Ideas for the New Assassin Profession

wouldnt that be the same as strength and i would prefer a natural dodge.

I'll make sure this thread ends up on the Alpha forums

I don't like the idea of invisibility on a game such as Guild Wars.
For an assasin-type class, firstly I think dual-wielding almost goes hand in hand with it and must be looked at.
Secondly, putting in skills that won't cause unbalance will be difficult. Invisibility certainly would cause a lot of issues, but things like sneaking, or moving really fast, backstabs, etc., would be ok.
But I think the class needs something more too - Just being a stereotypical assassin who is able to sneak and kill and stab etc. is really not enough compared to the other professions on GW. He needs more than one weapon to choose from, and he needs skills other than just those under the label 'assassination'. I think the assassin class will be very hard to develop and they must bring in a lot of ideas if they are to make a good profession.

Exactly Symeon, like Alex said, think outside the box.. so I'm looking at all the skill lists for characters, seeing what skills they have, how they pertain to their class, and then trying to see how an Assassin could work.

EX: Offering of Blood, its necrotic, with the health sacrifice, but it helps energy regen like healing.

So maybe there could be an Assassin skill like..

Cover of Darkness
Nature Ritual type, terrain altering
15e, 60s recharge
For (5-15) seconds, you and your allies can travel under the cover of darkness, lowering the chance that enemies can engage you by (50-75%).

It's a well-known fact stealth isn't a good idea in games like this, since it's pretty easy to make mods to decloak.

That said, I like the idea of armour that changes colour with the settings. Maybe 15k/FoW armour could have this attribute, w/o actually affecting the gameplay?

i think that the assassins primary attribute (that youhave to be a primary assassin to have) should be

Spell Resistance: For every point of spell resistance you have a .66 percent chance to completely resiste spells cast on you.

this attribute would have very few linked skills, so that maxing it out to get the 10% chance of spell resist(with 15 points, im assuming there will be no help of spell resist) would seriously decrease an assasins other potentials.

im just thinking that a class that nukers and pyromancers will be less effective against suits the assassin style...

also, if assassins use katars just like in diablo 2, i'll be pissed. look at that that picture again.. those aren't claws, they're throwing knives.

i think we're looking at a knife mastery skill set that involves both melee and ranged skills. that would be sweet.

i think if there were stealth in guild wars, it would have purely strategic value, so even if you modded the game so you could see a stealthed assassin, you wouldn't be able to target it while it was stealthed...

ooh! i just got a downright evil idea... this would serve almost no purpose in PvE, but what if there were an elite skill that made you apear to be a different class! includeing that tag in front of you name. this would only last 20 seconds or until you used another skill. im not sure that's a good idea, but that would be sick!

I was thinking of some kind of 'trickery' attribute, to substitute for not having invisibility. You could use certain skills that make your enemy see you doing weird things, like going one way when you go to the other, and attacking someone when they're actually attacking someone else.
Also, yes, perhaps some kind of 'dark' or 'shadowy' skills similar to necro. You could use a skill like 'Cut Vein' which would sacrifice health in exchange for the release of conditions.
Or even, they could put hexes on enemies, such as making them scared of you and not being able to move, or receiving a new condition called 'fright'. I thought the assassin could also be able to do various things with his weapon such as poison, bleed, blind etc.
One final idea, he could have throwing darts that could paralyse the enemy, blind them, or perhaps even inflict deadly hexes.

Yeah thats true, it would be easier just to encorporate a Knife Mastery, and then you could combine those two skill attribute likes I came up with earlier. It would be much more diverse (and bamf) if you could blind and backstab one foe, smoke bomb a group of rangers shooting at you, and then throwing off a poisoned or barbed (bleeding) throwing knife at another enemy, or a group of enemies with an elite Shuriken Barrage that acts just like Barrage, but with poison tipped barbed darts to cause massive havoc.

im thinking there could be 2 main weapon types for assasins
daggers, and throwing knives. all throwing and melee skills workwith both, the main difference is the plain attack. with daggers it would be a melee attack, and with throwing knives it would be a ranged attack.
there should be "infinite ammo" for both types of knives, since rangers have infinate arrows.

Please read the rest of my suggestions: Assassins as a character type are typically 1-1 designs for combat purposes and aren't there to hacknslash like a Warrior - it's instant death or incapacitation. So for GW's application, we give them some type of ability to be equal when dealing out damage directly.....lets face it, a dagger isn't going to inflict as much damage as an axe. That's also why I added in the Critical Dmg chance increase - to emphasize more the innate abilities of dealing death.

Later on I discussed the "dodging" or evasive characteristics


I get what you're saying and agree but that's why I added more to the description so that it was clearly separated from Warriors Strength.

The dual wield could be set easily so it wouldnt affact game balence. Make the dual wield weapons light in nature short swords (slow attack speed higher damage per strike), daggers(faster base attck speed lower damge output) that would have the combined base max the same as swords are now. High end min- limited max. The advantage of added damage and what not would been in one skill line, this would let every class pick it as a option without unbalanceing the damage matrix

this is my idea of the stealth(if it will be in the game)
name:stealth ( well dont name it like this)
cast time:0sec
mana:10
cooldown:10 sec
when stealth is on, your first blow will deal x %dmg(higher with your attribute), butt you have 7 hp degen(this would be picked by your lvl) and 5 mana degen while in stealth. Stealth can only be used by x assassins in 1 party,

Multiply : creates a complete illusion duplicate of yourself (without health or abilities).
In PvP an opponent who is in the habit of just "targeting and attacking" the nearest person would probably end up wasting his first attack on the illusion. The illusion looks exactly like the caster and moves like him/her but doesn't absorb or inflict damage. In fact, one can walk right through it. It's just there to confound the enemy's ability to target.
In PvE - the enemy's attacks are divided.
Perhaps higher levels can grant more than one illusion.
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Disguise: Temporarily changes the Assassin's primary profession in name only. In PvP he can appear as a monk or a warrior etc. Perhaps the disguise is broken if he uses an Assassin skill. e.g. if his secondary profession is a monk his disguise is maintained as long as he only uses monk skills. (I'm not sure how the Disguise skill would work for a player who has Assassin as a secondary class).

In PvP this confounds the enemy.
In PvE ... I'm not sure yet. Let me think about it.
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As with the Ranger and Warrior, the Assassin will have interrupting attacks ... probably better ones, though. The assassin has both ranged and melee attacks (albiet weaker than the bow or warrior weapons) -which are better for interrupt skills, disarming skills, hamstring skills, bleeding skills etc.

staves and blunt assassin weapons may have interrupt and disarming bonuses while blades and assassin hooks can have bleeding or hamstring bonuses.
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The assassin's natural vulnerability may be against the undead (which makes sense if you think about it) since most of their skills (eg. deception skills, bleeding conditions. poisons etc. ) are most effective against the living.
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Primary Assassin attribute increases the ability to avoid ranger traps, decreases the size of their aggro circle etc...

2 words: illusionary weaponry

in order to make dual wielding not affect game balance, i think that using each weapon would have to comprise one attack.

Nice. Some good ideas here. I'll only add for the moment generally aggro management and speed, possibly, as a potential line or two of related skill sets. Some of the ideas here address aggro management in terms of stealth and invisibility, which might cover it. I'm thinking additionally manipulation of the aggro circles for either yourself or the entire party, pulling or taunting a target out of a mob to come over to the area you desire, dropping the aggro chase state when you attempt to flee and these sorts of things. For speed, not just movement, but recovery, weapon speed, and/or skill speed, slow or fast, ally or foe.

Duel wielding of course raises a potential parry use and I am not sure if that's been mentioned.

All within the realm of gameplay balance, of course.

one of the assassin's weapons is a staff.

this means a Monk/Assassin can use a monk's staff as an effective melee weapon, too (disarm skills, interrupting attacks).

.... or maybe Assassins are versatile enough so that, in addition to Assassin weapons, they can use certain caster weapons (rods, cesta etc.) as well as swords, axes and hammers for melee attacks.

actually, the idea of an assassin being a "jack of all trades" and having skills that work with many different weapons would be really cool. a realistic but fairly original take on the rpg assassin.

Critical Strike
Stab for 25%...33% more damage but take double damage for 3...1 second while using this attack.

Silent Cut
Slice target dealing no damage, after 10....5 seconds target takes 80....50 damage. (A non conditional non stackable invisible bleed-type)

Eet's False Hope
Apply a deadly hallucinogen to your weapon. Target gains 40 health for 5 seconds but takes 80 damage after effect wears off.

Another pair of skill ideas:

Malicious Doppleganger: Caster temporarily becomes a carbon-copy of the targeted foe with same effective weapons, armor (which can't be un-equipped) and skillbar. Health and energy, however, aren't changed. This skill has a pretty significant initial energy cost and costs 1pip of energy to maintain. As long as it is maintained - the skillbar is replaced with the enemy's skillbar (so the caster "loses" their other skills as long as the enchantment is maintained). This can be used on monsters and other non-humans (bosses?).

For example, this skill can be used in PvP to become a monk (using the opponent's monk as a template) if more healing is needed or become a mesmer, or warrior as the situation requires.

The caster could benefit from energy support and buffering from teammates to maintain the enchantment.

Benevolent Doppleganger: like Malicious Doppleganger but targets an ally instead.

Great ideas I like how this thread is getting reconition from Anet and Ncsoft.

Definitely this Profession needs Duel-Weilding I like the idea of making Duel-Weild an elite which you need to equip to have 2 weapons would be good at countering some cheap conbinations like IW+DW.

I also came up with this.

Awaken Hidden Power
Casting Time: 10
Energy Cost: 10
Recharge: 25

Stance For 4-12 seconds, You attack 25% faster and do 10% more Damage. While Casting this skill all "cloaks" end and you are easily intrupted

Would be hard to pull off because easy to counter but if you can hide near your target and attack him quick you would be rewarded.

Assianin's Stance
Casting Time: Instant
Energy Cost: 10-15
Recharge: 15-25

Stance Your "Cloaks" are ready 50% faster and last 15-25% longer.

Just like practiced stance only with cloaks May want to make that Elite.

Your the Boss

Trojan Human {E}
Energy Upkeep: 1
Energy Cost: 10
Casting Time: 5
Recharge: 25
Enchantment You disappear from the map and can't be targeted by all sources and can't attack, move, or use skills. Target Other Ally is enchanted with this. When Trojan Human ends you appear on the map Ajcent to the ally enchanted with this spell. If Ally Enchanted with this dies you appear in the location that he/she died. While Casting this Skill you are easily intrupted

In short you hide in an ally's armor and pop and and attack. Might be a bit buggy to work with.