I had an idea in a thread a while ago about how the charge/lunge mechanics should work. After mulling it over a bit, I decided it was a solid idea that warranted a thread. How exactly this gets balanced is beyond my powers of observation, however I see some flaws with the current setup from a logical standpoint. What happens right now with the lunge for the assassin is that you rocket forward at 3000 speed. I do not know the speeds that the tank/assault go, but they appear to be static as well. This urks me, a lunge is basically an increase in speed with an offensive bent. Same with charge. What gets me is that speed modifiers have no bearing whatsoever on the speed of the lunge/charge. Dashing currently has no effect on the lunge, but drains lunge as you use it. It would make more sense to me if the lunge were influenced by dash/speed pickups. As it is dash is a next to worthless skill. Charge should have speed factored into it as well. A tank should be incrementally slower than the assault while charging equal to the difference in speeds. Speed pickups/endorsements should effect this. Ideally this wouldn't alter the balance too terribly much. The assault kind of needs the charge speed back, and hopefully that will satisfy the assault nerf ragers. The assassin would gain a useful tool but lose a cheap skill-purchase workaround. A fair trade from where I'm standing. What do you think about this? I was juggling between putting this in the discussion or wishlist subforums. If any of the mods feel it needs moved go for it.
Can you please not make balance suggestions for classes you have never played? Lunge is hard enough to predict as it is. Using it close to the map edge will sometimes just catapult you off the map for no reason. Now you want to combine that with dash level and speed pickups? With your ideas I would have take into account: - my dash level - the number of speed pickups I have collected - the movement speed and direction of my target - the time it takes before he is back on the ground - and allow for a couple of feet error margin in case I have a lunge hick-up Lunge has nothing to do with charge and Assassin and Assault can't be compared in any way gameplaywise. It is like comparing icetraps with a firebase. If you want to compare the Assaults charge to anything look at the Tank, for the Assault Rifle to the Gunner and for bomb to the Support. PS: If you don't believe me launch Blitz and lunge parallel to the two forward turret nubs under the spawn ring. You will notice that the lunge distance will vary. It's Blitz so there is no lag present. Now imagine you do the same online. There is a reason you should not play Assassin on servers with suboptimal ping.
I mainly play assassin/support, with tank coming in third. And that was very very rude. I look at both as an offensively bent speed boost. Charges just do more damage and have knockback. Lunge has a shorter timer, I really don't see the huge difference. Dash levels have no bearing on speed difference. All it does is effect the cooldown unless the upgrade menu is lying to me. Dash is a wasted skill at the moment with the current lunge mechanics. You already have to take these things into account. Changing how you do it is not a big deal from where I'm standing. In fact, a speed boost would make it easier to predict in my opinion. Also, multipliers are immensely easy to predict. If you know you're going to be going 4 times faster, you account for that. The faster you go, the bigger the multiplier. Getting the feel for a multiplier is NOT difficult. Can you account for RoF/Speed/Armor changes while juiced easily? Why, because multipliers are VERY easy to grasp. ALSO, lunge ends prematurely if you hit something. Having trouble predicting how far you will go? Aim for the center of your target.
ooh, an idea that i fully support! it makes jumpmaps possible (like, stand on the edge of slope, charge upwards, fly further, ???, profit ) or hell, even just, jump + charge = upcharge if uber isn't gonna do this, i'll definitly will in a mod
Sorry but I thought you were another Assault player lashing out at the Assassin for no reason. I apologize! Still, I don't see how the lunge changes would be a good thing. Uber would not just add speed to the lunge for more speed pick-ups, most likely they would also make what we have now slower if you have no speed boni. I see a problem with this for the first few minutes of the match. You start with with a cloak that is more visible than usual and a dagger. Getting a clean kill under these conditions is already harder. Now imagine lunge would be slower too. It would make it hard to get close to any experienced player unless you can pick up some speed drops. But you can't really rely on getting them. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes not. And I don't want to use speed as an endorsement. Armor and RoF are even more important after the armor nerf and I wouldn't want to give up skill recovery for it. After all bronze SR makes your cloak reload faster and adds to your speed with dash. TL;DR: You want to add a variable to lunge that relies on luck (if you find speed pick-ups early) and I don't think we should introduce more randomness into the game.
No worries. You seem to misunderstand where I see this change going. Speed pickups should help the lunge, I'm going to stick to that. I also think that DASH should affect the lunge speed. Dash boosts your speed by 1.5(I believe). Let's just go out on a limb and say the new speed for the assassin lunge is 4x instead of the 5x from standard we have now. While repeated lunging would no longer be as fast as dash, dash would gain a new use. When dashing your lunge speed would be boosted by 50%. 4x1.5 is 6x, significantly faster than the current lunge, but not gamebreakingly so. Now we add in some speed pickups/bronze endorsement and you are looking at a killer lunge. Even if we look at a 3.5 multipler, 3.5x1.5=5.25. Still a bit faster, and speed pickups would help this. The thing that would balance this out is the fact that many good assassins would be using their dash regularly, every time they lunge. Dash becomes just as vital(and useful) as cloak. Now people have a reason to upgrade it. I was not intending to nerf the assassin in any way. I just noticed some of the skills needed made more useful, particularly dash. Lunge being a free dash is wrong, but I don't think the lunge needs nerfed. I think the dash needs to be made useful by being tied to lunge in a way that doesn't hamper the assassin. As far as the whole tank/assault charge thing, I just think speed should be calculated in all boosts. A tank with gold speed would charge just as quickly as an assault with nothing if this change were implemented. Give those speed/reload/skill tanks more of a reason to be feared :twisted:
Oh crap, I just realised my math was a bit off. For some reason I thought that assassin base speed was 600. 3000/650=4.615. A 3.5x multiplier looks way more reasonable than a 4x now. Other than a number mixup though, the way it works should be the same. Numbers can always be tweaked Uber-side to make it balanced anyway.
I don't see why it needs change... And I'd rather leave the balancing to the devs instead of having them listen to every other reasonable balance suggestion which will eventually stack up and unbalance the game.
I think the game is balanced as is(aside from the assault charge speed). I just feel the assassins dash is being vastly overshadowed by the lunge. At the moment there is no reason to ever upgrade the skill. And for all those people calling for a lunge nerf? This would essentially do what many of them are asking for(tying the dash to lunge) while doing so in a way that assassins do not feel nerfed. I tried to find something that would make everyone happy. Nerfs make people upset, mechanics that add strategy, skill, usefulness, and sense make people happy. Managing dash would essentially be just as important as managing cloak, and just as useful. Lunge SPAM would become less useful, but lunge used in proper situations would get a slight buff. Good god i need to lay off the walls of text. tl;dr I generally like keeping balance decisions to the devs. This is more of a mechanical suggestion/idea than a balance one. The devs can make these numbers whatever the hell they want to keep the game balanced.
It's quite possible I'm a bad assassin, but I find that an upgrade of Dash (and maybe even two if I'm rolling in the cash) is a nice thing to grab--it's a huge boost to cloaked mobility. Even if you're more obvious since you're going faster and leaving the little puffs of smoke behind, you're much, much less obvious than if you're lunging, to the point where you don't get noticed too often unless people are looking at you or you're already pretty close. It also seems to me like a lot of players who've noticed I'm in the area don't expect me to be dashing while cloaked, and so I end up with an advantage in positioning: they don't expect me to be able to cover ground as quickly as I can without revealing myself, and so I'm able to get behind them while they might still be assuming that I'm ahead of them. The usefulness of dash for me may stem from a different playstyle, too. I don't really trust cloak to keep me hidden if I'm going to be near people, so I tend to do everything I can to stay on the edges of their field of view. There, a little extra shimmer or some footsteps aren't going to make me a significant amount more noticeable, while a lunge absolutely would.
Jump while dash/cloaking to cover more ground. Or lunge repeatedly, the ground you cover is fast enough to avoid just about all deaths, and you can smokejump/cloak at the end to be re concealed. I almost never trust cloak. Cloak is for turret/bot protection and crits. Lunging repeatedly is like dashing but without the cooldown. AND if you lunge, but hit nothing, you can cloak midlunge. Great for getaways. Lunge>Dash in almost every situation.
Yeah, for some reason, I get shot at and chased down a lot more while I'm cloaked, than if I opted not to use the Cloak while retreating. It's akin to waving a bright red cloth in front of a bull, just induces rage in players.
If you've been pinged already, cloak isn't that useful for avoiding whoever's already chasing you. If not, it can make it a little harder for them to get that first cloak-ruining bullet on you (hopping over gunner bullet streams like a jump-rope is fun). Cloaking is also your primary tool for moving about the field undetected (aka "why your bots don't seem to be spawning in Spunky Cola Arena"). There are plenty of players who have sound setups that allow them to almost instantly home-in on any sin that's cloaked nearby, though, so.... /sadface
Scratch this, you can still hit your target. It isn't all that useful against players though. You will now not only be in their face but buzzing like a beehive stuck in their underpants.
Well, I meant the habits of the players themselves. pros chase me with a vengeance when I try to cloak up, but if I don't bother, they often let me escape largely unscathed. Something about the cloak seems to be rage inducing. :shock:
