Balancing the assassin vs. tank fight

I understand that every class is going to have one or two classes that naturally have somewhat of an advantage over it. But I honestly feel like when an assassin fights a tank, unless the tank completely sucks out of his mind, the tank is going to win every time.

All the tank has to do is have gold armor, and even if the assassin lunges into a back grapple, the tank will live. Once the tank is done being grappled, he will have a sliver of HP left. But even though I'm full health and he has one sliver, he does one of three things:

1) He does the charge move. This is virtually unavoidable and takes absolutely no skill whatsoever to hit the assassin with after she finishes a grapple. Sometimes I manage to make it out of the way by jumping back and to the side, but most of the time it will hit me anyway. Instant kill or drains 90% of my health and leaves me on fire where I get picked off by either bots or the tanks flamethrower.

2) He does that stupid spin around move. This one is even more unavoidable than the first one. Literally. Think about this. I have to turn invisible, find a way to get behind a huge tank, line up with him, aim my lunge, and time the grapple right - all before he can hear my assassin cloak and react to it, which then negates the entire process. All he has to do after I do all of that successfully is press the freaking left trigger. Then I'm on fire with hardly any health left, and he kills me with his flamethrower.

3) He kills me with his flamethrower. This one isn't as difficult to avoid because I can just run away. However, I'd like to point out that when he has only a sliver of HP left, and I'm at full health, I should be able to kill him with a lunge before he kills me with his flamethrower. Most of the time, when I lunge after the back grapple, the lunge doesn't even hit him because I die from the flamethrower. If my lunge does connect and I kill him, the flamethrower has already put me down to about 20% health and i'm on fire, so even if I do kill him, unless he's completely by himself I will most likely die too.

The only way to really avoid all of these and fight a tank as an assassin is to hit him with some shurikens first, and then figure out how to quickly get behind him and assassinate him. This is something that will only work once on anybody who doesn't have Downs Syndrome.

I think the best way to balance this is to give the assassin reduced damage from the flamethrower while in a lunge. It makes sense anyway, right? If you move quickly through fire it doesn't burn you as bad as if you stand still in it (like when those stupid people think they're cool and they quickly move their finger through a candle flame).

Does anybody else feel like something like this would help the balancing for this matchup? Comments and suggestions? Thanks.


SNARF SNARF

It's generally preferred as an Assassin to avoid Tanks alltogether. You should never go SEEKING a fight unless you know you can win it, and it will benefit you.

If you do choose, for whatever reason, to target a Tank, don't do so without the Katana. There is an unbelievably slim chance you will get away otherwise.

Try to go after a Tank that is already under attack via Bots, Turrets or another Pro. Your back grapple should finish him off if he's already worn down.

But again, as an Assassin, Tanks should be the very last target you will want to assail.

The tank is the king of close range, that's all there is to it. You want to kill one, hit him with shurikens from a distance or backstab him after he's been softened up.

Not true. My Tank has silver armor and survives assassin back grapples.

I can solo Crowd Control many juiced assassins with a non-juiced tank. It is just a bad class match up. That being said, there are things you can do if you feel like going tank hunting for whatever reason.

Best way to approach a tank:

-S-Launcher from afar and don't ever let us regenerate health without significantly stalling a push. Even with passive 3, tanks regen to full health very slowly. Every time we take damage it stops our regen (INCLUDING DEPLOY's regen).

-Don't cloak when going for a back stab on any one you suspect of being a competent tank. If they sound whore at all like I do, they will either deathblossom or 180 charge behind them for a near instant kill, and this will only increase after the DLC which removes the hum from allied assassins. If you are trying for a back stab on them, THEY CAN'T SEE BEHIND THEM, YOU DON'T NEED TO CLOAK.

-IF you feel you must kill the tank, go for katana backstabs as early in the game as possible. A tank can only live through this with Passive 3 and Silver Armor. Most tanks don't upgrade to passive three early, and if they do, it means they don't have charge 3.

-Try using smoke bomb to initiate instead of grapple. Get behind a tank, decloak a safe distance away so you don't give yourself away, dash (not lunge) in and smokebomb (higher level helps for increased radius). The tank will likely death blossom which you can anticipate and dodge, or just take the damage and slice him 2-3 times before grappling him from the back for a kill. This is dangerous and takes Rev/Bolt levels of proficiency to pull off.

-Smokebomb also reduces the amount of damage you take during the smokebomb animation AND negates crowd control. I nearly always charge 3 right after an assassin grapple. If you smoke bomb as I'm charging, you will only take half the normal damage AND avoid the knockdown effect. The same thing happens against the tank's rail gun grapple: It resets the grapple cooldown and avoids the crowd control effect. You can see this occur at about 7:00-7:15 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_fi_P2NL8E. Notice my grapple get set to cooldown without me CCing her at all.

-Lastly, if you ever see a deployed tank, you need to be S-Launchering him as much as possible. Your sword/dagger strikes are just too dangerous to attempt, and they give him LOTS of juice compared to the S-Launcher which does far more damage per juice gain rate since the full clip is almost guaranteed to hit (and kill if you are pure criting from cloak 3).

It is still a very bad class match up and I would not recommend fighting this battle if it is avoidable.

Why are you talking about this like you play the tank or something?

Lol, that was me! I normally don't play assassin so I was just effing around that match, slapping as many people as I can.

I saw you and noted you to the rest of the party. Figured you and JON were just messing around that game.

Oh totally. Didn't figure we'd win anyway

if i ever see a tank as an assassin i wait a bit for him to take damage then lunge grapple and i usually get the kill or i just ignore him and kill other people

correction: silver armor passive 2 tank will survive backstab.

I'll just add that if a Tank with Deploy 2 (or 3) has Gold Health Regen and Silver Armor, it only takes about 1 second to go from red to full health.

Shhhhh. Don't give my secret out.

Uncle Smedley's Beard Tonic?

Yes, but damage still stops the regen.

Before the patch, and the removal of weaponswap grappling, tanks were easy to kill (ask hudson ) Now it requires this, very simple, tactic:

DO NOT FIGHT TANKS

You WILL lose a one on one fight UNLESS you have the katana and he does not have passive 3 and at least silver armor. If he does, the ONLY way you'll win is after the backstab, smoke bomb, and while he's blind, slash him (i uses smoke 3 so i get a much longer blind)

Also, shirookans do a pretty effing good ammount of damage, and rip heavies to shreds, try using them

if your a gunner, stay tha **** away from snipers and dont play as gunner against a sniper team. unless the sniper sucks, they should always win.

if your an assassin, dont start a full-hp-fight with a tank. pick off an already wounded one, or be sure you know how to lunge-grapple-lunge with gold armor. or use shurikens as initial damage, they cause a lot more than a lunge if you have the element of suprise; once he has lost 1/3 of health and has cockily spent his charge trying to hit you when you werent a sure shot, lunge grapple and his death blossom wont save him.

dont play vega against zangief apparently, and dont play zangief against seth apparently. these are game balance neccessities in my opinion, to be easily defeated by one class (the tank), to easily defeat another class (the sniper), and to have a particular talent for the game (the assassin can infiltrate to flank the best, as well as destroy bots and turrets about as well as the assault can destroy turrets and bots, if not better)

That circle is flawed, untill she has a sword in hand, a gunner will usually beat the assassin

And a tank beats a gunner at long range with RoF railgun (even more so after the patch) and has a good chance at winning at close range if he dodges the slam.

Mid range is the death of (most )tanks (imo).

Everything is situational.

That said, there are a few matchups that are heavily favored for one side.

Sniper vs Gunner: Sniper is the heavy favorite
Sniper vs Tank: Sniper is the heavy favorite
Assault vs Sniper: Assault is moderately favored, many advantages vs sniper in most situations
Assassin vs Sniper: Assassin favored, depends ENTIRELY upon trap usage/avoidance.
Assassin vs Tank: Tank nearly perfect favorite.

Oh, and tank can counter the Assassin attack from the rear by jetpacking, setting assassin on fire. Whee!