Assassin feels bad.

I HATE NEW ASSASSIN
This post will be talking about the spell aspect of assassin since I think that melee is fine enough that I wouldn't really bother making a whole critique on it. This is mostly going to be talking about the general playstyle of Assassin and how the change of vanish and other parts of assassin's toolkit has made assassin feel fucking horrid. This will only be for combat, for lootrunning it's actually surprisingly fun but in other niches I have not explored it enough to really say anything definitive.

Pre 2.0 Assassin
I don't plan to drag this part out too much but the general idea is that assassin is a burst class, you were meant to go in with vanish, utilize the time you had before the boss or mob reagro'd to you and then spell-spam until it reagro'd and go back into vanish. Now in theory this sounds unbelievably broken but in practicality perfect gameplay was only really possible by some of the best players in the game and was not really possible by regular players, but the general idea was still utilized, but the spell that really made this work was obviously vanish. Vanish was basically the center of Assassin's entire playstyle of burst dps, being not only a damage boost but also a very useful tool to reset mob agro and also a good source of mobility in order for Assassin to stay true to its sort of stealth stereotype. Vanish as it currently is synergizes well with every other spell obviously, but it best synergizes with spin attack. This is due to the fact that spin attack blinds almost every opponent and allows you to pull off your full burst combo. It is also important to point out that Assassin is ARGUABLY the best class, especially in regards to general DPS output for both spell and melee. There is a bit more I could go into that I simply cannot come up with at this moment but this is just a general synopsis on the class.

Post 2.0 Assassin
This class feels bad. Okay so this will be three separate paragraphs for each archetype but I will start this off by saying, they made a fucky wucky with assassin's general playstyle.
Acrobat
Starting with by far the worst archetype, Acrobat. There are so many issues with this class it isn't even funny to be honest, but I would like to say at the very least Acrobat is a very fun class archetype to play for lootrunning. Moving along, this archetype is bad. To start, a lot of its mobility is very clunky, or inconsistent, like how lacerate > hop can either launch you 50 blocks in the air or just flatout do nothing, which I feel is a fault of hop being so unbelievably lackluster vertically, not to mention just how bad it is to try and get wall jump to consistently work, and considering that Acrobat is meant to be a little hopper, the inconsistency makes comboing utterly aids, as well as making bloom annoying to use. To be honest this isn't even the worst aspect of Acrobat, rather its the fact that the range of all of its spells just do not have any sort of vertical length in any way really. For a class that is meant to be above the opponent it is pretty sluggish and bad in the air. There is also an issue with how weak Acrobat is just in general, but that might just be a fault of my building. Conclusion on Acrobat is that it not only combo's horribly, but it can barely combo in the air, where it is meant to be comboing. I'd also like to mention that I heard that salted flat out disregarded the horrible design of Acrobat as a fault of inevitable unbalanced metas, as he says "Some archetypes are bound to be bad" so have in mind the kind of content creator we are dealing with when digesting this entire critique.
Trickster
Honestly is probably not as bad as Acrobat but it certainly has its own fault as well. Starting this out, I will note that I have played Trickster the least out of all the three archetypes, but I have also heard other players out on this archetype so still hear out what I have to say for this class. I want to at least give it credit that at the very least, it is actually like very incredibly tanky and it at least does well in that aspect. On another note its damage output is so situational it is comedic. What I mean by this is the fact that not only is your overall DPS just nerfed flatout when building into trickster, but your clones can barely even hit the target when you do cast spells, and melee attacks are not any better. It is somewhat understandable that conceptually it is fine that you are giving up damage for survivability, but it is the fact that this is completely out of place considering it is for Assassin out of all classes. Not to mention that the cooldown on said clones is so unreasonably high that their practicality for any extra DPS is not going to be apparent in almost any situation, not to mention that they're so spaced out that even if they somehow did survive, they would not hit 95% of the mobs in the game. The only actual good think about the entire Trickster skill tree is the Deli Gas perk, which is only ever good if you go into another archetype and simply utilize that single perk, which brings me onto the last archetype and by far my favorite conceptually.
Shadestepper
The only archetype that truly stuck true to Assassin's old playstyle, and sadly got gutted in turn. This class is actually one of my more favorite archetypes for the entire beta, but using it in any real PVE instance just highlights how little the CT decided to put real thought into this poor class. To start, let's highlight one of the two primary foundations of the entire archetype, vanish. It sucks. I honestly question at this point whether Salted and the CT have it out for Assassin or if they just did what they always do and go completely over the top on the nerfs for Assassin. To list off all of the general nerfs for it, it got a 5s cooldown, it made vanish buff a perk in the Shadestepper tree and made it so the buff only worked for a singular hit, they made it so that you could not gain health while in vanish, and vanish now seemingly does not give you any sort of grace period in order to perform any sort of burst. The last point might be a fault of something else in the game but it is a major change nonetheless. I mean at least you don't lose mana anymore whenever you're in vanish! Not even gonna mention how that fucked over weathered. Onto another note, the change to vanish was so overkill to the point where the entire idea of burst damage on Assassin doesn't even exist anymore, since you cant put yourself in a safe position so as you can burst without getting shredded in 0.5 seconds. That reminds me of the nerf to Spin Attack, where now it doesn't stun naturally but instead you have to build into it's stun, and even then its stun is not even a second, but rather 0.5 seconds. Sometimes it feels as though I cant even backstab after a spin attack before the mob agro's back onto me and starts shredding all of my HP. Speaking of backstab, it sucks! For a move that is meant to be pure burst, the content team sure want to make it as impossible as ever to even perform your burst without taking unreasonable amounts of damage. I think that these people messed up the difference between "High risk High reward" with "High reward High recoil" because there is no sort of risk management, it is flatout just punishment for using backstab in any situation, not to mention that they didn't give you anything to compensate for the vanish spells unreasonable execution such as a better stun or increased range. I'd also like to note that it is fairly possible that Salted likely never even reverted Assassin's spell multipliers to pre 1.18 multipliers, which were nerfed due to the damage boost of assassin. If you newer players ever wonder why Assassin's boost was so high, it was because the multipliers for its spells were nerfed by 50% globally, it still got a 30% buff overall and an 80% buff to melee but now I don't even know if it is back to normal or not, but lets hope so!

General Complaints
This will just be general complaints that I wouldn't like to specify in any one of the three previous categories that I just made because they are more-so general complains that I have about the overall feel of Assassin.
-The fact that if you swap off of your item while in the air, it will act as though you had not previously touched the ground therefore not giving you the initial intended boost in the air is dumb, fix it.
-Trickster as a concept does not fit into the Assassin theme at all.
That's actually about it. I'm surprised i don't have more to complain about to be honest.

Suggestions
I don't want this post to be solely complaining so I'd like to give some of my suggestions as to how to make this class any sort of more tolerable, take these with a grain of salt though since I inherently have a noticeable bias for the Assassin class.
Acrobat
-Change the vertical hitboxes of Multi-hit and Spin attack to be much larger
-Increase gliding mobility
-Implement some sort of way to control whether or not you get lunged forward with "Lacerate"
-Improve wall jumping to be much easier to use
-Improve hop's vertical distance
Trickster
-Reduce clones cooldown/Remove cooldown increase from "Forbidden Art"
-Reduce damage nerf given from the clones
-Reduce damage nerf of the clones themselves (Slightly)
-Reduce the distance between all the clones
-Have it so that "Lure" causes mobs to agro your clones
Shadestepper
-Improve "Backstab" range
-Improve "Blazing Powder" Blindness duration
-Greatly reduce or remove "Vanish" cooldown
-Somehow fix the incredibly quick reagro-ing of most mobs out of vanish
-Add some sort of improved mobility buff out of vanish (100% speed 2 seconds outside of vanish)

I'd like to also note that Silent killer is so bad and doesn't even really work out in certain situations, major situations such as certain raid boss fights, so please do not mention it. The general gist of these suggestions revolve around the idea that Acrobat needs better mobility in order to combo better, Trickster needs major clone buffs in regards to damage output and up time, and Shadestepper needs to be more balanced around allowing the player to properly backstab. Acrobat might also just need improved DPS output but oh well.

Conclusion
The newest version of Assassin are honestly some of the worst changes that Salted has ever made that I genuinely consider if he hates the overall Assassin playerbase. Maybe this is just karma for my egotism relating to the class though, but I truly hope some CT see this and give it a real read. I think i have spent about 5 or so hours on this entire post, but as my parting notes, I would like to beg of you Salted to please not completely fuck my class. I have put in over 3000 hours into this class and I do not want to experience another Assassin dark ages like in 2017. Please reconsider the overall assassin playstyle shift and think for a second if it was a good idea or maybe you guys just have horrible ideas sometimes. I feel as though I didn't say everything I could have said but frankly i'm kinda tired so this will be adequate enough. Thank you for reading this

-Fizi

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Forgot to mention, don't be afraid to criticize me as harshly as you feel, I'm open to listening.

 

I play a tank assassin. Trickster looks fine to me. As a tank, you don’t worry about damage as much as you worry about being helpful in a group. Assassin has 100% base defense, same as 2.0 warrior, so it should have a tank archetype, just like Warrior has a tank archetype. When I run a raid as my tank assassin, I’m not concerned with “am I keeping up in DpS” as I am concerned with “enemy please aggro onto me and not the 2 hp archer three blocks behind me”. Trickster does this very well with delirious gas and diversion, and trickster offers crowd control.
As for Acrobat, it definitely needs something other than a final red ability to actually incentivize you to be above your enemy. As of now, the only damage an acrobat can do above an enemy is bloom and smoke bomb.

 

Based assinass player

 

I probably have a couple dozen hours experience with the new assassin and I have to say it’s not all that bad (except trickster lol)

just takes some time getting used to, but I do agree half the stuff has to get reworked altogether :shrug:

another thing id like to mention is that assassin doesn’t really compare to the others in damage, being the damage class and all, I feel like it should be more noticeable

 

tbh i do agree with salted that some archetypes are bound to be worse than others just like how some items are bound to be worse than others. however, i am also very disappointed with acrobat specifically because it has so much potential to be really fun, they just need to fix its mechanics and make them actually usable. you are right in saying that the damage on it is extremely weak though, so giving it slight damage buffs is definitely a good idea too. keep in mind that they are trying to give assassin a different playstyle purposefully though, and make sure you stay open to using the class differently in 2.0.

 

Good read, from my minimal playing of 2.0 assassin I agree with most of your points on it, it’s borderline unplayable (and not just because your clones using spells causes lag!), especially if you have even the most basic memory of what assassin currently is in the game. It’s poorly designed and it seems like assassin was thrown together with a “let’s just hope this works!” mindset. I’m entirely convinced they made the entire class in the 1-2 weeks it took for them to release it after the prior classes.

In conclusion,

Cope harder.

- A Local Archer Main

 

UR SO BAD, I AM COPINg!!!

 

I agree with this honestly, I think with the new archetypes it's a bit harder so I'm not sure what to do with acrobat, trickster seems kind of ok, but shadestepper just feels dumb since spin was always assassin's main spell and honestly the new backstab is cool, but having two single hit burst spells feels so clunky, smoke bomb was damage over time, multihit was great because it did high damage over a short period of time and you could spin while it's going and overall assassin's current kit just feels amazing, I will say the marks make you stronger than current vanish but my god there was no reason to gut vanish especially with the hilariously stupid sp changes, vanish being on a cooldown is dumb enough and while I think not losing mana in vanish is good because mana and intel are pretty crap right now, coming out of vanish and not getting lifesteal for example on that hit just feels so awful and clunky to play, shadestepper really should've stayed closer to how assassin is now, it had a kit that synergized so unbelievably well and I agree only the best assassin players really could make full use of it, the marks are a cool idea but man shadestepper needs a bit of tweaking, dash should be put in the acrobat tree and give it better movement, vanish's dash is pretty crap on its own which is why it needs the speed boost for mobility and it feels so right for assassin, vanish should be the base movement spell again, work as it does now but spread the damage boost out, put one in the tree where it gives you a 40% boost for 1 second then have one that doubles it and maybe nerf marks and somewhat revert multi, I think the tree should be smaller and all the spells shouldn't be taken apart so much, it's just so unbelievably obnoxious. Tldr revert vanish to how it is now, split the damage boosts up in the tree, revert multihit and give it a buff and nerf marks so each one adds 4% damage with a max of 5 marks before the ability that gives 2 more marks which should remain the same, however the better marks ability should only give +1% damage to the marks thus still keeping them relevant but keeping vanish ACTUALLY at the center of the kit unlike it is now. Please fix this class I mean the new update seemed really cool but everything feels so clunky and I think every class should have an archetype that's just a buffed version of the original kit, all the classes have decent kits and none really need to be drastically changed although some might like it and that's fine, but there's so much unnecessary shit in this update to the point where combat feels much better in 1.20 than in the beta.

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Kinda started rambling but my god only Wynn can take an update that looks so cool and ruin it, screwing up the best designed class in the game and making agility and intel feel more like garbage than Lunar Spine

 

Besides my opinion that acrobat isnt the worst assassin archetype (because it’s the only archetype that I have been able to solo li with), I strongly agree with basically everything else mentioned. It’s hilarious how ridiculously op the mindless spell spam archetypes are while the high skill high reward classes/archetypes like assassin have been seemingly completely disregarded.

Context for anyone that hasn’t tried beta. It’s laughably easy for classes like mage, archer, and warrior to output well over 100k dps (with some builds going well over 1 mill dps) while keeping the same if not better survivability than 1.20. Meanwhile shadestepper with cata (once one of the highest damaging mythics in the game in 1.20) can barely even hit 80k dps consistently, and other assassin builds can’t even get above 30-50k dps and that’s using mythics.

I understand that this is beta and that things are not finalized, yet we’re approaching 2 months since beta came out (now 1 month since mage) and things are not even remotely close to being balanced, especially in endgame… Not to mention the countless other bugs and issues as well as an entire class still missing. And despite all this, Salted/ct team still claim that things are going relatively smoothly and they still hope to release in August.

 

Regarding the "nerfed" "stun" time. First off, it's Blind. I'm just a stickler for that, this isn't anything against your point- it just bugs me when people call it stun. Second off, the main benefit of Blind is that it takes enemies a couple of seconds to re-aggro to you after getting blinded, so you have a much larger grace period than that 0.5 suggests, roughly equaling out to around the same time as a 1 second blind would anyways. The lessened half a second makes virtually no difference whatsoever.

 

lol cope

 

Alright so i recently learned that the reason why mobs reagro so quickly is due to new mob ai, which fucks over shadestepper immensely, but yes it is blind stun. anyways the difference between 0.5 and 1 second means u actually get to cast a multihit before you get hit, but the thing with spin attack was that it realistically had a nearly 1.5-2second stun effect due to the worse mob AI, which allowed you to get in a bunch of burst dmg before the mob ever reagro'd. so the point still somewhat stands, but i think the new fix would just be to increase the stun to compensate for this recent change due to the fact that backstab is so bad right now because of this.

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I AM COPING

 

You completely missed the point of this post and ignored the biggest problems with the class, please give it another read sir. And honestly it's basically a stun and I dont think it's a very big deal, but it does make a difference when vanish was nerfed to shit. You guys should be taking criticism seriously with this update because it was royally screwed up and could've been Wynn 2.0, but the combat just feels so much worse and not because it's in beta.

 

No response lmfao.
Not even a slight attempt at trying to calm our fears, shows how much of a shit show is going on behind the scenes.

 

to everyone being mad about assassin being bad:
at least this is better than hsb

 

it isnt

 

This isn't anything new, the game designers are some of the most close minded people and this game is gonna go to shit real fast if they dont start taking criticism seriously and realize they're wrong sometimes, I find it hilarious because their knowledge of their own game is beginner level at best which is probably why some of their decisions are so terrible AND why a lot of people who have been playing for a while aren't very pleased with this update anymore.

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Stg we're gonna have a repeat of the guild update where from what I was told Salted talked with relevant guild community players who knew what would be good for the community and all those suggestions went in one ear and out the other and the guild update upon release was absolutely disgusting, even when they manage to get criticism and feedback from people who actually know what they're talking about they fuck it up, I dont think I've gotten this aggressive on the forums before this update, it's so annoying how they took an update which was just on the right track and managed to neuter it at every turn, they cannot take a step forward without taking multiple steps back and all criticism is going to be ignored since they can't be wrong about balancing their game.

 

mfw 1.18 repeat

 

I didn't have anything to say to the rest, because I agree that Assassin feels bad and most of the points are pretty fair- I've communicated as much internally to the team. My thoughts differ a bit from this, but the overarching point that a lot of the archetypes could use polishing and Assassin ones feel particularly iffy is the same, so I didn't feel the need to respond to anything else except the one point that stuck out to me.

I was at work. I have a job. Just cause I didn't immediately respond doesn't mean I'm ignoring you or anyone else. Immediately jumping to the worst conclusions and assuming we're trying to ruin the game is an issue I'm seeing more and more lately.

 

I think it is rather important to voice your opinion and show support for threads people put a good amount of thought into like this one whether you agree or not, but fair enough.

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This is kinda what I and I know a lot of other people mean when we say there's a lack of transparency between the Wynn team and the players and I for one would like that to improve.