Viability of Assassins? Post-Nerf (NO LUNGE GRAPPLES)

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Gold RoF Silver Armour Bronze Regen/Skill

Edit: Shuriken builds are a mix of ammo rof and crits.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Not a good idea, playing without Armor at all makes it impossible to kill bots that are being escorted by players.
I'm definately going to stick with Gold Armor, simply because it's pretty pointless to take any other gold endorsement for the assassin. Gold RoF doesn't really pay off since lunge is preferable against both players and bots while silver RoF is completely sufficient for juice rushes.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I've been running an Assault build with RoF/Acc/Reload and it's worked pretty well as long as the other guy doesn't run gold Armor(difficulty varies depending on how well the other guy can aim)

It wasn't a nerf, it was a bugfix

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Yeah, not running armor on a Sin seems to be giving free kills to the Support's legit aimbots.

With Gold Armor, I am dying a lot more often, pre-nerf I often escape battles with a sliver of health and on fire. I would play quite aggressive. Now, tanks are no longer viable to even try to kill unless he's deployed, as the fire damage from the Death Blossem are quite deadly now. Support Firebases and the Hurt gun are also giving me far more problems than before, so I don't bother going anywhere near Support now either.

In all honesty, I really detest this particular change as I do not like playing conservatively.

About the grapple fix, kudos to that as well as that lunge, front/back grapple bug.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

You can still do the lunge+frontgrapple*, it just can't be turned into a backgrapple anymore

*Was hit by that combo 3 freaking times earlier

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I recall a few assassin's suggesting Clip Size as a bronze endorsement, even before the patch. Perhaps now that we have to be more cautious using our bronze endorsement to boost the usefulness of the shurikens is a viable option.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I'm gonna have to test the armor nerf in crossfire.

Because the armor nerf drew attention away from assassins it leads to my favorite situation in crossfire. Being the only assassin. I'm the best at what I do and no one does what I do. It should be easy to get a feel for her squishiness (innuendo?) with a couple of builds.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I've played around 10-15 games since the update. There's hardly a noticeable difference in my book. Just smokebomb level 3 turrets when you're juiced, and you'll be fine.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Are you still running the same build Skull Man? I was actually thinking about trying Movement Speed out to see if it is a viable method of damage avoidance. I suppose that all boils down to how well the other player aims. Of course there is still the fact that movement speed pickups exist.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

And all of the tools to allow you to do so quickly and get out in case of trouble. Sorry but you can't always have EVERYTHING. If you are highly mobile, high damage, high escape you shouldn't also have high health. Assault is fast but even with bomb jump and charge he can't keep up with a good assassin using dash/smokebomb/lunge to move around the map. His biggest advantage is that he can come in from harder to counter directions (drop down from above, or float above the battle field.) but pure mobility and speed the assassin wins handsdown.

Actually you take 66% less damage.

And is extremely difficult to hit that sniper with from long range, also it only 2shots a sniper if he isn't running armor at all (it REDUCED armor benefit, didn't remove it.)
And "wipes out bot waves"? LOL! Hardly. Its good at killing groups of slimbots, but it takes 5 shots on a black jack to kill them. And the launcher only has 10shots and fires 1shot per-second and the splash radius is rarely large enough to hurt more than 2 black jacks at a time. The Assault is actually one of the worst bot killers in the game without using charge 2 to make up for it.

And yet most assaults don't take charge 3 because its actually a downgrade for most situations.

Completely true. (though to be fair, medium classes also lost 50hp on their armor endorsements, and the assassin's base movespeed (WITHOUT accounting for dash or lunge) is actually higher than assaults by 50 (which is precisely how it should be.)

Not sure how these two correlate. They fixed the air grapple bug, and a RARE bug where if you were infront of the target it registered you as behind. I don't see how that removes 180grapples OR lunge grapples.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I don't really see how this accomplishes the goal of an assassin nerf.

The only benefit of this change is to make the "end combat" point earlier. Lunge is still way too good. A reduction yes, but it really doesn't change much.

The less health is probably necessary across the board because armor was broken and way too good. It probably still is. But they still don't go after the actual cause of the balance issues?

For what it's worth a sniper or assassin surviving a face grapple should never occur. Generally, you precede grabs by a lunge which increases damage to 615 which killed gold armor sniper and assassin.

Lunge needs a longer cooldown or in some way linked to dash. Lunge is just stupid strong.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I still use gold armor, silver rate of fire, and bronze skill recovery, but now that you mention it, I was consistently getting mowed down by a particular gunner since this last update, but I think he just had exceptional aim. Like you said, I decided to edge away from speed endorsements since you can just pick them up. It may be worth experimenting with now though.

As for our over-juicing strategy, I've had no trouble pulling it off since the update. I'm probably around 10-1 in wins since the update at this point, so I think we're good =)

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

I do a lot of fighting on the ground as Assault, so I tend to spring for the LV3 charge. Very good against Assassins and Snipers, but ringing out a Support is the best feeling of all.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Do you play much assassin? I've been more vocal than a lot of people about lunge-grappling needing a fix, but the way it's done right here has seriously demolished the class.

You guys focusing on the comparatively minor armor nerf are missing the big change -- you can't cancel lunges into grapples anymore.

Imagine if Assault had to charge the full distance of his charge before a grapple would even engage. Now you can only pull off a charge grapple from a certain distance and have to be super precise.

This fix got rid of the backgrapples from the front exploit. (This is good!) It wiped out the viability of pubtrash assassin play where you beeline for someone's face. (This is also good!)

But it also more or less wiped out the viability of the lead-in move to back-grapples. Now if you want to hit someone you should either go for blade kills or run directly up to somebody and grapple. Both are a lot more dangerous.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Yes you can, you can also still do the lunge 180 to backgrapple. Tested by myself and I'm not exactly a great assassin (boring class ahoy)

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

What's been driving me nuts is getting lunged at, slashed by it, frontgrappled and if I survive the grapple, I get slashed for that last bit of health before I can jump/shoot/returngrapple


Not to mention grappling is still a bit screwed up. Grapples failing to connect despite being within range, people teleporting to me to grapple and myself getting teleported into a grapple(not off the map tho), Lvl3 Charges not connecting(on one occasion the game actually pushed me to the side as if I hit a pole) and other Assaults getting a grapple instead of both of us just bouncing off each other

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

They need to drastically shorten the katana/kunai grab animation. Because of how loud it is, how slow it is, and the stationary nature of it, I never survive backstabs anymore post-patch, even if I hit the guys in the very rear. If one guy turns around, hearing me slashing up another guy, he can pretty much kill me even if I finish the animation. The smoke bomb doesn't help much anymore. I used to be able to survive with a good 40% of my health. Now it's more like 10%/dead.

Assassins SHOULDNT be punished for achieving something so difficult. Relatively speaking, backstabs are much harder to achieve then to avoid. If you can spam space bar, you've made the assassins backstab much, much harder to achieve. Why the hell then, make it so that assassins health is so low even with armor, that you can't survive backstabbing someone?

It's the primary reason why I ran gold armor.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

A lot of people are looking for reasons to complain about balance. The difference between a gold armor assassin now and a gold armor assassin then? 75 hp. 600 hp before, 525 now.

You will have less health left after an assaults charge grapple and a tank charge + death blossom means guaranteed death before you take any additional burn damage. That's all.

Juice rushes really haven't changed all that much.

It was a good change imo - not overly harsh and not insignificant. It really promotes survival tactics instead of being rambo as a light/medium class.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

Yeah, I rarely ever get close to Tanks nowadays, but shurikans are still very effective against them, and having the lunge really helps if the Tank charges to close the distance on me. Juicing still works, though I usually die afterward thanks to having next to no health left.

Re: Viability of Assassin's Juice? Post-Nerf

No. Learn to read topics.

Can we get a word from Uber on this? I just wrote a gigantic 4-5 paragraph comparison of the classes which was wiped while I went to get a drink by this ingenious posting system. If I feel it's really necessary for me to retype it, I will, but I hope someone intelligent/someone who has a very deep understanding of game mechanics in MNC reads this.