Assassins overpowered?

good posts there, when i was playing with monk in random arena I notice thing Laserlight mentioned before, i got 2 assassins and offensive ritualist and dun remember what 4th was, I almost fell asleep, with my monk there still not been any assassins that can take me down (i know, cuz they cant play them well yet with insufficient skills and runes)

but anyway I agree to fact that none can say bout overpowered skills or some yet, it takes time and this weekend is not enough to find them out.

I would just like to say, there very easy to take down, they cant take a blow at all, and armor pentatrating attack brings them down hard

If you're having problems with assassins I'd say the problem is you. They're too easy to kill and none of the ones I've seen are effective at anything but running away.

I actually have found the Assassin so far to be underwhelming. Your skillbar ends up built around a select few combinations of skills that have basically been pre-made to work a certain way, so your creativity seems to be limited somewhat.

In addition to that, your skillbar is also spike-damage oriented. If your string of attacks can't counter an opponent or overwhelm them the first time, you're basically screwed due to recharge times.

At least with a warrior you still have a certain amount of versatility in being able to carry whatever you want without being concerned about lead-offs.

the reason they easy to kill because most of them are premade assasins, with no unlocked skills .

at no point in this weekend will assassins be good, i have yet to see an assassin that could kill me without help from his other teammates (by that i mean the teammates do all the work :P) one miss from the attack skill chain and the assassin is useless

I played with my regular ole whammo and I surprinsingly had not such problems with assassins.
The premades in my thoughts are weak.
Some hard-hitted me with their condition chain (even with temple strike) but as I had condition removal and hard armor against physical so that didn't hurted much. I was running an axe warrior and using disrupting chop in the middle of their chain was really annoying for them.
Runners were more a problem.

Ritualists seemed really powerful. At the beginning.
When I understood that it was easier to kill their spirits instead of killing them I knew more how to handle them.
Even with high health spirits, you can kill one far before the Ritualist's spirit skill is recharged.
If you clean the zone from the ritualists' spirits, not only theirs non-spirit skills are very less powerful (because most of them reveal their potential with the presence of one or more spirit), but they can't do anything but to wait that their spirit skills recharge.
I think ritualists should really bring +recharging skill if they plan to be spirit skill heavy, because when the spirit they just took 6 sec to cast is destroyed in 3 sec and has 30 sec recharge, it's really annoying.


And in the worst case you can flee the zone if really spirit-full.


I played both an assassin and a ritualist.
I developped more the assassin. I used a A/W and tried to unlock their main skills.
Their skill chains are problematic for two reasons: 1)interrupts/evade/blocks/blind will reduce them to nothing.
2)A chain attack terribly fill your skill bar, so you are left with few things for: hexing ennemies, evade stances, anti-evade stance, self heal, anticonditions,run skills, rez signet etc....
To be effective I ended using two or three attack skills at most, because the more you brought the more you have odds to never finish a chain,and to waste a skill slot for a "maybe" attack instead of a skill which will make sure your simple 1-2 chain strike.

The assassin is not under/overpowered, I found them surprinsingly balanced. I was owned by many eles and mesmers, I owned many of them when they didn't bring physical defenses, as well as I owned overconfident warriors and was owned by clever ones.
I used my unlocked warriors skill to bring wild blow and frenzy along my assassins skill. I used frenzy + evading enchants (not stances-this is really powerful as you can cumulate) + wild blow (to avoid evades as well as a critical and on the top of that I don't care about adrenalin and I don't have to spend points in any of the warrior attribute) to max damage and be sure to land quickly an attack chain before the target could react.
Assassins have real potential. But are counterable as any class of the game.

A-net, you really did a good job.

From what I see, the only reason the assasssin might be viewed as overpowered is because there isn't any experience with him yet. People don't know his weaknesses and strengths as well as the other 6 classes.

All I know is, I brutally murdered A/W's who cast Mirrored Stance on me while I had full adrenaline and Frenzy.

Heh, I'm going to have to try that.

well I guess I can stop counting down until the first nerf cries ran out... geez...

You mean that is the point of DAGGER mastery.

I'm using sword mastery because I like the 4 pips of eng and using pure strike and seeking blade.

So far, I'm like a warrior that can cripple AOE, heal myself, dodge, and run fast. Not too shabby.

The dagger mastery is indeed dangerous, if the other team is not prepared. But that isn't the entire point of an assassin.

Critical strike atribute works on different weapons - try it out. A/W with axe can deliver a big punch.

Huh? Current proffesions are getting new skills?

So far, I think the assassins are very balanced. I've gotta agree with everyone here, as all of my damage with the assassin so far has been spike oriented with the combo. A lot of their skills are interesting, and it does take a bit more reading to put some things together... but the shadow skills when other classes get their hands on them will be a problem. I can see it now, casters with Shadow Refuge... *sighs*

One thing I've worked on is using smaller chains over all, or having multiple options to start chains (i.e. Having an off hand attack which follows a lead attack, as well as another off hand attack which can attack hexed victims so that the dual attack has multiple opporutunities to be used for less skill bar space). This makes you not as useless because the refresh times on most of the chain moves isn't too bad, and you're also not having to wait for one special moment where everything is perfectly aligned for you to perform your chain.

I really want to dig deeper into the deadly arts and shadow arts, so I should probably get back to grinding.

Energy denial's owned me some times, evasion/blocking stances also. I'm happy they do have a few tricks up their sleeve to sneak up on folks though.

Ironically, about 90% of every assasin build out there ran the same jungle strike to mobius gimmick. It's not the fact that the assasin is underpowered, its the people who play it.

The majority of every assasin player out there has the mindset of that of a warrior it seems. I think the assasin plays the melee role of a ranger, only to strike in when an oppurtunity presents itself. not to run in, flailing weapons every which way.

I've seen it way too many times. An assasin shadow step, and jumping the gun. =x

Yes.

I wish they would have put some of those in. Maybe they will in the next pre-event, or whatever they're going to do.

back to the question of "assassins overpowered ?"
my awnser is yes...ppl wasn't play with him properly because it was first time they use his skills and it was very easy to kill anyone of them with my ele..but yesterday it seems that they know to play with him and in my opinion this prof. is soo way overpowered.
you were talking all about interrupt their combos..and he become useless,as i saw yesterday his combos doesn't take more than 3 or 4 sec to apply on you the 5 conditions (i didn't play with him yet but that's what i saw in pvp)..if you have 2 or 3 assassins foes in 8 player team and you didn't decide which one you are gonna kill or use your shut down mesmer in your team in first 2 or 3 secs in the first of the match..i 'm sure to you that at least 2 of your team will kiss the dirt of the arena

You know whats fun?

Me and a friend have been running an awsome N/Me build in TA for the past couple of days. It helps that 90% of people are running assasin, warrior or rangers.

Enfeeble
Spiteful Spirit
Insidious Parasite
Empathy
Spirit Shackles
Blackout
Blood Ritual
Res Signet

We just pick a seperate target, pile on the hexes and wait for the idiots to kill themselves. You would be suprised with how many totally ignore it.

Although I think it's fairly obvious that Shadow Stepping is somewhat made to circumvent runners while still allowing for rapid movement in actual combat, I can think of a few choice uses for any skills like Shadow Step. Run past a group, aggro them, lead them off, then teleport back safely and just walk past them as they stand there, confused. Good fun.