Subtle Assassin Buff

#1

The Assassin is meant to be a class that is capable of being light on his feet while simultaneously dishing out plenty of damage. However, when he is compared to other classes, he falls behind in regards to this damage output. In fact, classes who’s main purpose is crowd control or healing are doing more overall damage than the Assassin, even after the poison was reworked.

As a class that focuses primarily on damage, the Assassin should find itself among the top classes for this, not in the middle. At the moment the Assassin is nearly equal to the Trickster in terms of dps, once the poison’s damage is included. Meanwhile, the Trickster is able to keep up with the Assassin’s damage output while also having the ability to teleport and provide distractions.

The Assassin is outperformed in nearly every way by many other classes and rarely sees situations where his role will be on top. Compared to the other two dagger classes, the Assassin gives up a fail-safe in favor of damage, but the amount of damage isn’t enough to justify the trade. That is why the Assassin requires a boost in damage to make this reasonable.

Poisons should give the Assassin attack directly, similar to the way shields and helms provide defense for the Knight and Warrior. That means the Assassin will benefit anywhere from 0 to 12 bonus attack for just tiered poisons, depending on how much is deemed necessary. In addition to this, the ATT cap could be raised simultaneously to be equal to that of the Trickster.

(This will affect maxing ATT by doing the following)
Initial Stats Gain Per Level Average at 20 Base Stat Cap
Now 12 0-2 31 60
New 10 1-2 38 65

With the two variables involved, ATT from poisons and ATT from increasing the cap, there are several different combinations in which this can be done. While I absolutely do believe that the Assassin requires an attack boost of some kind, I cannot decide how much he needs and where he needs it. That is why I’ve created this poll to allow you to provide your own feedback.

DPS Chart to help decide

DPS
DPS.PNG789x525 106 KB

Note: Ability DPS is not included.

  • Follow Helm Progression (+10 ATT with T6)
  • Follow Shield Progression (+12 ATT with T6)
  • Helm Progression with 65 ATT Cap (+15 ATT)
  • Shield Progression with 65 ATT Cap (+17 ATT)
  • Other (Post your reasoning)
  • No Change

0 voters

I’d argue that the best thing about this simple concept is that a poison giving ATT makes as much sense as a shield or helm giving DEF.

#2

This would help but the poison should just be instantaneous damage or reworked entirely.

#3

I reckon just making the time it takes for all poisons to do their work equal to t0 (about 2.5 seconds? Rather than like 6 for t6) would be good enough. Wouldn’t have to wait years for the damage over time to actually do it’s damage

#4

No, definitely not. Giving it the same att as the Trix would mean it outdamaged Trix all the time, as basically a Trix with poisons. Assassin has an ability that does more damage at range than any other class. (Wiz’s spell does more damage at once, but that damage is only applied once, is greatly affected by armour and requires all shots to hit). It takes time but that balances out the amount of damage. It also makes it more interesting, requiring a bit more strategy than just aim and shoot.

#5

Well, the only difference between the Assassin and the Trickster is that the Trickster is capable of safely dealing her full damage behind a decoy, or teleporting away when things get hectic. On the other hand, an Assassin can safely deal about 7% of his normal dps to an area, but delayed. With decent MP regen and good max MP he can boost it up to about 35% of his normal DPS, but for only 4.5 seconds each.

Increasing the Assassin’s ATT value won’t affect his poison, it’ll only give him up to 21% more dps depending on which option you believe is best.

Anyway, if raising ATT isn’t the way to go, then what should happen with him?

#6

If anything Assassin is OP, with a good pet. You are dealing several thousand damage every poison thrown, something you can do every few seconds. Poisons ignore armour and work from any range. With their area of effect they even take care of enemies off-screen.

Like other classes with damaging dealing abilities, it becomes far more effective, if not OP, as your pet MP heal increases. It’s not as much fun when you are starting out, as the high MP cost of better poisons means you don’t get to use them often.

#7

The majority of players do not have enough MP heal to abuse the poison. Raising ATT does not affect the poison at all, and when compared to a player with a 100 MHeal pet, the amount of damage 17 more ATT would do is negligible because of the sheer amount of poisons being thrown.

Any class (Aside from Warrior and Rogue) will become all powerful with a good mheal pet anyway, and they’ll still outperform the Assassin in their own ways.

As of now, even for players with rare pets, the Assassin is likely in their bottom three classes when it comes to enjoyment/usefulness.

I’d rather the Assassin become at least 5% more useful to everybody than have it be only enjoyed by <5% of players because they spent tons of money on a mighty pet.

#8

I personally believe that at this point assassin needs no other changes other than (maybe) +200 instant damage and should be able to use poison on bosses while they are shielded. (rather than the current way, where you are probably constantly missing the timing on poisons and wasting 100-140 MP)
Honestly though assassin is a fun class as is, IIRC it has the highest atk of dagger classes already AND a damaging ability.

#9

No, trickster beats assassin in dagger damage (especially if you’re running an mp set on your assassin). You do make a good point though, poisons take way too much mana to MAYBE do 900 damage to a boss while a class like wizzy is sitting there with a lower mana cost and a much higher damaging ability.

#10

If anything, the Assassin should see a 6 point Wisdom progression from tier to tier, capping at +6 Wisdom at T6. This may not look significant, but you’re looking at the issue quite one-dimensionally in terms of weapon DPS/Damage resistance for balance. Balance can be employed in measures of utility rather than damage. The Wisdom modifier will definitely have a significant effect on the usage rate of the Poison, even though it may seem negligible at first sight.

On that note, the Vitality stat may also be getting a rework to grant small immunity/status effect buffering. Perhaps the Vitality stat might be reworked into the Assassin as Assassins develop immunity to the toxins they work with? Just a thought, and on that tangent I’m looking to see what DECA does with the Vitality stat.

Let me know if I’m wrong, though. I just personally think the Assassin has good early-to-midgame utility and excepting the endgame where invulnerability phases make the Assassin a little less useful (this challenge was addressed when poison throw times were changed) I’d still argue that Assassin remains in meta enough for it to be called a balanced and well-loved class.

#11

I quite like that idea, having the Assassin be more resistant to status effects.

Assuming the Vit rework goes through I’d be willing to go as far to say that increasing the Assassin’s vit cap to 75 would be enough to help him compare to the other dagger classes. Heck, it’d make more sense than the Sorcerer having 75 Vit. +35 to a stat cap is huge though, so I doubt anyone would be willing to agree with something as drastic as that.

Regardless, I’ll always be bothered by the fact that Assassins in most games are deadly, whereas RotMG’s Assassin is nearly in the middle of all classes when it comes to dps.

Any simple buffs like these can’t make the Assassin greater than classes like the Warrior and Paladin though, so I wouldn’t be concerned about making him overpowered.

#12

Then get gud :grinning: I would not say I like it, but having bosses with invulnerable phases makes using poisons much more interesting. You have to know and anticipate when they are vulnerable, which is easy for some bosses (Limon e.g. has very regular timing), hard for others (Oryx e.g.).

#13

the poison itself is the issue because it gobbles up so much MP for so little DPS
its built towards controlling large amounts of units, i get that. to use the t2 poison as an example, even something like the quiver (580 in t2), shield (510 in t2), and the spell (1000-1800 in t2. (spells can be used as both concentrated towards one unit or crowd control.)).

the assassin would be made a good class if the poisons cost about 5-15 less MP to all of them. virtually none of them are worth casting for the lackluster DPS

#14

i’m personally of the opinion that the assassin’s ability just doesn’t really match up what an “assassin” should be. The ability is long range trickle group damage, all of which doesn’t match what an assassin should be:

  • close up
  • single target damage
  • burst damage

which are all attributes that are nice and can work well on a dagger class, but this “poison” seems like the kind of ability a WAND class would synergize with. Because of this, I don’t think assassin can be simply buffed in a satisfying way- either it’s boring and underused or it’s boring and overpowered.

Also, DPS. The single-target DPS of poison is absolutely terrible. 100 Mheal + Murky toxin will deal 450 DPS, granted that you aim it right EVERY TIME. Very, very few people have even half that mana regeneration (90 mheal), and most experienced players are sitting in the 70s and 80s. That means for most people, “getting gud” means getting max 100 DPS or less out of a poison. Contrast this to the regular few thousand DPS almost every maxed character with tops is capable of dealing.

Granted, this DPS is multiplicative based on the number of enemies you hit with it- landing perfect poisons on a densely packed Crusade will have you dealing more DPS than even the most geared out Warrior in the group, at least for the moment that the Crusade is alive. We don’t really tend to value non-boss DPS, and since most bosses are kind of singular meat walls that don’t make enough use of vulnerable minions, the situations where Assassin should shine are few and far between.

I’d say in general, there needs to be more boss battles that players can take advantage of with piercing DPS. This would probably make bow/katana classes a little more appreciable in the lategame.

But if we’re talking strictly about how we can change Assassin, I’d only be able to support a complete rework of his ability.

#15

I’ve been having a think about assassin buffs recently and come to the conclusion that all it would take to make assassin a class people care about is to add Weak to the poisons (and maybe buff Weak itself against enemies, -10% damage is nothing. 20% would be more noticeable).

It doesn’t make assassin more damaging, but it means they would be valuable in a group setting even with HP scaling making their DPS irrelevant, and it wouldn’t contribute to steamrolling like a damage-related debuff such as Curse or minus defence would.

#16

With the status effect immunity stuff Deca has been tinkering with, weak won’t be such a bad idea, as it won’t be able to be perma’d but will still help a lot

#17

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