Dear Uber (update review)

The way I see the assassin update, it's wonderful. The assassin was never that hard because you could too easily run around dodging bullets and lunge/grapple for a free kill. Now, you actually have to play smart and choose your fights. Hopefully we'll see who the good assassins are now. The tank never needed a buff, I think that was totally unnecessary. I'm very glad the glitches were fixed, but I wish parties wouldn't get split any more. That is extremely annoying.

From what I've seen (and posted), the main complaint here is with the nerf of the dagger lunge. The solution seems simple; make it stronger. Granted, it was overpowered before, but it does not stand to reason that a backstab along with 3 lunges should not kill a Gunner. His health was nothing but a black bar, and 2 lunges did nothing. That, in my opinion, makes the dagger lunge useless.

Also, Bolt has pointed out that the Assassin has become useless for quick games; this is true as well. In the time that it takes an Assassin to become the killing force that she is capable of being, the game is over. And generally if I play with 2 or more people in a party, we will win the game very quickly. The Assassin is not suited to such games.

The assassin is the best at ending the game quickly. She shouldn't be a "killing force", nor should she ever have been. She gets juice more quickly than any class and is the fastest, so she can push a bot lane with no problems and an easy escape. If the assassin does her job, the game shouldn't last too long. And it doesn't take much time to get $200 anyway.

This "easy escape" everyone talks about is a complete lie. If a Tank is anywhere near you, you can't get away before the Jetgun kills you. If you're in view of a Gunner, there's a chance you'll get away, not a guarantee. Even with her dash, the Assassin is rather slow.

As far as ending the game quickly, I don't see how that's possible with her lack of any decent starting tools.

If they catch you by surprise, you'll die as any class. You can run from any class if you see them first. You can end the game quickly because you are the fastest class, kill bots the fastest, and get juice the fastest. Basically it should go like this-
-Kill bots. Simultaneously push yours in while getting juice.
-Kill the turrets with your juice. In go the bots.
-Buy more juice with the money you just made from killing bots.
-Shoot the ball with your juice.
-Clean up.

That's without the help of gremlins too. If you die, all you have to do is run across the map in cloak and smoke bomb above the ball to keep it down.

Just to be clear before you read this, this isn't a rant, and I fully expect someone to go "obviously your just not a good assassin" or "thats not even true". But I'd imagine most people have played me at some point, and I'd be willing to bet most players know I'm pretty decent. Also, I'm good at other classes, so don't act like assassin is some class that people have to have to be good. Oh, and I fully realize I write like a third grader. Enjoy.

Quite frankly, your not going to get sympathy from people that do not play assassin. I realize most people consider it to be an annoying class because they hate just getting randomly backstabbed and instantly dead (depending on class). But, quite frankly, if you ever died to an assassin, it is your fault. They have low hp and nearly everything kills them. They have no way to save themselves if knocked off the map. Their cloak is transparent at best and makes a "here I am" sound. So a good assassin has to try to sneak up on good players without cloak, in which case your fully visible to the player, his team, bots, and turrets. The grapple has always been relatively unreliable with it's cooldown, lag making it hard to consistently hit people that jump, and lag that makes you get face stabs when you clearly were behind the player.

Thing is, people go assassin against a bunch of bad kids in public games, go 40-0 or something, and think it is an easy class. I can do the same thing with any other class, but against people that know what they are doing, your opportunities are so far and few between, it is ridiculous.

And now they've made it so an assassin has to kill bots until they get enough cash to get a sword, just so you can continue killing bots, just so you can pray that an opportunity presents itself once every few minutes.

hello uber, first of all, I love the game it is great I play it more than any other game, I actually sold reach b/c I play this more than it. now the patch really helped a lot of things and I understand you cant please everybody, and as what you are doing is great but after reading a couple forum topics I found that I am not the only one disappointed by the assassin "nerf". the assassin used to be a deadly weapon, but after this latest patch, it got turned into mere target practice for everybody else. due to the fact that the lunge is practically useless( unless you are using it to tickle the opponent) we are left with the grapple(which seems to be less effective than most everybody else, unless you can pull of the backstab) and the shurikens(unless you can manage to upgrade to the katana before the end of the game). now I know that people say that if you use the assassin right nothing really changed but that is wrong, I know how to use the sin, and I normally do very well, but after the patch came out there was just no hope for me or any others playing as the assassin. I just wanted to help bring to your attention that while the assassin could be a formidable and fun enemy it has become a joke to play as and a waste of time. please work on fixing this problem so that many others and myself can continue to enjoy the wonderful game that you have created without constantly getting bashed into the ground by the more overpowered classes. thanks for listening to you community and creating such a great game!!!

The bottom line is that the assassin's dagger lunge was overpowered. You could lunge into a front grapple and kill nearly anything.

So what's your problem? After you get your upgrades you play about the same way as you did before. But now you have a slow start like everyone else. That sounds pretty fair to me. I played a game earlier and an assassin got me from behind three times with juice. It effectively shut me down and greatly hampered my efforts of pushing the enemy. Imagine that.... an assassin selectively choosing ripe targets for a quick kill followed by a faster getaway.

I've spent the first half of several games as a gunner (playing against a good team) and was shut down until I got my upgrades. I'm sure I would be upset if I had been playing MNC with broken damage for 2 months. I'd want to swap classes too.... but then again my level 1 passive skill never did more damage than my level 3 passive.

Nobody is saying the old lunge was not op, it definitely did too much damage.
Kill anything with a dagger lunge grapple? you mean the low armor classes? Well duh that's kind of the point.

The problem now is that the dagger lunge doesn't do any damage, its about the same as a right stick melee.

They did not lower the damage, they almost completely removed it.

Did you not read my post? you would know the "problem" If you had.
The assassin does not have a "slow" start like everyone else...it is completely gimped out of the gates compared to any other pro now due to a main weapon that tickles enemy's and the fact that you can't upgrade any skill but passive.
This means when playing with a good team, as I have stated time and time again, that the assassin doesn't have the time to upgrade to the katana, and if if you do..the game will be over in the next 1-2 minutes.

Don't act like you would not complain if they reduced the gunners starting weapon damage by 80%

And ofc he killed you, he was juiced. :roll:

Here's the thing, the Assassin's starting weapon was not nerfed at all, only her lunge attack was, which to be honest is an extra ability designed to close distances not deal huge damage. So the Assassin can grapple more quickly, still attack normally and can still use the lunge to close large distances. Sorry that your lunge+grapple combo won't kill heavy classes from the front any longer, not. FYI, it still works fine from the back on everything but a Gold Armor Gunner/Tank. Once you finally do get Passive 3 the Gunner is no longer a problem.

As for an Assassin not being to upgrade to Passive 3 before the game ends... seriously?!? I'm with UberGunner on this one, if the game ends in a few minutes then every class has this issue so what's the problem exactly? The Assassin was broken before this update and now she is fixed; stop comparing her abilities to the broken version. I guess all these Assassins have been spoiled for too long and now they cry when they actually have to do some work for a change. I can't wait for the Sniper adjustments!

EDIT: For the record, the Gunner's starting weapon is already nerfed 50% compared to the damage of their Passive 3 version; 67% for the mortar even.

Which was done before people started in on accusing the complainers of sucking and whatnot. Often, you guys come down on the detractors even when instigated by your staunchest supporters. That comes off as tacit approval at the very best.

Wow. Assassins were easy to deal with before. If you ran in, you died. If you didn't think or play smart, you died.

Maybe you're just not that good? Grapples were easy to avoid and hardly free kills except when set up properly or against poor players. It was hardly the "free kill" button people made it out to be.

Amaranth,

Do you have an actual point or just trying to instigate? I read through the whole thread before replying.

I think it's kind of funny that all the people saying Assassins were overpowered before are people who play Gunners and Snipers. I recognize many of them from the game.

You see, this is a neverending battle between those who play Assassin and those who do not. Those who play Assassin want a class that they believe is balanced enough to function. Those who do not want Assassins nerfed to the point that they are no longer a threat.

If you read through the whole thread, why did your original response have nothing to do with the topic at hand? With all due respect, you completely ignored the entire discussion and just told us to be serious... That's how we were before people came and started trolling and whatnot. If you had really read the entire thread, you should have noted that.

I really can't understand why so many think the assassin should be pretty much solely a support class... The stats show it, she's a (how should I say) deceptively 'Offensive' class... just because she has low defense doesn't mean she should be a tame, no account adversary against other pros.

Her skill should keep her formidable and bold, able to take on any pro and win. Players should still be cautious not to place her in too hazardous a situation, but none should have to cower from other skilled pros.

She should be able to run head on against others as the offensive class she's said to be...assassinating those foolish enough to take her lightly. Before the update, she was that person...

Before I was able to move in on Support persons setting turrets and firebases (and supercharging them) in our home base and I could frag them/stopping them from bringing an early end to the fight. But let me try to stop them now, Grappling them will get me chewed up by the bases they set (because I can't cloak/protect myself), that on top of them, many times not even dying and shooting me as well.

The issue with this is timing, what many of you are suggesting is a very slow and tedious way of attempting to stop a forward push. Very good players will crush you in that attempt! That couldn't happen so easily before.

I don't and never did use exploits, I exploit weakness in player design and tactics, but this change has made a great difference to the outcomes I've seen since the change...where I'd once had scores like 36 33... now I'm getting around 17 25 on average; higher if I work ridiculously hard for it.

Against greater players, I've found myself going into a practice/try-this out mode rather than focusing on winning a match, and when really trying, I've become more-less a distraction to heavy guns while they have it out with each other and barrel through kill attempts.

The whole thread includes valid concerns as well as the trolls, so yes I meant the whole thread. Try not to assume the worst. There is a lot of hyperbole all through out this thread even with the concerns. We get you guys are passionate about your specific class but we look at it from a much broader view as the developers and take the whole game into account when making balance changes which sometimes comes off as very unfair to certain classes. Also we need to take Blitz into account as well. Oh and sometimes we completely suck and get things completely wrong too. This is only the first update and there will be more changes and adjustments.

Well as long as you're here, might we get your opinion on the dagger lunge?

All I must say is that support is now the worst class. They made him suck. Again I agree with Rev on this. I love you guys & the game with all due respect but half the update was horrible in my book. I expected a few different things. One thing im glad is the host migration & the lag part & of course the juice. But I will say I wont be using the support anymore cause he totally blows now. Sorry for those whom do not agree with me. I will still play but you wont ever see me play as a support anymore. Right when I started to like him & use him sigh... :/

QFT

Gotta agree with lief here, I was really hoping somebody would comment on the topic at hand. We can't control other people coming in and being rude and immature, but you can.

I honestly like the assassin changes a lot.
The only small problem is the dagger lunge was nerfed TOO much
I expected the damage to be maybe 20% lower then the katana or somewhere in that ballpark

Imo the dagger damaged should have been dropped down to a bit below the sword, and upped the sword damage by about the same amount
That ofc is my opinion, Not everyone will agree.

However I do think we can all agree (Except the gunners) that the lunge at LEAST should do enough damage to kill another assassin with a lunge+face grab combo

I honestly would not even mind the pisspoor damage as much if it was not for the fact that most games in a decent party end before the katana can be gained or put to use.
(Yes, most of the games I play with my normal party end anywhere from less then two minutes to five minutes max)

We can sit around and debate about how the class should be played, or how uber intended it to be played or how this or that person is "Doing it wrong"
But it honestly comes down to the player. Each person can play how they want and develop their own "Play style".

It may not be how you play, or I play.
Or even how billybob the farmer plays.
But just because somebody has a different view of the class does not make them wrong.
If you are gonna argue about it at least be polite and give detailed counter arguments.

sheesh :roll:

Education:

The dagger lunge now does approximately 50% of what it did before.

It does around 75% of what the sword lunge does.

Against an unarmored assassin, from behind:
- Dagger lunge takes her to just under 50% health. The old one would kill in one hit, now it takes two.
- Sword lunge takes her to around 25% health.

Damage is significantly lower from the front, but I don't remember exactly how much lower.