The 10 Commandments of Assassin Juice Rushing

I. Thou shalt killeth bots
This should be a given. As an assassin, your primary goal is to push the bots. But always be killing bots. It doesn't mean you can't kill pros. A lot of people will say that an assassin is a noob for attacking a pro. Attack a pro - just remember that you should never spend more than 5 seconds on an attempt to kill an enemy pro before a quick escape back to the bot lanes. Otherwise, even if you get the kill, the enemy team is pushing bots and you're not. The good thing about constantly going for bots is that your juice bar fills up fast, which is the beginning of the assassin juice rushing. In order to max out the amount of juice you get, when no enemy pros are around, instead of lunging at a group of bots to kill them instantly, slash at them to gain juice.

II. Thou shalt have no other skills before thy sword
When the game starts, pick passive 2. Don't spend any more money on skills until you get passive 3. I know that there are many different opinions on this - but I promise you that your juice bar fills MUCH faster with the sword than the dagger. It has a larger radius of attack and more damage, so instead of having to lunge to quickly kill the enemy bots, you can slash away at them instead, kill them almost as quickly, but get more juice out of it. The only time you have to lunge for a quick wave kill is if the wave is heavily guarded. You want to start your juicing as soon as possible, so get the effing sword.

III. Remember the juice pickups, and keep them holy
You are on the front lines. Get the juice pickups. It should be easy and obvious, but dno't ever overlook any. Even if there are enemies in front of it, LUNGE into from cloak, and instantly smoke bomb jump away. It is worth the smoke bomb cooldown because one of those is 1/10 of your juice bar.

IV. Thou shalt not die
When you die, you lose your streaks. You also lose your current juice bar. The two best methods of escape for assassins are lunging and smoke bombing. You have to anticipate when you are about to take damage. Understand that once you start taking damage, if you are not already in the process of escaping, you're going to die. If you sense that you are in trouble, aim a lunge around a corner. Don't worry about creating distance - they can still kill you from a distance, even if you're cloaked. Instead of creating distance, create walls. Lunge acround corners, or off of platforms other platforms (see my thread on lunge jumping). Smoke bomb is all about timing. If you don't have a corner to lunge around, just make a quick lunge in whatever direction puts you as far away from enemy fire. Keep in mind that while you're doing this, you want a sharp change in angle, as well. The purpose of this is to completely displace your current position for a split second so that less fire will hit you. Then, the moment your lunge ends, smoke bomb jump to safety. Even if you don't have a platform to jump to, if you have bronze health regen, your health will start regenerating about the time you land. Immediately lunge when you land, dispalcing your position once again, and you'll have full health again. But do everything you can not to die because it will slow your juicing down quite a bit.

V. Thou shalt slayeth enemies who annoy thee
Understand that the most important thing to focus on with the assassin is bots. Understand that against a pro team, if you spend more than 5-10 seconds attacking a single person and not hitting bots, there is a good chance that your ball will drop. Understand that if you spend more than 5-10 seconds attacking a single person, they are too aware of your immediate existance and position, and you probably will die fighting them. These three things being said, there are going to be certain enemeis that you HAVE to at least put some damage on. Heavies and assaults that are just all over their own bots, and pros (particularly snipers) that are camping on the ejector pads. You'll never be able to build up juice if you can't get to the bots. Just remember that you are fragile, and that any attempt on an enemy pro needs to be lightning fast, you need to get the drop on them, and you need to know when you run if it fails.

VI. Know thy situation
Before you go into an enemy base to juice on it, know what's there. What turrets are there? If you're doing it right, hopefully nothing more than level 1, sometimes level 2 turrets. But try to, as stealthfully as possible, gather info on what you're up against. How many pros, and what kind? How many turrets, and what kind? Find that out. Once you've figured out what you're up against, know exactly what they can do to you to hinder your juice rush or kill you.

Tanks can hit you with a product grenade, which can blind you. They can hit you with a charge attack, which can slow you down, displace you, and ring you out. They also have a grapple that displaces you and rings you out.

Assaults can hit you with a bomb that can displace you or ring you out. Their charge can do the same. They also have a grapple that can burn some of your time.

Supports can throw an airstrike that can kill you. They can also grapple you with their shotgun that will waste quite a bit of your juice meter. The can also kill you in about 3-5 shotgun blasts.

Assassins can grapple you, wasting your time and dealing a good bit of damage if from the back. They can also blind you with a smoke bomb, which can eat up a bit of time as well.

Gunners can freakin' kill you. Fast. They also can hit you with their slams, which displaces you, slows you down, and possibly rings you out. They also have a grapple that wastes a good bit of time, and possibly rings you out.

Snipers are your enemy. They have ice traps that will pretty much waste all of your juice if you get caught in one. They also have a grapple that can ring you out, and another grapple that can waste a bit of time.

VII. Prioritize thy targets.
Your ultimate goal when you juice is to kill rockit turrets. That's your first priority. After that, shaveice turrets are your next goal. After that, it's the firebases, followed by the longshots, and then the blazers. Only then should you go after enemy pros. Now the order of priority ultimately is based on availability. In some situations, you're going to have to kill a firebase or a shaveice turret in order to get to the rockit turrets. But remember that if you are a good enough assassin they should never be able to have turrets.

VIII. Getteth the dropeth
This is simple. Don't just show up in the front door with juice and go to town on the turrets. If they see you, they can plan out how to defend it better. Use smoke bomb and lunge jumping to get the drop. For example, on steel peel, lunge from the bridge in front of their base into their spawn ring. Then jump up, juice as you're falling down, and begin slashing away at the turret. On Spunky Cola, go up your bridge jump pad, smoke bomb over to the other side and fall right down next to their turret, juicing in mid air. Even if they see that you have juice, by coming in from a crazy lunge or smoke bomb jump, you have much more time to kill them and their turrets. After that, lunge to the next turret and do it again. When attacking turrets, always make sure that you are jumping and spinning as much as possible. It makes it much more difficult to grapple you.

IX. Useth your smoke bomb
There are certain situations where you'll need to use your smoke bomb. Blind 3.3 rockit turrets. Otherwise, they'll kill you. If a support places a firebase right next to any damaging turret, smoke bomb to stun them both. That's a lot of damage you can shut down instantly, even if it's only a level 1 rockit turret. Smoke bomb is also good if a tank charges at you. You won't go anywhere, and if you continue slashing, you'll likely kill the tank.

X. Buyeth Juice
Don't upgrade your skills unless you have to. You'll know you need to when you find yourself wanting to use it but can't. Otherwise, don't upgrade em. Instead, save for juice. If you utilize the above strategies, you should be making enough money and getting juice frequently enough to be able to almost always have juice on you. Even on my worst games, as long as I have a decent team that can hold off enemy bots and pros okay, I'll juice 8-15 times in a game. Sometimes, you won't have to use the juice to hit their base. They may not have turrets. Their bots may be near In that case, use it to advance your position. Don't chase pros around the map. Just kill anything, bot or pro (and ESPECIALLY firebases. I'll use an entire juice to kill a firebase if it's giving me hell), near you so that you can push my bots up a lot farther. If you have an easy pro kill, take it, of course - even if you have to go a little bit out of your way. After all, it's easier to push bots up if their pros are dead. But don't waste the entire juice chasing and killing one pro. Don't sit on juice, either. You get it enough that it's honestly okay to use it for any even semi-dire situation.

Very juice heavy. I would say this works a lot of the time.

That said, I am one of those people that don't use armor, don't upgrade sword fast, and don't go only for juice.

You need to either have a backup stradegy to deal with pros that do walk with bots and are competent against assassins, or a backup class altogether.

...because I will quote you on one thing, "Tanks have... a grapple that will displace you and ring you out." On pc especially, I will kill me handfuls of juiced assassins a game, and a few more non-juiced assassin that thought I would just let them. As a tank, I AM NOT DOING MY JOB by letting assassins juice, or when juiced let them destroy more than 1 turret. I must say, I do my job pretty well .

IDK, I approve of this guide, sticking to it in most situations will gurantee a high level of skill in an assassin's gameplay. I just feel it is too cliche. If there are any assassins reading these forums that aren't doing this yet, they are way behind the ball.

Fixed.

Bro, for this game, there is a counter for everything. You say grapple me, I say jump. I say jump, you say charge. you say charge, I say smoke bomb. I say smoke bomb, you say grapple me.

I typically upgrade passive and dash at the start because bots and turrets can see through cloak 1. If any pros are guarding bots, I sneak to an ejector to ring them out.

...and I'm guessing that's where this guide comes in. :|

That's where this guide comes it. (points to signature)

Also, the many many before mine.

Still a good guide. I get flamed for complimenting it in a critical way? He brings up a very deep point, there is a counter for everything. Play street fighter, you learn to mix up things on opponents. If you smokebomb 100% of the time, I will whip you 99% of them. If you use a backpedal, I will probably make the mistake of trying to walk up to you at the speed of... well, a tank. Isn't going to catch up, and by time you backpedal even a charge shouldn't close the gap. I will only whip you 60% of the time (because I know mixups well ).

II is WRONG. Upgraded Dash or Cloak right out of the spawn make it much easier to get to the other side of the map without being detected. Sure, your Passive should be the first skill to reach level 3 (in most cases), but going straight for it isn't always the best idea.

VII is WRONG. The order is bots past mid field, pros with a kill streak, the rest of the bots, turrets, then other pros. If a pro has a kill streak, your team is having a hard time killing him (obviously), so a nice backstab out of nowhere is excellent, and it stops his/her money from rolling in.

X is WRONG. The Assassin should save the Juice dispensers for the classes that have a harder time earning Juice and are much nastier with it (Gunner and Tank), and Level 3 Dash, Level 3 Cloak, and Level 3 Smoke Bomb are all VERY useful.

Look dude, I could spend 20 minutes writing a huge wall of text explaining to you why I believe I'm right. But for the sake of not doing that, let me just say that if the way you do it works - great. Keep doing it. Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Write a Billy Reubin guide to assassin juice rushing. I'll be happy to read it and try it out.

But I'm telling you this - the way I do it works. It works against pubs. It works in pubs against good players. It works in privates. I can confidently say that how I do this works very, very well. So for the sake of this guide, I'm going to tell people what I have seen firsthand work effectively against the best competition I've faced.

I agreed with you on defending it, not that I don't do what billy does.

Juice machines should be bought out clean by the assassin if your team does not have map control because it takes it from the enemy. However a good team at stopping a juiced assassin (me lol) makes $500 not-so-well spent, so billy has a point to let heavies buy juice if it is within your team's map control.

Pros with a streak, and sword over other skills, are personal issues. Only thing I recommend is that the strongest class and the player with the most understanding of juice uses it, unless the assassin is the only one with a reasonable chance to get to the juice machine (firebases firebases everywhere).

That however is common sense IMO, I mean do you buy juice if your meter is already 99% full? I hope not, if I saw an ally pick up 8 juice boxes and still buy juice, I will grief them hard.

Who ever undercover is he knows what hes talking about. Whats your gamertag man?

:shock:

Nicely written Thundercat. Now my play style doesnt exactly match yours id just like to maybe throw a pointer at your for the turret kills.

Focusing on shaveices before rockets would be a good strategy, a hacked shaveice can effect you before even reaching some bases. This slows down your team and bots and makes it a lot easier for rocket turrets to kill them. Now i understand killing the life drainer first would be good, but if you knock out the shave ice(an im assuming youd be able to do it in one swipe especially if juiced) then the rocket, you will have a lot smoother of a time pushing bots into the base, even if the first thing you knocked out was the shaveice, teammates can assist a rocket turret with mortars and air strikes.

Just a thought Good job tho, feel free to check out the guide i wrote, its a little hefty too but im sure youd like some of the pointers i have in there

I didn't think this was technically a guide, more of a set of rules to follow. Aside from the few I disagreed with, you really can't agrue those "rules". I figured you wrote a Do's and Don'ts so the inexperienced players know what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, and not so much a guide to a playstyle. As far as writing a guide, there are already plenty of guides to the Assassin playstyle.

I believe you said his name was Pat, so I'm guessing you already know.

I was wrong, I thouht it was deadi.

Billy, kinda missed the point of my post, but it's cool. Bottom line - if it works for you, awesome. But the way I do it has always worked effectively for me than doing the suggestions you've made (and trust me, I've tried everything there is to try with assassin), thus I am laying it down the way it best works for me. Definitely not knocking you...you're a great player and I respect yo skillZ (now with capital z!). But trust me, sword first has always worked better for me than upgrading any other skill. Not upgrading skills unless necessary and buying juice when ya need it works INCREDIBLY well for me, even in competitive games.

Mudknot, there are a lot of times where I will go for the shaveice turret first. It's especially useful to take out the shaveivce first if there are a lot of them gaurding the turrets, so that when I go for my escape I won't still have the turret's lasting effect.

Ultimately, though I'm want what costs the most to replace, so that if I don't get everything, it's likely that they won't have as strong of a defense the next time around. If they have 2 2.2 rockits and 2 shaveices up front, and I choose to hit the shaveices first, chances are that by the time I get back to their base, the shaveices will be there again on the other nubs. If I take out the 2.2 rockits first, it's doubtful that they'll have anything past level 1 next time around (if you make turrets too expensive to keep up, they're going to stop spending money on them. if they do keep spending money on them, lol at them because they aren't upgrading their skills.. if they stop spending money on them, they have no base advantage and you can easily walk your bots in).

That being said, if a team is playing defense hard, you're most likely going to have to take out the shaveices first because you just can't survive heavy firepower long enough to take anything more than one shaveice out (2.3 + shaveices create this scenario). This is when juice chaining is necessary. Build up your juice, and use it when you have 500. take out the shaveice, smoke bomb out, run to the juice machine, buy, run back in and take out the rest. Then, taunt in their base and let them kill you, just to rub it in.

This is a pretty good sum up of what assassin should be doing, i normally upgrade passive and dash at the start but thats just my play style. I will give your method a go tonight though. Do you have any videos of you playing assassin?

Passive 3, cloak 2 is all I upgrade. I'm also the best assassin ever, you can take that to the bank.