Some small balance issues.

She SHOULD have to, but she doesn't. Everything but a Tank is too easy to lunge+grapple to even worry about.

Er... No. Backstabs are the equivalent to sniper headshots. Lunge+facestab is equivalent to body shooting: easy and reliable to hit... should be unreliable to kill with, sadly, it isn't.

All very good if you're not doing anything else. As for the sound, yeah, you know one's around, shame you can't do jackshit about it as they'll lunge into your face and kill you before you can do anything about it... Except for Tanks that can simply spam Death Blossoms to hell and back.

I don't remember saying assassins in general were overpowered or even mentioning base destroying. It's just face grappling with the assassin. In that case, sure she won't be raiding your base, she'll just kill everyone that's not standing in direct line of sight (and within fire range) of the Tank! Yeah, that's not a problem at all.

Not really. Assassins, Gunners with mortar, Assaults with grenade launchers.

On 2 classes... Comparatively the assassin can "1 body shot kill" (face lunge+grapple) everything up to a Gunner. And even a gunner it can easily dispatch without silver armor at least, by simply following up with a jump+slice that can't be avoided.

Geez, I'm pretty sure I ordered some cheese from that waiter over an hour ago. What gives? This whine isn't gonna complement itself!

As in video footage, unedited, of a match with plenty of examples or GTFO.

You sure talk a lot for someone who's entire argument comes down to "NUH UH!".

How about some videos from your side? unedited, match with plenty of examples or GTFO?

Can't a gunner just countergrapple an assasin that failstabbed him? That's what I always do and I've yet to see it fail.

Depends.

If it's a bad assassin, yeah, totally. But the bad ones are hardly the problem.

If it's a good one: As much as an assassin can grapple someone jumping - If it glitches.

See, an assassin can simply follow up the lunge+facestab with a jump+sword slash or two. The gunner doesn't have enough time to re-spin his minigun and kill the assassin before she kills him, a slam will be useless since the assassin will jump over it, and a grapple will also fail due to jumping. So, yeah, only if it glitches, otherwise, nothing the gunner can do.

It's really great how one side is trying to be reasonable and the other simply replies with. NO YOU'RE WRONG I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN LA LA LA LA.

But yes, I main assassin and it's pretty great. Lunge + Grapple takes care of anything I'm aiming for aside from a tank although from personal experience I can tell you that I simply stopped using gold armour because it does not prevent tanks from insta-gibbing you with DB.

At this point I just concede that my best defense is my mobility and run full sprintz with silver armour and either RoF or Skill Recharge.

My only major problem is that either due to lag or the games programming if I failstab the class I just grappled instantly grapples me and OhKO's me.

+1. Any gunner that remembers that they have grapple as a skill launches it and ALWAYS connects with me so far if I don't kill him after a face stab. It is the reason why mid-air grapples currently exist for all other classes instead of just a heavy class, which is why it won't matter if you jump now, a heavy will get you one way or another if you continue to engage him, which seems fairer now. They just need to fix grappling so sins stop backstabbing from the front and we stop getting this weird mid-air fighting.

Also, if you are dying from lunge grabbing all the time (and you're not a LIGHT ARMOURED class) it's probably because, like so many other things, you're not working as a team. Grappling in a crowd is suicide regardless of the outcome, and everyone has their own counter; either a skill or strength, or based on who's around e.g. Supports get extra anti-assassin if they follow a heavy class around to constantly heal them, so they can use them as a shield if they watch out for the little guy on their end.

People are whining in here about dying too easily from assassins. If they're doing it right, then they shouldn't be whining, because either that sin is awful and on a self-destructive pro-hunting pattern or you win overall because your team will have avenged your death soon after (whether it be a tank or a firebase, or a DoT, there's tonnes of ways).

guys, im not sure what you are talking about, but ive been playing (or should i say "try" playing) the assassin and even with my swords, fro ma backstab on a gunner (or seemingly anything else for that matter), only the lights die. others survive and usually kill me right back after.

gunners are especially aggravating, i backstab them and they just use theire grapple skill to one-shot me. there's like absolutely nothing i can do.

and about gunners...how do you counter those bastards ? whatever class i play, whatever strategy i use they always end up killing me cheaply and easily.

[not whining. just game feedback]

Are you SURE you had your katana and did the actual back grapple? The one where she trips up the big fellow then drives the katana through his face?

Cause they can't really survive that one. They can only survive the kunai one (the "knife"-shaped thing you start with), but any half decent assassin will have his katana within a minute.

Only class capable of surviving a katana backstab is the tank with gold armor. And honestly, that's fine. Backstabs are "their thing". What bothers me is how much damage lunge+face grapple does considering how easy it is to land.

Tank at lv2 passive can survive it with silver armor.
Tank at lv3 passive can survive it with bronze armor

Counter-grabs seem somewhat random. I play classes on both ends of it, and it just sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

Sometimes I'll be mashing jump after doing a grab, but I still get counter-grabbed.

Sometimes I'll be mashing grab after being grabbed, and the other person will jump away. Sometimes they simply aren't in range for some reason and I look like a fool.

As for what a gunner should do after being face grabbed, you almost certainly want to jump backwards and fire the minigun. Dual mini will tear up an assassin even before it spins up all the way. If she jumps at you, you can time your slam for when she lands. If you're lucky you might even get a pancake out of the deal. I play as both assassin and gunner, and both of those perspectives say this is the gunner's best chance.

I agree with zarakon. If a gunner slams right after being face-grabbed, that's typically a dead gunner. A good assassin will always being jumping or smoke bombing right after a face-grab.

Lol, spin up or no, that sin jump slashing, or even lunging then slashing you from the side will finish you. In fact, half the time just one slash can finish you.

What you should do is not back down and use your grapple skill. It's there, it's ready, it's reach is significantly extended and it's the most powerful grapple in the game besides a katana backstab. Only way to stop them is with the biggest overkill you got, and miniguns barely hold a candle to your grapple.

Wow... "Video proof or GTFO"?

Seems that with a TF2-based release, we're getting a TF2-like community stupidity.

Videos have never solved anything. Ever.
If someone *does* post a video, people just say "You're playing against bads", "You're bad", "You were lucky" and "The map caused that do the same on another map".

Asking for videos is pretty much trolling - it's a tactic that serves only to make one side provide evidence over and over and do hours and hours of work - to tire them out until they give up. All the while the other party just says "Not good enough. Not good enough"
Pathetic.

Do you know how intelligent people (or at least those with half a brain) and game developers judge balance? Numbers and principle.
Like the actual number crunching on Page 2.

At the moment, I would agree that Assassins are too heavily rewarded for frontal grapples that as a principle shouldn't be as effective as they currently are.
I abuse them as an Assassin, and I see many others doing the same.
It's good for more than half a bar of damage on most classes, while your lunge, jumping slashes and shoyrukens can easily make up the rest with little skill.

Then a possible fix:

Making merging the lunge with the grapple bar? Having the lunge drain 20-30% of the bar while missed grapples only drain the regular 5%? (I think its 5%, looks like it, not sure)

This prevents the lunge+grapple combo and lunges has to be used more carefully.

*Gears up in metal power armor and picks up a shield and a police batton*

"Okay! I'm ready! Bring on the rage! :twisted: "

xD

Lungegrapple is pretty much the only thing the Sin has going for her in vs Pro combat <_<. Maybe a slight increase in the time between the lungeslash and the moment you can grapple would be appreciated, but I think the only thing that really could use a nerf is the damage of facegrapples. Not because it's really a problem, but because it would make failsins less tedious to deal with and because it would discourage failsins from playing the class in the first place. Make them do something useful, for goodness sake!

Yeah, my problem isn't combo-ing the lunge with the grapple, is that the face grapple itself is way too rewarding for what it is - "poor/substandard assassin behaviour".

Again, it's the same as rewarding a sniper for body shooting.

Why has this turned into a "Nerf the assassin" thread? The original post was talking about all the other classes as well. If any of you have played hidden the assassin is exactly like the pigstick except you can't take 500 bullets to the face and you're not completely invisible all the time. Lunge is the only good thing about the assassin. When i see people play, even really good players, when they lunge+grapple they usually don't wait for the lunge to use it's slash attack and when they do they usually get grappled by the enemy first.

I don't see why face-grapples need to be nerfed, you can't kill anyone with them except for sniper and other assassins. Any good assassin is going to have gold armor. Any good sniper is going to be camping AND have an ice trap near him. If for some reason you're a really good assassin and you dodge his trap but he notices you, even if you grapple before him he is still going to win. Now not only does the snipers face-grapple do almost as much damage as the assassins it also knocks you back a huge distance, either knocking you out of the map or into a killzone.

This is all assuming you even get close to another assassin or sniper while killing bots and attacking the enemy base.

The gunner, assault and tank all can kill the assassin with gold armor with half the clip of their main gun (3 seconds firing time give or take). Pretty much all their abilities can 1 shot an assassin with gold armor.

Once you start playing with people who have spent more than 2 hours playing the game, assassin becomes very hard to play easily. This is a subjective term because you can still do your job effectively enough to win the game and you can still avoid dying if you don't try and harass other players. Some maps are even so badly designed it's almost impossible to not have someone shooting at you as an assassin. On maps where the assassin does really well an assault or gunner can still have better map control than an assassin.

Overall the assassin is pretty balanced, if you cloak near someone they will hear you. If you uncloak and approach them from behind, well pray they don't turn around because you probably won't 1 shot them. If you smoke bomb to get to someone they will hear you (snipers). Assassins are only "overpowered" against average players early to mid game and during overtime which by the way aren't the best at killing the money ball regardless of what everyone thinks. Yes they are fast but it still takes ~30 seconds of uninterrupted shuriken spam

Personally i think the assassins grapple should take priority over everyone elses. The assault can fly and has AoE explosives and charge and can kill you with half a clip of auto-fire. The gunner/tank you can't even grapple when they're deployed and regardless of what i do i always seem to end up getting slammed by the gunner. Even when i was ice trapped i still got knocked out of the map.

So people complain about assassins getting juice too fast and "owning it up" and 3 shoting everyone. That's great and all but you still need to be in melee range and if you're running all over the map killing people you're only going to kill 1 or 2 people max. If any of the above 3 classes get juice their ranged attacks can 1 shot you. Even when you're cloaked and running around their stray bullets are enough to kill you.

Personally i think dash needs to be instantaneous on activation and the smoke bomb needs to be uninterruptible while the animation is playing or at least a clearly defined blind zone. I don't care if you explode me right as it ends and i get launched out of the map. At least i didn't get killed by a face-grapple trying to escape.

TL;DR

Assassin is fine against other pros, everyone else's damage/abilities needs to be fine tuned.

Well having put about 40 hours of play into the game before the beta ended and before/after the assassin nerf. I have to pretty much disagree with the OP....

Face grapples are pretty much death against players that actually know how to play the game.

If you actually manage to get grappled by an Gunner, you deserve to die.