Assassinating for Dummies

Special Assassin mobility tips:

On Grenade iii, use the dash/slash (reload button) attack to jump from basically any outcropping on the outer ring onto the inner ring. From there you can take a launcher, or smoke-bomb jump up to either team's base.

On Steel Peel, you can dash/slash from the raised portions of the outer ring to the inner ring. Incredibly useful as an escape route; just hide behind the glass!

Pretty much if you ever buy a launcher as an assassin, you're doing it wrong.

Ooh Ooh I wanna contribute :mrgreen:

Cloak: One thing I discovered the other day is that you can actually cloak during a grapple, bots and turrets will no longer shoot you during your grapple and also it doesn't drain any cloak which I thought was pretty weird... Also don't use cloak when you don't actually need to, only use it when enemies are around because you will just waste it.

Dash: use it all the time and level it up when you can, not really much to say about it other than its awesome

Flash bomb: very, very, underated, with this you will practicaly never need to pay for jumpads again (with a few exceptions), especially since the cooldown is so low on it; you can also use it on any bot but never try to use it just for the purpose to blind a pro as it only lasts for about a second and the animation for the smoke bomb is so long the will just kill you :/

Ok I'm with you there, I think one Assassin is more than enough.

You can still do good without cloak as long as you not running into turrets.

Thought I'd add a few things, based on skills.

Cloak: Your lifeblood. Don't keep it on all the time, unless you have level 3 perhaps. Activate it when approaching an enemy or turret but strike quickly so you have enough to escape afterwords. You need to hit-and-run, so do it.

Dash: Use this whenever it is up, especially to make a fast approach or escape. No one can keep up with the assassin, so if you dash away and keep jumping and dodging, no one can catch you. Except other assassins.

Smokebomb: So many uses, even at level 1. While it can be used as an escape if necessary, it generally isn't a great idea to jump into the middle of a group of 3 or more players and kill one. The others will usually kill you before you can escape. However, you can use the smokebomb jump to reach high places without the jump pads, as well as blind bots and turrets to whittle away at them.

If you get some juice, the best use is probably to cloak over to the enemy base, activate it, and slash away at turrets. Rocket turrets go down in about two hits with the sword when juiced, so you can really clear out the enemy base this way.

Bots will not stand against you. As long as no enemy players are too close, you can use your dash attack and slashes to tear through bot waves. A back grapple on a JackBot drops it to half, just be wary of reprisal. His slam will take you out easy.

Most enemy pros are fairly easy targets, but here's some pointers, in order of difficulty (in my humble opinion, anyway).

Tank: You should usually stay away from these guys. You can't drop a full-health tank with a grapple attack, and their jet gun steals your main survival tool: cloaking. If you see one at half health, feel free to back grapple for a kill, but usually keep you distance. Pick em off with shurikens if you must engage, but watch out for the railgun.

Gunner: With a sword, you can usually one-kit K-O these guys from the back, but some make a custom gunner with extra health to survive. These are probably the second-most dangerous targets. If they spot you, you will get slammed and gunned down. Their bullets slow you down, too, so that negates your speed advantage. Can't grapple when deployed, either, so come up on their back and slash away. If they undeploy, GET AWAY. They'll slam you, guaranteed.

Support: These guys go down easily to a back grapple, but they're almost never alone. They're either healing another player, their turret, a jackbot, or just hanging around their base with the defenses hacked. If they spot you, keep a close eye out for the airstrikes. They'll kill you in one shot. Also, their shotguns can take you out in one shot at close range, so be careful. A front grapple won't usually kill them, but you can often dash-attack to make up the difference. Just be careful, some are quick enough to get a shotgun blast off. They're fairly useless at long-range (unless surrounded by long-rage turrets) so you can sometimes pick em off with shurikens, but this isn't very expedient and gives them time to react.

Assault: A back grapple takes out an assault in one hit, so that should always be your goal. Keep a close eye and ear out for their remote grenades, though, they will take you out (especially upgraded). Assaults are pretty fast, so they can be difficult to get a grapple on sometimes. They're also immune to grapples when they're jetpacking around, so keep that in mind. A smart assault will take to the air and unload when they know an assassin is around. Still, a fairly soft target for you sharp pointies.

Sniper: Ah, the sniper. Fragile enough to go down to a back grapple, and even a front grapple most of the time. Snipers go down pretty easily, but you MUST MUST MUST watch for their traps. Sometimes a sniper will camp in his traps, so when you go for the grapple you'll be frozen in place and can do nothing but stand there like an idiot while they line up a headshot. If you see one doing this, either unload the shuriken death from a distance or try to get some bot support.

Last tip in this block of text: Gremlins. If you have a little cash to spare, drop $100 in some gremlins. These little buggers are annoying and will distract your enemies from more important things, like your blade poised to stab their vulnerable head. Even if you don't hang with them, just spawn em and let them go cause problems. They're one of the best pro-spawned bots.

tl;dr: Don't let them see you, use juice to take out enemy bases, don't attack a group of 3 or more players, don't neglect enemy bots, GREMLINS!

Getting some good extra tips here. Here are a couple of mine.

Once you have custom class, use armour for your gold sponser. Seriously. As soon as I started using this, I don't die. A tank can spin me, or a sniper can lvl 3 grapple me, and I won't die. I'll go flying across the map, but I'll still have at least some health.

Use your shurikens to destroy enemy turrets. Camp near and above the enemy base (if possible, depending on the map), and just spam turrets with your shurikens.

Escort your bots whenever you get the chance. With cloak, you don't have to worry about being picked off while with them, and Assassin's sword just rips enemy bots apart. Getting your bots to the enemy base is what it's all about after all (at least at first).

SubtIeArt, OMFGNinja, LaPippin.

That's how you play Assassin.

Personal favorite use for Assassin: When the enemy's money ball is down, get juiced and the shurikens will bleed out about %50 of its life before your juice ends.

Dont know if this is a bug or not but...

If you get trapped by a sniper use your smokebomb jump to escape.
However. The frozen doodad will stay on your character EVEN WHILE CLOAKED.
It does go away eventually but until then kiss your sneaking skills goodbye.

I just hate assassins that dont help with jack bots
killing jack bots is an assassins specialty
they are designed to take out the biggest threat present
and when I see assassins run past a jackbot to get to the enemy base just to get a kill and die is very irritating

I'm surprised no one mentioned using the blade dash to close the gap for an assassination kill, not only will it get you closer faster, it'll soften up the big guys for the finishing move.

Also if you do fail an assassination (front grapple, target has gold sponsor armor) switch to shurikens and spam while jumping back and to the side.

I like to use RoF +3, armor +2, and health regen +1 for my build. No sense in speed when you can blade dash.

At the start of a game I only buy dash 2, then build a level 3 Lazer Blazer near the bot path then run down the opposite path to kill those bots while your turret will do work on the other for quick cash.

THIS. A MILLION times this. I was on a team the other day that had 3 Assassins. Needless to say, we were steamrolled. 2 of them switching to assault would have saved us.

I made sure i could play 2 other classes to a good standard just because of this. I'm sure at times i'm the only one that ensures we get the win when im playing with a group of complete randoms (all assassins or snipers!)

Absolutely. I spent time working with Assault and Gunner for this reason. I have good offense and defense in case there are a bunch of nub assassins on the team.

My personal favorite build is: Shoot for level 3 Cloak right away. Then level 3 passive. Smoke bombs are good for taking out turrets, but useless against pros. I once heard a rumour that smoke bomb's animation could prevent you from being charged, this is not true. Lv 1 Dash will get you by until you have the katana, plus you want to be careful about using it near other players anyways. You leave a cloud of dust at your feet that is hard to miss. I generally only use it to close the distance from behind.

The reason I go for lv 3 Cloak right away is simple: paranoia. If you manage to assassinate some specific players multiple times, you will cause them to do one of two things: Either hunt you down for the remainder of the match (screws with your K/D but helps your team in the end) or change classes and have no upgrades for a time. Lv 3 Passive gets you an instantkill against Gunners, and should not be underestimated.

As for custom endorsements, I love getting Gold level armour, or Gobinumb. Most Assassins and Assaults these days have not figured out that the easiest way to be anti-Assassin is to have that extra health boost. And having that extra health boost yourself usually wins you 1v1s against either class (until Assaults get their lv 3 Charge). Silver endorsements could be Skill Recovery (for standing there with that lv 3 Cloak charging at the speed of continental drift), Crit Shot (shurikens against a deployed gunner from afar, anyone?), Speed (negates needing Dash upgraded right away) or Health Recovery. Bronze, any of the above again. Though I am curious to see how much getting a Juice endorsement would benefit you for an Assassin.

Lastly, lots of people have said it...never forget about that Dash attack. It can finish off a health boosted enemy, or let you zip by for damage before hitting them with a back-grapple.

If I feel like playing assassin, I pick her first and judge who everyone else picks. If there's another, chances are, they won't listen to anything I have to say, so I just switch to something more appropriate to team balance.

I just do Passive to 3 first, then sprint and cloak to 2, and get them both to 3 later in the match when money from bots get more lucrative thanks to the sheer volume of black jacks. Until then, I occasionally do gremlin rushes or build longshots. Smoke bomb is good enough at 1 for super jump escapes.

Armor is my silver because I can't bear to part with gold RoF.

Personally I don't worry too much about an exact upgrade order these days. I buy what I feel is appropriate based on the current situation. Honestly, if you taunt after kills regularly (it's fun and INCREDIBLY lucrative) and kill bots when you see them, you should have more money than you know what to do with.

I personally love the Taunt system now. Not only does it agitate players who try and hunt me down after that, instead of helping their team, but it provides me with much needed money.

I always forget to taunt (even though we can turn invisible and taunt). Otherwise, I found the taunt thread on page three to answer my question about the taunt window. 10 seconds after a kill btw!

You'll find that while actually playing 10 seconds feels like 10 minutes, if you tend to play at the pace that I do.

I feel like I get 50 dollars EVERY time I taunt, haha..

I like the Assassin class, but I'm still not entirely used to it, or know much of it either.. Just recently discovered the RB launch strike.

Which brings me to my n00b question: How do I super jump with the smoke bomb?

Jump immediately after you use the smoke bomb (red skill). I believe just mashing jump after you use the smoke bomb will suffice.