Just some random questions I've been meaning to ask for a while - any replies will be greatly appreciated! 1) I see a lot of assassins (in game and in Youtube vids) dash up to pros from behind and then back grapple them. Is there any reason why they don't lunge -> grapple combo instead? Some classes can survive the regular back grapple with armor, but I've only ever seen a tank with gold (maybe silver too?) armor + L3 passive survive the lunge -> grapple. Also dashing takes more time than lunging, which means there's a greater chance of the target randomly turning around and spotting you (I say "random" because the assassins I see doing this are always decloaked when running after the target). I guess the only advantage to using the dash instead of lunge is that the cooldown is preserved in case it is required for a quick escape, but is that really the only reason not to lunge, or am I missing something? 2) If assault upgrades charge to level 3 and then uses it while flying, it won't grapple and does knockback instead. Does this also do any damage? If so, is it equal to a level 2 charge damage, or is it slightly higher? 3) Most, if not all, gunners I've played will use slam right after surviving an assassin grapple instead of countering with their own grapple. Assuming they do the slam, this means you can lunge -> facegrapple them, jump back+switch shuriken+ unload in their face to finish them off before they're able to do anything. Does the gunner grapple have a short reach, preventing them from using it as a reliable counter, or does the slam just work against the majority of assassins out there? 4) Most good gunners I see will do a short hop -> slam instead of doing a grounded slam (I see this for all slams, not just following a facegrapple). Any particular reason for this? Is there less startup/ending lag when doing it this way? 5) Are endorsements considered while juiced? In other words, are the gains from juice percentage based or absolute values? For example, will a juiced gold armor assault survive the same amount of damage as a juiced no-armor assault? Or will a juiced gold reload speed tank reload as fast as one without any reload endorsement?
1) Those youtube videos are probably from the 360 version, where excessive lag makes the lunge terrible. Half the time you'll hit the person and then slide past them, ending up in front of them facing the wrong direction. Unless they're grappling a tank, it's safer to just dash and grapple. They would be uncloaked to avoid generating the humming cloak sound, since that's pretty much a dead giveaway to any good player paying attention. On 360 there's less chance of someone turning around and spotting them, simply because it takes more time to do. 2) It does damage when you're in the air, but MUCH less than the lv2 dash, almost negligible. The same goes for if your Lv3 charge hits a player who is in the air. After I found this out, I stopped upgrading my charge to Lv3. It seems like it must be a bug. 3) Bad gunners will slam immediately and bad assassins will get caught by it. Good gunners will immediately jump up and backwards and start shooting, then possibly slam a little late if they see the assassin jump at them or get underneath them (pancake!). 4) I would usually jump+slam when playing the gunner, for no particular reason I guess. I just jumped around a lot. But the advantages would be that it's more unexpected, and gives you a chance for an instant-kill pancake. I've gotten a LOT of pancakes by doing jump+slam when a tank, assault, or assassin is up in my face. 5) I don't know how much armor affects you while juiced, but other endorsements definitely matter. RoF can increase your juiced effectiveness by a huge amount. You might also notice a big difference between your juice in regulation versus your juice in overtime. That's because in overtime you have all gold endorsements (bacon!)
the ini's say +300hp for gold armor, and +1000hp for juicing, so in this case both flat values that are being added and assault default hp would be 500, so, juiced + standard = 1500 hp, juiced + gold armor = 1800hp, i dunno if overheal is affected by endorsements/juice, so i can't comment on that (but any class should survive 1 backgrapple when juiced? (since assasin and sniper = lowest health = 300 + juice 1000 = 1300, and backgrapple with sword does 1000 damage) but yes, endorsements still work when juiced
Critical shot helps tremendously when juiced. Juice makes all shots fired critical hits, and Crit Shot endorsements affect the crit multiplier.
Does that also mean skills affect the crit multiplier? So if an assassin is juiced, would the shurikens end up doing loads more damage if coming out of a level 3 cloak? Might have to start playing around with crit builds now
Yeah, level 3 cloak gets 15% more damage. If my calculations are correct, that means level 3 cloak and Achillies gets you 44% more damage. And since it's a gauranteed 44% damage increase for a whole second, you could really dish out a whole new level of pain.
Up until grapple 3, the gunner's grapple is TERRIBLE, and even after that it still isn't that good. Whereas the slam will knock them back but not out of range and give them a major speed reduction making them an easy target.
