Revert Assassin Changes

I'd absolutely love this. Multihit feels very slow actually in terms of combat. The issue with it as well is that since every hit is 27% and there's 10 hits total, you're overall dealing less damage with Multihit than if you added all 10 hit percentages together and dealt them in one hit. (270% in one hit rather than 27% for 10 hits)

Going to suggest what @Flow of Fate suggested and recommend changing the amount of hits to 5, then upping each hit to deal 54% damage. It would increase the damage of Multihit and also end it faster. I'd also recommend knocking down the enemy instead of up so that way we can get back to combing them much faster instead of having to wait the extra 1-2 seconds for them to get down. In combat, a second of time can mean a lot.

If these changes were made, I'd overall enjoy Assassin gameplay much more, as it'd feel more fast pace and more comboy. I've played around with the concept of Multiht knocking down enemies and having just 5 hits myself, and overall I liked that version a LOT more than the current one, as I was able to combo much more consistently and was overall much more fun.

If I'm being honest, I care more about how fun to play my class is rather than if it has mad DPS.

 

people who play assassin have been wanting buffs since gavel lol

 

In actuality if multihit and spin were swapped, I'd probably say swap the mana costs too, and do a bit of tuning. I think Multihit is a better initial spell even in earlygame though.

That said, reducing the knockback and time it takes is a solution. It just leaves Assassin and Warrior still pretty screwy wrt spell cost IDs.

Regarding Vanish, it could just activate for an additional two seconds or something after you leave Vanish (with perhaps the initial boost of 30%). That would make it more useful in general situations and less abusable by heavy melee.

 

I made an entire thread about the problems with assassin that were about to happen, so I'll just quote that

 

That's a
YES

 

The only problem then would be that you can barely get anything out of vanish. If you really lowered the hits from Mulithit to 5 with double the damage, you will only get the 80% vanish buff applied to the last 2 hits, considering that you cast multihit and then vanish (and manage to cast vanish inbetween either the 3rd and 4th or if you are really good between 2nd and 3rd but considering stress and all during bosses it might only be possible to cast it after the 3rd hit.)
So yeah vanish applying the damage buff for another x seconds or the first spell cast after going out of vanish would still have to be added for that, else assassins damage potential would be lower than now.

Other than that, I do not have that many problems as some others so far with the new assassin, and that is coming from someone who has no problem soloing the Eye as an Assassin.
Though yes I do agree its dps could be a bit higher by making the gameplay a bit faster. Dmg-wise it is almost equal or a bit lower than archer right now, which I cannot see being the intention.

 

I'd say the best fix for this would be to have Vanish's damage boost apply to all of the Multihit rather than just the first hit.

 

As I said, apply the dmg buff to the first spell cast out of vanish. That applies to smoke bomb, multihit, and spin. For the entirety of their respective durations.

 

Realistically nothing about assassin was absolutely ungodly broken pre patch expect insane crit damage thunder spin spam builds.

I want to say that while im pve assassin is still good this patch nuked it in pvp.
for starters the range of spin attack seems lower. Now it wasn't in the patch notes but I and most other people are 99% sure its got less range as it sure as hell feels that way. This on it's own feels unnecessary and just as an annoyance as in pve its a noticeable nerf and in pvp you no longer have any sort of viable ranged attack. Stacked with the damage this spell becomes nearly useless endgame in pvp as the only real way you would normally be able to land this is against a player (that isn't archer) is by sneaking up behind them and spamming as many spins as you can. But now that vanish has been limited you probably wont have enough mana to get more than a spin without having to vanish again.
as for multihit the spell itself is better however the issue is that compared to pre patch spin attack it simply is not good. The amount of mana for the damage output is generally not worth the risk especially because when the target is fast or in pvp the player has agility there is a good chance that the attack wont even land. on top of that agility can make this spell nearly useless as multihit has each hit individually account for agility. so if a target has a 50% chance of dodging spell that means there is a 100%*.5^10 chance of all ten hits landing meaning a 0.0976...% chance of all ten hits landing at ONLY 50% agility. (assuming my math is correct)

I don't know what the hell you guys where trying to do to this class. but let me tell ya, it ain't working. Honestly Pre patch vanish and Pre patch spin attack range with spin attack having a 175% damage multiplier (instead of 200% as before) probably could fix this class.
if not then for the love of god fix multihit with agility.

 

I feel like giving multihit the option to not move the mob (like with uppercut throwing mobs in the air) and to hit it on the ground in rapid succession (double the speed it currently hits at) would make it a more viable spell for dps. But, I would tend to agree with the consensus that multi is a bette rutility spell and spin attack is a better damage spell.

 

As a comment on Multi-Hit:
I agree with the suggestion to make it not deal knockback when shift is held. I think it would be great if it 'stunned' an enemy sort of like how Arrow Storm can 'stun' enemies. Multihit should deal no knockback, but also not allow the enemy to move. It would hold them in place as you unleash a flurry of hits, before dealing a finishing 'fatality' blow for flair and damage.

As well as this, it would be nice if the knockback was a little more consistent and controllable. If we're to revert to 1.18, Force stopped the enemy from jumping around all over the place and let you sort of throw it around a bit cosmetically/to reposition it, but it sort of funneled them into a slope where they fly up a certain distance from you before getting launched in the air. What if the height and range from you was reduced slightly, and the 'fatality' hit also did splash damage to mobs close to the target? This would encourage players to tag a single mob and hold it in a group to essentially use them as a timed bomb.

 

What id like as a whole based on what I’ve read here is:
1. Make vanish bonus damage apply to every damage tick of multihit and vanish
2. Decrease time between multihit damage ticks
3. When a target is blinded, multihit will not move AT ALL.
4. Make smoke bomb blind targets (if it doesn’t already tbh idk) and remove blind from spin attack if it still has it.

This will result in people combining vanish with spells because it actually does better damage, using smoke bomb more as an escape and crowd control, also it will now pair well with multihit since you don’t multihit them out of the bomb. This can result in very high DPS with multihit and smokebomb ticking at the same time. Also now spin will be used just as crowd aoe damage and shouldn’t stunlock imo. Also multihit will be usable since higher overall DPS.

 

The reason I think spin should be classed as the main damage spell is because all your damage was instant, much like bomb arrow and meteor, even though meteor had fall time and isn't ideal, but mage isn't a dps class. It's hard to be to think of a way where multi hit is useful while still doing damage over time because like I mentioned with the vanish spin thing, damage does not equal dps and dps is far more important. I don't think changing assassin in the first place was a good idea and I don't think multi hit will hold a candle to things like bomb arrow while it still A. Pushes things around and B. Isn't instant damage. I feel like no matter how the class is tuned from here on out no one's going to use multi hit as the main attack spell because it just doesn't feel like assassin was built that way and it's also never going to reach the level where it was before. The spin nerf absolutely butchered the viability of Sitis because it relied on spin and as a hybrid weapon, vanish spin isn't a viable option every time, even with something like atlas or aphotic. I think my favorite suggestion so far is making spin the 3rd spell and multi hit the first one as suggested by Druser because this new assassin is not, at all, good for the assassin community, it made the class worse overall and I am just not seeing a solid fix to this.

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The only thing changing assassin back is going to do is make it usable again and bring back assassin mains, I've been using the class for two years and I can't begin to wrap my head around the fact that people think assassin is OP, but archer isn't, or isn't worthy of a nerf. When the changelog came out, it said assassin was getting buffed and nerfed and archer was getting nerfed. Archer barely got hit hard at all while assassin just got kicked in the teeth and lost almost all viability. Archer, besides arrow storm, barely got nerfed at all and arrow storm still does insane damage, the difference is, while people try to make arrow storm and spin out to be the same, they're not, if that's how they were meant to be, that's not how it turned out, the two spells every makes their builds around are bomb arrow and spin for archer and assassin respectively. Just a little side note, I think the new arrow shield was kind of a buff and actually really cool, I know it's not an instant arrow explosion anymore, but being able to do damage just by getting near something 3 times without resetting your shield and then getting an arrow explosion that's a hell of a lot more consistent before is kind of epic not gonna lie.

 

I’d honestly reverse these two so base multihit doesn’t have knockback and shift-multihit does; having to crouch in the middle of a combo for damage would feel incredibly janky, especially for mobility based builds, and having the utility multihit as a side option activated by crouch would be a lot better since you wouldn’t need it as often

 

Not an assassin main, just an assassin player, and unpopular opinion, but I actually liked the kb on multihit

Made it useful for positioning enemies, semi stunlock (against ranged and burst ranged), overall really cool if not the best for damage

(Then again I'm also the guy who uses uppercut as a stunlock, so maybe its just a me thing but the upwards kb is real useful against ranged bosses especially)

 

Yeah, tbh I think that multi hit is just a better utility spell than anything, it can't compete with spin even now for being the best offensive assassin spell. That being said, I've been thinking it over and I honestly don't think spin and multi hit need to be changed. If you think about it, spin spamming was never and could never be a thing because you need to spell cycle and that alone forces you to make use of all your spells, you can use max 3 (maybeeee 4 spins depending on your int and mr) in a row before it becomes very inefficient. The main reason I hated this nerf to assassin (yes, it wasn't a change, it was a nerf, archer was the one that got changed) was because while spin was just the best offense spell for it, it's not like it was completely used over multi hit, all the spells used to work perfectly together before and had better synergy for dps and if spin was being used over multi hit, it was for a good reason. Multi hit displaces your enemy and is very situational, I think it was fine before, the damage nerf I am fine with because it didn't destroy the class unlike the spin damage nerf, the point is, spin is not situational, it was just a good spell overall and multi hit was a big liability in some scenarios. I heard that it was being talked about that the classes were all going to be buffed to match archer, the old assassin wasn't even close even to this archer, so I fail to see what exactly is going on here. I don't think assassin needs to get new changes, I think that it was fine before, despite what people think that thought it was OP, it pretty clearly wasn't, and I think a vast majority of the community would appreciate if Assassin was restored to its 1.18 state. I'm more than happy to continue the debate, however I just haven't heard any suggestions that I don't think would hurt the class or make it too over powered. The community is resisting change here because Assassin was fine before and it simply wasn't over powered. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

Honestly, I feel like this is true for all the other classes and was true for assassin before the nerf. Let's compare:

Warrior: Bash. A powerful one-two punch that does 260% damage (130% per hit) and slows enemies. Incredibly useful as essentially a power-swing to the warrior's normal melee.
Archer: Arrow Storm. A quick burst of 60 arrows that covers a wide area in front of the archer and can put mobs in a stunlock. Incredibly useful for proccing poison on a lot of mobs at once or dealing high single-target damage (If all arrows hit, they deal 600% damage).
Mage: Heal. The very cornerstone of what makes a mage a mage and separates it from the rest of the classes. It heals you for 30% health total (20-5-5), and removes all debuffs and fire. While it doesn't do damage, it saves having to switch to a potion and can help out allies in a tough spot.
Shaman: Totem. Totem is the key to all other spells of the Shaman class, and without it Shaman is little more than a melee mage with triple-shot. Totem lasts for ~18 seconds, gives you a 35% damage boost (15% for allies), deals 20% of your damage per second to any mobs standing in range (360% damage total), heals you and allies for 4% of your max health per second while in range (72% total) and when it's first cast, deals 100% damage on touch-down to nearby mobs.

Now, look at spin attack. It's a weak stun spell that deals the lowest damage out of all the other starting spells (Only 20% higher than a single Grade II/III bash), only temporarily freezes enemies instead of blinding and debilitating them, and cleans off negative effects and steals positive ones. The only way to buff this spell's damage to something a little more reasonable - as explained (and criticized) in this thread - is to first use Vanish, which must be re-cast every time to re-buff the damage. No other class needs this reliance on another spell to be in place for it's first spell to be effective. Warrior benefits from War Scream's damage buff, and Shaman's totem can do a ton more damage with Aura - Mage would probably be a lot safer if they used Ice Snake before healing, and Archer's arrow shield could keep them safe while up close - but these aren't required for the spells to stand on their own.

 

You hit this right on the head Nep, Assassin, despite being a former high dps class is now reliant on another spell to make its starting spell somewhat reasonably strong. What I wanted to point out though is that bash (from what I've heard) now for some reason lowers the defense of either nearby enemies or enemies in the area even though it's a spell that's able to push mobs into a better position for you, I'm not saying spell warrior is good, but if the tank class is going to get a crazy buff like this and the close range dps class is going to get crapped on, I don't know what the Wynn team is thinking. Unless vanish gave spin a massive buff that would more than double its damage it wouldn't be able to reach its old dps because you need to cast a spell in between spins and to me that seems pointless.

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Something else I was thinking for assassin if they don't want to restore it: Restore spin's damage, keep multi hit's damage, and remove vanish's damage boost all together and make it last for 10 seconds so it's more of an evasive spell like it should've been in the first place. The biggest issue with the Wynn team and assassin right now is they're desperately trying to force multi hit to be the main attack spell and it's just a bad spell and much better for utility in almost every scenario, spin is instant damage like bomb arrow and meteor, it doesn't do split damage into multiple hits which makes it a good spell.

 

i agree and i wasnt even peer pressured by my guild to agree o,o

 

I used to main a spell assassin. I updated and improved my build for 1.19 and spent a few days doing LI/EO.
Now I'm a mage main.

Using spin as the main dmg spell means dps scales up with mana regen/int. Multihit pushes the enemy out of range of your teammates and your other attacks, and it doesn't scale well with mana because of how long it takes to deal its damage. It doesn't do nearly enough damage either.

The big class killer for me, though, was the spin radius nerf. Forcing the close range class even closer in makes it much easier to take damage and much harder to control group fights. In particular it was ridiculously annoying to fight Dr Legendary's push spell + ranged attack combo, because I end up spending half the fight running back to the boss from the opposite side of the arena (this isn't directly about the spin range nerf, but the nerf didn't help). Classes with ranged attacks can keep fighting the whole time. The Eye has a similar issue for close range classes because of how frequently it shoots out aoes/wretches spawn; when half the time is spent running, dps is halved. Stunlocking the eye has no effect, so assassin got hit extra hard here.