Assassin's Ability Tree is...Not Good.

hmm i tried it but unless i used dash a second time after i turned around midair, i would just keep going the direction i first dashed in, i don't think pirouette moves you forward on its own

 

I would say that Shadestepper goes with Riftwalker and Paladin on the bad scale. You can actually compare Shadestepper's gameplay to Riftwalker's since they do have a similarity - stacking debuffs on enemies that make them take more damage. Shadestepper's biggest issues are the vanish cooldown, backstab not working on many enemies and being annoying to use, spending lots of energy in one attack, and of course, nightcloak knife removes the stacks you're trying to build up. Riftwalker doesn't have many of the same issues, as the Winded cooldown, while annoying, is justified because of attack speed, Winded doesn't depend on enemies' backs being turned (while a cool idea, extremely annoying), and Riftwalker keeps Winded on enemies even after they're hit. Riftwalker's most glaring flaw is boringness and Timelocked, which is fairly optional. Considering Paladin is probably the best of these to play (somewhat interesting gameplay, somewhat consistent damage (not really), not nearly as situational as shade), Shadestepper is the worst archetype (not DPS wise) post 2.0.

 

What changes would you make then? Does it need a complete overhaul, or just some tweaks here and there?

 

eh, I don't really know. I played Shadestepper for about two weeks before I stopped. I don't know what the archetype needs.

 

I briefly tried shadestepper and agree that it is lacking.

Here’s an ability idea off the top of my head:
Holding crouch while casting dash teleports you to the back of the nearest enemy with the most marks within 20 blocks of you, and immediately casts backstab upon teleporting.

This certainly isn’t balanced, and is just a spitball idea to perhaps put shadestepper on the right track. I feel like shadesteppers biggest weakness is not being able to close the gap between itself and enemies when vanish is on cooldown, so adding an extra gap close ability seems like a nice addition. would likely give this ability a cooldown too

 

this would be absolutely awesome, but maybe it could just be the enemy you’re aiming at, and if you’re not aiming at anything it just goes to the one with the most marks. but yeah this would be awesome

 

I think the main issue is that Shadestepper, as an archetype, conflicts with itself pretty heavily. The essential fantasy of the archetype is disappearing into the shadows, nuking an opponent with a satsujin backstab, and then disappearing again.

However, this fantasy is pretty badly hampered by the sheer amount of setup required, where you effectively need to set up marks (twice), nightcloak knife, vanish, position yourself correctly against a moving target, and keep the enemy above 70% HP in order to maximize damage, and because Satsujin has a 30 second cooldown you realistically only get one shot at best on most enemies. And that’s if the enemies don’t get killed outright by the mark boosted smokes and spins, which are usually already strong enough to clear most trash mobs, which again kind of defeats the point of setting up for the backstab.

The marks system also makes the gameplay of shadestepper a lot more boring, especially when combined with the new Vanish. With the Pre-2.0 assassin, you were incentivized to only vanish for short durations by the draining mana system, but in exchange you were allowed to use it whenever you needed as a defensive escape option or as an offensive damage boost. Combined with its other spells, the end result was that Assassin had a fast, combo- focused playstyle with a lot of flexibility in how you play, which is something that I think got translated well into Acrobat and to a lesser extent Trickster’s playstyles in 2.0. But for Shadestepper?

With the new shadestepper, the incentives are flipped; because of the time it takes to stack marks, and the fact that vanish doesn’t drain mana but does have a cooldown, you’re incentivized to stack marks by throwing a smoke bomb, vanishing, and then… waiting in vanish for as long as possible. Until you hit max marks. And then backstabbing the enemy, or spinning to proc Nighcloak Knife and then repeating the whole process. That’s 3 spells over 5.5 seconds, and like 4 seconds of just pure downtime. It’s basically the opposite of Pre 2.0 assassin- slow spell casting, low flexibility.

That’s not to mention the other issues with vanish and dash. The point of Vanish with the new system is to allow you to position yourself behind enemies, with the five second cooldown preventing you from spamming it defensively. However, in practice, it basically limits Backstab’s usefulness to, at most, once every 5 seconds, plus the time it takes to maneuver. And because both Vanish and Dash are tied to the same ability, it’s pretty common to waste vanish while trying to maneuver with dash if you fail to pay attention even once, meaning that Backstab is now useless for another five seconds. If you want to use Vanish defensively? That’s another five seconds for Backstab.

So essentially, every part of Shadestepper’s toolkit is in conflict with itself. It’s not ideal.

 

Given how much the cooldown conflicts with Shadestepper, I’m curious why the CT hasn’t removed or reworked the cooldown. Would the old system of vanish draining your mana have been that OP?

 

Honestly, the main issue with the old system wasn’t really with Vanish itself, but the fact that mana steal on super slow weapons could pretty much circumvent the drawback entirely just by meleeing to leave vanish and regaining all of the mana you lost, especially when combined with Heavy Melee builds, which could effectively allow you to stay vanished infinitely.

Realistically, I don’t think there’s a way to keep old vanish from breaking the game as long as you could consistently use mana steal with it.
I do have some ideas on ‘fixing’ vanish for shadestepper but unfortunately my break is over so those’ll have to wait

 

Yeah, mana steal was kinda op with vanish

 

You just summed up exactly how I fought as an Assassin before the 2.0 update XD
Honestly, I feel like that was the "Classic" way to play as an Assassin, in and out quickly while dealing a decent amount of damage...
It allowed me to make what was, in essence, a "Glass Cannon" build, and run with it for 10+ levels...

I'll be one of the first to admit that Acrobat's archetype is pretty good, But there's no real substitute for Vanish, especially when you get hit HARD by a stray attack, It would allow for what was essentially a respite from the battle, allowing you to regen and chug a potion if necessary...

Unfortunately, so far the only way that I've been able to use the ShadeStepper Abilities has been as a supplementary for the others, and even then it's just been terrible, and by doing so I've pretty much lost the ability to get decent smoke bombs, which were a significant part of my combat playstyle...

 

MOOD

 

Shadestepper dosen't have a niche. By the sounds of things, the bloodbath weapon may do better nova damage while being more reliable then backstab.

 

Bloodbath is a warrior weapon.

 

I think that might be his point... XD

 

nothing changed marshallah

as if this wasnt the most obvious outcome