Hi, I'm Snarf, and this is my assassin guide.

HI IM SNARF'S ASSASSIN GUIDE

Hi, my name is Snarf, and I'm an alc...

...oops, wrong speech. *Ahem.* Okay. This is my guide to how I play assassin. Please note that everything in here is subject to preference, and that what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. This is all from my experience.

Table of Contents:
I. Introduction
II. Weapons
III. Skills
IV. Endorsements
V. Objective Strategies
VI. Pro vs. Pro Strategies
VII. Strategies for Each Map
VIII. Pro Strategies

I. Introduction


Assassin is the least respected class in the game. Why? Because 95% of the people who play it have absolutely no idea what to do with it. So if you are new to this game and are reading this guide, you are one step ahead of most assassin players.

Versatile, quick, and stealthy, the assassin is, in my opinion the most difficult class to effectively play in MNC. She is extremely fragile, and any minor mistake in the wrong place will generally cost you your life. Most good players these days don't even take assassins seriousy because so few actually know how to play. In fact, if I'm playing a random game, I usually count how many assassins so I know how many people I won't have to bother worrying about.

On the opposite end, however, the assassin can also be the most important class in the game. The assassin's ability to one hit KO almost any single target, along with her ability to control the bot movement on the entire map makes her generally have the highest score on any good pro team.

II. Weapons

Dagger
The assassin's primary weapon at the start of the game. It is a melee weapon with low damage and short range. The primary fire (RT) swings the dagger, damaging anything within range of the swing. The secondary fire is a grapple, and you must be within melee range for it to work.

If you grapple an enemy from the front, she will flip up onto their shoulders and stab them in the face. It does moderate damage - killing all undarmored assassins and snipers.

If you grapple an assassin, sniper, support, or assault from the back, she will stab them in the back. This is an instant kill unless they are overhealed.

If you grapple a tank or a gunner from the back, she will flip over them and kick them in the back of the head. It will leave a gunner with a sliver of health left, and a tank with a little less than 1/4 health left.

Because there is no ammuntion, the the reload buttun (RB) is a lunge attack. When you press RB, the assassin lunges forward, damaging anything in its path. This is often used in succession with a grapple. You aim towards your opponnet, press RB to lunge, and as soon as you hit your opponent, you press Left Trigger to perform a grapple. This allows you to deal both lunge damage and grapple damage to your opponent. Unfortunately, the dagger's lunge does not do that much damage.

Sword
The assassin gets her sword when you upgrade her passive to level 3. The sword is a much more powerful version of the dagger. It does a lot more damage, has a much longer range, and the grapples do much more damage. The lunge is also significantly better. It's easier to hit because of your increased range, and it does a lot more damage. This will be the assassin's most used weapon for most builds and strategies.

Shuriken Launcher
The assassin's alternate weapon (press LB to switch) is the Shuriken Launcher. It's a gun that shoots out slow-moving shurikens that are tough to land, but deal a lot of damage. One clip of this with no endorsements to the face can kill almost every single class. However, because it is so hard to hit a full clip on somebody not standing still, it is used only in specific scenarios.

The most common scenarios for this to be used is for deployed gunners. If a gunner is deployed, you can usually kill him in one clip by turning invisible (so that you can take your time to aim perfectly) and shooting off a clip into his face. It is also extremely effective against tanks (will cover more on that later). The third and final thing the shuriken launcher is particularly useful for is taking out turrets. It deals good damage from any distance to turrets...all you need is a clean shot. It is the assassin's best tool for destroying firebases.

The shuriken launcher's alternate fire is a grapple. If you grapple somebody from the front, you will slap them in the face. I'm not 100% sure on the effectiveness of this. I've heard some say it can kill most things in one shot, however I have used it and had it used on me and always seem to get different results with it. I prefer not to use the shuriken front grapple unless necessary because I have to switch back to my sword before I can use my lunge, which can mean the difference between killing or getting killed, or escaping and not escaping.

If you grapple somebody from behind, she slaps them to death in the back of the head. This can kill most pros in one hit, but I still recommend using the sword's back grapple over this because you can lunge into it with the sword, and the sword is a much better up close weapon in case you fail or the opposing pro was overshielded.

Gremlins
When you spawn bots for the assassin, you get 4 gremlins. Gremlins are small, fast bots that can cloak. They seek out pros and melee attack them for quick damage. If there are no pros on the ground, they will attack turrets, and they do quite a bit of damage to them, as well. In my opinion, the are the best bot you can possibly spawn in MNC (except for gapshots on Spunky Cola).

III. Skills

Passive
When you upgrade the assassin's passive skill to level 2, she gets an increased clip size on her shuriken launcher, and she takes less fall damage. At level 3, she replaces her dagger with her sword. This should be the first thing you go for. The assassin is 1/4 as effective with her dagger as she is with her sword.

Cloak
The assassin's yellow skill is cloak. Cloak allows you to turn partially invisible for a short amount of time, giving you the ability to sneak around. While invisible, you will emit an audible hum that pros on the other team can hear. Do not be mistaken and think you are completely invisible. The closer you are to somebody, the more visible you are. The faster you are moving, the more visible you are. If you are sprinting (your blue skill), you'll kick up dust that allows you to be seen. And finally, the less health you have, the more visible you are. So do not think that this skill gives you a free pass to just run around and do what you want. You are still detectable, just much less. Cloak automatically turns off if you use a skill (aside from sprint) or an attack of any kind.

At level 1, cloak lasts for a short duration and turrets can still see you. At level 2, it lasts longer and turrets can no longer see you. At level 3, it lasts much longer, and you get two bonus attributes. The first is that it the skill does not drain while you're standing still. The other is that any time you break your cloak via attacking an opponent, that attack will automatically be a critical shot.

Sprint
The assassin's blue skill is sprint. Activating the skill makes the assassin run instead of walk, moving much faster. Higher levels allow more sprint time.

Smoke Bomb
The assassin's red skill is smoke bomb. When an assassin uses smoke bomb, she throws a bomb on the ground, creating a radius of smoke around her. Anybody in that radius will be blinded for a short period of time. If the assassin jumps immediately after using smoke bomb, she will jump extremely high into the air. This is an excellent escape tool and an excellent way to get to various places on the map. It also reduces damage while you are bombing, and if timed right, it can stop you from being knocked back from charge attacks, and I have heard it can even block a Gunner's pancake.

This is a very underused skill, even with a lot of good players. Learn how to use this to early in your Monday Night Combat learning curve. It is really my number one go-to escape move, even before cloak and sprint. The trick is knowing when to use it and when not to use it. When you use it, you are vulnerable to fire for a split second. So you have to do the trial-and-error method to really get a feel for when it's appropriate to use it. Until you get it, I recommend trying to use it as much as possible, even if it gets you killed. Eventually, you'll start to learn when not to use it, but you'll be surprised by how often it is an effective escape method.

Finally, the smoke bomb also stuns bots and turrents, rendering them unable to attack or move for a short period of time. Very useful, especially against turrets that woudl otherwise kill you.

Buy Order
Honestly, I always kinda buy my skills in different orders. The only thing I always do 100% of the time is get my sword before I upgrade anything else. While your other skills upgraded are useful, they all are good enough at level 1 to work effectively (they're just much more convenient at higher levels). Your passive is a must. For the rest of the skills, it kind of depends on what is going on and what map I have. If I were to give a good build order for beginners, though, here's how I'd do it:

Passive 2
Passive 3
Cloak 2
Smoke Bomb 2
Cloak 3
Dash 2
Dash 3
Smoke Bomb 3

IV. Endorsements

Here is a list of the endorsement options, followed by my ranking/10 for each endorsement at each spot.

Armor
Gold: 10
Silver: 8
Bronze: 5

Gold armor is essentially a must for assassin. She is the most fragile or the 2nd most fragile class in the game. I think she may have slightly more HP than the sniper, but I could be wrong. Either way, she is much more fragile than the sniper because most of the time getting a kill with her requires you be standing so close to your opponent that you're literally touching them. Also, it prevents you from dying from an assassin grapple.

Clip Size
Gold: 4
Silver: 5
Bronze: 7.5

Because the assassin's primary weapon has no ammunition, clip size does not affect that. Therefore, putting clip size as your main skill is a huge waste. Putting it as your bronze skill, however, can make your shuriken launcher potentially deal a good bit more damage.

Critical Shot
Gold: 1
Silver: 1
Bronze: 4

Crits are not the most useful thing for assassin. You already get crits by attacking out of a cloak, and your sword does not attack nearly fast enough for the small % chance of crit bonus to be worth it. At bronze, it can maybe be slightly useful for your shuriken launcher, but clip size is better if you want to improve your shuriken.

Health Recovery

Gold: 3
Silver: 5
Bronze: 10

My personal favorite bronze endorsement for assassin. It makes you recover health a LOT faster, which is so useful when facing harder enemies. I particularly like this for fighting snipers. If a sniper gets a grapple on you, by the time you land, your health is already about to start regenerating. By the time you are back at the sniper, you're at full health again. But it's extremely useful for all fighting situations because you just regen your health so much noticably faster, even at bronze. While it would be nice to have gold health regen or silver health regen, those spots could be used for much more useful things.

Juice
Gold: 6
Silver: 3
Bronze: 1

While generally I'd say never give up armor for something else at gold, it can be kinda useful to put it at gold for a juice-suicide strategy. The assassin build juice up faster than anybody else in the game. Because gold juice lets you start out each life with a lot more juice, you can get juice extremely fast with this endorsement. A funny strategy to do with this is to make juice your gold endorsement, build a quick juice, kill a few people, suicide so that you can quickly regain your juice, rinse, and repeat. If you save your juice for the right moments, you'll be surprised at how many kills you'll get for each of your suicides.

Reload Speed
Gold: 1
Silver: 1
Bronze: 1

Absolutely useless on any spot. Avoid like it's an emo kid.

Rate of Fire
Gold: 7
Silver: 10
Bronze: 6

At silver, your rate of fire is fast enough to take down a rockit turret with your dagger after using smoke bomb to stun the turret. At gold, your rate of fire is very fast and deadly, but at the cost of decreased armor, which can cost you even if you're dealing out more DPS.

Skill Recovery
Gold: 1
Silver: 5
Bronze: 9

Probably the best alternative to bronze health recovery. Many will argue that it's better. I think it all depends on how you play. The biggest benefit from this would be more frequent smoke bombs.

Speed
Gold: 2
Silver: 4
Bronze: 7

Not a terrible choice, but you can get speed pickups from killing bots and pros that make you just as fast, only for free. Still, it is nice to have a permanent speed boost.

Accuracy
Gold: 2
Silver: 1
Bronze: 1

Just not that useful really. The shuriken launcher is plenty accurate, and the only reason why it's hard to hit with it is because of the slow moving projectile motion that the shurikens carry. Accuracy doesn't really make a difference to anything for assassin. Only time I use this is if I REALLY want some shuriken kills.

Your Build
Ultimately, you are ging to have to come up with your build. That being said, pretty much any pro assassin will agree that the most effective objective assassin will be set up like this:

Gold: Amor
Silver: Rate of Fire
Bronze: Health Recovery or Skill Recovery. Clip size if there are 2-3+ tanks on the map.

V. Objective Strategies



The ultimate objective of Monday Night Combat is to lead your bots to the enemy team's moneyball and then destroy the moneyball. The assassin class, in particular, is set up to be one of the, if not the best class in the game for playing objectively.

Slimbots and Blackjacks
Your main weapon for these guys is your sword. Once you get your sword, you can melt through these guys like butter. If you have Silver or gold Rate of Fire equipped, you really can destroy bots extremely fast. Assassin's lunge attack, as well, will rip through bots like nobody's business.

While the lunge attack will generally kill a wave of bots in one hit, your sword will give you more juice and kill them almost as fast. However, they will do a slight amount of damage to you, you risk getting blackjack punched (if you're not paying attention), and you are exposed longer for other pros to kill you. When nobody is around, I always sword slash to kill the bots. If there are other pros within firing range, lunge at the bots and then immediately smoke bomb and jump to safety.

Because the assassin can kill bots faster than any other class in the game, the assassin's primary job is to push bots. Because of the assassin's speed and ability to bomb jump around the map, you really can kill both lane's bots the entire game. No matter what else you are doing in the game, you should CONSTANTLY be going back to kill wave after wave of bots.

Rockit Turrets
The next feat of the assassin is her ability to rip through turrets with ease. If you have armor level 3 and Rate of Fire level 2, you can kill any un-shielded level 1 rockit turret by smoke bombing right next to it and then slashing it away with your dagger. If you have your sword, you can do this with it overhealed, as well. Standing at a distance and firing shurikens at it will also kill it pretty fast, and give you a fair amount of juice.

At level 3, you will absolutely need juice to kill it. You can put down a fair amount of damage to it by using smoke bomb and attacking, but I don't believe you can kill it in one attempt (and generally, by the time they get a rockit turret to level 3, somebody is going to be watching it).

If you get juice, you can rip through entire bases of turrets easily. To maximize this, jump around while you attack the turrets. It makes it much harder for people to grapple you and take away precious juice time.

Also, while attacking turrets, juiced or unjuiced, remember that turrets cannot shoot through each other. With that in mind, position yourself so that you are only in the line of fire of the turret that you are attacking.

Laser Blazer Turrets
Why kill them when you can just profit instead? I'm sure it is eventually going to be patched, but for right now, laser blazers are just free juice. Just stand in front of one (make sure you have at least silver armor) and taunt. It will fill your juice bar up about 70% of the way. They are actually weak enough that bots will eventually take them out on their own, but if you're trying to kill it, just lunge towards it and slash away. No bombing necessary, but if somebody is around to attack you while you're hitting it, it may be a smart idea to bomb just to stop the extra damage.

Shaveice Turrets
Just slash them down when they are not paying attention. Whatever you do, don't let them upgrade these because they will severely hinder your juice rushing abilities.

Long Shot Turrets
No need to bomb here. Lunge into it and slash away or just slash away.

Jackbot XL
The assassin is the best class at taking out the jackbot. She has the ability to grapple him, which takes away half of his health. However, if you grapple a jackbot, you are vulnerable to all kinds of attacks, and there is nothing you can do to defend yourself during the extremely long animation. The assassin can kill the jackbot extremely fast just by slashing it with her sword, and it will fill her juice bar up about 2/3 of the way, as well. If you have juice, it's not a bad idea to use it to kill their jackbot if it hasn't been out for too long. If you can take it out right as it comes out, then you have more time to go defend yours and push it into their base.

Annhialator
The assassin should always be going for the annhialator in competitive matches. Why? Because the assassin can move faster than any other class, giving you the advantage for the race to it. On top of that, your skills being upgraded aren't as important as your teammate's (with the exception of sword), and you can cloak, so if the other team has map control, you can still get it. Always keep tabs on how close the annhialator is to being ready for use. When it's close, stay near it so that you can make sure to punch it before somebody from the other team does. Also, if you get an annhialator kill, make sure to taunt so that you can get some of that $250 back.

VI. Pro vs. Pro Strategies

While the assassin has the ability to kill any pro instantly, you must remember that above all, the ultimate objective is to get bots on the other team's moneyball. Keep that in mind while you are going for kills - if you are spending too much time chasing pros and not enough time pushing bots, it could result in a loss for your team.

Before I go over pro-specific strategies, let's go over a few general guidelines for fighting:

Pick the Right Fight
Above all, you choose the fight. You can turn invisible. You can sprint super fast. You can jump from almost any point A to almost any point B on the map. Basically, you can be just about anywhere you want at any time. So why pick a fair fight? Target people who don't know you are there, or who already have low health. If there is somebody that you REALLY need to kill, find a way to make it an unfair fight.

Assassination
This is more obvious, but since I am writing this assuming you know nothing about the game, it should be noted that the most effective way to kill other pros with assassin is to grapple them from behind. When you successfully kill somebody with a back grapple, it is called an assassination kill.

To Cloak or not to Cloak?
Here's the thing. When you cloak, you emit a hum that, once trained, is extremely easy to hear. It is just about impossible to sneak up on any good player when you have your cloak on. It is better to try and sneak around them with the cloak on, and then uncloak once you are close behind them. You'll have to flirt around with this before you really get a good understanding of how close you have to be for them to hear you. But they can hear you when you are still out of lunge range, so you need to uncloak a decent pace behind them.

That does NOT mean that you should uncloak behind somebody and charge in when there is somebody else further behind them to shoot at you. Be smart about it. Remember, you get to pick the fight. If you will get killed assassinating somebody, live to fight another day.

Be Unpredictable
Don't EVER do the same thing twice in a row. If there is a sniper camping up top and you go for him and get killed, he is expecting you to come back. Don't. Go push bots on the opposite side for a little bit. If there are two people pushing hard into your base and you sneak behind them and die, they are probably expecting you to try it again. Mix it up, go mess with the other side for a minute, and then come back. Remember - if they can predict what you are going to do, it's much easier to counter it. Always, throughout the entire game, be mixing up where you are going and who you are going after.

Ejectors
The assassin is the best class in the game for getting kills with the ejector. Because of your cloaking ability, people cannot see you when you're on it. A combination of level 3 cloak and a little bit of patience can go very far with the ejector. Even if you don't get the kill, it does enough damage that you can easily go finish off most pros with a lunge or a few slashes of the sword.

One of my favorite tricks with the assassin is to lure somebody out into the middle of an ejector pad. To do this, just initiate a fight near it, and go stand near the middle. When they are close to the middle of the pad, smoke bomb jump up to the top of the pad and quickly use the ejector before they have the chance to escape. This is especially useful at Grenade III because of the ejector setups on that map. I'm telling you...this works WONDERS for getting kills. I've actually killed 4 people at once with this strategy before.

Running with the Gremlins
This is another easy trick. Spawn a wave of gremlins. Run with them. When you get close to the battlefield, cloak and start sprinting towards whatever they target. As soon as they start hitting something, lunge into them and start slashing/grappling them. A lot of times, gremlins come up so fast that at first they can't differentiate between a cloaked gremlin and a cloaked assassin.

Getting the Drop
Before I go into each individual matchup, I'd like to point out one of the most important concepts for assassin in this game. In order to win a fight, you need to "get the drop" on your opponent. If any decent player notices you before you are within lunge range, you're probably going to lose the fight. Even if the kill you are going for isn't an assassination, you still need to have the element of surprise on your side. All matchups described below are going under the assumption that you start off the fight giving the first blow. If it's the other way around...see ya in the respawn room! Never ever let them get out of lunge range, either (with the exception of tank), and always be circling and jumping while fighting any class while lining up your lunge-grapple.

Assault


The assault class is one of the more difficult classes for assassin to fight. Yes, you can asssassinate them. Once you are within lunge range, you have to worry about the assault's charge. The charge will ALWAYS take priority over your lunge or your grapple attack. If they hit you with charge 3, best case scenario you're going to be in an awkward place that's out of lunge range...they will pick you off. Worst case scenario, you're off the map or dead. So if they see you coming, do not lunge straight at them. Bait them into using their charge and missing by lining up with them and jumping out of the way as soon as they use it. Once they have used their charge, you have a short window of time to go for a lunge-grapple attack. For most assaults, this will be an instant kill. I believe that gold armor assaults can live through this with a tiny bit of health left. If they live through it, don't lunge straight into them. Charge restores too fast...they may have it again and will own you with it. Bait them into another charge or jump up and down and slash at them from the side, and be prepared for them to charge once more.

If an assault is running away from you, don't chase him. A good assault will set up a bomb to get you while you're running. If you get hit by the bomb, the assault will most likely kill you with the assault rifle because you can't turn invisible while you're on fire.

If you know his bomb cooldown is gone and he's running away, you can try to lunge after him or hit him with shurikens to pick him off. But once again, beware of his charge and keep in mind that bomb has an extremely fast cooldown, as well.

Another thing that assaults will do is jetpack around and shoot you. When they are doing this, spring underneath them and jump up and down, slashing your sword. It works wonders.

Gunnerr


Gunner is one of the easiest classes for assassin to fight. Because they are so big, they are much easier to assassinate. It's best for beginners to try not to face grapple them, but more advanced players can get away with it if you can get the drop on them.

For 95% of the gunners in MNC, if you lunge-grapple a gunner in the face, he will have a small sliver of health left. As soon as the grapple animation is over, jump backwards. He will use his slam attack the moment it's over, and by jumping, you will avoid it. The reason why you jump backwards is so that you can also avoid his grapple in case he plans on using that. Once you avoid the slam/grapple, lunge back into him and slash away until he's dead.

A good gunner will be jetpacking around after he misses his slam. You have to jump to slash at him, but it still should get him.

If a gunner is deployed, you have two options. If you are far away, one shuriken clip to the face will usually kill a gunner, or at least put him in red health. If you are close by, get behind him, and don't try to grapple him. He's just gonna laugh at you. Don't try to slash him, either. If you begin slashing him at full health, gold armor gunners have enough time to undeploy and get off a slam. Instead, pull out your shuriken, and unload a clip to the back of his head from point blank range. After the clip, if he's not dead, pull out your sword, jump up in the air and finish him with 2 slashes.

One more thing - avoid gunners with gold accuracy. They will rip you to shreds if they have good aim. If a gunner I know has gold accuracy sees me, I immediately bomb away and go somewhere else. You can assassinate them, but NEVER initiate a fight. They will kill you too fast. A gold accuracy gunner can kill you in .5 seconds. As soon as you begin lunging towards him, you're dead before you even get close enough to face grapple.

Support


There are two things you really have to watch out for with support. The first is his firebase. If he is near his firebase, you have to be careful about any kind of fight with him. If you do decide to assassinate a support near a 2.3-3.3 firebase, you have to smoke bomb and get out of it's firing radius immediately afterwards. You'll be in red health when it's done. If there are any other pros around with the support and his firebase, don't kill the support unless it's sacrificial so that one of your teammates can take out the firebase.

The most effective way to kill firebases is with your shuriken launcher. Form a safe distance, you can take it out in a few clips, and with silver Rate of Fire, it deals enough damage that the support can't heal it faster than you kill it. If it's hidden, try to find a good spot to ricochet them to it. If a support is stupid enough to stand still while healing it, fire a clip at the support's head first. You'll get plenty of kills that way.

The other thing of the support's you have to watch out for is his shotgun. With gold Armor, 2 shotgun blasts will kill you. So when you are going into a fight, if you have 1/2 HP or less, you will lose to any decent support. If he shotguns you before you grapple him, you'll lose.

At my early stages of learning the game, I died a lot trying to lunge-grapple supports. A gold RoF support can be hell with the shotgun. In order to beat one, you must come in with full HP, you must hit your first lunge. If you miss and he gets a shotgun blast off on you, jump in a random direction so he's more likely to miss the next shotgun. Then, smoke bomb and get the hell out of there. He would love nothing more for you to do that. Just wait until you have full HP, and come back later.

If for some reason you get stuck by an airstrike, get under something so the airstrike won't kill you.

If the support is trying to kill you with the hurt gun, just laugh at him, and lunge grapple him. They usually will be jumping around in circles while doing this. Back up and try to line up your lunge for where he is going to land, and then lunge-grapple him.

Tank


Avoid them. This is my best advice. The tank vs. assassin matchup is not balanced. Assassins will lose. The only way to kill a maxed out tank is to lunge into a back grapple. And I believe with gold armor and passive 3, that still will leave them with a tiny bit of health left.

If you find yourself accidentally face grappling a tank, immediately jump backwards and to the side. This will avoid his charge, although it won't always avoid his death blossom. After that, don't try to keep fighting. Smoke bomb jump out of there. Even when the tank has less than 1/4 health, at close range, he will beat you unless you can grapple. Don't try to finish him with a lunge. He will light you on fire and kill you unless he's not wearing armor, but even then he'll leave you with such low HP that bots or other pros will effortlessly pick you off.

If you find yourself in front of a tank, the first thing you should do is jump to the side because that tank is going to try to hit you with a charge or his jet gun. Then, smoke bomb jump and get the hell out of there.

If you see a tank at mid distance, fire shurikens at him. At worst, you'll widdle his health down a little bit and keep him from regenerating health while other teammates attack him. At best, you'll get a shuriken kill. If you can actually hit him with most of your clip, it will deal a lot of damage to him. Because he's so big, he is the easiest class to hit with the shuriken launcher.

Sniper


Snipers are my favorite class to mess with as an assassin. First of all, they are often the most necessary class for you to go mess with. Their explosive rounds will make it very difficult for you to kill bots. They can just shoot their own bots to kill you.

The two most dangerous things you have to watch out for when battling a sniper are his ice traps and his grapple. If you both push grapple at the exact same time, a sniper's grapple will take priority over yours. So you've got to catch him off guard with your grapple.

The good news is that your grapple, even a face grapple, is often a kill. A lunge-grapple is always a kill unless he's overhealed.

But remember that his grapple can easily ring you out. So if he notices you, you need to time your grapple for right after he misses his. It's very difficult, advanced stuff to master, but once you get it down, it's a very effective way to kill a sniper.

The other thing you have to avoid are his ice traps. Most snipers will camp on top of some kind of platform. When they do that, most of the time they will have their traps set up like this:

1 trap at each jump pad landing.
1 trap right near where he is.

When fighting a pain-in-the-*** sniper that you know you're going to have to harass, before I go fight him, I smoke bomb jump up in the air, and I don't land on the platform. All I do is just look at where his traps are set up. Then, I run away and go push bots on the other side for a second. If you just go for the kill immediately after this, he's going to be prepared. Be patient.

When it's time to come back, go cloaked to the side of the platform that he has his back to. Figure out where he is before you bomb up. Smoke bomb jump up in the air, and land directly behind him. Attempt an assassination. Make sure you aren't cloaked when you land behind him. Chances are, when you smoke bomb, he'll hear you, but you will have a split second to choose your landing spot before he sees you. If you don't land behind him or you miss the grapple, lunge away for an escape, run away, and come back later. Don't try to have a prolonged fight with a sniper.

If you do get caught in an ice trap, you have two options. If the sniper pulls out his sniper rifle to kill you, tap the right bumper (melee attack) a few times. It will move your head so that it's much hard to headshot you. With gold armor, he has to body shot you three times. If he is body shotting right away, smoke bomb once to reduce the damage, and then melee to avoid the headshot.

If the sniper is smart, he'll pull out his smg and try to kill you by firing an smg clip while moving towards you to finish you off with a grapple. When he pulls, if he is walking towards you, pull out your shuriken launcher. If he is moving in a straight line towards you, you can kill him EASILY with one clip before he can get to you to grapple you. If he's strafing, smoke bomb, pull out your shuriken launcher, fire a clip (you won't kill him, but it will threaten him, make him strafe, and therefore not be as accurate), and then run. If he DOES manage to get close enough to grapple you, you're going to have to attempt to grapple him first. It does work about 40% of the time because your grapple range with the sword is slightly longer than his. So as long as you time it right, you can face grapple him to avoid his grapple. However, if the face grapple doesn't kill him, he may end up still getting his grapple on you.

On maps like steel peel, a sniper will often stay on the ground and fire at you from his base, with ice traps set up at the base entrance so that nothing can get through. When this happens, my favorite way is to sneak around the side. If he's on the right, you can sneak in through his backdoor. If he still has traps blocking the backdoor, just smokebomb to avoid them.

If he is on the left side of steel peel, go up on the left-middle ring, and smoke bomb onto the glass near the edge of the map. You can actually walk along the top of the wall there to get into his base behind him. I actually don't know if anybody else knows about this, either. Well, they do now .

Assassin


Because an assassin vs. assassin fight is so complex, I have actually made an entire guide for it. It can be viewed here.

VII. Strategies for Each Map

Here is a list of key points to know for each map for the assassin. I'm going to list them in order of difficulty, starting with best maps for assassin to the worst maps for assassin.

Grenade III


Primary Skill to Focus On: Sprint
This is by far my favorite map for assassin. Most people are sick of it, but here's a few key points to know for this map:

• Because of how it's set up, you can't push bots as quickly until you've unlocked a few of the jump pads in the middle and going to the middle. Don't buy any jump pads until you've gotten your sword, but once you have, go ahead and make sure you can access the middle platform from both middle spots on each side of the map. You're really going to want all jump pads unlocked as soon as possible. Ask your teammates to help you out with this if any of them have mics.
• You should be using the middle platform to your advantage as much as possible. Look at the other side when you're pushing one. Is it pushed up? Is there a sniper camping up top? Are there any vulnerable, lone pros over there?
• If you need to sneak into the other team's base, you can go onto the middle platform and smoke bomb right into their base. It's great for keeping the moneyball down with your shuriken launcher.
• If you are trapped into your base, jump onto the middle platform and use that to get behind the enemy lines for an assassination kill.
• Use the ejectors. This map's ejectors are an assassin's wet dream. Luring them out to the pad and smoke bombing to eject them will get you a LOT of kills.
• Don't spend too much money on gremlins for this map. They aren't particularly effective.
• When pushing into an enemy base, if you are on the top platform right in front of their bot spawn, you can smoke bomb jump over their bot spawn to get into their base.

LazerRazr
(reserved for when I find a pic that doesn't stretch the page)

Primary Skill to Focus on: Smoke Bomb
My 2nd favorite assassin map. Key things to know:

• Keep tabs on the middle area. Because both lanes are so close in this area, you can easily control the entire map's botflow just by hanging out here. I would say the middle courtyard is where you should spend the majority of your time because of the close bot lanes and the annihilatior all being right there.
• The 2nd story is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because you can bomb jump and escape safely to it from anywhere on the map. It's a curse, though, because if you aren't constantly looking to see what's going on up there, a tank can drop in on you for an easy kill. That's the only map I've been pancaked on, too.
• Get smoke bomb to level 3 before your yellow or blue skill. You're going to need it much more than any other map.
• Gremlins. Spawn them. They are particularly effective in this map because of all the corners that you can get caught in.

Ammo Mule
(reserved for when I find a pic that doesn't stretch the page)

Primary Skill to Focus On: Cloak
I used to hate this map. Now, I actually love it for assassin.

• Avoid inside the dome. I honestly never go in there unless I'm going for the annihilatior. The assassin class just isn't set up to effectively control this area. The good news is, it doesn't matter. I tend to spend more time pushing bots on both sides, and going underneath the dome to switch sides. It's much safer and faster.
• If you ever want to get a good view of the entire map, smoke bomb on top of the dome. However, don't do too much fighting up there. You're very vulnerable and exposed, and assaults and gunners love to camp that spot.
• When setting up for assassinations, I like to play around the side of the map. You have a lot of cover there, and if you do get into trouble, it's easy to smoke bomb over the wall. To actually get a kill, hide behind the wall, smoke bomb over it behind somebody, and finish em off.

Steel Peel
(Reserved for when I find a pic that doesn't stretch the page)

Primary Skill to Focus On: Sprint
This map is kind of weird for the assassin, but once you get used to it, it's still a pretty good map.

• Most of the time spent is going to be on the bottom towards your base, or on the bottom in front of their base. That's where the bot lanes are closest together, so that is where you will be killing the most bots.
• As mentioned before, you can walk along the upper wall on the left side to easily sneak into your opponent's base.
• Gremlins are also very effective on this map.

Spunky Cola


Primary Skill to Focus On: Smoke Bomb
Spunky Cola has some very significant advantages for assassin, as well as some very significant disadvantages for assassin.

• Unlike the other maps, the bots are all in one place. This is great because you can kill them quickly and pay more attention to other things. However, because there will be twice as many bots in one place, one lunge can't wipe out an entire wave. You have to lunge and slash a few times, leaving yourself open to fire.
• Because of this, I like to lunge into the bots, and then drop a smoke bomb to avoid taking the extra damage from bots...especially if there are 3-4 waves on top of each other fighting.
• Watch out for snipers with explosive shots. They are your worst enemy. On this map, taking out explosive shot snipers that are picking off bots is just as important as killing bots themselves. One sniper can devastate both lanes with ease.
• Don't let them buff up that front turret. A level 3 rockit turret right there pretty much runs the game. You out of all the classes have the ability to destroy it easily.
• Don't spawn gremlins. They're pretty much useless on this map. Instead, help your teammates upgrade turrets.

VII. Pro Strategies

These are my "fun builds" that I like to play with when I'm pubstomping. I've tested them against good players, and found them to work moderately well. You won't generally get a great k/d or a lot of money, but if you stick to the plan, you can still play a certain role and help out your team a lot.

Gremlin Assassin
The Build:
Gold Rate of Fire
Silver Speed
Bronze Critical Strike (or whatever you want on there)

The Maps:
LazerRaser
Steel Peel

For this strategy, get your sword as soon as possible. Run around killing bots, but don't mess with pros. Only kill them if it is an easy, obvious kill. Just run around, kill bots. Every time you have 100 gold or more, run back to your base and spawn gremlins. Some games, I'll never have to leave my base for this once I get my sword because my gremlins are getting me so many kills.

Make sure to taunt after every single gremlin kill. It gives you a LOT more money. If you are have $95-99, go ahead and do a tuant for the extra gremlin spawn.

The thing here is to not die. You need to stay alive so that you'll start building streaks so that your gremlins start to pay for themselves. Once you are getting $50 per kill, a taunt will earn you your money back. Whenever you don't have money for gremlins, run around and kill bots. The only time you should be going for pros is when you have juice. Even then, be careful. You're still a little squishy without armor, even when you're juiced.

This strategy is great. I've gotten almost 40 asssists and over 20 kills with 0 deaths by doing this strategy and just letting my gremlins do the work. If you have a good team, your gremlins will get a LOT of kills and assists.

Shuriken Assassin
The Build:
Gold Clip Size
Silver Rate of Fire
Bronze Crits or Accuracy

The Maps:
Grenade III
Spunky Cola

The shuriken launcher is a tough weapon to use. But with a gold clip size, it can do wonders. This is another assist-based class. With gold clip size, you can stand behind your bots, and if you learn how to spray right, you can actually kill bots insanely fast with the shuriken launcher.

This strategy is especially effective when you have 2+ tanks on the board. A gold clip size shuriken launcher is the tank's worst nightmare.

I only upgrade my passive to level 2, and my cloak to level 3 (for the added crit bonus). Other than that, I leave my skills as they are and spend the rest of the money on gremlins and turrets. Even though gremlins aren't particularly effective on Spunky Cola, having them distract somebody while you spray shurikens at them does wonders.



And this concludes my full assassin guide for MNC. This is made for the latest patch, which is the Spunky Cola DLC patch. I will modify this for future updates.

Please do not repost this anywhere without asking me first. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to post here.

Also, I'm sure there are tons of typos and other small errors. I'm too lazy to fix em at the moment, but I will work on them down the road. For some laughs, here's an evolution of the assassin strategy for Monday Night Combat:

I can haz face grapple
You mean assassins can push bots?
How to actually play the assassin

"While the assassin has the ability to kill any pro instantly, you must remember that above all, the ultimate objective is to get bots on the other team's moneyball"

Bold this, increase the font size and use it as your guide banner. Even if they only read that one sentence, it is far and away the best bit of advice anyone can give a new assassin.

Unless I missed it, you might want to suggest turning off the cloak before going for an assassination. Good players hear that, turn around, and get a free kill.

Did mention it. It's under Pro vs. Pro strategies in the section entitled "To Cloak or not to Cloak?"

I think this guide needs a tutor that will teach people over XBL at a mere cost of 1600 microsoft points, or cyber services.

Amen.

Assassins have SMGs?

That's what dumb snipers do. A smart sniper runs backwards and bunnyhops while shooting you with an SMG. The grapple is a last resort.

Haha, thanks for catching the mistake on assassin's SMGs.

I guess the really good snipers will strafe their way towards you for the grapple. The smg can't kill a gold armor assassin during just the duration of the trap. So if the sniper doesn't grapple me, I'll make it out of there with a smoke bomb jump.

But the dumb snipers are the ones going for headshots on a frozen assassin.

You may as well if they're not meleeing. I normally use Gold RoF so I bodyshot them and throw a flak.

Yeah, the smart snipers will use a flak. There's really nothing that can be done about that. Usually, I just taunt as a way to say "**** you, I'm coming back". And for the extra $5. Might as well...it's better than earning nothing.

Lol.

With just scanning it, I already know the guide's better than you are.


:twisted:

Wow am I so immature?

What a DeadEye thing to say, am i rite?

Why am I so immature?

You forgot a crucial part, using lunge as a mode of transportation

So true. I actually thought about that when I was about 3/4 of the way done with it, and just forgot to go back and edit it in.

Whenever I'm less lazy, I'll go back and put that in there. Where should that go? I guess under the objective strategy section?

more so in each map, go in detail about good "lunge jumps"

Ya, good lunges can make upgrading dash past 2/speed endorsements unnecessary.

From my experience, lunging is really faster than dashing. You can dash while your lunge cooldown is regenerating. Dash is still nice to have, even at level 3, for various scenarios (mainly because you can't turn corners while dashing...you have to go in a straght line). Lunging is great for escaping and avoiding bullets, though.

Especially after after a smoke bomb jump. It has helped me survive numerous times of either idiocy or naivety when grappling a tank. Excellent guide by the way.

It's a decent guide, for beginners, but a lot of the advice will get you killed against skilled players, i've said it before, if you have to fight someone as an assassin, you're doing it wrong.