Superb Assassin tacticts

*Update* 1/4/11

Seems Uber changed the assassin. Fixed some glitches and changed other variables. Gives me something to work for now. Use this thread as history reference as most of it can still be used but expect something new as I continue to figure out new strats!

Haven't seen a specific thread big enough for this yet. Most of the ideas for this class are scattered. So lets try to gather it all here.

So for me as of now I have RoF gold Armor Silver and Bronze is usually juice.

I just unload as many shurikens as I can on turrets and harass while clearing lanes.
Then just get enough juice to get the turrets. Rinse repeat.

Works best on ammo mule stadium.

I try to avoid the Steel Peel arena. (Thats support and tank land)

So that's were Im at right now. Whats your style?


Assassin threads

Updated 9/29/10
Mini threads
Summary Of Game Phases <--- Early/Mid/End game strats
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5749&p=75446#p75446
Assassin Guide (from one of the best) <---- Haha oh boy obvious thread is obvious. Moneyball raping/base invasion/skills/endorse builds. Pretty useful.
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3095
Assassin: What am I doing wrong? <----Grapples
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2951
I almost don't want to say... <----Harassing*Warning trolls!*
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2987
My Assassin Tactic (TMIYHABO) <----Upgrades/Early game
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1702
Assassin post nerf anti support strategy <----Vs...supports? Really?
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2694
Vinticus's assassin guide to not sucking! <----Basics field guide/tips
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2669
The Juice Assassin Guide.. <---- Turret/Bot clearing/Juice endorse
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2718
Assassin strats? <----Old thread/old tactics for knowledge sake
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2209
Shutting down an Assassin
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3166<----Use your juice wisely
Please Help Stopping Assassins<---- Anti Assassin thread/Learn enemy strats
viewforum.php?f=18
BoltAktion's Assassin compendium <---- Great strats from one of the best Recommended
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3260
Pitgirl's Nemesis: Rev's Assassin Guide <---- Even more great strats!
viewto Recommended



Larger threads

Hi, I'm Snarf, and this is my assassin guide.
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5419<---Detailed/Arena strats overall. Recommended
ASSASSIN FIGHT! How to fight an assassin 1v1 mirror
http://mondaynightcombat.com/forums/vie ... 4670beeb95<--- Gotta fight em some time
Assassins are getting nerfed so hard!!... <---- Turrets/Smokebomb
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2534
Why are Assassins so underpowered? <----Stupid thread/Crying/Flaming/more crying.
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2384

Youtube
Assassin Gameplay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acTs4vxG ... re=related <----Assassin vs noob team. Bread and Butter tactics. Early base harass.

I switch RoF and Armor around.

Gold Armor
Silver RoF
Bronze Skill Pill

Why gold Armor? Gold armor gives you 100 extra health. Your base health is 100. Gold armor gives you DOUBLE your base health, and lets you survive a lot of the otherwise fatal front grapples. I don't think Silver lets you survive a front grapple from a dagger assassin, and im positive you won't survive a sword assassin. Gold survives both. (Though good assassins will be lunging you first anyway). It also has saved me many times from things like the tank's fire effect, or lets me out last a rocket turret without juice after a smoke bomb wears off.

Why Silver RoF? Faster attacks = more damage on turrets and quicker juice build up. Pretty straightforward.

Bronze: Skill Recovery. Why skill recovery? At 20% cooldown reduction at the bronze level, and only 33% at the gold level, it is the most efficient bronze endorsement in the game, on a class that is very reliant on her skills.

Why should you never be using any juice endorsements on the assassin? Because the assassin can collect juice quicker than any other class in the game from the moment she steps foot in the arena. (Yes, even quicker than the sniper, because she is picking up the dropped juice pick ups from both sets of bot spawns, pros, mascot, and jackbots instantly as opposed to the base camping sniper.) Juice pickups are worth approximately 10% of your meter filled. Bronze juice is only worth about HALF of a single juice pick up, where as gold is worth about 2 juice pickups.

Juice endorsements do NOT effect the amount of juice you gain from attacks. This has been confirmed.

I see people write on here that Gold juice = 40% of your meter filled when you spawn, and its simply not true. I've tested it, and its clear that you can take the amount of juice you spawn with and multiply it times 3 and still not fill up the bar. I have also confirmed that 2 juice pickups = about the same as what you start with if you have Gold juice. In other words, an assassin will easily earn more than the bonus juice you spawn with in 1 bot wave at best and 2 waves at worst. It also only is truly efficient if you die immediately after your juice wears off so you can get the bonus juice again as quick as possible. 20% Cooldown reduction is simply light years ahead of what juice offers in any slot on the assassin.

As for your GAMEPLAY, good on you for using the S-launcher for a variety of uses, but don't be afraid to melee their turrets without juice. With Gold armor, and a smoke bomb, you can take down the spawn rockit turrets. Meleeing a turret with the dagger will build between 25-40% of your juice meter (more if your timing is good enough to start dancing around the turret right when the blind wears off and dodge the first 2 rockets).

A good strat is to get 70-80% of your meter filled and then go smoke bomb a turret for the last 20%. People are very likely to charge a non-juiced assassin. Juice after you take a little bit of damage (healing you to full) and make them (and the rest of the base) pay for the mistake of messing with you. Cause as much damage as possible BEFORE you juice, and WHILE you are building up your meter for juice.

If you are using the S-launcher as much as you seem to be, cloak 3 is a MUST, since cloaking then shooting makes the entire clip crit. This does insane damage to the moneyball once it is down, and always should be used instead of the melee against it (even when juiced).

The assassin does not really have a bad map. I love her on steel peel because she has so many terrain abuse jumps that no other class has easy access to. She wrecks ammo mule and grenade 3. LaseRazor is probably her worst map because tank's death blossom attacks cover the width of pretty much every passageway/lane. Its still not BAD for her, just good for tanks, which makes it less good for her if the tanks have any idea what they are doing.

Edit: What you are doing with your assassin is very good, and more useful than 90% of the people that play the class, I just think that if you merged your ranged style with a more aggressive melee approach against the turrets IE: before you fill up your juice meter, and switch between the two as the situation calls for it, that you would get much more utility out of the class. The best assassin is efficient and active above all else.

Other tips:

Don't ever grapple a jackbot. Walk NEXT to it (not in front or behind it), slashing at it, jump over its melee attacks. You'll get pretty much a guaranteed juice off of it this way and kill it almost as quickly, with the added benefit of being able to run away if someone targets you while doing it.

Also, always keep $250 on hand and hit the ANHI as soon as its up (start watching the cooldown timer every time you run past it). This is pretty much mandatory for all assassins.

And personally: I never buy juice unless overtime demands it, or trying to avoid overtime demands it. If you juice through their base and kill all their turrets, you likely do not need juice again at that moment. You'll earn it back simply by killing the bot waves that are spawning next to you. Gremlin spawns when the enemy has no turrets are DEVASTATING. There are of course exceptions to this rule that one learns from experience.

what up Hudson! Ya, you nailed it on the head.

That is how to play assassin. Everybody paying attention?

silver lets you survive dagger attack just fine. sword attack no

Lunge is way over used by assassins now a days. Id venture to say that atleast 60% of assassin lunges are un needed. The only time its useful BEFORE a grapple is for a front grapple or back grapple on a tank. as far as lunge with out a grapple there are many situations where its useful.

Id agree with most of the rest of your post though

You said EVERYTHING hudson, except how the S. Launcher destroys tanks/gunners, I have nothing at all to add. Honestly i learned a bit from wat you said XD

Should maybe detail each threads name/OP to make things more simple
maybe get this turned into a sticky

Would love class sub forums for things like this


Hudson hit all the important stuff it seems

Side notes-
Gremlins seem to have a different attack priority then most bots
From my experience - They attack enemy pros first and foremost, Turrets secondly,enemy bots last

Have you guys noticed that the last 5-6 shots from the launcher out of lvl3 cloak are not purple? Tell me I'm not crazy!

Wallwalking is great-Put that smoke bomb to good use
:Avoid Ice traps
:safe taunts while cloaked
:slip past enemy's even without cloaking

oh and for new assassin's, you can dash backwards
I figured this would be common sense until a friend of mine was over trying the game for the first time, he was completely surprised

Yes, idk if you were playing with us by then or not bolt but me and hudson were spawning gremlins like mad and they were just destroying everything in sight XD.

Another usefull tactic is spawn a few waves of gremlins, by running back and forth between the spawns, then escort the last wave while cloaked, if you grab a pro they're attacking it's USUALLY a kill, and most people know how ungodly strong they are so they're likely to target them before you.

SIlver armor lets you survive both dagger and sword front grapple, but gold armor lets you survive a sniper lvl 2 grapple or an assault charge. That's the main reason I use armor for gold and RoF for silver, but both armor and RoF is good as gold.

If there's a lag-free game I use the lunge instead of buying dash, I buy gremlins instead. And using the lunge to get closer to your target can't hurt.

I tried the gold rof sivler armor just now, works well, gets you in their base and taking down turrets pretty well, still prefer gold armor though

Just messing around with endorsements.

Ill probably get rid of juice.

Its really tough for me. between RoF gold and and Armor Gold.

So I have two customs with each lol.

I like the bronze skill recovery. Tried that out.

So some topics I was wondering about.

Strategy vs Assaults? I've seen alot of them lately harassing teams on ammo mule. They stay behind the glass and then if anyone tries to come up they lay a stickie and boom! Now I was only using silver armor on my assassin that time but now I'm starting to think, Yeah that is a pretty good tactic that was hard for me to counter but really how do I deal with assaults overall?

I'm talking about if they already see you and its a fight. Keep your distance with shurikens waiting for him to waste his dash grapple? or lunge then back off or slash? Uber calls them a sort of anti assassin but there just another victim with a good strategy I believe.

Early game? What do you guys prefer early game? Are those lvl 2 skills really worth it? Or are turrets and grems the way to go?

ill detail those thread links guys and make this the best assassin resource eva!

assaults beat assassins with two moves for most part. fly and charge. Charge is easily avoided if you are experienced. And fly only lasts so long .

so do one of two things. if you can sneak up on them go for it. if you cant try the lunge grapple move. if neither of those are practical then toy with them. let them see you and laugh as u run away while they are using fly trying to find you again. once there fly is down your odds of a grapple go way up

oh and dont forget to avoid the bomb ! it makes a distinct sound and usually isnt to hard to find. Always assume that its a lvl 3 bomb and make sure you stay out of damage area of it .

It depends on your preference ghost, i usually upgrad dash and passive right away, some people upgrade passive and buy 2 waves of gremlins, some build a lvl3 lazer

Early game-

This depends on a few things for me
-Is my team or the enemy coordinated or a pub
-What is my team and or the enemy teams class make up
-What map is it

If its just a regular pug, 9 times out of 10 Ill grab cloak and dash right off, then passive.
Because the game will draw out a little longer

If the enemy has a few or a least one darn good tank, grems can be a huge waste

Either way, I never spawn grems right off on steel peel

VS Assault

Don't.
Seriously. A good assault can be harder to drop then a tank sometimes, and even a bad one only has to get off one lucky charge/grapple and your done.

Lets not forget bomb ringouts and head crabs either, lvl3 bomb will instakill gold armor sin if your in the center of it or it sticks

His charge will trump your lunge every time

If you can't get off a back stab or you have no team around your better off avoiding him

Good times to attack are when they are using the G-launcher or shooting sombody with the AR since they tend to stay still and on the ground to aim

You get to pick your fights, picking a head on fight with an assault is not a good idea

Juice pickups vary in how much they give. Some give a little, some a lot. Sorry but I don't put much faith in your comments about juice.... other than the fact that endorsements do not affect rate of juice gain.

No way man. I use lunge each and every second I possibly can. One hit black jacks, one hit x2 slims, useful for escaping, added damage, crossing large gaps, and so so so so much more. A entire guide could be made on the lunge itself just on how to get 100% usefulness out of it.

Well, go test it then. I've tested the starting amount of juice, and unless it changes across classes, I can confirm its much less than the 40% you have cited in other threads.

Actually hang on, let me go into a blitz match and test it right now.

...

Hey, im back, and sure enough:

Tank (slowest Juicer) with Gold Juice = about 20% filled

Assassin (fastest juicer) with gold juice = about 20% filled

I built nothing but laser turrets. Never attacked. Only gained juice from pick ups. No juice from any other sources.

With gold juice, I gained full juice after exactly 8 juice pick ups. If I start with about 20% juice, and 8 juice pick ups gives me full juice, this probably means that each juice is worth about 10% of your juice meter.

Just to be safe, Ill run a game where I don't have any juice endorsements. I'll predict that I gain full juice after 10 juice pickups.

...

And I'm back. Sure enough, 10 juice pick ups = full juice. I did it twice just to be sure. I suppose it IS possible that they do vary on the amount of each pick up, and that all three of my tests just happened to hit at the exact percentages I hypothesized, but i'll leave that up to you to prove. If you want to test more than that, feel free.

This

Lunge is top tier awesome

The lunge sound effect = my boltaktion sense is tingling...CHARGE! (whenever we are split by the down syndrome matchmaker )

(And then he goes Assault and destroys my k/d. )

Bring on the patch!

Your sig is pretty much how the game goes if I don't pick assault :lol:

loooooove lunge, it's my main bot killer, and gets me where i'm going a bit faster