we're now not the low man on the totem pole so to speak.

That's the problem with Assassins right now, their role in the party is still to be determined. Nobody knows what to do with them. It took while before people started to value the role of the Mesmer in groups, and now we're all labeled as "interrupters", even though we have lots of other skills we can rely on. Eventually, Assassins sterotypical role will develop. It wasn't too long ago that Necros were not a sought after class for parties, but now they're in high demand. The role of the assassin will evolve naturally.

Well, I rebuilt my assassin to dual with ranger (from monk secondary). At level 12, she was having trouble getting to into a group for the very first mission on Shing Jea Island! That is just crazy stupid.

With her Crit Attack and Marks ramped with Wild Survival (for Troll Unguent) and a zealous short bow, she deals serious damage scoring a critical hit far more often than not, can self-heal (if the warriors hold the aggro halfway well) and stays just out of the way of hostile warriors while still protecting the casters behind somewhat. Usually by the time the warriors get to the enemy casters, they're either already dead or in their death throes. In other words, she can hold her own given the chance.

Problem is, since so many have jumped on the Assassin as Tank bandwagon so early on and/or have little to no idea how to play the class (at all), it is very unlikely that the rest of us will get any opportunity to show that we can be effective. Of course, I had the same problem nearly a year ago with my first mesmer (eventually retired) and my ranger (who completed Prophecies and is now causing mischief and mayhem in Cantha).

Maybe it just takes time for people to pull their heads out of their collective posteriors. Guess I'll just wait it out.

Assassin hate will always be there, by the last mission though, people actually want you in a group. (1 warrior + 1 assassin = dead shiro).

I really dont mind assassins that much, so far the worst players that I run into are warriors and necromancers. Even better are players running dual superiors so they die in a single hit from an ele boss. Whats even better is leaders inviting rits thinking that they would heal, but not even asking. So I ended up being the only healing character in Seabed with a dual superior necromancer who kept walking up to enemies and dying over and over. Though having Life Sheath and Energy Drain was great! Still beat the mission though, that mission is a joke. The Kurzick one is a pain in the ass.

Any Character with a maximum health below 400 in groups is the worst pve character ever. (Yes even 55's, 55 is a solo build not a group build [on that note, somoene tried to 55 us in gvg, shatter enchantment one hitted him]). I however will not allow more than a single assassin in a party though. One assassin is enough. When I monk, i do not heal assassins that are in enemy mobs, if they want healing they must pop back first. If i see such good assassin behavior, I will gladly spare some of my energy on him.

I disagree with the position that Assassins are not Tanks. They are Light Tanks. Their primary attribute is that of a melee weapon. Currently the most effective use of the Light Tank is as a suicide bomber (A/E) or as a ranged character which never uses their primary attribute but relies on a secondary of marksmanship (A/R). There must be a reason that not one single pre-made assassin build exists for PvP, but they do for Ritualists.

If ANet was attempting to make the Assassin a quick strike non-tanking class from the beginning they would have supported the class as such. Instead they grant us the class with no escape skills what-so-ever until after we begin to get into the advanced quarters of the game. The early player of an assassin has no opportunity to practice Word of Recall or Viper's Defense. If such skills were available from the beginning then it would make a difference in player skill development and community class perception. By not providing them from the outset ANet has showed they intend for the assassin class to be a light tank.

By light tank I mean a support tank, not the sole tanking individual. They have substandard armor for tanking in the general sense. They are however, and remain, principally melee fighters. Their skills as you mentioned in your editorial are highly chained, which means time requiring. Because the skills can only be executed in a 1-2-3 pattern (assuming the assassin is true to using class skills) they must be in close melee proximity with the foe for the required time for execution. Once they have administered a strike or strikes that cause them to be a threat presence higher than that of the primary tank, the ANet's AI turns the attention of the foe upon the assassin. If, and only if, the assassin has a teleporting escape skill are they guaranteed to be removed from that foe (after being struck) for a sufficient duration that the heavy tank may re-assert field presence and gain the attention of the AI.

Until this situation is corrected all assassins must either be light tanks awaiting sufficient access to skills to play as you perceive them, or they must disown their primary skills and abilities to play their secondary. As rangers have the same energy, AL levels, and combined with distance skills this has become a favored option.

Fitz

Having experienced the "discrimination" with my assasin first-hand I pretty much insist on an assasin and a mesmer in team when monking. Also : I find the best teams for any PvE -quest/missions are the ones which are balanced .

I play an assassin, and quite a good one, until recently I was stuck at Raisu Square, due to all this Assassin hate I had to try to play at times when a low player count meant people would be desperate for anybody in their party, as such, it was hard to finish.

I have never been insulted due to my "squishibility" or ever been called for trying to tank. Simply because I dont do that. I have defended Assassins in every thread of this basis, and there are alot, and simply put this is how an assassin is played....

11) Dont tank, let the warrior carry the agro and slip past to hit up the ritualists or monks. Id they are healing themselves, they arnt healing the other enemies.

2) try to hit from behind, the guaranteed critical hit from behind means your get energy alot, so with a fast recharge time on moebious, you can keep the last part of a combo going indefinatly, especially with Zelous daggers.

3) For the love of god recall FTW. Return is naff, you have to be in range and arch! Recall allows almost a full radar distance between you and your enchanted ally this allows you to zip out of danger.

An assassin cn be really good, people just need to know how to play these new classes.

wammos have decent armor in case they leeroy.

assassins dont.

pretty much sums up the assassin hate.

Doesn't change a thing, high armor means they die last. Wamo overaggros, can't keep ennemy focus, hostiles take down back line, finishes wamo.

At least assassins die in their tracks, there's a chance mobs won't notice the rest of the party.

Assassin/Ranger may be a compromise, but there's just too many of them, at least before Closer to the Stars. They're not frontline, and you can't just have 4 ranged assassins with no tank (or maybe with a minion master creating a flesh wall).

They still die a lot though.

As mentioned before, assasin's are there to kill the spell casters not the warriors. They run behind the lines and kill the soft targets pretty quickly.

Take a look at the PVE enemy assasin's and you will see that they always run past the warriors and attack the spell casters.

I like Assassins, my Nec gets 10 energy every time they go down


We had an Assassin as a guild guest last night as we were one short for GVG. This was the first time I’ve seen an Assassin play as I would imagine it should be and achieved a flawless victory.

There are good ones, just not that many.

Assassins are like ninjas, and everyone knows ninjas kick butt and never die. That's why assassins like to tank. It's obvious really

Well, in PVE the assasin seem to have been made to be antiplayers (good for monsters). Actually many skills in the proffesions skill bar seem more adapted to be monster skills.

Ritualist have it much easier, since many areas in Factions require the ritualist spirit "shelter", because of heavy monster spiking. Its almost mandatory to bring it.