The assassin buff hurts the existing assassin playerbase


#1

(copy pasted from reddit)

inb4 what existing assassin playerbase?

While the new assassin buff definitely 100% helps those who normally wouldn’t play the class, it hurts those who are already hardcore assassin players such as myself.

Let my preface this by saying the mana reduction and the DPS increase are perfectly swell and dandy, it’s the throw time that shoots existing assassins in the knee.

Point 1: Assassin is about intuition and knowing > reaction
Assassin has always been class that has thrived off of knowing enemy patterns, keeping a close eye on a bosses tells to know when a venom will hit and when it won’t. This is contrary to most classes who thrive off of reacting to what an enemy does as it does it. By decreasing the throw time the line between reaction and intuition is blurred making the class less unique and more in suit to class like wizard and necromancer.

This blurring of the lines will promote less skilled play and more random throwing and hoping your venom hits. Which I feel is not okay.

Point 2: The old assassin throw time is hardwired into our brains
For most assassin mains like myself, when we should throw a venom is mostly an unconscious decision. When we should throw a venom based on an enemies tells is something that we have hardwired into our brains over the years. This change will screw with existing assassin players ability to get DPS as they will prove to consistently throw too early missing their windows.

Point 3: Relearning the timings is not as simple as you’d think
Well why can’t assassins simply learn the class again, they somehow managed to figure out how to make it work once? Well I’ll tell you why. Unconscious decision making is something that ha been beaten into our brains over the years. It becomes essentially habit of when to hit the space bar. Any assassin main can tell you their brain ticks every time they see an enemy opening in a RotMG video, we can’t help it.

For example say you always put your keys on your mantle when you return home but want to start putting them somewhere safer like in a drawer. You probably won’t remember to put them in a drawer until after you put them on the mantle, and when you look for them later you’ll likely forget where you put them since they aren’t in their usual place. During testing I would often throw my venom much too early, go ‘Oh yeah’, throw a second venom too late, and end up missing two venoms, wasting my mana, and missing my opportunity to get venom DPS in since enemies would die too fast. I slowly got the hang of it but would still default back to the old timings during each new fight.

Point 4: What existing assassins can already do pre-buff
People consistently insist assassin is bad, for they fear what they do not understand. However assassin has always excelled at what other classes couldn’t. Get damage in on an enemy while it is invincible.

Of course you’ll get the argument that 1000 damage instantly is better than 900 over 7 seconds. But this fails to realize something that not even most assassins realize. The venom hangs around a bit after hitting the ground. This allows us to do some amazing things other classes couldn’t even dream of. Hit test chests and others enemies that spawn invincible and get a head start on DPS. That is correct, a good assassin can land a venom on a test chest before anyone can even hit it.1 /But it’s not just test chests, it’s enemies like Skuld before she does the paralyze wave. By changing the timing existing assassins lose this edge until they can re-learn the class. Such a short window of opportunity you can’t actively and efficiently practice will be a nightmare to get the hang of.

(note you can hit test chests as they spawn with a weapon, but you can’t spellbomb it or hit it with a quiver, you can hit it with a huntress trap though. I just wanted to sound fancy).

Recap and Ending thoughts
I am very much against the timing change on assassin venoms. It promotes less skill based gameplay, while this will certainly attract new players to the class it will hurt those who already know and love assassin.

Is there any way I can improve my argument? Are there any arguments I can add to help cement my ideas? Do you have an valid counter arguments? Please, let me know!

This argument is a little redundant and incohesive but I am very passionate about assassin and wanted to get this out there before the update goes live in the chance someone from DECA sees it and and realizes maybe the throw time reduction isn’t such a good idea.

link to reddit post
The reddit version is the one I will be updating, as it’s better to post replies on than constantly make edits on realmeye, while versa is true for reddit.


#2

I cannot confirm this but perhaps the new throw time is he same as the huntress trap? Can anyone back me up on this?


#3

Ahem brother.

i dont main assassin but I love it


#4

I don’t think this buff will affect assassin mains that bad, yes they might miss their poisons the first time but they will learn that now you can throw them directly at the enemy instead that some tiles ahead to make it land, the huntress trap buff affected my timing as well and tbh it didn’t took me that long to get used to it (yes I still failed sometimes when I thought I got it but slowly you will get it done)


#5

:sunglasses:


#6

I really just think people look too far into class differences, play the game play what class you like.

and uh… don’t complain about a straight buff of a shitty character that you like defending.


#7

I agree with all the points, I play assassin a fair bit and though I hardly know the timing of all the examples you give, I do like to think I’m good at timing it in Oryx phases.

I’d suggest that the underlying skill won’t change, that being the ability to learn the timing. There will definitely be a bit of confusion while the new timings overwrite the old in our brains, but I’m not too hung up on losing my instinct timings, and after a few weeks of the new poisons I’m expecting that it will be business as usual.

I’m cavalier at the thought of adapting to the shorter throw time because there’s been so many new enemies over the last couple of years, changes to existing ones, new invuln. phases on things like Skull/Cubes - these have all been possible to cope with, and the benefit to the assassin player of being able to get their poison in faster outweighs the negative of having to relearn the timings, IMO.

& I’d counter-suggest that the more you play assassin, the faster you’ll adapt to the changes since you’re gonna be in more situations to learn the timings than the casual assassin who will still hit during the invulnerable, so assassin-mainers will still have the advantage.


#9

Or it will take a little time to get used to, but after a bit of practice, it will be easy to time again.

Ouch.

Flashbacks of 'Nam, huh?

See? Already making progress.

Okay, all joking aside, I understand where you’re coming from. But you gotta understand that the timing change is all a way of balancing this:

Yeah, it’s gonna be harder to time throws, but it will be well worth it when you learn, and, with some practice, you will learn. Old habits die hard, yes, but this isn’t going to be like trying to kick cigarettes or something. I remember back in the dark ages of 2014, I wanted to learn Mystic over the summer, so for about four or five months I played Mystic whenever I could. Back then it was pretty straight forward. Just stasis shit and move on. Then, that autumn, the first WisMod update went live, and Mystic gained the ever useful Curse. However, in order to avoid clunky Stasis-Cursing, I had to learn where to position the orb blast to make the most of both abilities. It took a while, but I’m quite adept at it now, though I haven’t played Mystic in a while. It’s the same idea here with the Assassin in my opinion.

And there’s also the small matter that the other 75%+ of the community that never plays assassin likes the idea of this higher skill, higher payout ability. And I think if you’re just patient and give it time, you’ll see this as a good buff for your favorite class.


#10

Sorry but this post does not make any sense to me; from the

  • belief that skill should be defined by inhuman precision in a such an unstable game, to the

  • illogical reasoning that reduced throw time leads to MORE random throwing

  • belief that poison timing is largely subconscious and neurologically ingrained in most assassin players, to the

  • claim that the current timing can be learned and mastered to the split second but it is too difficult to relearn a new interval reduced by 50% (and therefore MORE than 50% easier due to less room for error), to the

  • failure to realize that hitting an enemy while invincible is inconsequential, NOT more difficult, and irrelevant to any measurement of outcome 99.99% of the time, to the

  • defense of an apparent “community of Assassin players” who will be collectively hurt by a positive change, and lastly to the

  • acknowledgement that while the changes will without a doubt make Assassin more accessible, the massive increase in appeal for the class is STILL not enough to warrant inconveniencing the abysmal amount of players who support your conclusion,

I cannot find myself sympathizing at all with your case.


#11

Listen to this, it’s the best way I can describe how the new venom time feels to me. It’s far from bad, it’s just really really awkward and wrong.

Though it’s nothing we won’t be able to get used to after a while. :sunglasses:


#12

one of the top comments from the same video you posted

so yeah i think you will struggle for a while then get better


#13

what existing assassin playerbase?

But in actually it’s a good thing I suck at assassin already


#14

I still haven’t come to terms with medusas not dropping abysses yet… :smiley:


#16

Then don’t join in it. Go find some higher level of discussion more suitable to your intelligence.

OP has some valid points.


#17

(I’ll also copy my response from Reddit)

I am worried about this as well, just as I was about changing the throw time of traps. But after all, the huntress changes received very positive feedback and I’m glad we went the route of making abilities more responsive, which is the biggest problem those two classes had.

I imagine we’ll have a similar result here, the need of the many outweigh the need of the few. I believe every dedicated assassin player will get used to the changes and enjoy their benefits.

It’s important to note that the pace of game changed severely after pets were introduced, which made 1.5 seconds increasingly steeper of a time frame to get the use out of your abilities - things dying before impact, or before damage ticked, etc.

We’re still not sure about lowering it to 0.8 seconds, as for traps it’s 1.0. On one hand we like the idea of poisons feeling a bit different, on the other hand we like consistency.

With the next iteration on the changes we are also thinking of increasing the throw time of one of the UTs back to 1.5 (most likely Plague to balance out the insane radius).


#20

Troll topic.

If you’re an assassin main and have the timings down then you’re good enough to get the new timings down. </thread>


#21

I don’t think relearning classes is or should be easy, but it keeps people playing the game. do you think that if deca kept releasing dungeons that were unreasonably easy on knights any player with half a brain wouldn’t have a knight? before all these anti melee dungeons came out knight items were expensive as hell, and now that they are no longer the king, people have to learn how to play priests and archers. the game would get boring and stale if nothing changed, and getting to relearn how to play a character means you get replayability. do you not think that ut items don’t change the way you play a character? The game is about learning and relearning, and to say that qol changes (that don’t fundamentally change the class mind you, they just make him a bit faster) are going to hurt assassin mains is ridiculous and stupid. Also, saying that shortening the throw time makes him a reaction class is stupid, as you still need to think about the amount of time its going to be in the air, its just shorter than before.


#22

The new huntress time is 1 sec, I believe the proposed sass time is .75 s. They both used to be 1.5 sec.

I favor the reduction because of how pets and playerbase skill have increased the pacing of the game. 1.5 sec is too long to wait in many situations, e.g. events like skull shrine, you can be the first person to it and throw from 12 tiles away but others run up to hit and send it into invulnerability phase before your throw lands.

However, I strongly believe sass and huntress should be the same as each other, so sass should go to 1 sec on tiered. Making both throw abilites have the same timing = easier learning and adjusting styles when switching classes.


#23

With the next iteration on the changes we are also thinking of increasing the throw time of one of the UTs back to 1.5 (most likely Plague to balance out the insane radius).

Nice idea. Goes with plague being slower-acting.

Mind increasing plague drop rate while your at it? I’d sure like to try it again but can’t expect to at 1/1000 :slight_smile:


#24

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