Assassin's Lunge - Lets Discuss it

When an assassin plays like this, there's not much you can do.

Look at some of the kills he makes. There is no possible way you can "hear" him coming. Even then, he can opt to run around and kill bots. Even if you protect the bots like you should, you have to deal with him either moving to another lane, waiting at spawn for a new wave, or smoking bombing to an ejector.

The only way to stop as assassin is when he attacks you. The problem is he can attack you and still get away and proceed to be everywhere on the map or decide it's not worth it til he has juice and proceed to murder your bots.

I can counter assassins. If I can force a fight.

Lunge means I can't in general. I'll wreck assassins that are forced to fight in a bad situation. This is quite rare and only occurs when they try to defend.

Assassins get to try ten times more for weakness and never really risk death with the lunge capability.

Whiff a lunge? Smoke bomb away.

Get a lunge face grapple? Try to finish off the player or smoke bomb/lunge away if it looks bad.

I have no problem with assassins being able to choose the engagement, but there should be a cost if they choose poorly. More so then current especially with the absurd power of gold armor endorsement.

Yeah that's about the style I see in lunge usage. No attempt at backstabs and exploiting the 615 damage lunge face grapple.

And contrary to what you think you can actually hear that coming. It doesn't matter though.

Sadly that video easily can be improved on. The player spent way too much on skills instead of switching to juice buying to chain juice slaughter everything in sight which likely would have ended the game far quicker.

Assassin is one of my main classes.

I don't think lunge itself is a problem. When you're paper thin and your gun isn't particularly good for head-on encounters, you need crazy mobility.

BUT: There are some things about lunge-grappling that are problematic:

1) Front-lunge into backstab. It's almost universally lethal, and nearly impossible to counter. I don't think the devs ever intended for players to be able to land backstabs from the front. (Is this stuff possible on a 360 controller? It seems to be dependent on the extra mobility and precision that comes from a mouse.)

2) Front-lunge into face-grapple. Definitely intended, but is it getting the result we ought to see? It's almost always a failure and results in a shotgun blast, counter grapple, charge/deathblossom combo, etc. But it works often enough (especially if the victim's ping is a bit higher and they don't get the first shot when grapple breaks.) It works often enough that legions of suicide assassins refuse to learn to play. They're setting themselves up for failure, but it succeeds often enough that they think the problem is something else. It makes the player base worse, and it's annoying as hell to everyone else. It's like a pop-up ad interrupting the game. Not exactly lethal unless you're in the middle of a big fight. But it's annoying to be interrupted and have to click a couple times to make the annoyance go away.

What I'd like to see is a face-grapple that does the same amount of damage but has more recovery frames. You reward good assassins who use it to strike down a weakened player, but punish bad ones who just lunge-grapple everything by teaching them that lunge-grappling healthy players amounts to certain death.

It's the fact that it does 615 damage with sword. That is a lot. Against Support2/Gold armor with 900 health that's still 2/3s. Options after this point are limited but the ability to escape is always there. Against an assault it's even worse. 185 health left after lunge face grapple. Which is one sword strike and one more lunge. My gun is not going to do 600 damage quickly enough to kill before escape. The best hope I have is to plant a bomb to catch over aggressive assassins then combine with charge to kill. With even a moderate delay they will escape.

Or I could cheese out on Charge 3 ringouts then die way more often because it sucks everywhere else.

Paper thin would be an argument if most of the weapons in this game wasn't wet noodles. And no, I wouldn't want weapons to do more damage. The problem is, the only way to stop an assassin is with burst damage because they can get away so quickly. It might be fine, but assassins with armor - you're not going to kill fast enough without shotgun or charge lvl 3.

If an assassin fails to get a kill after a grapple, jumping will negate most of the supposed counter followups.

Support: If support has heal gun, he's dead with sword slashes. If he has shotgun, side jump to avoid the grab - lunge away to escape and go in for the kill. You can survive one shotgun blast with armor. This is only late in the game when support has enough for lvl 3 passive. Otherwise, just jump + slash him for the kill.

Sniper: Forward Jump + Slash will kill if somehow the sniper survived your grabs.

Tank: Smoke-Bomb the follow up charge. If he has rail-gun, it's better to eat the throw and hope for a non ring out then eat the lvl 3 charge with stun.

Gunner: Jump to counter Ground Slam and Grapple. A good gunner will jump + slam to counter your jump but he can't follow up once you land and lunge.

Asssault: Jump to counter the possible lvl 3 charge. If he waits for you to land to charge you, lunge away. If he charges your jump, lunge after him to finish depending on how you get bounced, or just lunge away and shuriken him. Eating the grapple charge isn't bad as long as you don't get ringed out.

I use the lunge for pushing the bot lanes, apart from that, I don't find a particularly effective use for it as I don't actively hunt Pros much except for the random idiot giving us a lot of trouble.

There are plenty of times in that vid where I SHOULD have died, but I knew the other team didn't have many experienced players and took advantage of that (for example, I'd never (intentionally) lunge->facegrapple an assault with silver/gold armor, or, 7:41 - if he finished the grapple -> shotgun combo I would have easily died).

Also, you're right about the skills thing - if it was a tougher game I would have bought juice and ended it a lot earlier, but I wanted to have a bit of fun and kept it going longer

Silver armor assault probably would be a good bet. You would have him down to below 100 health and immediately going to attempt escape. One lunge after his charge and he dies.

Gold armor is a bit riskier of course, but I still see assassins try it. Usually they go for a back stab but I hear their cloak and turn to face them. Get a lunge face grapple and end up really hurt and the situation is still really bad for me but it now takes sword slash and a lunge. The sword slash you can get for "free" by just holding attack after the animation supposedly.

Think of it this way though, in order to win as an assault I have to do 600 damage to you before you can do 180 damage to me. And you are already in melee range. If I don't get you out of melee range in short order I die in 1.5 seconds (3x0.5 RoF). Charge is my only option to force spacing. After gaining space I can drop a bomb and start firing at you but at this point the reset occurs via any number of escape mechanisms and I can do nothing to force the fight to continue. It is entirely your option to pursue even though you failed in your attempt at killing.

The main thing is, hearing the cloak prevents instant death, but the advantage above this state is quite limited. The only class that it doesn't effect is a tank who evidently can survive even a lunge back grapple with gold armor and passive 3. (250+1000 < 700+300+300) It seems that Uber reduced the lunge damage at some point as I recall lunge being a 175 base a while back.

It would MATTER when you miss man, Ive seen so many zoom zoom zoom zoom lunge till you make it sins, that are successful because of the low cooldown, that its rediculous.

ALSO, it would matter when you lunge grapple my face and try and jump / lunge away.. Because it could still be on cooldown.

You're argument is like saying, Give the sniper a clip size of 1. It won't matter right? He'll save the one bullet he has to head shot you.

As people get better, Asssassins will have to rely more and more on their lunge to get kills. The cloak is unreliable against people, and Dash doesn't really help much offensively against those with good aim.

I don't think Lunge should be changed for this reason.
It will become the one thing Assassins can still use to move around.

The only issue I have with the Lunge->Grapple combo is that Lunge->Front Grapple can kill low HP classes with Gold Armour.
It supports a stupid play style that many assassins dedicate themselves to (and find occasionally profitable so they don't thrive to be better), and frankly, being "that Sniper that tried to jump over it and got grappled halfway in the air" is lame.

I don't find it to be such a huge problem that it *requires* a nerf, but, I personally think it could be looked at.

Assault is a hard counter for sin, if you are having trouble with sins then assault might not be the class for you, a decent assault can handle any pro 1v1 with good use of fly, charge and bombs.


Lunge is fine, most of the complaints in this thread come from an inability to punish failed face grapples properly, uber wont nerf a class based on players that lack skill or experience.

I think a lot of people are concentrating on the lunge-face grapple efficacy in this thread.

The general consensus is that face grapple MIGHT be too strong when combined with lunge's damage (not everyone agrees but its currently the majority opinion.)

I personally feel that while lunge face grapple damage is high it would be fine if lunge's CD was long enough that it would punish players who miss.

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While you have a point about the unreliability when up close using cloak. The ability is still extremely effective as there is a range limit on the sound and the outline effect of the cloak. It allows extremely safe travel and the ability to choose when to engage.

Dash is supposed to be a mobility tool. Its not so much that its helping you dodge (though it does make you harder to hit thanks to the smaller targetable area when dashing) it is ment to give you an advantage in getting from point A to point B faster and give you more options on when to engage your enemy, when to escape your enemy, and simply make you a harder target to keep track of. Right now Lunge is effectively doing the job that dash was meant to do in terms of adding mobility to the class.

FYI Dash gives a x1.5 multiplier to your move speed. With gold move speed endorsement (easily obtainable thanks to Assassin's ability to pickup powerups more consistently than others.) Dash is granting you a total of 1125move speed. For comparison purposes, a gunner with gold move speed endorsement moves at 650. You are approaching double his speed, and that is a lot of mobility (and perfectly fine to have IMO)

Now I think that hick brought up a point I hadn't entirely considered, which is that if lunge were attached to dash, players might simply forgo using dash at all so that they could lunge more. And while I didn't consider that possibility it does point to the idea that lunge is more important and/or effective than dash for similar purposes.

No, just no.

A good gunner never slams a failed face grapple ever, use his skill grapple, throw the sin away and finish off with mini.

None of this matters when assassins pick the engagement in totality. Which is the huge majority of the time.

People claiming "hard counter" this or that generally have no clue in my opinion either unless speaking directly about Rock Paper Scissors.

EDIT: You know what beats that throw after a grapple? Jumping. You know what it also beats? Slam. What else can the gunner do? Nothing.

No you are wrong, gunner throw skill was updated in a patch long time ago, it comes out fast enough to be a direct counter to failed grapples.

Have you ever seen two sins dancing with each other? One grapples the other, then immediately the other sin counter grapples, thats how the gunner grapple works. It is a direct counter to a sin fail grapple.

Pre patch as gunner i was scared of sins, post patch the gunner throw and mini combo felt just as safe as a tank's charge + death blossom punisher, few sins can survive the counter.

Also if you want to get the kill guaranteed without relying on your minigun aim, gunner grapple 3 will OHKO a full health gold armour assassin (I think even fully overhealed, but not tested it myself).

Gunner grapple level 3 does 600 damage (enough to kill a gold assassin/sniper in one hit, but not enough to kill them if they have ANY overheal whatsoever.) Falling damage might finish off a slightly over healed sniper, but assassin's with level 3 passive don't take ANY falling damage whatsoever

Face grapple needs to do less damage.

It would actually be okay if you couldn't lunge grapple out of stealth to negate 2/3 of my health then wear armor to survive my only reliable anti-Assassin move before escaping scot free to do it all again, farming waves in between.

If face grapple did less damage then lunge wouldn't be so crappy feeling because talentless players couldn't keep lunge face grappling from stealth and escaping with ease.

I'm starting to agree with this line of thinking. On one hand, I'm most of the time able to kill any assassin that tries this. But on the other hand, it's successful often enough that it forces nearly everyone to play with gold or silver armor because lunge+facegrapple is stupid easy for even bad players to pull off, and even being fully situationally aware won't stop it most of the time. (Generally what happens is I land a shot or two before they connect, then the grapple happens, then I finish them off. But on most classes that's only possible with an armor endorsement)

If you want to see more variety with endorsement builds, changing facegrapple would be the first and best place to start.

I mean let's not mince words: there is no other ability in the game that nearly every player picks endorsements to get away from. You don't see people universally picking Speed to get away from Gunner deploys. You don't see people universally picking Gold Skill Recharge because of Scramblers. But nearly everyone takes silver or gold armor because without it, you are handing absurdly easy one-shot kills to some of the worst people to play Monday Night Combat.

The devs need to look at these things instead of assuming that because Random ******* #5835 thinks Hurtbeam is overpowered, it must mean everything is good and balanced.