The upcoming dagger lunge damage change

Can Uber provide any detail about how the assassin's dagger lunge damage is being re-tuned in the upcoming patch?

Right now it does maybe 30-50% more damage than the sword lunge.

Will you just be swapping the two damage numbers? On first impression, this makes the most sense to me. However, I think it might actually make the sword upgrade too much of a necessary upgrade, much like the gunner's dual minigun. The sword might become overpowered, while the dagger would lose too much.

Or will the sword lunge damage stay the same while the dagger lunge damage gets cut to something below the sword? This would be a huge nerf - much bigger than the "cloak during grapple" fix/nerf that everyone is screaming about, IMO.

I think the best solution would be to put both of the damage numbers somewhere in between the current dagger and sword lunge damages. It could even make sense for them to be the same, since you typically follow up a lunge with either a slash or a grab. This way a lunge+slash or lunge+grapple would still do more damage with the sword than with the dagger, but not by so much that either of them would be particularly under- or over-powered.

The way I read it, it sounds like just the dagger damage for the lunge is being chaged. I would guess it will do slightly less then the sword lunge. This is a pretty big nerf to early game assassins, but at the same time for people that use it well it's actually better then the sword.

The sword should be a rewarding upgrade in every form, and unfortuneatly it will probably feel like a required upgrade just like for gunner.

On the flip side, this may encourage assassin players to find new tricks and tactics. There is still a lot of potential to the class, it just takes A LOT more work then say... gunner.

I think dagger and katana to the same damage atm.

I was killed by the dagger lunge and on the kill thing it the corner it said they killed me with a katana.

Nope, the dagger lunge does more damage, just try to lunge at a sniper with no health endorsements. A dagger lunge will kill but a sword lunge will not.

And the killfeed will always show a sword if you get killed by an assassin melee.

Looks like they will just reduce the dagger lunge damage. On the upside missing a grapple is less fatal so as long as that will make up for it somehow. I also read somewhere that they will disable to the ability to switch weapons during grapple, wich in turn makes most supports free kills if their deployable nuke-base is not in range.

Sucks though, dashing is my favourite move

Only from behind. Hit them in the front and it'll do about 85%

Really? :shock: I didn't know that.

@DR0KZ: You have the best avatar ever, EVER! Can I steal it? I really want to slap supports in the real game but the damn firebase keeps killing me.

All dagger/sword attacks do a little more damage from behind than from the front

They said the dagger damage will be "returned." I think they were being cryptic for a reason. I suspect they have noticed that far too many assassins have been spamming lunge far too often. When they say returned I think they meant "returned to the ideal we had in mind for the assassin".

Why bother with a grapple when you can kill someone in two lunges?

They could have been crystal clear and said: "the dagger damage and sword damage were reversed but now have been fixed!" But they did not. Why would they not? I can only suspect it suits their purpose. They wanted to avert attention away from ye olde cry of we've been nerfed.

Honestly I don't care much. I just can't wait for the day when there are no assassins running around cheating the whole game.

No, they said "retuned", not "returned"

You read too much into it without actually reading it

retune [ri?'tju?n]
vb (tr)
1. (Music, other) to tune (a musical instrument) differently or again
2. (Communication Arts / Broadcasting) to tune (a radio, television, etc.) to a different frequency

I still think that just the dagger damage is reduced, the sword damage will probably not be affected.