Assassin Ability Rework: Poison-Coated Daggers


#1

Assassin has a reputation for being kind of a potato in late-game content. The trickster and rogue both have much more rushing utility, and the assassin’s good damage rarely matters when the trickster and rogue both have a much easier time creating openings to deal damage safely.
The assassin’s poison just isn’t a great tool for endgame dungeons. Dealing 1200 damage per ability use sounds good until you realize it’s worth less than a second of dagger DPS, doesn’t scale with most buffs, is awkward to throw, and takes way too long to do meaningful damage. For most late-game bosses, it’s enough to pass soulbound thresholds but not enough to contribute meaningfully to a fight.

My proposed rework is to add a new component to the assassin’s ability: while the ability button is held, the assassin coats his dagger with poison, which increases his damage.

Reworked Baneserpent Poison:
Tier 6
MP Cost: 100
On Equip: +20 HP, +20 MP, +3 WIS
While Key Held:

  • MP Cost: 30 MP/sec
  • Poison-Coated on self
  • Attacks deal 50 + (4 per WIS over 50) additional armor-piercing damage on hit

When Key Released:

  • Impact Damage: 200
  • Damage Over Time: 700 total
  • Duration: 4.5 second(s)
  • Radius: 5 tiles

The new ability works like a ninja star: it gives him a buff while the ability button is held, and can be released (or tapped) for a damaging attack. This mechanic also gives the assassin an interesting new way to pump up single-target damage. Wouldn’t it make sense for an assassin, of all classes, to be good at killing single targets?

The MP drain is very high compared to the Ninja’s standard stars, but the damage increase is huge: 90 extra damage per attack at maxed WIS! The assassin’s high DEX also allows him to apply this damage very quickly. This interaction also allows him to scale nicely in group dungeons like the Lost Halls and Shatters: he gets to apply his poison-coated daggers much more quickly with a berserk buff.

One of the most important skills for the current assassin is the ability to predict when the boss will become vulnerable and timing the poison accordingly. The high mana cost of this new ability allows the assassin’s poison to retain its identity as a high-cost, high-reward ability that plays around timing: unlike a perma-buffing class, players will need to know when they can hit bosses reliably or risk wasting their mana.


#2

I feel as if I’m obliged to say something, so I’ll start by saying that I think this is an interesting idea. The mp drain is balanced and still keeps assassin as an mp-based class, but I feel as if it changes it up a little too much. I would prefer this to be on a ut poison, like maybe add this to plague or something and slightly nerf the radius, because, like I said earlier, it changes the class a little too much for me. I feel the fun part of the assassin is trying to time it right and watch that damage go on while the boss is invincible. Take this from someone who plays the assassin very much, (it is my favorite class). Very well thought out idea though, and definitely a very interesting one!


#3

I’ll start by stating that I don’t think Assassin needs a buff. With just dagger alone they have pretty good DPS, only 5 att below a Trix, 10 more than Rogue. Their ability though is what distinguishes the class, letting them do massive damage (900 x however many enemies there are), doing damage that ignores armour and is also incrediby safe to use as it can be lobbed from any distance, over obstacles.

THis is an interesting idea but I am not sure it works well mechanically. First having an ability that is per-shot would be hard to balance. You could e.g. equip a dagger with increased fire rate to get more poisonous hits in. Or even a dagger with two shots so you get twice as many hits in as normal.

Perhaps more of a problem, anything using the mechanic used by Ninja stars has to deal with the fact it’s badly broken. You can easily trigger a disconnect by using your ability as a Ninja, if your MP drops too low. A 30 MP/sec drain on MP would pretty reliably cause your MP to go to zero, putting it in the range of a DC if it works the same way.

(you might think DECA would fix an easily caused DC bug, especially one that’s been in the game for years, but they seem to have no interest in it)


#4

BTW, just making a new Samurai having done something stupid with the last one, reminded me that Doku no Ken now has a poison effect on the weapon. on shoot. But it also has a 3 second cooldown, so is independent of your rate of fire. The slowing nova on the Wand of Geb similarly happens on shooting but with a five second cooldown between novas.

Basically you want an ability or proc to have an MP cost, or have a cooldown time. Having it fire every shot is just too hard to balance with all the things that can affect your rate of fire and number of shots.


#5

“Massive” damage. 900 damage is nothing man… I hit 1k PER SHOT with cdirk on trickster. I think assassin needs to have the poison buffed and the DPS stats buffed. It should be THE DPS dagger class- trickster and rogue have utility, assassin should be doing the most.

I had a similar idea for assassin, but instead of holding down an ability it would apply when you throw your poison. Your next X shots deal a DOT effect. This would reward careful aim and timing your shots, while not allowing high fire rate weapons to abuse it. You would apply the damage faster, but the total damage remains the same.


#6

Er, CDirk does 220 damage per shot, on average. To do 1k per shot, so about x4.5, you would need 200 att. So, no, you don’t do 1k per shot, probably you do more like half of it.

I don’t disagree, that most of the time your weapon is most important for doing damage. Including for Assassin, which is so close to Trix in raw DPS it makes little difference. The main difference is ability; the Trix gets to decoy things, the 'Sin gets to do additional damage to them.


#7

curse, expose, armor break, damaging, +18 atk set, high dmg roll at 290… its possible is all im saying


#8

Here’s my two cents:

Yes, at a first glance, the poison damage seems to be far too low. But firstly, keep in mind how much more it’ll do to weaker enemies that aren’t bosses, or even lesser bosses themselves. We don’t want to make it too powerful!

Next, since awhile back, the assassin received a massive buff for its poisons to stack their damage, making it far more spammable. The damage strikes through armor and periods of invincibility as a plus.

I think the largest argument I have is this: The assassin is another “safe” class, if you will. It doesn’t have to get in close to rack up a humble amount of damage, so the price can be a slightly lowered tool for keeping your distance. It’s a trade-off! The Sorc’s scepterfeels like a side-grade to the Assassin’s poison, tbh.


#9

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