Change these things: And I will cry tears of joy

Assassin is a perfectly good killer when choosing the fight (essentially always).

The problem results in the fact that the fights chosen by other players against an assassin in a lane always end in an escaped assassin with no real chance to kill outside exceptional circumstance.

Asymmetric warfare at its best.

Contain them in their base and they are useless, but all the bot killing and juice gain directly prevents this and now we arrive at the same situation as before, assassin choosing fights with unheard of escape capability.

People who don't think the assassin is OP haven't played a good assassin. And level is no indicator. I've played level 90+ assassins who are annoying but not really a threat because they STILL go for back grapple player kills.

Wait till you play against a good assassin who kills bots, then turrets, then the moneyball. You won't know what hit you. These assassins are pretty rare though, and as it is most assassin players are down right useless players who contribute practically nothing to their team. Any competent player should easily be able to handle these bad players no matter what class they play.

I think assassin should be nerfed in a way that balances her when top players are using her. This would make the assassin even more useless when new players use her, but then perhaps they'd get fed up and change class. However, she would still be a threat in the right hands.

What happens when you have a top Tank on one team and a top Assassin on the other team? Or any "top player" for any class for that matter.

Top tank = Assassin begone. :lol:

No other class can win the game as quickly as an assassin can, even when played by "top players". I'm not talking player kills here, I literally mean exposing and thus destroying the moneyball. Her ability to annihilate bots and especially turrets is overwhelming.

A Tank can do everything the Assassin can do and not worry about death.

A halfway competent team won't let an Assassin ravage an entire base either, which this game sorely lacks,.

An assassin can do everything a tank can do and not worry about death. ALSO FASTER.

both die, both can be countered. it just takes a competent team, or couple of players.

Assassins cant do **** when they're dead.

The advantage the assassin has over the tank is her speed.

But when it comes to open warfare she's dead weight. The best she can manage is to flank the enemy and eliminate one target (sniper, much?) or cause confusion and panic with shuriken fire and ejectors. But she won't stand toe-to-toe and come out the better for it.

Mind you, if people learnt to pay more attention i'd have a harder time as a sin myself. In one match i was firing shuris at the money ball for about 20 seconds completely unopposed. In the open. Right next to the lower spawn exits on G3. With half the enemy team in the same location... on the opposite side of the ball. Facing the other way. By the time someone caught onto the fact the ball was taking damage (the 75% warning) I had picked up juice from all the damage, and proceeded to topple the match completely. Had i been chased with any degree of ferocity beforehand, that match might not have ended in under 5 minutes. When people are actively spread out trying to prevent me from approaching i have a -much- harder time attacking that moneyball.

Assassins are overpowered by-proxy. If you don't know how to counter the assassin, they will walk all over you. And if you're too predictable in your methods - she'll still kill you or get away with relative ease. If you know what they're going to try or where they're going, an assassin is a relatively easy kill.

Yeah, the only time I have an issue with Sins is when my team is full of incompetent players that let him/her get juice all day. But I blame my team more than anything, especially when I see a Support overhealing and hacking a Firebase instead of repairing a half dead lv3 Rockit Turret.

Assassins can stand toe to toe with everything but an assault with charge ready, tank, and a precise support. Because of how jump jet happy assaults are, it can be difficult to land a proper backstab. They also tend to jet away from you while firing at you at close range. That's one of the reasons why Silver RoF is so important. Other than bot killing, it lets you kill gold armor endorse assaults much easier with the Katana when grappling is just too impractical. This again, relies on jumping them when their charge is down, so they just don't run over you. And well, gold armor endorse is practically needed there.

Most assassins cant handle tanks, because even with no RoF a tank can spin you to death before your silver/gold RoF Katana can kill them, and even Katana Backstabs won't kill them. Plus, they're pretty damn hard to grab in the first place. Spin stop grab, jump stops grab, and charge can stop grab. Charge also does massive damage, and stuns. Basically, we can't stand toe to toe with them unless they have no armor, and haven't gotten there level 3 tank passive. Even -then- it's hard, because that usually means they have another endorse which makes their reload faster (more spinning), or their rate of fire higher, or gives them faster regen (which makes chipping them down and running away pointless), or they always have speed up. The best case is if they have no armor is that they have the juice and accuracy endorse on their setup.

Gunners are easy. Either backstab them, or shuriken them death (huge bodies + slow weight = easy shuriken prediction, and it out damages their minigun at little over midrange), hell I've slashed gunners to death and avoided their slam/grabs/mini. People forget that blind works fine by itself without the superjump...Actually people expect you to superjump, so they instantly put their reticles upward so when blind is off they can tag you as you're floating. I've done that to gunners and just kept slashing them. Jumping around makes their slam a joke, and they can't grab you very well. Their one juice is to try to nail the assassin with his minigun, which at that range IS actually pretty hard because its third person and the gunners model blocks line of sight at that range. It's like how Scouts can take out Heavies by constantly jumping over them and batting them in the back of the head. Except we ALSO have a grab, so during the slashing, you can go for a face grab when you know he's at low enough health.

Snipers are easy. Lunge + Grab for a face katana stab that kills silver end sniper and if they see that coming and go for a grab of their own during the lunge+grab, go for a backstab, or just constantly jump and slash. They'll keep mashing grab and die instead of use their SMG, for the most part.

Support is the second hardest. Even with gold endorse they can two shot you at katana grab/slash range. They're also much smaller than a tank, and faster then a gunner. Yet they also have a load of health if they run silver end to avoid the katana face stab, and if they get passive level 3 to avoid the lunge + grab katana face stab. They also have one of the best setup grabs in the game. They grab you, and you're going to get your health down to 50% at LEAST. Much more likely 30%. Even then, they have an auto lock on weapon, and if you've taken a hit to the face with the shotgun, it WILL out damage/heal your katana slash when you're at 30% heath from a grab+shotgun. Even if he's at 50%, if he's near his firebase, he can steal out damage and heal you. Worse, if he grabs you near a firebase, it goes more along the lines of having 20% health left, to just plain 0. I avoid open combat with good supports unless they're not running some form of armor for some reason. I always go for the backstab.

They can also do a suicidal trick where they throw a bomb, and then grab you. Last ditch sort of thing. Very annoying.

...

Other Assassins I think are the third hardest matchup, as long as they're running at least bronze armor endorse to avoid the facestab. Silver is pretty much the min, though. Gold is better. If you get facestabbed by an assassin (that wasn't a Lunge+katana grab) you either: Go for the grab, and hope he doesn't lunge. Go for the lunge+grab, hope that it either hits him and you get the kill, or it at least negates his lunge, then runs away... and hope he doesn't just jump and constantly slash (which will get him hit by the lunge, but avoid your grab), or back up and constantly slash, and hope you can run off, and he goes for something silly. Really, its who grabs who first, and who picks what. Most Assassins I've come to find, go for the lunge kill. So I always go for he lunge to negate his lunge (or get a lucky lunge+grab), and then run away so I can try for the first strike.

First strike gives the other Assassin a huge advantage, because as long as he can avoid the facestab, he should be good enough to either kill that person, or at least reset the fight.


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But yeah. There's two serious builds I run, and one gimmick build I try. Based on what you pick, you can handle them differently.

Gold Armor/Silver RoF/Bronze Skill or
Gold Armor/Silver Skill/Bronze Regen.

The second half has a much easier time running away from tanks, because fire isn't very threatening with high health and super fast regen. But it does terrible against assaults, because your Katana slashes just won't outpace a good assault without RoF. Bronze Regen is REALLY awesome for the Assassin, and it gives you almost no down time. Silver Skill makes the Katana Grab, and Cloak incredibly good. With Silver Skill you can get away with only have level 1 smoke bomb, as it gets off cooldown very fast.

The first one is the one I use the most, and does well 1 on 1 with every class other than Tank, and an exceedingly good Support. It has less trouble against good assaults then other Assassin builds, I think. But they still are hard to take down 1 on 1. Speed boost pickups are really needed to seal the deal, as it lets you slash them while they jet back or try to charge away (or avoiding the charge in general).

The Gimmick build I use is
Gold RoF, Silver Clip, Bronze Armor.

Bronze armor lets you avoid the OHK from a front stab. Gold RoF makes the Shuriken Launcher much better. Silver Clip gives the Shuriken launcher ungodly amounts of ammo with the level 2 Assassin passive. The Shuriken Launcher becomes your main weapon. The skills you should get are: Level 2 Assassin first, then Level 3 Cloak, then level 2 Sprint, then Level 2 Smoke. Level 3 cloak + Gold RoF makes the Shuriken launcher a real hassle. If you get good enough to nail normal walking speed characters with half a clip, you can hit them in the red zone, and possibly kill them.

It also makes taking down turrets from range easier, and killing the money ball even faster.

But yeah, its a gimmick build, and I can barely hold a 1.5 KD with it. I bet there'd be a lot better people with it than me.

Im not 100% sure but doesnt it already work like this?

No, it actually does much less damage for some reason.

It does so because you have an added grapple with Charge 3. Having the power of 2 and the grapple of 3 would make that skill way too powerful.

When you upgrade Assault's Charge to level 3 all the damage the charge does gets put into the grapple. So without getting the grapple Charge 3 does next to no damage.

My thoughts exactly. I don't feel like I'm in god mode when I play assassin but if the other team does not do their duty and keep an eye on their bots they are just asking for it. When there are component people who know how to prioritize then I can be stopped.

Assassins advantages over tanks, are far more than speed.

Pros:

1) Speed
2) Juice Gain
3) Ability to Escape (and hold on to juice)
4) Ability to ambush turrets/moneyball from cloak (with or without juice), as opposed to having to lumber in, with the entire world knowing hes coming. The Assassin can usually get 3 to 4 seconds of uninterupted Juice Shrukiens on the money ball before anyone can react, and can usually down 1 or even 2 turrets before anyone knows whats going on. Turrets especially, since before shield drop, half the team is usually far from home base.

Cons:

1) Direct confrontation with an enemy pro that knows you are coming.



The only time an assassin is worse than a tank, is when she allows her self to be worse than a tank, by attacking pros needlessly, instead of shrukening their bots and moving on.

All your points depend on the skill of the other team. Really? What competent team lets an Assassin get any more than a few shurikans on the moneyball, or to get juice repeatedly and destroy the base. The Assassin doesn't need a nerf. New pub players need a buff.