Curse

LightningHell · Dec 09, 2007, 02:01 PM // 14:01

I'd agree with that.

But the statement was not about the class - it was about any class, of any game, made for instagib.

LightningHell · Dec 09, 2007, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Hate to use a one-liner against long posts, but...

...Isn't how to change such an instagib profession what we were discussing for fifteen pages?

Sniffy · Dec 11, 2007, 12:55 AM // 00:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaserLight

Sniffy, the concept of 'Dual Attack' comes from the fact that Assassins carry two daggers. a Dual Attack is the act of striking with both daggers essentially simultaneously.

With the exception of a specific notable One Piece character, I haven't seen many people use three blades at the same time. And frankly, an Assassin's mask would get in the way of clenching a dagger in their teeth. Nor are their toes all that dexterous. Kinda leaves out tri attacks as an option, eh? One hit per blade, man.

Piece of cake. You just hit twice with the first dagger. 1-2-1 in rapid succession. However, the whole idea is too impractical to be implemented.

LightningHell · Dec 11, 2007, 12:22 PM // 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

Try doing 1 2 1 with your arms.

the third hit is always unorthadox.

It is doable with slashing weapons, methinks, but then the first hit is pretty weak.

My problem with tri-attacks is that it makes the chain more gimmicky than it already is.

Bobby2 · Dec 11, 2007, 12:40 PM // 12:40

Then, how about simplifying? If Duals were less powerful than they are now, wouldn't just L-D be better?

Sniffy · Dec 12, 2007, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by LightningHell

So, basically the change asks for a single increased attack hit? Because otherwise all you're doing is shifting Offhands to the Lead position, Duals to the Offhand position, and Dual-after-Duals into the Dual position.

Not to say, you can't make your chain more flexible via any modification of the "Offhand" ability.

The chain is indeed essentially to include one extra hit. Moving the assassin from O-D-O-D to L-O-D greatly reduces you chance of getting to the dual, the main point of the chain.
Say, as a random example, you're attacking a Monk with Guardian on. With O-D-O-D odds are fair that you will get a minimum of one O and one D hit. Also, if the chain does mess up (which is quite likely), you have a nice refresh point halfway through to start from. With L-O-D, your chance of getting to the only useful attack, D, is pretty slim. 50% chance to block the lead, 50% chance to block the Off-hand, and odds are at least one of your duals will be blocked. *But* if lead is blocked, offhand's chance is 0/1 and duals is 0/2. If offhand is blocked, duals is 0/2. Thus, the overall probability of getting to your dual, (much less through it) is I think slightly less than one out of four. I'm all mathed out for today and don't feel like figuring it out. Or, in other words, probability to get through would be just slightly higher than hitting through blind. Considering even if *all* of your attacks hit you *still* can't kill the person I don't know how well it would work. Guardian is of course just an example. A timely riposte might be a better example. Anyways, the off-hand essentially becoming a less powerful dual would increase your chance to get to your dual. Not significantly but enough to raise probability to a more reasonable level.
I understand that with a buffed to usefulness utility such as enchant stripping, the assassin would stand a chance at taking out a monk, providing they aren't using cover enchants or something. But if the assassin is going up against a block he doesn't or cannot counter whether that be, stance, enchant, riposte or what have you, he would stand essentially a zero chance of killing his opponent. Same goes if his enchant strip/stance killer doesn't work due to cover enchants, easily spammable blocking stances (Escape Natural Stride etc).
Also, with monks (at least in RA) en masse favoring WoH right now, an assassin is less likely to carry an enchant strip and more likely to carry a WoH counter, as a single WoH would take a monk out of the re-vamped assassins damage potential.

This went long again.
/apologize

In short, the dual dual system would by no means be essential, *depending on how they would change the assassin class and it's counters.*

Which it looks like they won't.

/sigh

Edit: I understand no assassin build should be able to counter everything, but I think there is a difference between being countered and having 0 chance of being able to do anything.

Ulterion · Dec 13, 2007, 07:36 PM // 19:36

Sins are FUBAR'd after that last update... No matter how you look at it, if you take away an assassin's ability to kill quickly, you take away the essence of the sin. Anet seems to vouch for the new, more casual players... The same players that probably have warriors in PvE equipped with 5 attacks, orison, breeze and ressurect spell... Frankly, assassins are irrevertable. Anet has killed the assassin with the nerf-bat and wammos now die less-frequently. XD GG

Pio Lokte · Dec 14, 2007, 04:08 AM // 04:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shuuda

Do explain how the fact that a few assassin insta kill fanboyz like X Cytherea X can't bare the loss of their imba steps means my idea is going no where? It just needs a few more things working out.

The problem is that your idea is just plain bad. I read all of what you had to say on your idea and all that I can come up with in the end is to ask why you aren't asking for stationary auto-attacking ranged traps, the ability to innately block attacks with the daggers, and a handy little shadow clone sidekick to help you kick ass right along with your removing shadow stepping in exchange for uber speed buffs to run circles around the enemies while they chase you through your traps.

(Yes, I expect many flames from anyone who doesn't get what I did there.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

I don't know what you think assassins were doing pre-nightfall then.
Only thing last update does to affect sin's badly
is nerfing horns.
Everything else is easy to go around

Yes, sins now are not quite capable of instagib. I still run the same sp tramp ox build that I ran since GWEN came out*, and the only time that I can instagib anyone is if they are packing a superior rune without anything at all to balance it - and I can't always pull it off then. I can, however, pull off fast spikes forever after on almost anyone once initial DP hits them and they don't have a monk babysitting them too carefully. That's why I generally spread my love to the softest target at the moment and keep the monk on their toes to try and pressure them into missing where I really want to be.

As for what they did before Nightfall... that brings up an issue that is on all sides. Nightfall threw everything out the window as far as PvP goes far more than Factions did. It's not only a matter of what sins did before Nightfall but what everyone did. The only class that has not truly changed beyond a flavour skill here and there is Warrior. What the new professions did to the game were just as bad as what the new skills for the old professions did, not to mention what the eternally constant nerf/buff game has done - perhaps more appropriately not done - for the game.

*ok, I changed one skill - falling lotus strike for falling spider, trading in e-management for that extra bit of degen to help push the line. After all, it's not like I'm doing a whole hell of a lot for the next 15-20 seconds but rebuilding energy while my skills recharge anyway (unless, of course, someone else happens to be kind enough to throw a hex on someone near me who happens to be soft enough for me to feel it's worth blowing an attack chain on them).

I likely don't have a great deal by way of helpful suggestions to add to this conversation, though, as I don't have much experience in high PvP at all. I did unlock all of the skills for 2 or 3 professions just from running Assassin in various low level PvP forums, though, so I'm not entirely ignorant of how the class works.

Sniffy · Dec 14, 2007, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

Try doing 1 2 1 with your arms.

the third hit is always unorthadox.

I have. It looks cool.

Seriously, I've come up with about 5 ways of doing it and looking cool without being impractical, and about 3 that aren't as cool or are more impractical. But my impractical ones aren't really worse than Blades of Steel. I mean, who the heck is going to do a backflip like that? Course, that looks cool enough that I'm not going to argue. All of the animations I've come up with look cooler than say, Critical Strike (ugh).
For example, a Nine Tail strike which throws it's daggers could be: underhand throw with left hand at roughly hip height, overhand right hand throw, left hand reaching over left shoulder and over hand throwing. Done at a properly fast animation speed, it would look pretty cool.

Sniffy · Dec 14, 2007, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

Okay so we make

Off-hand Dual, Triple attack.

Then we nerf Dual and off-hand to compensate Triple attacks power to really the same status as L-O-D, but you can hit 5 times in total instead of 4 hits from L-O-D.
Idea seems like a waste of coding, not to mention new animations may have to be made >.<.
I rather just buff leads.

O-D-T would actually be 6 attacks.
With the L-O-D, you hit the person so few times, that the chain is easily broken and useless. With O-D-T, blocking hurts the damage of the chain, and could still stop it completely, but in general, blocking will mitigate the damage, making it still useful, but not stopping an entire chain with a single 5e Guardian.
With L-O-D, you hit so few times, that you'd have to make L and O rather powerful, which could lead to L-O-L-O-D abuse, which would be taking the assassin away from what we're trying (unsuccessfuly) to implement them to be.
I still don't think O-D-T would be by any means neccessary, but I think it could help with the chain fragility of L-O-D, while still rendering it blockable.

Sniffy · Dec 14, 2007, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

Ulterion, stop eating led, it makes you dumb.
I don't know what you think assassins were doing pre-nightfall then.
Only thing last update does to affect sin's badly
is nerfing horns.
Everything else is easy to go around

I think the Black Lotus nerf was the most annoying. I haven't really used Horns since a highly embarrasing incident early in my sin career. The Horns nerf mainly stopped Horns -I just went three days in RA without seeing it used once :-( Lotus nerf seriously stopped entire chains.

ensoriki · Dec 14, 2007, 09:26 PM // 21:26

[card]three days in RA[/card]
Thats how you know its sad, if RA won't run it....
Now I have to run stuff like this

Well now we can run
14 Dagger mastery
13 Deadly arts

[card]Black Spider Strike[/card][card]Death Blossom[/card][card]Impale[/card][card]Signet of toxic Shock[/card] [card]Siphon Speed[/card]

And before horns nerf I could've had a KD to make Getting off the spike easier T_T

Fix assassins list
Energy,recharge and activation tweaks (Why is shameful fear 2 activation?)
lower the recharges of some dagger skills.
Weaken O-D-O-D by a bit, (just weaken the off-hands damage)
Buff Critical strikes Critical boost to like 1.6/ 1.7
Buff Dagger masterys Dual strike chance to 1.7
Give horns a little damage buff (would still be weaker than before)
revert paradox, make it affect assassin enchantments and hexes, make hexes last 2x as long on him.

Sniffy · Dec 14, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47

I agree with most of those. Just mainly not that last one. It would have a similar problem as before. They'd have to balance all skills around the potential that a character could have deadly paradox, regardless of whether they do or not. Skills like Feigned Neutrality would have to stay pretty much as they are making them useless without paradox. With most assassin hexes, I don't think it's so much the lasting power as usefulness power. Sure, getting Expose to last 50% longer would be nice, but does that make it more useable? It still has high energy cost, long recharge, and you shouldn't have to be sticking around that long anyways.
Plus the thought of 21 seconds of insidious parasite scares me.

ensoriki · Dec 14, 2007, 11:27 PM // 23:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sniffy

I agree with most of those. Just mainly not that last one. It would have a similar problem as before. They'd have to balance all skills around the potential that a character could have deadly paradox, regardless of whether they do or not. Skills like Feigned Neutrality would have to stay pretty much as they are making them useless without paradox. With most assassin hexes, I don't think it's so much the lasting power as usefulness power. Sure, getting Expose to last 50% longer would be nice, but does that make it more useable? It still has high energy cost, long recharge, and you shouldn't have to be sticking around that long anyways.
Plus the thought of 21 seconds of insidious parasite scares me.

If it scares you don't use Paradox =P

I see what you mean however.

Technically most assassin hexes are not terribly frightening, if you can see by the current assacaster they're power is on spells/signets.

So more work is needed on this,

LightningHell · Dec 15, 2007, 03:38 PM // 15:38

I'm not going to comment on any actual skill changes, I'm just going to stay on the theorycrafting. I'm lazy.

Quote:

Plus the thought of 21 seconds of insidious parasite scares me.

Huh? 1) Where did that come from, and 2) why are you afraid of Insidious Parasite anyway?

Red_Dragon56 · Dec 15, 2007, 05:23 PM // 17:23

I still don't know how assassins can be fixed without destroying the class. I mean, isn't the point of assassins to instagib? If they don't have that I would rather take a warrrior, at least then they could have DPS and armor...

Shuuda · Dec 15, 2007, 05:29 PM // 17:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red_Dragon56

I still don't know how assassins can be fixed without destroying the class. I mean, isn't the point of assassins to instagib? If they don't have that I would rather take a warrrior, at least then they could have DPS and armor...

Fact, Assassins cannot be balanced as Assassins.

Shuuda · Dec 15, 2007, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

You can kill people by poisoning them and shit and be an assassin IRL.

So you can make the assassin really condition heavy and crap.

Stuff like the signets that work of Conditions are kinda cool.

If your conditions removed they do nothing...if they didn't remove the condition...they die soon.

The main problem is, in real life assassins don't fight, they murder. Instagib is trying to recreate that murder action, but in a fight, which makes little sense to me. A real assassin in a GvG would not play in a team, but poison the victory party food of the other team.

Shuuda · Dec 15, 2007, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

Assassin in this game is really just a
Warrior/Mesmer

no thats wrong

Assassin in this game is a ninja >.<

Oh, so if their like mesmers, why have I yet to see a GOOD shutdown build?
And if their like warriors, why have I yet to see a good offence build without Instagib?

Biostem · Dec 15, 2007, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shuuda

Oh, so if their like mesmers, why have I yet to see a GOOD shutdown build?
And if their like warriors, why have I yet to see a good offence build without Instagib?

Why play a shutdown build if you can kill your opponent in the same amount of time?

The assassin is built solely around delivering a huge amount of damage very quickly. If anything, I'd say they are a melee-nuker/spiker. This is ok in PvE where enemies are huge sacks of HP, but in PvP it breaks down.

I really can't foresee a way to "fix" assassins - only to redo them from the ground up, which isn't likely to happen.