Assassins are Anti-Fun. Regardless of their status as OP/UP

still nothing indicated that he was playing a "hide, assassinate, hide" style. He's saying that he can be completely reckless with his backstabs and still get away with it because of the grapple and smokebomb damage reduction

Ah, but therein lies the problem. A bad Assassin, as you define this, is not only NOT contributing to the team, they're frustrating the hell out of other players too. So no one wins, except the Assassin.

It's like they're playing another game, where all you do is pro kill. Your team may lose, but who cares?! You're having fun one shotting people and that's all that counts, right?

There has to be some way to encourage Assassin teamplay, but at the same time discourage the assassinate>hide>assassinate>hide mentality.

There's no penalty for failure for Assassins at this point in time.

If they're suppose to Assassinate why am I constantly being charged, attempted grapple/slashes and then watching them flee with their massively reduced damage buff.

You can argue all you want about them being good or bad, the fact is there is no penalty for it.

Can you please reduce frontal attack damage to about 20% what it is now on players (nothing else) for all facets of their attacking?

To encourage proper play?

I honestly see no problem with this, they're suppose to be bot and turret killers yea? everyone keeps reiterating this, front on they should be far more bloody useless than they are now vs players.

How does anyone argue that it's ok at peak for an Assassin player to do EVERYTHING extremely well?

The other classes simply cannot "skill" more damage in. Where as an Assassin can skill to use their base extremely high damage to do anything.

Coming from someone who's put 35 hours into being an assassin:

1) They need to substantially reduce the damage that a frontal assassination delivers.

2) They need to take out the ability to do an assassination immediately after a dash-attack (the reload button).

3) They ought to do something that provides a disincentive to bot-spawncamping. I have no idea what it would be. But yeah, it's not nearly as easy to stop a half-decent assassin from camping the bot spawners as Liefglinde suggests. And if things get rough at one spawn point, you can just run over to the other...

Again, this is far more applicable toward the sniper. They may as well be playing a game of Bejeweled where every combo results in a random player dying.

Nor do the useless, self-important posts like this...

Whining about whiners whining.

See what I did there? Scathis has already stated Assassin is fine. Assassin has already been discussed to the limit in multiple threads, and each new one that pops up contains the same arguments, the same counter-arguments and the same conclusion that balance is in fact the very existence of people unable to reach an agreement.

The bait, it was delicious. Too bad these forums are well-moderated, I don't get enough here.

/sarcasm.

Which is obviously complete nonsense, unless of course were stating that every forum poster has a good understanding of what balance is and how it relates to the game. The fact that people disagree doesnt indicate anything in and of itself.

Coming from someone who's put over 150 hours into being an Assassin:

1) No, they really don't. It's weak enough as it is. And if you have any skill whatsoever you will not let them follow up with their face grapple.

2) LOL no. If they take that away, the should take away the Charge + Death Blossom, grapple + shotgun, etc. It is the only real combo she has.

3) Seriously? So you want to make it harder for her to kill people AND kill bots? Her nerf to turrent damage and reduced juice gain wasn't enough? What is her purpose in the game now?

I dont think hes asking for them to be nerf against either, just that something needs to be done about bot spawn camping, which as I alluded to earlier, can be problematic on some maps.

Well he suggested that frontal assassinations have their damage reduced. Seems like that would make it harder to kill pros.

Then he said there should be a bot spawncamping deterrent. Seems like that would make it harder to kill bots.

Sure it does, it indicates that people disagree. Good call there, chief.

which has absolutely nothing to do with the existence of imbalances or not.

I'd like to point out that while I disagree with a lot of the nerf ideas people have had in this thread (which was not the threads initial point anyway and has gotten far off topic.)

the grapple + shotgun combo has a delay between the grapple animation and being able to shoot afterwards unlike the lunge - grapple combo.

Also your point about giving the assassin MORE armor during grapples is horrible. I've stood next to an assassin and unloaded a full clip of assault's rifle into her during a grapple and still she had around half health.

Now reducing the grapple damage reduction would be good, but not to such extremes as "assassins take ADDITIONAL damage while grappling" which would be retarded.

I'm not sure of the exact values for the damage reduction during a grapple, it feels like about the same as during a juice (66% dmg reduction) anyone know the exact numbers?

As someone who has refrained from complaining about Assassins up until now, if I had to throw my two cents behind a single idea, it would be to reduce front-grapple damage.

That's it. I think everything else works out alright as is, but there's nothing more annoying than when Assassins don't even have to try to be sneaky, but can just run around at the speed of light grappling willy-nilly and still get an instakill if you're not at 100% health, or if there's a single turret or teammate around that can do that extra tiny sliver of damage during the front-grapple animation that turns it into a kill.

I don't mind getting killed by a stealthy class doing their job, but they don't even have to be stealthy most of the time to kill anything.

Have you tried the grapple shotgun combo? There is no delay. I shotgun blast their face off as the grapple ends. They don't even have a chance to move.

Assault Rifle? That's not all that strong to begin with. Dual minis and the Jetgun will easily dispose of the Assassin mid grapple. Not to mention you can do things like Head Crab and Ground Zero her, which will still be an instant kill.

The reason I say that the armor buff for the Assassin grapple should be increased is because that is her only reliable means of killing another pro. The sword is by no means a good weapon to take on someone who has a gun. How fair would it be if she couldn't even take out a pro anymore because every time she grappled someone she died?

LOL. The assassin doesnt need to be any more powerful thank you very much. shes already the crme de la crme of base rapists and requires far more resources and consideration to counter than any other pro.

Seriously? You have trouble against Assassins? That's... depressing.

Did I say that, Einstein? No, I pointed out what is painfully obvious to anyone with any understanding of balance.

Oooh I'm hurt. Anyway. What you said is completely wrong, as anyone who has ever played this game will tell you. Assassins require careful consideration to counter? Is that why I have thousands more Assassin kills than any other class? Is that why, when I see an Assassin, I charge straight at her no matter what class I am, and 99% of the time, get an instant kill?

As someone who has played Assassin probably more than anyone else who has played this game, I can say that Assassins are very predictable and very easy to counter. The only thing I will admit is that it takes about 25 seconds to determine whether the Assassin you're dealing with is a good Assassin or a bad one. However, both good and bad Assassins are predictable, just in different ways. Once you've figured out whether they're good or bad, countering them is simple.