Curse

Tyla · May 20, 2008, 09:34 PM // 21:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

Well that's not the class or skills' fault is it? Nope, its player choice.

And the player chooses this WHY?

Because it's a broken mechanic, and it WILL get abused.

Quote:

And really if you're going with a 12-12-3 split for your build, you could get a 2 second slowdown with Dark Prison to allow an easier spike, or a 92 point heal from Death's Charge, or an 8 second on revert Deep Wound from Shadow Fang, or a 10 second delayed KD from Scorpion Wire, etc., etc.

If I were going with Dark Prison, I would probably take 6 Deadly Arts.
If I were using Death's Charge, I wouldn't be bothered about Shadow Arts because you're not going to heal yourself and shadowstep towards an enemy are you?

Kaleban · May 20, 2008, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyla

And the player chooses this WHY?

Because it's a broken mechanic, and it WILL get abused.

Exactly, but if the broken mechanic is equally abuseable by all, than comparatively there is no abuse, it becomes the new standard. If everyone can do something, then no one is at a disadvantage are they?

Quote:

If I were going with Dark Prison, I would probably take 6 Deadly Arts.
If I were using Death's Charge, I wouldn't be bothered about Shadow Arts because you're not going to heal yourself and shadowstep towards an enemy are you?

I didn't mean the conditional heal on Death's Charge was in any way preferable, nor did I imply that you MUST take only 3 in Deadly Arts. All I said was that there are different shadowsteps with different effects that are all useable based on the intent or design of the specific build, and that professions are not limited to only AoD or DC.

Again, I'm not really sure why people are so quick to assume that a purely informative post sans opinion is somehow a declaration of the only way to do things, especially considering all I was doing was giving options beyond Shadow Walk or Death's Charge as a qualifier to my disagreement to those being the only viable shadowsteps seeing as how no class is restricted because no ss are located within the primary Sin attribute of Critical Strikes. Is it just me, or am I being held to a higher standard of explanatory reasoning here? Geeze.

Tyla · May 20, 2008, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

Exactly, but if the broken mechanic is equally abuseable by all, than comparatively there is no abuse, it becomes the new standard. If everyone can do something, then no one is at a disadvantage are they?

And even then, telespikes can be quite hard to prevent.

It also kills positional play, which is a major part in this game.

Shadowsteps should go die in a ditch. Seriously.

*Hides, I don't think that last thing was a good thing to say!*

Kaleban · May 20, 2008, 10:12 PM // 22:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyla

And even then, telespikes can be quite hard to prevent.

It also kills positional play, which is a major part in this game.

Shadowsteps should go die in a ditch. Seriously.

*Hides, I don't think that last thing was a good thing to say!*

LOL! Run for the hills hehe.

I was just thinking though, the assassin has been likened to a melee caster, with the low armor and high damage attacks.

Now, barring DA builds, for a sin to get off his "spells" he has to be in melee right? Sort of the opposite of a normal caster, like a ele nuker for example, who usually prefers to cast at maximum range. So if you take away shadowsteps, the assassin becomes useless in a myriad of ways and builds, both PvE and PvP because the mechanic the class depends on to make "spells" hit is gone, and all sins would then be relegated to Narutard-style Dancing Dagger spam.

I absolutely agree on the positional play problem, take your basic AB map for example, and SS can cause some real havoc especially when bypassing *obvious* barriers put there by the devs, such as ramps and chokepoints.

I don't think shadowstepping ruins the game, but it has definitely changed the way its played, and I have a feeling the current over-use of it is something perhaps unforeseen by the devs. I suppose one solution would be to make shadowstepping only work when wielding daggers, but that might anger a lot of players, and invalidate skills like Way of the Master/Assassin.

But the argument is similar to the Ursan debate, as in, how do you close Pandora's Box? If you take away the contested skill/system, you're altering an entire class or playstyle at a fundamental level, and probably angering a lot more people than the few who are against it currently.

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall when the dev debate on shadowstepping nerfs was begun, I can imagine a lot of blood and body parts being hacked off...

Celeborn10 · May 20, 2008, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

Now, barring DA builds, for a sin to get off his "spells" he has to be in melee right? Sort of the opposite of a normal caster, like a ele nuker for example, who usually prefers to cast at maximum range. So if you take away shadowsteps, the assassin becomes useless in a myriad of ways and builds, both PvE and PvP because the mechanic the class depends on to make "spells" hit is gone, and all sins would then be relegated to Narutard-style Dancing Dagger spam.

If Anet had tried to give the class better utility with more useful DA/SA spells then they would truly be meleemancers. Chuck in some useful interrupts (NOT Disrupting Stab which takes 1.33 seconds to hit), some "I disable you at the cost of x" skills and more touch spells, then the class would be more like the melee-mancer you described. This concept of a melee class creating a window of opportunity was the role that the community initially percieved the Assassin to be but the class gradually evolved into the old AoD HoTO build because anything else was inefficient. Nightfall only worsened the situation with SP...

Anet also didn't give Assassins a viable weaponset for the melee-mancer role. Daggers are nice pointy things and it good that DM has its own weapon but perhaps throwing stars or some half wand-half stabbing implement would have worked for SA/DA. At the time it probably seemed neglible but were Anet to try to magically change every skill in the Assassin class, they would still be subpar casters because of a lack of a 40/40 set. I don't blame SS-Assassins were supposed to have mobility both as an offensive and defensive strategy. I'd rather Assassins proactively try to control their opponent, taking them down piecemeal as opposed to a 3-4 second kill (hardly possible unless under an IAS).

shru · May 21, 2008, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyla

Shadowsteps should go die in a ditch.

Hear Hear !

Bobby2 · May 21, 2008, 03:54 AM // 03:54

Ahem. No.

There had to be a burst damage class in GW. It's found in every MMORPG. Their high damage potential is usually balanced out by

- it having to be dealt in melee (Assacasters should STAY dead, no doubt about it)
- horrible fragility

Check on both accounts.

Then, the game designer looks for a way to implement surprise, since the burst damage class, attempting a 'tank's' attack run (the Warrior is the closest thing GW has lol) would either find himself

- dead due to overwhelming pressure
- sufficiently prepared against

An Assassin without Shadow Steps is nothing more than a really flimsy Warrior. Even worse, due to his predictability his damage output would be much lower since no opponent in his right mind would let him complete an attack chain if they knew it was coming - reducing the Sin to auto-attack damage in effect. That's BAD.

Going to digress for a tiny bit, to another game. WoW. The direct analogy of the Sin is the Rogue. Rogues have Stealth. I don't know if any of you have experienced how powerful the Stealth mechanic is, but suffice to say there are (relative to the size of respective player bases) MORE people whining about it than our humble Shadow Step antics. This whining is inherent to those who got killed too often without getting a chance to fight back.
...but there really is no other way to lose against a Sin, or a Rogue. That is the price they pay for it.

WoW offers some balance by keeping Stealth exclusive to Rogues (and the odd Druid), whereas GW has given other, more resilient classes free reign to exploit the mechanics of it. I never considered this a good thing either - the Shadow Steps belong to Assassins.

To close out with, I'd like to ask, if Shadow Steps are so overpowered in the first place...

Why is this considered the best Warrior build
[skill]rush[/skill][skill]bull's strike[/skill][skill]frenzy[/skill][skill]eviscerate[/skill][skill]body blow[/skill][skill]disrupting chop[/skill][skill]shock[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]
...and not this, or something along those lines?
[skill]rush[/skill][skill]bull's strike[/skill][skill]frenzy[/skill][skill]eviscerate[/skill][skill]body blow[/skill][skill]disrupting chop[/skill][skill]death's charge[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]

Next thing there will be cries for KD nerfage. The 6 sec kind.

shru · May 21, 2008, 04:17 AM // 04:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Ahem. No.

There had to be a burst damage class in GW. It's found in every MMORPG. Their high damage potential is usually balanced out by

- it having to be dealt in melee (Assacasters should STAY dead, no doubt about it)
- horrible fragility

Check on both accounts.

Then, the game designer looks for a way to implement surprise, since the burst damage class, attempting a 'tank's' attack run (the Warrior is the closest thing GW has lol) would either find himself

- dead due to overwhelming pressure
- sufficiently prepared against

An Assassin without Shadow Steps is nothing more than a really flimsy Warrior. Even worse, due to his predictability his damage output would be much lower since no opponent in his right mind would let him complete an attack chain if they knew it was coming - reducing the Sin to auto-attack damage in effect. That's BAD.

Going to digress for a tiny bit, to another game. WoW. The direct analogy of the Sin is the Rogue. Rogues have Stealth. I don't know if any of you have experienced how powerful the Stealth mechanic is, but suffice to say there are (relative to the size of respective player bases) MORE people whining about it than our humble Shadow Step antics. This whining is inherent to those who got killed too often without getting a chance to fight back.
...but there really is no other way to lose against a Sin, or a Rogue. That is the price they pay for it.

WoW offers some balance by keeping Stealth exclusive to Rogues (and the odd Druid), whereas GW has given other, more resilient classes free reign to exploit the mechanics of it. I never considered this a good thing either - the Shadow Steps belong to Assassins.

To close out with, I'd like to ask, if Shadow Steps are so overpowered in the first place...

Why is this considered the best Warrior build
[skill]rush[/skill][skill]bull's strike[/skill][skill]frenzy[/skill][skill]eviscerate[/skill][skill]body blow[/skill][skill]disrupting chop[/skill][skill]shock[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]
...and not this, or something along those lines?
[skill]rush[/skill][skill]bull's strike[/skill][skill]frenzy[/skill][skill]eviscerate[/skill][skill]body blow[/skill][skill]disrupting chop[/skill][skill]death's charge[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]

Next thing there will be cries for KD nerfage. The 6 sec kind.

imo, sins are actualy the worst class benefiting from shadowsteps atm (with all the skill nerfs/functionality changes) and if you could some how tie shadow steping to sin primaries (50% failure with crit strikes 4 or less) than the worst of the offenders would be rendered useless.
I know this is a drastic change, but it keeps shadowstepping where it should belong, in the hands of a class that pretty much needs it, but will still have trouble abusing it.

RavagerOfDreams · May 21, 2008, 04:37 AM // 04:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by shru

imo, sins are actualy the worst class benefiting from shadowsteps atm (with all the skill nerfs/functionality changes) and if you could some how tie shadow steping to sin primaries (50% failure with crit strikes 4 or less) than the worst of the offenders would be rendered useless.
I know this is a drastic change, but it keeps shadowstepping where it should belong, in the hands of a class that pretty much needs it, but will still have trouble abusing it.

the 4 req critical strikes would fix alotta problems....shru for skill balancer?

fireflyry · May 21, 2008, 01:05 PM // 13:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

An Assassin without Shadow Steps is nothing more than a really flimsy Warrior. Even worse, due to his predictability his damage output would be much lower since no opponent in his right mind would let him complete an attack chain if they knew it was coming - reducing the Sin to auto-attack damage in effect. That's BAD.

QFT

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

This whining is inherent to those who got killed too often without getting a chance to fight back.
...but there really is no other way to lose against a Sin, or a Rogue. That is the price they pay for it.

Such a simple statement that, if taken on board, could make the Assassin section here so much more enjoyable to read while also freeing it of the all too repeated theme and mantra:

"I got ganked by a Sin spike.omg over-powered nerf bat plz anet!!11!!"

While I agree the implementation of shadow-steps could be better it could also be a LOT worse.To expand on the WoW Rogue analogy the Stalker class in City of Heroes, also using a stealth mechanic as opposed to steps, killed 99% of the PvP in that game....overnight (for those that have never played CoH imagine an invisible Sin and an unconditional one hit insta-gib button).

Imo the Assassin class has been one of the better implementations of a burst class into an MMO that I've seen.Sure there have been hiccups but nothing game-ending or in anyway close to influencing the meta as such classes have in other MMO's.

More than anything else I think many of the long-winded discussions,opinions and debates here can be summed up in one statement:

"I dislike burst damage classes...especially when they gank me....please nerf the crap out of them."

Personally I'm not a fan of Rangers when on my Sin or War.If they are actually any good they can usually block me, blind me or sprint away and shoot me with more arrows while I hobble after them, if not a combination of all of the aforementioned.Logically as a result, obviously build/medium dependent, I often avoid them altogether.

In saying I'd never wisp them with a "noob ranger" message (the usual almost automated response/reward for a successful Sin gank or even pressure kill) let alone run into their forum section and whine about the mechanics of their class being hugely over-powered merely because they are obviously a potentially lethal counter to my classes core mechanics yet it seems perfectly acceptable to direct such logic at the Sin class or it's skills.

I think some people just have to accept that burst classes are popular, imo great fun to play and are here to stay.Sure....maybe they won't be back in GW2 after the endless criticism but they are sure to be in the vast majority of MMO products and it's pretty obvious the days of only having 4-6 basic classes based on J.R.R.Tolkien and D&D stereotypes is over.

moko · May 21, 2008, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Why is this considered the best Warrior build
[skill]rush[/skill][skill]bull's strike[/skill][skill]frenzy[/skill][skill]eviscerate[/skill][skill]body blow[/skill][skill]disrupting chop[/skill][skill]shock[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]
...and not this, or something along those lines?
[skill]rush[/skill][skill]bull's strike[/skill][skill]frenzy[/skill][skill]eviscerate[/skill][skill]body blow[/skill][skill]disrupting chop[/skill][skill]death's charge[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]

a) there is no "best" warrior build
b) there is a thing called a "teambuild"
c) it depends on the "situation"
d) noobs can use the latter easier :>

Super Igor · May 21, 2008, 03:15 PM // 15:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

Well that's not the class or skills' fault is it? Nope, its player choice.

And really if you're going with a 12-12-3 split for your build, you could get a 2 second slowdown with Dark Prison to allow an easier spike, or a 92 point heal from Death's Charge, or an 8 second on revert Deep Wound from Shadow Fang, or a 10 second delayed KD from Scorpion Wire, etc., etc.

Of course, there's always the ubiquitous Shadow Walk-Dash combo, all I'm trying to point out is that even with bare minimal investment in the relevant tertiary attribute, the various shadowsteps have quite a decent utility, just depends on what effect you want.

They dont use shadowsteps for utility, they use them to bring themselves to an opponent without giving off their spike.

This why shadow steps are so overpowered, and broken. you cant predict a spike untill the very last moment they appear near their target and start it off.

Also, nobody really uses Shadow Fang....it is a 45 sec. recharge shadow step, what is the point in spiking every 45 seconds? It also brings you back from wwere you have started no matter if you want it or not, which is bad...if you want to get back and forth in this way there is always Shadow Walk/Dash.

Also, SW/Dash is only good on Derv or A/D telespikes, it cant be used on a warrior spike effectively.

So Kaleban, it is not player's preference, it is a matter of what works or not.

Super Igor · May 21, 2008, 03:29 PM // 15:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

Now, barring DA builds, for a sin to get off his "spells" he has to be in melee right? Sort of the opposite of a normal caster, like a ele nuker for example, who usually prefers to cast at maximum range. So if you take away shadowsteps, the assassin becomes useless in a myriad of ways and builds, both PvE and PvP because the mechanic the class depends on to make "spells" hit is gone, and all sins would then be relegated to Narutard-style Dancing Dagger spam.

You run shadow steps in PvE? Oh my...

DA sins, dont need to go to melee range to make their DA "Spells" effective, the most common PvP Assacast bar is this:
[signet of [email protected]][dancing [email protected]][entangling [email protected]][signet of toxic [email protected]][augury of [email protected]][iron [email protected]][deadly [email protected]][resurrection signet]
NOW! "Narutard style" from your mouth means something innefective, now the above build is a dancing dagger spam and even after the nerf is one of the most deadly builds an assassin has in his disposal, how come you think it is bad?

Celeborn10 · May 21, 2008, 04:19 PM // 16:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Super Igor

You run shadow steps in PvE? Oh my...

DA sins, dont need to go to melee range to make their DA "Spells" effective, the most common PvP Assacast bar is this:
[signet of [email protected]][dancing [email protected]][entangling [email protected]][signet of toxic [email protected]][augury of [email protected]][iron [email protected]][deadly [email protected]][resurrection signet]
NOW! "Narutard style" from your mouth means something innefective, now the above build is a dancing dagger spam and even after the nerf is one of the most deadly builds an assassin has in his disposal, how come you think it is bad?

It is not the dancing dagger spam that makes it strong. It is the multiple KD's that makes it even remotely effective. I believe that particular build has shifted from being in the meta because of a lack of energy management that results from any prolonged fight ie from a good monk. KD spam is all well and good but doesn't a Shock Warror/HotO Knock-Lock perform that role more efficiently?

Super Igor · May 21, 2008, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celeborn10

It is not the dancing dagger spam that makes it strong. It is the multiple KD's that makes it even remotely effective. I believe that particular build has shifted from being in the meta because of a lack of energy management that results from any prolonged fight ie from a good monk. KD spam is all well and good but doesn't a Shock Warror/HotO Knock-Lock perform that role more efficiently?

I think assacast has one of the most deadly pressures in game, just because of unconditional KD spam, basically the opponent is lying around most of the kombo. For hoto lock you need your target to be under 50%hp, shock is touch range but still very effective. And yes, Assacast uses DD quite often during its combo, this makes it a DD spam to an extent.

Tyla · May 21, 2008, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Super Igor

Also, nobody really uses Shadow Fang....it is a 45 sec. recharge shadow step, what is the point in spiking every 45 seconds? It also brings you back from wwere you have started no matter if you want it or not, which is bad...if you want to get back and forth in this way there is always Shadow Walk/Dash.

Aswell as the fact you need to wait for the hex to end after the combo.
Either it gets removed too early, or your spike is finished and they are healed before the hex is finished.

Super Igor · May 21, 2008, 05:49 PM // 17:49

And if it is removed you get thrown back from were you have jumped mid-spike, nearly forgot to mention that. Also who the hell would "spike" for 10 seconds? ^^

Tyla · May 21, 2008, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Someone who would hope their target would be killed to life?

Super Igor · May 21, 2008, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyla

Someone who would hope their target would be killed to life?

Or someone who likes his opponent to suffer before death?

petrorabbit · May 21, 2008, 08:36 PM // 20:36

One of the more effective builds have been the A/E shock sin that utilizes the best shadowstep in the game.

[shock][golden phoenix strike][horns of the ox][falling spider][twisting fangs][shadow refuge][dash][aura of displacement]

Other than its disruptive KD's, it is also capable of using its combo in a variety of ways, rather than 1234.

If AoD is not your thing, i've found success with a conjure lightning shattersin for RA's.

[golden fox strike][wild strike][shattering assault][impale][conjure lightning][storm djinn's haste][assassin's remedy][resurrection signet] or [critical eye]