Assassin is an under-powered class?

#21

Very on-topic btw :thinking:

Overall, gotta agree with Xaklor on this. Huntress just does what Assassin does but so much better in general. The poison is extremely weak compared to other abilities, and honestly should get a buff sometime in the future.

#22

but its ez money survival from camping or it can double as a close range boi with murky and cdirk/etherite/whatever so its a class that can be used differently depending on your risk/reward weighting. I personally like assassin, but see some good points here so idk what im saying at this point

#23

I used to love assassin but over time I found that I just play other classes more.

SB now is low so almost any class can get it easy even unmaxed classes. This low SB threshold changes the game for many.

Forget about UT and ST poisons just use a T5 or T6, chuck it at boss and you pretty much get SB but it would not hurt to hit boss 2X. Lazy ? Yeah maybe but people don’t need insane amounts of DPS anymore to kill a boss as there are almost always enough people to kill a boss fairly quickly so you only really need to get your SB.

I play classes for the enjoyment, I do tend to like range classes because it gives me time to dodge the DE-BUFFs that a lot of the bosses use. Lately I am running Cursed Libraries and the Assassin is pretty useful here because of his poison range and dagger > sword range. Huntress is good because of its bow range but the traps are pretty much useless as the boss ignores SLOW and Paralyze. Range here is key because of the Stun the boss uses.

I try not to get hung up on DPS anymore because it truly does not matter unless you are solo at the boss. If you are in a crowed there is enough DPS from the crowed to kill most bosses fairly quickly.

#24

I enjoy playing assassin as a ppe, it feels great. I feel that assassin isn’t underpowered, but neglected in a way. The assassin is meant to be a ranged dagger class, where the other two dagger classes merely have abilities that let them run through everything (I might be mistaken).

However, I do believe that the MP cost for the poisons is waaaay too much (you can’t even use the t5 ability at lvl 1). I believe nerfing both the MP and the damage at a constant rate seems fair and allows the class to become more versitile

(also camping in the corner is fun :slight_smile:)

#25

Apart from curse with the ST poison. Much easier to use than many other classes curse ability - no danger of stasis, no need to do it around yourself and curse yourself in the process as the tome does.

#26

wXEiGHE

granted, it drops from LH. but it’s much much better than the poison, it’s an instant AoE on the cursor that lasts for 4 seconds compared the the poison which has air time and only lasts for 3 seconds.

#27

Yes, that’s why I wrote ‘many’ not ‘any’. Plus of all of them the skull is the only curse inflicting ability I have no experience of, so can’t really comment on it.

#28

The Lod rework removed a couple of assassin-specialisms (black, blue, ivory could be killed without being close enough to trigger their movement, red you could herd minions together and poison them).

But assassin still has soloing O2 (especially being able to do Suns/Dance with minimal fuss) going for it.
Admittedly I haven’t tried Huntress there, but as you say her ability dmg is far lower (T6=350 and I believe O2’s 60 DEF means it’s only 290 per T6 trap, versus 900 per T6 poison, also slight more MP cost). And this is telescoped for non-Divine pet players when each point of MP is more precious.

Something else that I think affects views on assassin is electric pets, since the paralyse on a strong electric pet prevents minions from bunching together and chasing you, so poison becomes less useful, whereas I (non-elec) can run around a little, everything herds together then dies with a couple of spacebars. Or if rushing non-elec, spacebar on yourself and chasing enemies get hit by it.

Edit: to the general topic, I like assassin, but I still disagree it should be more powerful because as the laziest class to play, (spacebar from max range, and non-self-peril ability unlike rogue/trix) it simply doesn’t deserve to be made stronger. Maybe there’s a case for daggers to be buffed/rebalanced, but not assassin.

If experienced players tire of assassin that’s fine, it is one of the most basic classes so it makes sense that many would want something more complex/difficult to master.

#29

Viewpoints coming from a top 20 assassin player :joy:

Edit: Wow I just noticed ur right below me.:open_mouth:

#30

Although I’ve gone on the record saying that Samurai is the class that the community is most divided on…I think it’s actually Assassin, reading through this.

Rather than going through Assassin itself, I’ll instead focus on the main points that both sides (Balanced vs Underpowered) bring up.

DPS
Assassin’s DPS is mediocre at best, and dissatisfying at worst.
While he definitely outclasses Rogue in terms of raw power, not even including the dagger, his opportunities are less frequent to close the gap between him and his enemy. Whereas Rogue can use his Cloak, Sin is stuck outside of Dagger range. Either that, or they can both reach the boss, in which case Assassin outclasses Rogue DPS-wise (but that’s a discussion for another time).
However, Assassin isn’t completely outplayed in aforementioned situation yet. Leading into the next point:

Poison Payoff
The Poison is one of the slowest abilities in the game. Out of all 15 unique ability, it belongs to the rare few to not do immediately “do” anything when spacebar is pressed - something the Huntress’ trap also shares.
It’s got the best effective range of all attacking abilities, with everything on-screen plus about 2.5-3 tiles outside of that thanks to the Poison’s decent radius.
However, it also acts the slowest, taking 5 seconds to deal its damage (compared to…well, pretty much every other ability’s single frame of contact, not taking projectile travel time into account). On top of that, its damage is underwhelming at the end, as well - 900 sounds like a lot, and out of all damage-dealing abilities, it’s certainly up there.
That is, until you realize that with as few as 4 dagger shots, you deal the same or more damage in a much shorter time frame.
It’s very polarizing, and frankly, I think it deserves a bigger rework than the one from X.26.0.0 (The Reworkening).

Class Comparing
Onto the final part. So far, I’ve mostly talked about Assassin within an isolated setting. This is beecause I wanted to save this for last. Assassin, when compared to most other classes, performs averagely. It’s got reliable damage, sure, but it doesn’t do anything insane. Think rushing classes like Warrior and Rogue, insane damage classes like Wizard, supreme support classes like Priest and Paladin…
What does Assassin have? AoE damage.
In which he is outclassed in many1 situations by Huntress, or just big groups in general.
1:See Nevov’s reply above me.

tl;dr;sb too lazy; didn’t read; seelpit bad
Assassin’s strengths are situational and underwhelming as soon as you start comparing it to other classes or bigger groups, and its weaknesses may not bee abundant, but due to its situationality, it just becomes incredibly boring.
Personally, I like Sin. It’s fun to play, at times, but I do stand by my points.

#31

Cheese a woodlab (sometimes)

enough said

#32

The Assassin can damage invulnerable enemies. It also requires timing and knowledge of the enemy invulnerability phases, which is why I like it.

#33

LoL, I used to solo wlabs with my sin, sometimes for fun I would stand on the other side of the hedge and dump poisons on the boss. Most of the time just running around the edge of the boss room and lobbing poisons was enough to get the job done.

#34

IMO Assassin’s damage shouldn’t be changed, but it should do something to encourage using the dagger; apply expose for the duration of the poison?

#35

Then samurai would be unviable, assassin is already good at what it does- getting easy soulbound (It’s becoming a meme in O2), and crowd control

#36

As long as Oryx can one hit ko your breastplate of life deca ring knight assassin will always be one of the best classes in the game.

Assassin offers a safe reliable way for you to get soulbound.
It has more armor than a wizard and is much faster.
It can deal damage from basically anywhere.
It can even deal damage offscreen.

If you’re a true noob to the game assassin is a great class.
It allows you to farm oryx with low skill and allows you to farm tombs with low skill.
Thus, you will be a master of the realm and able to stack up potions that you can then pass to your other classes.

As other people mentioned, huntress is also one of the best starter classes.

#37

assassin has always been a meme in o2

#38

YinYarn’s video says it best:

#39

wait yinyarn has the Crown ring? so he has the ability to summon items?

wack

#40

no, and no.

he’s just some dude, he’s not an admin.