Assassin attack skill balance

[djacob]

Indeed Alaris, which is why I think it would be good in pve. The issue I see with it in pvp is that sins can already take people down easily. Throw in the ability to have three skills do three separate things depending on the order you use them in, and that's a lot of bar compression. You're basically getting 9 skills in 3 slots.

Think about it this way, if elementalists got a skill that would do something different depending on how close the enemy was to them (blind if adjacent, daze if they're in the area, or cripple/knock-down if in earshot) would people not complain about that skill?

At the same time, skills that do one thing or another depending on the circumstances are not new and I could see that happening with dagger attacks even in pvp. It would also open up a lot of combinations depending on how many skills were made that way. Which, I would imagine if they did it would sort of end up like flash enchants, in other words, fairly common.

[Alaris]

Flexibility could be the assassin's specialty... the flexibility added by these skills could be balanced by making these skills less powerful. So assassins using these skills would do less damage, but bring better utility.

The skills would still have the same recharge times, which imo is the main reason why most sins bring more than 3 attacks. (disclaimer, I admit that I don't know that for sure)

[djacob]

Glad you included that disclaimer, most dagger recharges are between 1 and 6 seconds.

[Alaris]

Glad I did. I don't play sin, it's the only profession I don't play. Partly because I don't like the current combo system, partly because they run funny.

Those skills that have an effect dependent on when they're used... could have longer recharges to make them not give too much of a bar compression advantage. See, there's ways to balance the idea, the devs just need to seriously look into it.

[Egg Shennn]

Glad I did. I don't play sin, it's the only profession I don't play. Partly because I don't like the current combo system, partly because they run funny.

Stop running away then!

[djacob]

I don't know, there probably is a way to balance it, but in a way that it's better than it is now... hard to tell. Especially by two people who don't play the sin much/at all.

Just like those who didn't play the derv much usually didn't realize one of the major issues with them was that almost all the enchants made you stop to cast an enchant that did less damage than your scythe anyway, and to do it for very little other reason than that damage.

That being said, I do want to explain my point of view as someone who has played a little bit of one to see how they play.

I personally think the issue with sins is that they are great at single target dps, but as soon as they're fighting more than a few foes, they either need to take skills like SF, or they'll take a dirt nap and even if their defense is enough, they have to worry that their lead attack won't hit or will still be recharging when they need it.

I do not think the solution is to up their aoe, or to make their attack skills do three different things. I do think sins should have more flexibility in their attack skill order, seeing as how no lead attack = auto-attack in many cases. The more I think about it, the more I believe that the only thing that needs to happen is an if/or statement the same as the new scythe attacks which remove enchants. Some conditions happen if the skill is in any part of the chain, and more if it's in the right spot.

It might not be as awesome or drool worthy as having three different (good) conditions from one attack skill, but it would still allow the sin to do something even when circumstances are against them.

That's all I have to say on this topic I think, as my limited experience keeps me from knowing any more of the sin's flaws.

[Alaris]

Stop running away then!

Hahah! Well, I'd shadowstep everywhere, but I can't always shadowstep where I want.

I don't know, there probably is a way to balance it, but in a way that it's better than it is now... hard to tell. Especially by two people who don't play the sin much/at all.

Granted, limited knowledge here... but I do play melee (W and D) as well as have played sin-like in other games.

I do not think the solution is to up their aoe, or to make their attack skills do three different things. I do think sins should have more flexibility in their attack skill order, seeing as how no lead attack = auto-attack in many cases. (...) Some conditions happen if the skill is in any part of the chain, and more if it's in the right spot.

Well, having their attacks do three things *would* accomplish both *added flexibility* and *no chain fail*. Your suggestion and mine are in many ways quite similar.

I think the original idea was not to have the sin play as frontline, but rather as midline glass cannon. In that respect, low survivability and fast dps with high chance of failure made sense. You pick a target, you shadow in, kill or incapacitate, and move out. Recover. Pick another target, rince and repeat. Interrupting a chain was the protection against sins. But people don't normally play sins that way, so the profession was misunderstood and had to be rebalanced.

The chain mechanic is a remnant of the old gameplay style. It's unflexible, and I'd argue on purpose, but it's not adapted to how people play sins now.

A few flexible skills that offer less dps would nevertheless allow for some bar compression, which would allow players to bring more utility/survival skills. The gameplay would focus more on dps/pressure, and somewhat less on spikes and movement... The previous gameplay could remain there too, but the flexible skills would be somewhat less useful to spike builds than their single-purpose counterparts.

[LeeMentalist]

When I saw the title, I was like... yeah, I can understand why people would want that, although combos are good in pvp, they can be frustrating to use in pve. Then I read the OP and was sad cause he just wanted more powerful skills, which I so do not agree with.

Actually im not looking for more powerfull skill just more powerfull AoE, I just really really really suck at balancing numbers etc and I should never be placed in Test Krewe <3

I also do agree on 5sec recharge shadowstep ! mobility FTW

-Tjal Lee

[djacob]

More powerful aoe in my mind, is the same as more powerful skills. The tradeoff for sins is that although they are great at killing stuff, they aren't great at killing everything at once. Whereas dervish were designed to be great at doing aoe damage, but not great at killing stuff one on one. Scythes + some pve skills might have changed this for a while, but with the update, we no longer do insane amounts of damage to one enemy at a time, this balanced the fact that we got more useable aoe.

If you really want aoe, I suggest going derv for a while. I really don't think the test krewe is going to want to add any extra aoe to the sin, not without severely nerfing their dps anyway, are you sure you want that?

[LeeMentalist]

I do have to disagree at Dervish aren't great at killing stuff one on one , if you browse through their skills there is plenty of 1 vs 1 action going on there.

I do agree tho at Assassins are great at killing one thing, the downside to that is that in PvE stuff dies before you get in melee range if not taking shadowstep so that nearly forces you to go shoutdamageway.

I'm not saying take X skill that does X damage to all foes im saying doing X damage to random X foes which may or may not include an entire mob, this spreads dps to nearby foes without it being overpowered.

-Tjal Lee