Are assassins crappy to play? If yes, what should we do?

[Eld]

I think most people agree assassins are horrible to level, and it's been mentioned before how bad they are in OAD areas if they can't move to rehide.
It seems assassins/slayers are relatively underused, probably because of how annoying they are to play.
They also miss out on some exp when lvling in a party due to being off of the square a lot of the time, and they also usually end up dragging a load of monsters off of/on to a square screwing things up for the rest of the party.

All of this is due to how the core mechanic of backstabbing works, with needing to /hide before attacking, and only being able to do it once per square before needing to move off/on

The key consideration in any change is not screwing up assassins by changing how quickly they can double stab.
Obviously too quickly would leave them overpowered, too slowly would be underpowered.

Additionally /hide and /autosneak are very useful stand alone skills as they are, regardless of backstabbing, so ideally these wouldnt get altered too much.



So basically there's a few different ways i can see of changing this

1. Change /hide so you can rehide on the same square *EXCEPT* make it so there's a delay of just under a second after each backstab before you can hide again.
This would avoid the need for movement and wouldn't let them cause damage too quickly.

Change /hide to have a publically announced message saying *Eld slips into the shadows*
This would give other classes the chance to /search out someone hiding as they have a chance to now.


2. Introduce a /backstab skill that would use 2 stam, and have a separate attack timer of just under a second.
Don't make it a requirement to move off/on the square to do this.
Have /hide and /autosneak remain as they are, but dont have them be prerequisits for backstabbing


3. Introduce a useable item (flash pot?) that would let you rehide on a square without moving
Have /hide still remain a prerequisite for backstabbing.
Introduce a timer between backstabs of just under a second
Have the flash pot be a continuous effect item for 4 minutes or so.
Flash pots to be bought from an assy hideout for 100g each and you can store 10 in a stack.

(This would mean you could get 40 minutes of no moving backstabbing for 1000g and a stack of inventory space)


4. Replace the Assassin class all together with a "Basket Weaver" class.
This class could attack people with baskets.
They could also store items in their baskets so they could carry more loot around with them.

Naturally weak against fire div.



What are people's thoughts on this? Are assassins fine as they are? Do you agree they could do with changing but dislike all of my suggestions? Do you think I'm a genius and should have a statue created in my honour?


p.s. can we nerf the infravision on a lot of the levelling mobs? Sometimes i try hiding at the end of a round to try and sneak in 2 Backstabs a round and it rarely works.

p.p.s. how about making it so you can /hide and get dragged around in a party? Or does that make slayers too OP?

p.p.p.s. Thanks to Kinetic and Wobbi for listening to my complaining whilst levelling and helping me bounce ideas around

[Terron]

- autosneak and hide should be combined imo.
- hiding should be a free action only useable on an empty square.
- backstab should drain all stamina
- backstabbing from hidden should be 2.0 multiplier per stamina used
- backstabs from unhidden should be 1.7 multiplier per stamina


hiding on last stamina vs mobs seems to only work vs 1 monster.

[daedroth]

Been a few discussions on this:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1166&hilit=backstab

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=984&p=7408&hilit=backstab#p7408

I still think critical hit chance for assassins when making normal attacks is the simplest. It would be a bit random though, but hurrah for the rng God!

Then you still have the normal backstab possibility, and you also have the option of just attacking normal and relying on critical hit chance to do around the same damage you would do if you were backstabbing.

Terron's idea above sounds like NM Not saying it is bad, it sounds pretty good actually (makes sense - an assassin assassinating). The backstab bit that is, I think hide should still cost a stamina point. This actually might be the simplest one.
Assassins would be scary to fight against. Might need to add more range to the damage though?
Damnit keep changing my mind (and therefore the posting)! How about you still need to hide to backstab, you do not need to move from the square though, the damage is then 2.66 (8/3) per stamina?
I seem to remember though, people were not keen on allowing assassins to backstab without the moving and hiding though...
Also... op maybe?

[Eld]

Cheers for the links, I'm a bit disheartened that this has been discussed a lot and backstab still hasn't improved.

There seems to be a widespread consensus that assies are horrible to level, i don't know if this also applies to playing assies in general but i suspect it does judging by how few people play them on a regular basis.

To me the current method of backstab seems an awkward mechanic that would be strange to explain to a true newbie and wouldn't work very well on the future tablet version?

[Terron]

i very much dislike moving from party. especially getting left behind, or losing out on ks exp constantly

i cant say i hate how they are currently, but i don't like the inconsistency. they seem to miss a ton. you regen stamina then do all this wiggling back and forth, 2 party members dc from seizures as you flicker on screen and then you miss just to repeat over it and over.

with that also is the fact they can land 2 bs and do the most damage ingame. also if we had 129 players online right now and pking was hot, it would be mostly slayers.

to me slayer fits more along the lines of a prestige of thief. thief hits 25 wants to do 26-50 and picks the slayer perk for bigger backstabs. or he picks cutpurse and robs easier.

[Thi]

I've leveled 2 to slayer and helped on a 3rd, so here's the worst parts of a Slayer from Leveling, PVPing to OADing:

• Leveling is so exhaustive that it's crazy, you feel twice as exhausted as leveling any other classes because you have more keypresses, it's even worse on laptops that you don't have dedicated arrow keys for movement.
• OADing people would rather not take you, reasons are: 1) Moving/hiding/stabing takes longer than pressing a single key, so in the end you deal less damage and fights drag on. 2) You can get stuck on trap rooms by yourself (this is officially a thing since every freaking OAD now has crazy amount of trap rooms)
• Party leveling it's harder for assassins, reasons are: 1) You miss on KS XP either when you're moving outside the room or EXH out of the room 2) People can be move along and leave your behind EXH sitting on a different square. 3) If you are party leader you screw with every class that relies on non-movement bonuses, such as ninjas/zerkers since they rely on sitting on the same square to get flurry/RH hits or you can screw other Slayers being hidden
• PVP - is kinda wonky on 1v1 events/fights, you usually lose 1 round every 5 to a ninja/zerker/etc cause of the famous "movement lag" to stab someone, so you're always at a disadvantage.
• Track - It is useful, but not entirely so, you can track people from afar and never catch up, unless they hit a trap room or are too stupid to not move into safety;

There's a couple options/ideas/suggestions to fix this or try to, such as:

• Movement - I'd remove this altogether, honestly, this causes SO many problems alone that it's not even worth having..
• Hiding - This would need to be re-worked, I've seen a couple of interesting ideas: 1) hide consumes one stamina, lags you for 1 second so you can stab 2) make hide fail/success be based on an int roll/chance 3) This is my favorite, make Stab take 2 stamina points and lag exhaust you for 1.5 seconds and don't require you to /hide anymore (this is by far the one change that would remove the strain of stabbing)
• Track - I've always envisioned this as a skill that tracks and locks a people to a room for like 15 seconds and you lose your entire round, so if someone moves, you automatigically follow, upon reaching them you "ambush" trap them in a room and lose your round, so they get a free round hitting you but you can fight back on the follow up round

P.S. Give a medal to those that finished a Slayer up to date, I'd rather level 2 ninjas than 1 slayer, worst class ever to level.

[Styx]

In Dragon #379 (September 2009), the assassin was released as a separate class. Announced in June of that year, the assassin was the first D&D Insider exclusive class.[2] It has the Striker role and the Shadow power source.[9] The 4th edition version of the assassin had a variety of powers based on manipulating shadow, drawing on the power of the Shadowfell.

In Player's Option: Heroes of Shadow, the Assassin build of "heroic executioner" is presented with an altered build that focuses more on a martial version of the shadow powers, as well as an emphasis on poison use.

Draw upon your dark shadow power to hide in your shadows of disguise and kill without reason.

And to enter your guild oNE should prove their worth to mercilessly kI'll someone.

[Folder]

1) hide consumes one stamina, lags you for 1 second so you can stab
3) This is my favorite, make Stab take 2 stamina points and lag exhaust you for 1.5 seconds and don't require you to /hide anymore (this is by far the one change that would remove the strain of stabbing)

I used to be opposed to anything like this but I've changed my mind on it. /hide, stab, leave, come back, /hide, stab is just clunky. It also ruins the class at trap squares, makes them shit to lvl, and doesn't really add anything lore-wise. It feels like an antiquated mechanic at this point, and there's really no benefit to it.

I think I more prefer 1) out of these, just because I like the idea of /search before a stab lands. I would remove any requirements from hide - no need to continue leaving and re-entering a room. I can see the benefit of 3) as well though.

[*]Track - I've always envisioned this as a skill that tracks and locks a people to a room for like 15 seconds and you lose your entire round, so if someone moves, you automatigically follow, upon reaching them you "ambush" trap them in a room and lose your round, so they get a free round hitting you but you can fight back on the follow up round[/list]

That's a pretty cool idea too. I'm not unhappy with how track works atm but this would certainly add some more flavor to it and make slayers a bit scarier.

[daedroth]

I had a similar idea

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=984&p=7408&hilit=backstab#p7408

"Basically:
You make the backstab attack,
Pause 1 2
Attack lands (or not as the case may be)."

But yeh hiding then the pause then the attack sounds better.

Not so sure about #3 but... how about an ambush type thing, where you can trap enemy for a round? It can only be used once every x amount of time though.

[Folder]

Cooldown based skills could go a long way but not sure NH wants to get into that at this time.

Not as much of a fan of the attack > wait because what happens if your target moves? I think attacks should happen right away otherwise its gonna feel goofy.