The Gentlemanly Guide to the art of assasination.

As a assassin player every game I play has been polluted with sins that assume they can add to their team by running into the barrel of a dual-minigun. Well, Today not only I will show you how to execute this magnificent art but I will also show you how to counter it.
I will teach you my way of playing assassin, but I encourage you to mix in your own style to be unique.

Endorsements:
Gold: Armor/Rate of Fire
Armor is very essential to this class *** one mistake can prove fatal to your life.
If you find yourself in combative situations often I recommend Gold Armor. Plus its fun to give those Face stabbing sins a run for their money when you return the favor.

Silver: Rate of Fire/Armor
While you excel at assassinating pros, You shine at lane control.
Rate of fire increases your slashing speed turning groups of bots into scrap.

Bronze : Skill Recovery
A good sin relies on her skills to execute her art.

Now to the actual game:
When starting the round as a sin. It is highly recommended that you purchase your passive skill and nothing else. (I will explain later)
Using the reload key lunge out of spawn and pick a lane you wish to preform your art in.
Find a nice place to stay in, once the enemy bots start marching along lunge at the backs of those pesky machines and turn them into scrap. You should receive a good amount of profit and juice for your simple task. Once you have $400 you should upgrade your bot killing ability. Note: Always have enough for the annihilator. No. Matter. What.

The art of assassination
Whats this? A pesky foe challenging your magnificent art? Well, Before you gleefully greet them with the cold steel of your sword (Don't even go for pros with the dagger unless its necessary!) you must follow these simple steps.

1. ALWAYS assume that your target has some sort of armor endorsement.
Never grapple someone from the front unless they have at least 1/4 of their health left and if they are distracted by your fellow teammates folly of bullets.

2. Make sure they are alone.
Emphasis on assassination. If the target is alone, follow through. If not, alert your fellow teammates to the disturbance in your lane. Now if you are unfortunate enough to actually attempt to assassinate the target with a enemy near by consider this. You are a sitting duck while assassinating. An assault could easily attach a bomb to your poor little skull and end your short life.

3. Uncloak and Dagger.
Your cloak is a great tool. But not great enough to assassinate your foes. Cloak to get across the map and uncloak way behind your foe. To execute the assassination lunge towards their back and follow through with a greeting made of cold steel.

The strange urge to destroy.
Whats this? You actually preformed your art successfully and are now glowing?
Well, not only you excel at turning bots to scrap but you also excel at turning turrets to scrap. But before you charge in to preform your magnificent art. Consider these steps.

1. Check the base.
The army doesn't go charging in a base. They look at whats inside and talk strategics.

2. Know your targets.
If the enemy's base is occupied. Make the push by greeting your enemies with your blade. Then go for the weaker turrets. Killing the occupants will ensure that your team will have an easier time destroying the turrets.

3. Know your limits.
While you do excel at destroying turrets, Do not go for level 3 Rock-its. They can turn you into pulp if they are backed up with other turrets. This is where your smoke bomb comes in handy, disable the turret with your bomb and preform your art on the said level 3 Rock-it.

How do I counter such an art?
This magnificent art can be easily countered if you make 1 single mistake, And there are a lot of them you can commit. But I will explain the most common ones.

1. Cloak sound
The most common mistake preformed by assassins. Always uncloak when you are in enemy territory. The mere sound of your cloak can announce your presence to your target. If you hear the hum of the assassin, Drop everything your doing, and listen where the sound is coming from and fire in that general direction. You should reveal the assassin easily and she should retreat post-haste.

2. Stubbornness
In my career I met assassins that will try to grapple you from the front and wont seem to give up. The most simple way to counter this is to jump and fire at the poor sod disgracing this magnificent art. Heavier classes should either charge or slam down on the poor fool.

3. Public Assassination
Many assassins commit this error, yet many don't seem to counter it. If you see your fellow comrade being greeted publicly. Fire upon the greeter in order to defend your comrade. If you do this correctly your comrades death will not go in vein as the greeter will meet him shortly in the burning depths below. As a support or assault, Sent the greeter off with a gift. Attach a bomb or Air-strike beacon on the said greeter.

What about my skills?
In order to preform your art magnificently you must rely on your skills. But a good sin should not have her skills hold her hand.

Passive: It is highly recommended that you upgrade this to 3 first. As it will increase your skill at turning bots into scrap. More scrap = More profit.

Dash: Use this to aide in escaping your failed assassination attempt. Leave it at 2. You should acquire speed pick-ups while preforming your art.

Cloak: While it is a good tool to move across the map. Don't rely on it to a point where you need it to assassinate your foes. Leave it at level 2 at best. (At level 3 it can give you crits when you attack out of it.)

Smoke Bomb: A very underestimated skill. Use it to access high areas and to assassinate troublesome snipers without setting of their traps. You can also use it to aide in escaping your failed assassination attempt. It can disable turrets for a small period of time. Along with passive you should also invest in making this skill level 3.

Tools of the trade

Dagger/Sword: You should have this out at all time. Use it to scrap bots with ease.
Greet your fellow enemies with the cold steel by using a grapple attack.

Shuriken Launcher: Use this weapon if someone spots you practicing your art on their bots. You can also send deployed Gunners and Tanks a greeting from afar. You can also take out turrets from afar. Heck, Use it for general annoyance, people hate it when you throw sharp things everywhere.

Tips to take on the field

1. Spend your money
If you are executing your art correctly, you should have a hefty amount of profit. Spend it on building turrets, send bots to do the greetings for you and to use the annihilator. Which leads us to our next step.

2. Fly like an angel
A good sin should know what goes on in the map. Know when the ejectors are usable, know which lanes need help and know when the annihilator is active. Be on it like a hawk.

3. Know your limits Pt. 2
If people are denying you to practice your art on their bots, simply move to the other lane. Inform your comrades to the disturbance on the other lane.

Now to greet this guide
By now you should know the basics of the Gentlemanly art of assassination. With enough practice you should earn more profits than your fellow comrades and come out with a positive K/D. (Don't focus on that)

ill see your gentlemannely art and raise you expert botany

your cold steel is no match for my death blossom

I'd add that LVL3 Cloak gives you guaranteed Crits for a short time upon de-cloaking - excellent for harassing Snipers and taking out Firebases.

I shall update it as soon as I can. But as of now. I am le'tired.

Pretty good, but there are a few things you've left out.

1.) Assassins are ridiculously mobile and only tied in that aspect with Assaults. Assassins should ALWAYS have an eye on the Annihilator's cooldown, and be ready to shell $250.

2.)
a.) The Shuriken Launcher is SO much more useful than you paint it to be. Got a quiet corner when the opposing Moneyball's down? Throw a few Shuriken at it for a guaranteed extra 30s downtime.
b.) See those unattended RockIt turrets? Occupy them with the Launcher. You can pretty much scrap a non-3 RockIt with the lovable little thing.

3.) The Assassin's job [imo] is to wreck bots, stomp bases [intelligently], and then and only then Assassinate players. They're too fragile, and the sooner newbie Assassins get into that fragility mindset, the better-prepared they are to actually PK as a role. Assassins sticking to the botlanes and trashing bases/turrets are infinitely more helpful than facestab Assassins in the end, despite the great kill numbers PK Assassins can pull. Newbie Assassins aren't efficient PK Assassins unless they're naturally gifted, and as soon as they can shake off the 'OMG GODMODE' concept, they're pretty close to prepared.

Otherwise, great read, and the dialect was delightful to read, a stark contrast to the typing style of three-quarters of the Internet.

Your entire skill section is wrong except for the passive.

Dash level 3 is extremely helpful for maneuverability and gets you across the map fast when you don't want to decloak for lunge. It does leave a smoke trail, but if you jump often you won't have to worry about it too much. It also has a HUGE skill meter, and it regenerates super quickly. If you're going to get level 2 Dash at all, you need to get Dash 3.

Cloak level 3 is important since it gives you mini-crits (already addressed previously) that deal a significant amount of extra damage. These are especially useful for the shuriken launcher. It also allows you to camp ejectors for a (hopefully) short period of time while regaining meter.

Smoke Bomb is the least important of all the Assassin's skills. While I still level it up, it performs the same functions at all levels, except at higher ones it works a little better. Essentially I'm saying you can still disable turrets (for the same period of time I believe) with a level 1 Smoke Bomb or a level 3 Smoke Bomb. This is the last thing you should level.

Yeah.

Like I appointed. This guide contains instructions on MY way to play assassin.

This is still misinformation since it can also disable turrets at level 1. This should be clarified.

I didn't even catch that... yes, that's terribly misleading. Lv1 and Lv3 have no noticeable difference in turret downtime. Please fix.

Frontally grappling enemies with 1/2 of their health actually makes sense, since the only class that would survive that is the Tank.
Also, grappling from the front is effective against other assassins and snipers .

Can't really see the problem here either, the backstab animation is pretty short, you barely recieve damage during it and escaping isn't this hard, so backstabbing enemies with other enemies standing nearby usually isn't difficult.

Wow I actually randomly played a game with you early today Gentlemanly Pyro! In all honesty you were damn good too which lends plenty of credibility to this guide. Thanks a lot for the write up. I'll keep trying to get better.