This guide is an....interesting way I play The Assassin on a match. And if anyone wants to give it a try. If you want more information regarding the Assassin please feel free to browse my archives in the link under my Sig. Wisdom is power. Okay to start you will need to create these three builds. Build 1 Gold : R0F Silver : Clip Bronze : Crit Build 2 Gold : Armor Silver : R0F Bronze : Skill Recovery Build 3 Gold : Juice Silver : R0F Bronze : Speed/Skill Recovery/Armor (Doesn't Really matter) So why do two of these builds seem completely silly and unnecessary? Well allow me to explain. At the start of the match I use build 1. Why? Bots at the start of the match are few and easy to manage being an Assassin. You don't need to worry about slicing through armies of black jacks and slims or player spawned bots. So here is the theory. You get juice faster from using shurikens on bots from what I see. With this build you kill black jacks just as fast as a dagger and get more juice for it. The Crit in the build is for use against slow pros to keep em back from pushing into your base or buy time until your allies get there. Be careful to remember there's no armor in this build so watch it. Early game Strategy First Upgrade Passive and Whatever else. Shuriken Bots for juice Harass Pros from afar If they have alot of turrets early game punish with juice Repeat You wont use Build 1 for long. It loses its usefulness fast. Because its time for Mid game. For Mid game your going to use of Course Build 2. Or whatever normal build you prefer. This is pretty straight forward Assassin play. Now pros are spawning bots to bolster their forces. Now the lanes get crowded. Get a sword and tear it up. Use juice when you need to and always keep money for the annihilator. Late Game By this time you are either winning or losing the match. You should have most of your skills lvl 3. If your losing then all you need to focus on is keeping the bots out. You will need to either hope your team can turn it around or hold out for overtime. Smoke Bomb lvl 3 is very important for its quick recovery time. Slice the bots and get outta there. When the Jack Bots spawn instead of Grappling them get BEHIND the Jack Bot and start slicing it. Attacking from behind is less noticeable and does THE MOST DAMAGE to Jack Bot. Plus you get alot of juice when your done. Cloak and then get the other bots and let your team worry about pros. Remember Pros cant do nothing to the money ball unless a bot gets in. Unless its overtime............ Overtime For overtime Use Build 3. Nothing really matters anymore then you getting in and pumping the enemy money ball full of shurikens. With this build you respawn with 75% juice. Most enemy pros will be rushing to your money ball so just cloak and run past em to their base. If there are turrets, shuriken the money ball from far away until you can juice and then unload on it! That money ball will come down very VERY fast. Meh thats kinda it. Its not revolutionary but for me it works. If you wanna try it then give it a go. :ugeek: Ill keep experimenting and sharing.
Just two questions. First, don't all your endorsements become gold in OT, and therefore you don't have to worry about what build you choose? Second, I thought RoF on the shuriken launcher between gold and silver was the same? If it is, opening minutes can be funny with gold ammo and silver RoF instead. Just putting in my constructive questions.
I don't think all endorsements go gold in OT. I think they are greatly improved, but I don't think that they go completely gold.
I have to say, seems ludicrous at first glance, but you do have some key points and ideas. Since you have only a measly Dagger rather then a full-fledged Sword, I like the idea with learning how to use your Shuriken Launcher and hanging back to get more Juice that way. Looking at the Pro match-ups, you can get a backstab on Assaults if they aren't wearing Gold Armor or if he is half-decent with Charge/Fly and Gunners with any Armor Endorsement, with Tanks being obviously a bad idea. Snipers/Supports are susceptible due to low health, and other Assassins depends on pros/cons of scenario. This is all with the Dagger though. With the S-Launcher you are meant to Ring Out players with the Ejectors, shoot from afar, harass Pros, and generally be an annoyance rather then go hunting right off the bat and give the enemy team some free cash. So in my eyes, you have my thanks for using the Assassin as someone who isn't meant to Assassinate people, and use it to be the fly on the wall that you just cant seem to squash. Some critiques though. For a S-Launcher, the difference between Gold and Silver isn't a whole lot if any, so I would keep it at Silver like in Build 2. Yet since that opens up the Gold Endorsement, I was thinking maybe have Crit for Gold. Sadly, since this is early game, you most likely won't be using Cloak 3 and won't make full use of the Gold Crits as you would later in game. Still, it's a Gold Endorsement and has the highest chance for Crits along with beefing them up, so it still can work. And lastly, thinking Bronze could be Clip Size. The difference between No Endorsement to Bronze is 4 ammo when Bronze to Silver is 2 ammo, I think it would be better served as a Bronze Endorsement. So finalized, it should look like... Gold:Crits Silver:Rate of Fire Bronze:Clip Size If you want, you could fool around with Speed and Skill Recovery, but I always think that the Assassin has her blue skill if she needs to run and can pick up fasty-feet if she needs that little oomph in her step. Skill Recovery depends if you plan on using the Smoke Bomb a lot to get out of places since you are a fly on the wall, and Cloak to get those Crits out at Cloak 3 along with running away.
What is the generally accepted effect of crits endorsement just to confirm? Percent to crit and crit damage? Or just percent to crit? Because if it's the former, I love the idea of using that build for shred the moneyball when it's down, especially in Clutch protag moments. I personally don't like relying on speed pick ups and experimented with a speed build. Gold Speed Silver Armor Bronze RoF The build was inspired by my tendency to run in and out of the two primary entrances to the enemy spawn on Steel Peel. A really annoying hit and run gnat, especially to keep the bot lanes down and run out before they counterattack. This build of course, wants you to lunge as much as possible, to make up for having less RoF, especially on black jacks, jackbot, and Bullseye. Assassinations meanwhile, for me, are more of an opportunistic thing for me. I did learn that Assault bomb 3 does insta-kill you from a recent match while charge 3 left me with a sliver of health (this is silver armor talking. My primary is of course the assassin standard armor/RoF/health). I find it a very fun build. Not the most practical if I'm surviving less enemy ability oriented attacks than usual but with this build, you become extremely annoying to catch with gold speed and dash. They do work together it's nice to rely on when your cloak becomes useless due to enemy spray 'n' pray. Future experiments may use bronze health regen for increased hit and run frequency.
I think generally it's that its Crits chance and damage for Crit Endorsements. Though, I hear you can get Crits without the Endorsements, though it's VERY unlikely, and may not notice it. This is going by the Wiki and I think it rings true. One thing I would change about your build is that I hate having Gold Speed on anything. It makes Speed-pickups useless and with less Armor on an Assassin makes you susceptible to LVL 3 Bombs. Solution? I think you can just switch Armor for Speed. You get that little bit extra Armor while you can just pick up one Speed for 2 Golds and a Bronze in your loadout. I want to go as far to say you can bump Speed down to a Bronze because of using the Dash to go between the 2 entrances at Steel Peel, because they aren't too big anyway, though it isn't always there when you need it and can't be helped with Skill Regen, so either Silver/Bronze would be good for Speed I think.
I have been fighting a lot of assassins with silver and gold speed lately, and I think it has something to do with the recovery time after a grapple. Before you write me off as being mad because I got owned by an assassin, listen to my story: I was playing sniper with Gold RoF/Silver Armor/Bronze Skill recovery. I normally have no problems with taking out an assassin when playing sniper (in fact, they are my favorite pro to fight), but this one person was giving me a ton of trouble. He/she would come up to me, front-grapple me, and then slash me to death before I could react. I noticed that they were running gold speed when I died. I then took on an assassin who front-grappled me who did not have gold speed, and I kicked their butt over the side of the map. The gold speed assassin then came back and killed me again with the front-grapple followed by slashes. I wasn't able to grapple because there is a "cooldown time" between when you get grappled and when you are able to fight again. It is very slight, but it is noticeable. Speed must have something to do with the period of time after the grapple and before either person involved in that grapple can fight. I believe this because I was dead before I could move or shoot, and I had full health before hand.
Being a new player, I have one question before I tinker with ANY of these builds... Endorsements. How does that **** work?? I've been told by a friend that you start off with Bronze, and when you upgrade Passive 2, you get Silver. Passive 3 = Gold. Is this true, or do you get all three effects right off the bat? Or is there something I'm completely missing? The only thing I know of that affects Endorsements is Bacon, which sets everything to Gold until death/end of match.
Your friend is talking about skills. You know pressing up on the D-pad brings up the skill picker right? Those are skills. Endorsements (let's call them perks for now) can be customized when you buy yourself a custom class slot in the locker room. These "perks" affect the very base things about the chosen class you are customizing. Gold changes an aspect drastically while bronze gives you small but noticable boost. You're allowed one of each level perk on your custom class. You know how assassins are so fragile right? Most assassins use gold armor to offset their low health. However, we've been discussing different builds that don't put armor in gold, for example RoF (rate of fire), which makes you attack much faster. So you want your skills to recover faster? Decide if you want it really fast (gold) or a little less for each tier (silver, bronze). Your endorsement build defines how you play your chosen class. An assault with gold armor wants the safety net of handling a firefight while another assault with gold accuracy would much rather run and gun, spray and pray. There's always latency to take into account. Latency affects whether or not you think you've jumped out of the way of a grapple. I once thought I jumped out of a gunner grapple attempt but I reset back into his grapple. If the assassin was host, he definitely had the advantage of doing whatever he wants after the front-stab.
No, I'm actually a Steam player browsing both Strategy and Tactics boards with emphasis on Xbox, but the D-Pad thing is easily interchangeable. As for talking about skills, yes, I understand that; but the way he explained it was that when you start, you have Bronze. When you upgrade Passive to Lv2, you get Silver. When you upgrade to Passive 3, you get Gold. And judging by the way you answered, this seems to not be the case; instead, you get all three perks as soon as you spawn. The only frustrating thing about MNC is the lack of information floating around; you either have to take forever figuring it out yourself, or ask other players. I also understand that depending on what tier you place your perk, its effectiveness changes. So let's say I want to specialize in clearing out lanes of bots as quickly as possible, but have high-to-highish RoF for dumping Shuriken into the opposing Moneyball. I use Smokebomb and Cloak often, but can stand for having Smokebomb at 1 all game. Starting off the match, I go Passive 2 Cloak 2. I clear lanes, pick up Juice, sneak into the opposing base, destroy some turrets, pray to God [despite being Agnostic] that I don't get rolled. I MAY have to run Armour somewhere, silver or Bronze, to avoid being stomped by bots. I DON'T expect to confront other players, the only time I interact is to take out obvious targets [deployed Gunners at range with Shuriken, Assault facing away not focused on me, etc.]. My main job is to rape bots, turrets, and the Moneyball. With this block of text in mind, does RoF3 Armour2 Skill Reco1 sound plausible? Steam recently had a wipe for all accounts, so as soon as I can run a second Custom Class, I'll try a few of the builds mentioned here and report. @StriderHoang, I'm rather amused that you were the one to answer. I just got finished analyzing your game-play videos.
I was just interested in keep the flow of information correct. Misinformation like that can be critical to easing new players into a game they'll love or hate. Most of the information long time fans have attained is a result of reading whatever information Uber provided (which can be vague), personal trial and error in the field, and lots of testing by dedicated individuals (This, learn it, love it, never leave it). As for your endorsement build, that one in particular is probably the 2nd most common build among assassins interested in playing assassin well and by the book. Just be aware that as I've stated, Assault level 3 bombs will insta-kill you. Assaults love their bomb 3 (people argue it's OP, that's how often you'll see it). But with skill recovery in bronze, you could theoretically use smoke bomb more often for an instant escape out of most situations. Silver armor is the minimum, most believe, for an assassin to act efficiently on the field, despite the difference in surviving between gold and silver armor. I'd also like to add that with cloak 3, the near instant activation means bots and turrets will ignore you that much faster. Just keep in mind that swinging your sword builds more juice on bots but leaves you exposed for precious seconds. Lunging gives you less juice but let's you clear waves in an instant and keeps you moving sometimes to get away from babysitting tanks and gunners get wise.
So looking at the link given, it almost seems that I can swap Silver Armour and Gold RoF around. The RoF was at gold so I could pump more shuriken into the Moneyball in my solo moments [of which I've had many, sadly enough...]. Rate of Fire (Shuriken Launcher) Gold: 10 stars in 0.9 sec Silver: 10 stars in 0.9 secs Bronze: 10 stars in 1~1.1 secs Default: 10 stars in 1.2 secs Rate of Fire (Dagger) Gold: 163 slashes per/min or 2.5 slashes per/sec Silver: 143 slashes per/min or roughly 2.5 slashes per/sec Bronze: 128 slashes per/min or 2 slashes per/sec Default: 118 slashes per/min or 1.9 slashes per/sec I can get away with 20 less slashes a minute [although how 2.5 slashes a second calculated twice gives two different results confuses me; though now as I read it more in detail, it sort-of makes sense..], and the RoF on Shuriken stay the same, while I gain extra armour. Or I could be back-breakingly daring and go along the lines of this thread, and put some other Endorsement at Gold. Hmm. One main question that may or may not free up money : Seeing as I'll rarely be a PK-happy player, should I still go Assassin 3? Or stop at Assassin 2 and use that $400 to up other skills/grief with Gremlins? Another question : I've read whisperings that Smoke Bomb can lower damage for a set amount of time? Confirmation and timeframe if plausible would definitely be nice to have. Go ahead and answer this chunk in-thread, for the sake of coherence, and I'll PM you further questions. Sorry@OP for derailing; didn't expect it to cartwheel this wildly.
I did some testing with Launcher to find that their is a difference between silver and gold. Almost as much as the difference between sword silver and Gold. Seriously go test it for yourself Gold is faster with the launcher.
I would, but Steam MNC wiped [yet again, might I add....], so I'm going to have to go spam Playoff Blitz yet again. Perhaps a reason to keep RoF Gold..?
