what?

At least half of the stuff you spew on the forums is blatantly wrong, it almost defies logic. I seriously hope people don't validate what you say just because you rear your head in every imaginable forum thread Assassins are unpowered, less so than a few other specs, but still far from optimal. DPS operatives aside, they don't have comparable utility when compared to other sub-10m classes. Low Slash and taunts are a joke compared to PT aoe stun, baseline pull better slow, VASTLY superior sustained damage and survivability and taunts of their own. And Maras? Don't get me started with the group buffs and instant aoe mezz... Your "op maul" (what a joke that is) doesn't count for a damn thing when you're queued into a team with a fake tanking pt that laughs at your crits and melt you down in seconds. Solo queue doesn't matter. You just hope you get matched with the less retarded players and pray to God that nobody disconnects, lags to hell and back or ragequits. Plenty of terrible/second rate players (from my server, anyway) are high up on the leaderboards. Means nothing. Most good players don't bother with Assassins because they just aren't worth the time or the pointlessly additional required effort. As a result, most of the solo queue Assassins are especially terrible. Hence, why you don't see them topping the leaderboards in such droves.

Madness needs better force management. You (the developers) have stated that that is not the case. You are wrong. It needs better force management. Could be tied to pre-2.0 assassin deathmark (each consumption of a deathmark returns force). Or a free Consumption proc. Something. Madness does not need any damage/burst buffs. Force management aside, the spec performs quite well as a sustained damage dealer. Lightning is outclassed by Arsenal Mercs and is an absolute joke compared to Snipers. Has amazing burst (but still in line with other ranged DPS) if left alone but no good team will let that happen in PvP. Peeling can only get you so far. Lightning sorcs need to be able to cast more efficiently and not get completely shut down by a single opposing DPS, even if you're guarded. They need a fair deal of additional survivability/casting utility talents. Lightning does not need a damage buff. I believe force issues could be solved if Lightning Effusion was moved to the second tier of Lightning (accessible by all classes) and nerfed so that it only reduced the cost of the next force ability by 25/50% as opposed to 75%. This would make it important for Lightning Sorcs to maintain 3 stacks of Subversion (they don't need to at all atm) and would solve Madness force starvation issues while still necessitating smart resource management for all specs. I believe that healing sorcs (and sorcs in general) would be in a much better place if healing operatives and Smash/Carnage/Marksmanship/Lethality were brought in line (read: nerfed). As is, there is just too much pressure for either Corruption/Lightning sorcs to perform at their intended level.

A major issue with operative DPS is that their survivability is somewhat tied to Exfiltrate. This is bad. It costs a ton of energy, costs a GCD, gets you out of range for actually DPSing a target and its procs (Insant Infusion and mini-Evasion) are neither sufficient or even guaranteed to proc. These procs need to be redesigned to be more reliable and most importantly shouldn't be tied to Exfiltrate. I believe that Lethality damage is fine (Snipers are far superior but I believe that that class requires DPS nerfs, they are so far ahead that buffing every other class to their level would likely cause more balance headaches than it is worth). Concealment needs to be able to use Hidden Strike more frequently. It's not that good of an ability as is: no guaranteed crit, needs stealth. It should be redesigned so that it can be used when Ghost (Sneak) is active. But it only knocks the target down if used from stealth. Concealment seems to have been designed for frontloaded burst and stunlocking. Buffing its burst damage is a terrible idea, it will just frustrate the recipient of the damage without promoting any counterplay. Instead, Operatives should be immune to hard CC when coming out of stealth and when Sneak is up (sneak procs for a few seconds out of stealth like Deception blackout). This allows the Operative to do his full combo and be a threat but won't be impossible to counter like it was at launch when you would literally be 100-0'd. Concealment sustained damage does need a buff. Surge on Shiv, needs much better energy management. Laceration is pretty bad. Only notable Concealment damage is when Backstab/Hidden Strike crits. There simply needs to be more sustained (preferably not up front, as Concealment openers would be too strong) damage in the other skills. DPS operatives need more passive survivability/utility talents. They just get destroyed by pretty much every other DPS class in the game, either in a hard switch or over time (it doesn't take very long). So yeah, really need more sustained survivability like damage reduction or something in both trees. Other ideas that I think should be looked into: Concealment gets a free Exfiltrate every X seconds Overload shot needs both a damage buff (already reported as incoming) but it also needs better energy procs. It's gonna be useless even if it's damage is buffed by like 500-1000 (assuming full minmaxxed gear) because the energy cost is just too high. Maybe make it cheaper/free if used on a poisoned target? It needs something. Make Snipe useful in one of the specs? Yes, it was designed for Snipers but it would be nice to have the ability not be completely useless for an entire AC. Would probably be tied to Lethality, since that is the more "gun" focused tree. Get rid of surge bonus on Sever Tendon in Concealment, or make its damage actually good. Seriously, it's a damn joke as is. Explosive probe energy reduction talent in one of the trees to help with burst. etc : )

No it isn't. Pre-2.0 Wakajinn is better than anything we have now, but the spec isn't as good anymore. Not enough additional up front damage to make a difference with operative burst healing so dominant. Full deception sustained damage is better and that matters more now.

Not to discredit Plastic_Cup or any other good juggs, but those duels were recorded when I wasn't fully geared and had only come back to the game like 2-3 weeks before I did the duels. Since then I've practiced against very good juggs and I've won most of the time. You can't win in Deception against a good tank jugg, but I've been able to win by going full tank gear/darkness. Just outsustain them, duels last like 2 minutes and it isn't fun or really applicable to warzones/arenas but that's that. Just throwing that out there, since I see my duels against Plastic cup come up a lot and are taken way out of context.

really

While I think simple damage buffs are a very lazy way to go around fixing the class, I feel like the darkness/deception changes have the potential to do so. While not buffing deception/madness survivability is bad, they hinted at nerfing marauder/sniper cooldowns in the future, so I think that would balance things out. So while I have high hopes for darkness/deception, I still feel like madness will be completely gimped. Not being able to cleanse is great, but it is going to be more noticeable on sorcs. Assassins are still going to be lesser madness sorcs in pretty much every way. These were the best answers yet, and I'm trying to be optimistic. Here's hoping the changes are suitable.

ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ

or in a dueling tournament

It's too bad you couldn't have fit survivability issues/phase walk's mediocrity into any of the questions but, all in all good job on the writeup. Here's hoping the answers don't disappoint :/

yes, because the game should be balanced around 1v1s that makes perfect sense. Thanks Maniac, gotta say I didn't expect a lot of celebration but I'm nonetheless more than a bit alienated by everyone's attitude about the results. Given recent Bastion happenings, I guess entering was a lose-lose decision anyways, meh. The credits are nice though. thanks for hosting the tourney

gg's kakarrot sorry that lying about every win up to the semis and then cheating in the finals wasn't enough to beat me jonie. My old guild may consider be a bad player, but I guess it doesn't take much to beat you.

Later the better, I really don't want to do it at noon unless that's the only way.

I can make it.

an example: melyn makes a thread simply trying to reignite the 8v8 rated scene and it just devolves into people screaming at other teams about stats or making personal attacks on specific players

it really amazes me how you people manage to take a massive collective dump on anything remotely constructive that happens on this server

Not that I know of. I'd be streaming "serious" stuff like this is laptop streaming didn't impact my FPS as negatively as it does.

Due to work it'd have to be later in the night. Prob around 9-10pm at the earliest for me.

We decided to duel a bit earlier, was a BO9 I won 5-1. Gudarzz, Seengularity, Luxford and a lot of Suckafish were witness. GGs Zeroday.

I'll be reliably available in like a week or so. Prob next Friday/Saturday.

This. PvP on this server is good, opportunity to get into a guild worth anything, especially on a sin, not so much.

spec is bad for reasons that pts changes have only aggravated don't run it

thank god they're two separate votes I'm pretty good at assassin but the shadow mechanics are still tripping me up

as suspicious as the situation is, do you really think talking to the guy with sole authority over the tournament like that is really gonna help your cause lol