March 10 2011 Patch

Nah, it took the same amount of shurikans to kill a firebase. The best way to fight heavies as Assassin, however, if to force them to retreat by spamming shurikans. 2 clips will fell a Tank. They are still the big, slow moving targets (that say shoot me, btw) they used to be, thankfully, and the fact that Lunge is still there in case the Tank gets too close.

Playing more conservative seems work very well despite the armor nerf, though it's rather hard to ignore the fact most players still seem to pursue Assassins blindly with a vengeance. :|

I've had Assault grenades hit, explode and nothing
Not a "hit the end of their travel" thing either

Yea, I've had the thing as assault. I'd hit a sniper, no damage. Radius damage seems to work fine.

Thing is, other assaults hitting me would do no damage, either. As, my screen would show me getting hit, but I'd take no damage. At best, my regen would stop.

I think they're doing like single-digit contact damage but not applying the splash damage. I'd report it as a bug but I don't have any good recordings of it yet.

I am happy with these changes and eagerly await any future changes with respect to how this update was handled. Many problems will be solved by nerfing the effectiveness of armor on Assault, Assassin and Sniper.

Neither class will be able to use level 3 armor as effectively to bully their way into a "surefire killzone" (grapple for Sniper, close range for Assassin where every inch of health counts after successful grapple/charge exchanges, level 3 bomb chuck range for Assault).

Much easier to push these classes out of heavy close quarters combat by playing aggressively against them now.

Very much looking forward to more varied endorsement builds.

Delicious tears, everywhere.

edit: Performance issues still exist and I've still been air grappled once, but its far far far more rare. Whatever setting you're playing around with I'd give it a gentlest of nudges in the not-so-air-grapple direction and we'll be looking at perfect feeling grapple system. Biggest performance issue is serious frame drops during gameplay as well as still not being able to alt tab out of the game without crashing.

I don't really see how nerfing armor is going to give you different endorsement builds. You are forced to go gold armor with every class still. I did some tests and you can live a front grapple as assassin or sniper against a tech 3 passive assassin. As long as she doesn't hit you with the lunge first. You still need the armor with most classes to out live any of the heavies on the field or have any survivability against bots. Especially now that the heavies are the most played classes. The health bonus that heavies get also makes it a far superior endorsement.

I still see people bitching about the assassins lunge. She needs it especially now with even less survivability. She could barely get away with the old gold armor endorsements. Most exceptional Assassins ran with Silver armor and gold RoF in the first place.

Haven't been air grappled yet, but I've still had a few people teleport to me and grapple

I've been grappled while in mid jump a lot. But these teleport grapples and jump grapples could be attributed to a combination of odd net coding and ping.

I have been teleported grappled and grapple while doing an assault charge and grappled in the air. Something is funky with the detection.

No offence, but someone tried shurikens against my tank earlier today. That game, I managed to fight off 4 people just outside the right of my base, pushing at my turret. My team broke their base while all of them were trying to break in that side. I beat, at the same time but killed in this order, a support, another tank, an assassin, an assault, and that same assassin again.

Shurikens work on very predictably moving or stationary targets. 2 clips downs a heavy, but 1 shuriken every 5 seconds when my railgun is hitscan just doesn't cut it.

Apparently.
This game just hates me.
It doesn't want me to play it!

Oh, no, I know that one. These ones survived headshots while being undeployed, much akin to what you expect from a Tank with gold armour.

No offense, using anecdotes of how you stop 4.5 players doesn't support balance or any argument. You were obviously on a different skill level than those players. They were most probably really bad or your skill is absurdly high. In either which case, balance can not be address with such a gap in skill difference. If you want to discuss balance, please use examples of players of above average and equal skill levels.

Overhealed with gold armor, perhaps?

Thanks for the updates. I know there's a lot of naysayers out there (especially on the Steam forums) but I think this game is great.