Assassinating for Dummies

First stepping into the game, one of my most immediate impressions is that there sure are a lot of Assassins around, and more often than not, they tend to be idiots with deaths far exceeding their kills. It's a real downer when such Assassins are on my team, and when they're on the other, they're nothing more than minor nuisances that make up for their annoyance by expending cash. To remedy Monday Night Combat of this plague, I created this topic so that people may contribute helpful pointers for budding Assassins. With any luck, they might actually learn a thing or two.

I'll begin:

1) If your team already has one Assassin, chances are that you shouldn't be another one.

2) Don't spend all of your time running past everything to the enemy base just to try to kill the Support surrounded by (upgraded/hacked) base turrets. Even if you do stab him, you'll probably wind up dead.

3) Don't try to solo a Tank. He'll just shrug off your grapple and kill you with a two-hit combo, laughing all the way.

Skills- start off with cloak and passive first, good way to get a head start. Get dash to level 2 and either get passive to level 3 next or smoke bomb level 2 then continue from there.

Beginning game: Rush toward the middle map and find any advantage points, CLOAK! Find any stranglers that wander by and back stab them. If its a gunner or tank back off. Help your team by taking out supports and snipers. Avoid face stabbing mid def. classes, wait until the sword. Find any assassins trying to sneak into the base if you can and take them out.

Mid game: Same tactic as before but by now you probably should have the sword so you can back stab gunners now. As before, stay away from tanks and use your smoke bomb. Cloak right after you jump and also use it to stun robots/turrets. Grapple to get jack bots, takes away half their health. Spawn gremlins too to get behind enemies and distract campers. Stalk your prey and wait for an opening.

End game: Dash and Cloak level 3 are very useful, espically with the huge increase of dash time. Use cloak 3 to camp in spots and also wait for traps and somebody to walk into them. Again pick of stranglers and stay away from tanks unless they have low health. If you have juice USE IT. The assassin is EXTREMELY powerful with her sword+juice and can kill a jack bot in a few hits. Keep supporting your team by taking out enemies that are giving them trouble. Sneak in and attack the money ball a few times to get some hits on it.

I don't think they don't know how to play the Assassin, I think it's the fact they can't connect a grapple. It's hard to do grapples when your lagging and you will just feed the enemy.

The third person aspect gives them a massive disadvantage when they are missing the grapples.

I play assassins, have been since it launched this morning. At first I had to get use to the grappeling, EVERY ASSASSIN needs to get use to this if they just started. Then Ive also noticed, with atleast how I've been playing (And note I get a 6-10+ kd after I learned this) that upgrading smoke bomb and passive first off is actually really good. You can save ur cloak till u actually have a target, assassinate, then smoke bomb out. The improved damage helps if ur target's a tank/gunner cause then u can use ur charge RIGHT after the grapple and pull off the kill and then smoke bomb out. I know it seems like suicide lol.

Then when u have the money upgrade ur passive and get urself that nice shinny katana. Then get cloak to 2, and afterwards smoke bomb to 3. If you're having trouble getting away then you can skip out on smoke bomb 3 and go for sprint 2. Just the idea of having the passive 3 and smoke bomb three makes it so u can be devastating and then escape asap.

Feedback on this set up would be nice too so I can see how it works with others playing styles.

Ive seen an assassin playing without cloak.... its just sad...

and its just funny when a team has 4+ assassins lol

Oh, I've seen them grapple plenty of times. They just pick bad situation to do it in.

Buy gremlins, they're support and can get you kills. Sounds like a stupid tip but I'm amazed by the amount of times assassins neglect the bot advantage.

RB is a nice chaser, and right trigger/stick are great alts for when your grapple is reloading.

Hey, just wondering: which endorsement decreases the time it takes to do the next assassination?

Shuriken = <3. It's your only ranged ability that can help pick off tanks/gunners, and use them on turrents whenever. Even if it isn't do much, free juice.

NEVER. STOP. MOVING. Cept when you have level 3 cloak, then take a break.

Don't rush for kills, be patient.

I've managed to get kills from the opposing spawn while rocket turrents are up. Just make sure to RIGHT AWAY cloak as soon as you get the kill and get out. Use RB if necessary to get out.

Against:

Tanks - I rarely go after them unless I'm juiced. Don't go for grapples on them, it's a waste in my opinion. Just go for melees, take him out quickly, cloak, and use the grapple for a weaker target.

Gunners - Back Grapples OHKO, don't let them notice you, they'll destroy you with shockwave.

Assault - Back Grapples OHKO, keep him in close combat and it's possible to kill him. Run away at 3 quarters health. if he's not low enough to finish.

Snipers - Watch for traps and he's no trouble. You could grapple anywhere for the OHKO.

Assassins - Watch for your teammates and pay close attention for the cloak. You can grapple them out of the cloak so no problem.

Support - Their drainers don't effect you while cloaked, avoid turrents, back grapple for OHKO, or just front grapple and quickly RB/RT for the finish.

I'll add more stuff later.

How do you guys figure this stuff out so quickly? Seriously, the game came out today!

Were just good like that ^^.

Ive actually played assassin mostly and played alot today. After playing a few rounds you come up with your preferred tactics rather quickly... at least for me.

First class I played was the assassin and from there I just got more and more used to using her. I sometimes switch to Assault whenever I see an assassin on the team but then I grit my teeth if they go negative. >.>

I actually played the other classes first, i love them all (except sniper which i suck at). After playing all those classes i got a feel for the game and i started playing as assassin and quickly came up with tactics and good builds for her.

I tried all the other classes and had fun with them all...but I just seem to keep going back to the assassin class. I just do really well with it.

I think the problem alot of people have with the class is they look at the name and go "Ok so my only purpose is to kill people". If you go into the game with this mentality you are going to do poorly. You may have a nice KD ration, but honestly since a re-spawn is ~5 seconds getting a kill really doesn't do much in the aspect of pushing the money ball.

I think a lot of people fail to realize that the assassin is amazing at taking down turrets, and this should be main priority. Lets be honest, other classes have just as good a capability to kill as you do, and in a fair amount of cases better. However you have something no one else can do, a cloak and the ability to disable a turret. My main strategy is to put a rank in the passive and the smoke bomb. Find a good spot where you can hide and watch the base, then when you have the chance, smoke bomb a turret and deal as much damage as you can. Not only will this make pushing easier, but turret will have to be rebuilt, which wastes a level of a turret as well as valuable cash for the other team. Now of course you have to be smart with this, if the entire team is hugging the turrets then its probably a bad idea. Following this strategy, i played for 3 hours last night with friends. We won every single game in under 5 minutes. A good portion of those under 3, some under 2 (though I will admit, communication is a HUUUGE benefit).

I guess the big thing that I'm trying to say is just because the class is called "Assassin" doesn't mean all you should be doing is killing people. You are equally, if not more, effective as a utility class.

Also, (and this may have already been said) Assassins rip through robots - especially from behind. It's a great way to make all the cash you need to level her up to greatness.

My build for assassin is to not buy anything but the passive until u get the katana, and then get level 2 of each skill, then level 3 cloak -> dash -> smokebomb. Kill bots until u get juice, then cloak in enemy base and kill all the turrets.

Thats the tactics to be a team-player assassin.

Heck yea they do, the dash attack shreds them apart as well. Far too many assassins ignore the bots. The more cash you have, the more deadly you become! Also, pushing you bots is one of the main objective anyway =P

Jackpots are very easy to finish thanks to back grappling. Also using shuriken from a distance at turrents helps a ton. Pair that up with a gunner and a rocket turrent will go down in less than a minute.

Fuggin THEES.

TOO MANY Asses out there trying to work their KD like this is MW2Lite. You're part of a team. If you don't like it, Uninstall. The most important goal is the moneyball, not your ego.

Assassin tips:

*Race to the enemy base as soon as the game starts. You are the fastest class, and the dash makes you even faster, so use it. People don't expect to be attacked in the first 20-30 seconds of the game, which means they won't be watching their surroundings closely. You should be able to get 1-2 player kills before the bots even collide.

*Use the high ground; kill snipers who think they are safe on their own side of the map. Stand on top of bridges in the enemy base then drop down and backstab people when they run underneath.

*Don't waste flash bombs on players; If they've seen you then you're better off cloaking and running. If they haven't seen you, stab them.

*Don't charge people from the front, even when cloaked. You are still visible enough for good players to see and kill you. Whenever possible, circle around and strike from behind. The exception to this is when you are juiced, you can soak up damage pretty well and kill with slashes much quicker than with grappling, so dash to people and cut them down one after the other. If all pros are down kill turrets then bots, but be ready to flee as soon as juice wears off.

*When on your own side of the map waiting for health to recharge, get our your shurikens and SPAM SPAM SPAM! Aside from doing damage to the enemy bots, this will give you money for assists.

*As a general rule, don't bother hiding and waiting for people to come past. With your speed and your cloak, you should do better actively hunting the enemy. Bots are no threat to you and turrets will ignore you when cloaked.

*Neato Trick* Most crossfire maps have jumppads that you can pay 50 coins to activate in the enemy base. This will allow you access to the path above their moneyball, so you can slaughter pros who are camping just outside of their spawn door.

Don't even get close enough to melee them, I consider assassins free money when I play tank. If you are close enough for me to spin, I will spin and you will die. In fact, chances are a good tank will accidentally kill you if you lurk by it. Spin just uses up all remaining ammo so a tank who is almost out of ammo has every reason to end his clip with a spin. Once I figured out spin wrecks assassins, I have never died to an assassin without being in a fight with someone else.

Assassin is very much about biding your time and waiting for the right moment to get in there and destroy a turret. While you are biding your time, kill bots and pick off lone players to build juice. If you get juice you should be able to kill both rocket turrets in one juice (once one goes down use RB to dash to the 2nd one) if they haven't been overhealed. Assassin is more a saboteur, you go in and screw up their base when you can or you try to hamstring the enemy's offensive plays by picking off a key player or two.

I always see assassins try to camp the base and kill people shortly after they spawn, this really doesn't do anything. They weren't making any progress yet and they have to wait all of 5 seconds to come out and kill you if you try to do it again (and the turrets didn't already kill you.)