A list of essential improvements...

Here is a hint as to what I was referencing with my joke.

I was just thinking that have you thought of timezones with the monday event? For example if it lasts from 6pm to 10pm American time then it is from 0am to 4am European time. So the event only works in one specific time zone, I mean who plays in the middle of the night?

And I knew the discussion in this thread will also be about the grapple thing you suggested, just like in the Steam forums. And everyone I think disagrees with it.

Well, middle of the night is precisely when I play and would want more populated servers - it's when they're at their lull; but yes it is an issue. I'd say two 2-hour periods. One scheduled for Europeans, say 8pm-10pm GMT (3pm-5pm CST) thereabouts; one scheduled for Americans; say 8pm-10pm CST. (That's 6pm - 8pm Pacific Time; 9pm - 11pm Eastern; 1pm-3pm GMT).

Note that I haven't taken into account daylight savings times, because I'm lazy and just demonstrating the rough timing.

An alternative would be to set it so that the "free" version of the game will only run on some dedicated servers, and those servers have ping limits to enforce geographic locality, and are only open during the promo. Naturally full paid players would have no limits joining these severs when they are open. Not sure how feasible that would be to either set up or enforce.

A third alternative would be to make the event just last long enough to over-lap; from 3pm CST to 9pm CST - a seven hour window per night; (8pm to 2pm GMT); a 6 hour window.

It is certainly the most contentious issue, but that's because players want to 0wn assassins, even at the expense of nerfing two L3 skills and the alt-fire of every 2nd weapon in the game; rather than adapt to the threat and play accordingly. It's precisely the reason spies are so incredibly vulnerable in TF2 - players can get fragged dozens of times by sentries or rockets, and it's fine; but one stealth kill that took time and patience to set-up and all of a sudden they cry "foul" just because they weren't paying enough attention.

The problem is you don't need to set up anything to get a kill as assassin. In a normal pub I can mash R and Right Click and have myself a kill, straight from stealth. Not to mention the assassin is the most mobile class by a long shot.

(No don't pull the "GOOD PLAYUR" bs on me, it's been done to death and yes, I know there are people who are good, the fact is there aren't many of them)

Oh no not this.

Trust me just because you can ambush effectively as the assassin that does not make it certain every time that the other team is full of dip****s. Assassins can take out people in an ambush when they are by themselves. If the opponent is near a teammate the kill wasn't worth it. It was a waste of time.

The assumption is that the assassin always has the upper hand but against skilled or marginally aware opponents you have to re-prioritize. It does not take absolutely no skill to ambush. It is always a risk that will probably be calculated in a split second. It takes a level of map knowledge to know where to strike.

Removing the slash at the end would make killing anything but snipers deployed heavies and other assassins hard. Removing the lunge entirely would kill assassin mobility.

I agree with some fixing but not enough to fracture the community

According to my stats I have more kills vs assassins than any other class, and that's well before I figured out bunny-hopping made me immune to assassinations.

They're pants, and fixing a core mechanic of the game FOR EVERYONE (something that will allow you to grapple assassins right back at them) isn't going to turn them from pants to super-win...

You also need to look at what class you play... if you play tank you are going to have tons of kills against sins, if you play sniper, probably not so much. Assassin's, despite the name, are not really slayers in this game. They push bot lanes and destroy turrets. Slaying comes second. But most pubbies haven't figured this out yet.

Lets be honest, the reason most assassins are bad is not because of the grapple mechanic. It is because they are bad.

No. It is because they are inexperienced. They don't know when to escape or how to approach pros and how to react.

Semantics :lol:

So, what do Assassins do when they face Tanks that actually hang aroung their bots?

Go kill other bots? Tanks can't be protecting all their bots, unless you have pushed them really far back or they have like five tanks.

I'd gain the upper ground and shuriken the tank. That or kill his bots from behind.

It's funny you should say that; Sniper is the class I've been playing the most, recently. Next, Support, next probably Gunner. That said, I mix it up a lot - I try to go for what our team doesn't have. Weakest pick is probably assault.

I've still yet to see how the armour endorsement nerf has impacted my sniper's lethality vs Assassins (previously Bronze Armour was enough to survive a face-stab, which is the best they could hope for before I fire off my grapple and send them into orbit), but having reworked it to Silver armour, I think I can still generally survive face-stabs and thus near-guarantee a win - further play-testing necessary.

They're not the "slayers" because they're already UP vs a lot of pros (although, as stated, armour nerf has gone a decent way to fixing this); meaning that they are reduced to what is quite literally busy-work until they can exploit the OP juice mechanic to take out some turrets.

Taking out bots is NOT a good use of an Assassins time; as if they're farming juice they'll be using melee taps which ANY class can do equally effectively (if not more so due to them having more HP) - and between the Annihilator, Ejectors, a single L1 Rock-it turret, and numerous other enemy pros which the Assassin is happily ignoring; those bots she's ushering forwards have no chance at all of doing diddley-squat.

It's pointless busy work. The only time pushing the bot lanes is necessary is when the turrets are already down and you need a quick push at the last moment to get the bots onto the money-ball. That takes barely hardly any time at all, and certainly doesn't involve spending THE ENTIRE ROUND stealing bot-kills from your own defensive turrets, or shrewdly placed firebases.

Yes pushing bots is important; but ANY PRO CAN ACHIEVE THAT REALLY FREAKING EASILY AS A MATTER OF COURSE - it's a waste of an Assassin to have them focussed on such a menial task.

I'd concur that back-dooring turrets and generally being a nuisance is probably the best use of an Assassin's time; however a decent gunner or an assault's GL spam is generally equally if not more effective and a better use of time.

I'd much rather have an Assassin on my team eliminating key enemy threats (breaking their kill-streaks, icing their snipers, locking them up with a grapple to help out vulnerable team-mates, etc) than doing something your static defences and your own bots can accomplish on their own.

Sure... in a pub with absolutely no coordination with the rest of her team lollygagging about, but this could be said for almost anything in the game. Nearly nothing is effective without proper team support. After-all, it is a team game.

Reading your responses I get the feeling that our different viewpoints come from different styles of play. I'm not one to set up stagnantly in my base and farm my K/D all round. I constantly push lanes and try to breach the enemy base. I find games which are just a standoff until everyone juices in OT boring and mundane. Having assassin as my second most played class I can say that focusing on bot lanes is an extremely good tactic and can pretty much win the game.

I find quick and decisive victories more rewarding personally than a high K/D. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAPDbEgyCMo I play sort of like this, but I still do kill key pros as assassin. I don't only target bots.

I play mainly support and assassin, and I can say that assassins kill bots far more easily. I average around 40 bot kills as support and pretty much always double that, or triple it as assassin.

It's very obvious that Ace is not an assassin.

With proper co-ordination you'd ideally have a support with bot boosting aura running that last dash and clearing the way; it's still a waste of resources having two team-mates shepherding one group of breach bots.

I tend to hang back in base as support just because my team are too busy messing around with breach bots, etc to prevent the enemy from walking all over the map (and thus straight up to our defences) like they own them. Most people are too blind to pay attention to back-dooring assassins or a sneaky assault on a turret-killing mission; and those turrets don't (over)heal themselves.

I'd say having control of the map and seizing the initiative from opposing players is more important than denying your turrets a few bot kills and pushing your position up a bit on the scoreboard from the bot-kills. Generally it only takes one solid bot-run to take down the MB; so there's no point in messing around with bots unless you know there's no turrets or enemy pros between them and the objective.

Quick decisive victories = steam rolls = stacked teams usually. I'd rather be fighting tooth and claw and have a fight go the distance than just blink and find out we've won.

I find support to be generally the worst class at taking out breach bots; however airstrikes + grapples on blackjacks can speed up matters rapidly - and while it may seem like a "waste" of a cooldown, if your goal is merely to push your bots forward rapidly, there should be very little opposition between you and the objective anyway. If there is, then you may as well ignore the bot lanes until you've dealt with the real threats, because they're just going to ejected. Also, stick a firebase around a corner near to the start of the enemy's bot-lane - the bots will barely make it out of the enemy's base, so the assassin farming the bots becomes pointless anyway.

No, no, no, no, no.

Best case scenario: Two (you can have more but welp) juiced players escort one bot wave, at the enemy base they juice, kill people and the bots take the ball down. At this point you've pretty much won.

Oh by the way, a game lasts 8-10 minutes and is automatically a steam roll for you? Were did you get your experience son? Pubs?

I could use some tips as Sin when they got half-way decent Tanks shepherding their bots. I hate Tanks with a burning passion. :evil: :evil: :evil:

If I encounter a tank in the lane I am trying to push I usually do one of two things:
1. Try to eliminate him. Eject him if possible, wait for team support, or backpedal and shuriken him and the bot waves. If I get him to around 1/3rd hp with shurikens I then try to coax him into wasting his charge cooldown, and move in for a lunge/grapple kill.
2. Bypass him completely. Smoke bomb over him and begin slaying bots as soon as they exit the "garage." If he continues to push the bots, he will find himself at our base alone, and I will most likely have juice in his base. If he comes back to try and kill you it is delightfully easy to escape.

The real problem with tanks is dislodging especially stubborn ones from escorting his bots from the garage to around the middle of the lane. Some tanks I have played against spend nearly all their time watching their bots spawns, trying to prevent me from farming them. At this point I will either do #1 as mentioned above, or just focus on the other lane. It can be really effective on maps such as Ammo Mule to kill a bot wave, smoke bomb up on their upper ring, and kill their other bot wave. Tanks can't keep up with your mobility and most just give up and try to kill your team instead.

Your bit about the garage reminds me of a game last night on Tullys
Joined about midway, my team was pushed back into our tunnel and started going to work. After a Chickey and some hard work we managed to push into their base at which point I noticed that our bots were nowhere to be seen.
Hual arse back to our base to see a Support had snuck behind and had a firebase sitting outside our garage keeping our bots down

After killing the Support and his FB I chimed into voicecomm "did you guys know an enemy Support had snuck into our base and was killing our bots?"
"Really?" was the reply. XD