The First Minute

Personal attacks are uncalled for.

I don't quite follow. Please explain.

If you're the assassin, you shouldn't be pro killing, you should be killing their bots to get juice as fast as possible.

Choose assault (Gold armor, silver rof, bronze clip size) + tf2 hat.
Buy charge + passsive.
Jump and charge then fly to the middle of the map.
Kill first person i encounter (if there is more of them, then i get more kills).
Kill the first wave of bots.
Kill some pro and start taking care of turrets which are easy to destroy.
60 Seconds...

That's cool. I'm sure someone out there enjoys 5 minute stompfests. I personally prefer to play longer games though. And I was top 25 in everything last time I played, since you want to throw around ranks. Establishing map control also nets you faster wins in general if you do it properly, because you have the annihilator and juice.

I love your name.

But if someone presents thier juicy, succulent, gravy-covered back to me while i'm going about my early bot killing business as a sin, i will kill them. Assassins should be pro killing. They just shouldn't be engaged in open combat.

It's not uncommon for me to get an early ejector kill or kill a support who doesn't seem to realize just how fast an assassin can cross the map early game. With no support and thus no firebase, our bots move further ahead - especially if i deny them the ejector usage.

If opportunity knocks, you answer.

I would strongly recommend against buying both bomb and charge right off the bat. The assaults lv2 passive increases the hight of his jump and is very needed in each matchup.

I would recommend lv2 passive and either lv2 bomb or charge out of the gates.

I'll give it a try the next time I play.

I play assassin and this is what I try to do in the 1st minute. It work pretty often.

1: Buy lvl2 passive and lvl2 cloak.
2: Run to the other team base which will be empty 80% of the time and flash bomb then kill a turret. Hopefully you will survive after that, but you will most likely be killed.
3: Then escort the bots on the side that got no turrets now. If your team is good, or the other team suck, you will get their ball down right away.

When the ball is down attack it with all you have.
If the other team gets it back, this 1st minute attack on the ball will make a HUGE difference in overtime.

Well, I have discovered the fun play as a tank not so long ago, but mainly play a 'sin...

My Assassin First minute :
B24B Dash
Killbots, Kill bots
Kill a poor pro on my lane (unless he's a tank or a gunner I know has gold armor, in which case I switch lane (unless they are deployed... poor them... shuriken them to death))
If I survive enough time to get juiced, wreak havock on enemy turrets

My Tank First minute :
B13B Dash
Kill bots (preferably with jetgun for juice, but with railgun if I am denied a close encounter)
Avoid pros (unless they have got too close)

Both classes I play I focus in killing the other teams bots and escorting more or less my own. Goal being to push the play towards their base... Without bots wrecking their moneyball, little chance it is going down in the first place.

Then again, I am ranked 4186453486th approximately, but this is how I have fun

As assassin don't buy cloak 2 immediately. Get passive 3 as soon as possible then get cloak.

This is a personal preference thing.

I can't deal with the cloak delay time for Cloak 1 - it gets me killed. I have no problems getting the sword at the same time anyway because with the faster cloak time i can be more active on the field.


Reading this thread is giving me advice for some of the other classes. Now if only i could get over how... how restricted i feel, not being able to move like a Sin.

Bots and turrets blow your cover unless you have cloak 2. There are bots I ignore as an assassin, and they would shoot me without the cloak 2.

Also, I buy cloak 3 before passive 3. Critkins are awesome, and the dagger does well enough against bots to warrant the delay.

On an unrelated note, I've been going ginger stepchild a bit recently, and this is how I tend to do things.

b12b
Rush to a choke point, drop a trap.
Pester people with the smg to lure them into said trap.
Flak/smg or grapple/smg them(depends on the class).
Obtain speed pickups.
Switch focus to bots.
60 seconds up.

I know that this is not an optima buy , but I do this so I can follow my 1st minute plan of destroying their turret.
If I don't have lvl2 cloak it harder to do, as pros and turrets see you.

There is one problem with my 1st minute plan. Lvl2 dagger isn't powerful enough to kill a turret in time, that is in time while its in shock after the flash bomb. So it will start shooting at you.
My solution is to damage it with shurikens a bit and then go for a kill.

I admit that sin isn't very good at killing turret, gunner with its nades is much better, but its not always that he can get close enough in the 1st minute.

Since we're discussing assassin tactics, I'm going to parrot some of what I've said before:

andr3y - cloak 1 guards against bots and turrets - I've believe the wiki or somewhere else claims that it doesn't, but if you're fully invisible, they can't see you at all. It wouldn't even matter if they did see you - you destory bots instantaneously with a lunge and can just smoke bomb turrets. You can destroy smoke-bombed turrets with the dagger easily. Sometimes you may get hit once or twice by the turret before it dies, but it shouldn't ever kill you if you're attacking its back.

So yeah - don't bother upgrading to Cloak 2. Cloak 1 gives plenty of invisibility time, and whenever you're destroying bots and turrets, your cloak is obviously recharging, so you'll be fine.

Passive 2 at the beginning of the game is also a waste - it gives you a couple more shurikans and reduces the already hardly noticeable fall damage. Big woop.

If you don't buy any skills and manage to make the money ball fall within your first life, you'll have juice from the bots/turrets and will have enough money left over to buy two juices consecutively. Three juices in two minutes = game over.

If the juice-rush fails, that's when you go for the katana, leave the other skills at 1, and focus on over-juicing. If you buy juice for $500 and do over $500-worth of damage, which is incredibly easy, it was a successful juice. Don't be afraid to spawn camp with juice (shoot at door with shurikans when standing down by moneyball - it's a d**k move, but after you get a killstreak going, you're awarded obscene amounts of money for more juice.

However, Obviously:

Any good strategy requires wiggle-room. Depending on a specific game-scenerio, I may upgrade certain things sooner than later, and so on an so forth. I don't feel like writing an essay when it comes to the nuances of assassin strategy, and I'm in the middle of a game right now, lol =P

Always buy Passive 3 first.
I never upgrade anything else use the money for juice, turrets and annihilator.
Endorcements:
Armor
RoF
Health recovery

I buy cloak 2 mainly for the cloak time/reload... I am not that proefiscient with the 'sin to cloak just at the right moment, and gives me a bit of leg room.

But I will try this juice tactic to see how it goes for me I usually like longer matches tho, since I am not bent out on gaining rank or something like this.

I can't deal with the cloak at all since the noise gets me killed. I only really use it for spamming crit shurikens.

Alright, I've been toying around with playing the tank recently and I must say I enjoy it... except for the first minute or two.

I feel naked without my level 3 product grenade.

How do tanks go about their first minute? I could really use some help in the early game with this class.