A message from NoTomorrow to Assassin players

[NoTomorrow]

Dear Assassin players,

you may have noticed my extremely militant and sometimes outright brutal negativity towards Assassin as a class.

I do feel that i owe you an apology.My gripes with the class itself had nothing to do with the players behind it. But due to my agressive posts, some players that i do respect a lot, players like Cycao, ArchangelLBC never deserved this sort of behaviour from me.

 

 

So besides an apology, I feel that I need to give you an explaination behind this personal vendetta of mine against assassin as a class. Contrary to what you may have thought, my hatred towards assasins has nothing to do with how often i die to them. In fact, the kill/death ratio is very much in my favor. I don't know how many, but for my every death by an assassin i do get to kill more than one most of the times.

 

So why all the hate? Why bash the class so brutally on every occasion?

 

Do I feel like Assasins are too powerful against snipers? No way! For the sake of keeping the balance in the game, it's vital that Snipers be countered by Assassins and Operatives, especially by Deception and Concealment. I never had objections towards these match-ups.

 

My problem with the class can be sumed up with two of these points:

1. Class unpredictability - hybrids builds.
   
2. Class versatility
   

 

1. I want Assassins to be more predictable in their builds that they use. I want the class to be more predictable at what it can throw at you. When you are fighting against any other class you see their stance, or take notice of the abilities they are using (for example snipers using Plasma Probe = Engineering), you can accurately predict what they are capable of.

 

When i see somebody in Ataru stance, i know that the class has this, this and this. I know precisely how many roots do they have, what are they vulnerable to, what are the important procs for them and how i can overcome that. I know exactly the conditions he or me need to meet to win the fight. There is a clear line: if you fail at this you die, you have to anticipate this and this. You have to save your CD for this and this or you are going to eat this. Even when you loose to them, or let these guys capture an objective, you know exactly where you messed up.

 

Same can be said about many other classes. I know precisely what to expect form Medicine, Concealment, Lethality, Carnage, Annihilation, Rage, Marksmanship, Engineering, Bodyguard, Arsenal, Pyrotech, Advanced Prototype, Shield Tech. There is no need for me to play the guessing game.

 

Because of this, it's not only fun to be the one that is playing the class and using an ability but it is also fun to be on the receiving end of it, because you know exactly what is happening and what you need to do. Same can be said about many many specs. Do you think Bioware added randomly the class icons above player characters? It was with intentions to promote a clear understanding of what you are dealing with.

 

And then you have assassins, where you cannot predict crap. The tank stance means absolutely nothing. He could be a full tank with tanking gear (there are telling signs of course by looking at their HP pool), he could be a tank in DPS gear, he could be some hybrid. And God knows what hybrid that could be. He could have gone for deception to get some crazy combos of damage reduction, or he could hybrid into madness. And with so many game changing talents, there is no way to know ahead what will happen. Does he have an istacast whirlwind? Does he have root cleansing on his force speed?

 

I am against hybrid builds. I want them to be culled. I support any major buffs to Assassins top tier skills, anything just to guarantee that Assassins will want to play 36 pts builds in 2.0. I want the Assassin stance to provide meaningful information about what I am exactly dealing with.

 

 

2. I want Assassins to be a specialist class, not an universal jack-of-all-trades. The game strives to offer completely different gameplay experiences based on its different classes. Also SWTOR is trying to promote team play between these classes. How do you achieve team play? by making sure that you have specialist classes and they all depend on each other teamplay and support to achieve a common objective or goal.

 

I don't want assassins to be good at more things at the same time than any other class. If you are very good at 1vs1 being able to kill the lone indvididual reinforcements, then i definetely don't want you to be strong in the zerg.

My personal feeling is that Assassins have it much better than other classes on the warzone objectives side. I don't want the Assassins to have the monopoly on node defense, node ninja capture, cutting reinforcements and just general having tons of utility stuff available. II don't want Assassins to be more versatile than any other class because it goes against the principle of having specialist classes and team work. I want other classes to shine as well at grabbing/defending warzone objectives.

 

Yes this could be quite a big exagerration about assasins being universally good or better than other classes people will say that in RWZ they are only good at node guarding. I accept this viewpoint as well. But i feel that this specialist approach needs to be enforced as heavily as possible. Nobody wants to see the outcome of warzones decided by a single class. People want to see team work.

 

That's about it. I hope you forgive me for my negativity and hatred towards Assasins. I have always tried to be consistent with my opinions and not twist my argumentation based on what point of view i needed to defend. Sorry for my gloating over the Assassins nerfs. It was mostly because of me waiting for far too long to see those 2 concepts above brought to asssassin class.

 

I am not saying that the changes in 2.0 are the right way to go. But at least i can see some vague attempt from Bioware to cut down on hybrids. How they do that, it's up to community to convince them.

 

So once again sorry. This should be one of my last posts on assassins.

Cheers.

Edited February 25, 2013 by NoTomorrow

[Tankqull]

well i have to disappoint you - all shade/sin 36+ specs lost more than they gained to fulfill the role the tree is designed for. to compensate this dumb BW decission you will see even more hybrids then before.

[PoliteAssasin]

Lol now you kill assassins too? Man slow down you're all over the map! I'm sure I don't have to inform people not to take you seriously about this.

[Ycoga]

Nobody wants to see the outcome of warzones decided by a single class. People want to see team work.

Does this include, in 2.0, the prospect of teams of high-dps snipers speed-rolling to turrets and camping them for the duration of the WZ?

[NoTomorrow]

Does this include, in 2.0, the prospect of teams of high-dps snipers speed-rolling to turrets and camping them for the duration of the WZ?

 

Snipers alone cannot carry the team to victory and never will be. This is a general truth known among many players. I am not going to speculate about Deception now, but Concealment will perform very well against any sniper spec in 2.0. The sniper stealth detection is mainly for spotting stealthers in the frontal cone of view, which stealthers shouldn't be staying in front of anyway.

 

In fact we have been doing hilarious stuff by going as a 3 sniper premade, and we still had a good portion of loses despite our best effort to focus fire and kill targets ASAP. If the rest of theam is not performing well, snipers will not win the game for you, despite all the focus fire.

Edited February 25, 2013 by NoTomorrow

[cycao]

Here is something that I posted the other day that myself and other assassins have known for a while about our specs.

 

 

 

They have affectingly killed all hybrids while still maintaining lackluster top tier skills in the dps trees. It should be biowares job to design skill trees where you want to go full 31 points, they failed in that regards and going into a hybrid was every ones best option, its not anymore and I have yet to see if now going full 36 for deception or madness will help anything but at first look it does not seem promising.

 

Just about from launch until now there has never been any reason to not go full 31 points for any tree. Bioware has failed to address the issue that we have which is useless top tier abilities.

[NoTomorrow]

I don't know why are they doing this cycao, If you look at Sniper, Operative, Marauder, PT, (cannot comment on Jugs) and even Mercs, they all have very very decent top tier active skills. How come this happened to Assassins, no idea.

 

I mean take Massacre away from Carnage, or Plasma Probe from Engineering, or Acid blade from concealment, or Thermal Det from pyro, this would be a huge blow.

[Siorac]

I don't know why are they doing this cycao, If you look at Sniper, Operative, Marauder, PT, (cannot comment on Jugs) and even Mercs, they all have very very decent top tier active skills. How come this happened to Assassins, no idea.

 

I mean take Massacre away from Carnage, or Plasma Probe from Engineering, or Acid blade from concealment, or Thermal Det from pyro, this would be a huge blow.

 

Guardians had similar problems, insofar as Guardian Slash has been utterly useless in PvP since 1.3 and Plasma Brand is lacklustre. In this case Bioware seems to have recognised the problem as Guardian Slash will be awesome in 2.0 while Plasma Brand is improved as well (and there's a brilliant talent just below it in the Vigilance tree, Keening).

 

I agree with you in that the same philosophy should apply to the Assassins: improve the 36 point builds, discourage the use of hybrids. Tie more abilities to certain stances and make the top tier talents appealing enough.

[Laforet]

Just about from launch until now there has never been any reason to not go full 31 points for any tree. Bioware has failed to address the issue that we have which is useless top tier abilities.

 

Sorc suffers from the exact same pathology, if our full trees were actually decent for PvP bubble stun would never become so endemic.

[DarkSaberMaster]

Nice to see you take the high road and make an apology and to explain your reasonings. I play a Sniper as my main. But my first main has always been a Shadow. Was my very first character. I had always wanted to play him as DPS, but the DPS trees are mediocre at best when compared to the other melee DPS. A lot of people like myself went with the hybrid specs because EAware has for the last year encouraged it. I say that because they never tried to fix the DPS trees. They only worked on balancing the Tank trees, which is fine to make the tank trees good. But you have to make the other trees viable also. People going hybrid is really just a symptom to the actual problem.

 

Even though I like hybrid specs because I like having the unpredictability, whether I'm on the giving or receiving end of it, no matter what game it is, I agree with what you are saying about that it needs to be equal across the board. Either make hybrids viable for every class or kill them for everyone. But EAware needs to buff the DPS trees and make them viable. Make the 36 point builds viable like how my Sniper's is and people won't go hybrid. It's really that simple.

 

As a fellow Sniper player and as a Shadow, thanks for the apology. But you have to understand why people were using the specs they were using.

[Nyaara]

well i have to disappoint you - all shade/sin 36+ specs lost more than they gained to fulfill the role the tree is designed for. to compensate this dumb BW decission you will see even more hybrids then before.

 

Any Deception/infiltration Sin/Shadow will need VS/Clairvoyant for the rotation. So they put a step in the right direction.

 

I agree with NoTomorrow, hybrids are NOT good for the game.

[Atramar]

But that was whole fun of assassin... so many options.7 official builds with personal one less here one more here... room for discussion... no 'one and only viable build'

 

now, from first look, you have 2 ways you can tank in warzones, one deception and one madness build, and that's pretty much it.

 

atleast my sin will go back to tanking tree, missed it a bit.

with sniper as my main dps and operative as my healer.

 

alteast they didn't took away our stealth

[tekhiun]

Just about from launch until now there has never been any reason to not go full 31 points for any tree. Bioware has failed to address the issue that we have which is useless top tier abilities.

 

This is true for sorcerers too. And they also removed the hybrid for them

[Tankqull]

Any Deception/infiltration Sin/Shadow will need VS/Clairvoyant for the rotation. So they put a step in the right direction.

thats true but deception sucks in WZs. in open pvp its great but not in WZs. Edited February 25, 2013 by Tankqull

[Nyaara]

But that was whole fun of assassin... so many options.7 official builds with personal one less here one more here... room for discussion... no 'one and only viable build'

 

Bioware DONT WANT hybrids. Cos hybrids are a pain in the arse about balancing a game with 8 classes with 3 talent trees each in terms of PvP.

[cycao]

thats true but deception sucks in WZs. in open pvp its great but not in WZs.

 

Are we talking now or in 2.0? Because deception does anything but suck in warzones now at least in terms of regs.

[Atramar]

Bioware DONT WANT hybrids. Cos hybrids are a pain in the arse about balancing a game with 8 classes with 3 talent trees each in terms of PvP.

 

I get that.

 

what you call a hybrid? 50-50?

18/23/0 jugg in tank form is a hybrid tank or hybrid dps?

 

is doing 27/7/7 marauder means it's a hybrid?

will sin 32/x/x (in 2.0) be a hybrid?

is 0/27/14 a hybrid now?

I'm not really crying over hybrids, will miss them, but not a biggie.

in 3.0 we will have 2 premade builds which we can switch between, dps one and tanking/healing one (or one dps for snipers/marauders), so it will all be equal, predictable, and balanced.

[NamikazeNaruto]

Bioware DONT WANT hybrids. Cos hybrids are a pain in the arse about balancing a game with 8 classes with 3 talent trees each in terms of PvP.

 

Yet the top tier in Deception and Madness really isn't that great. This is a lot of the reason Shadows have usually been better off going hybrid specs.

[Siorac]

I get that.

 

what you call a hybrid? 50-50?

18/23/0 jugg in tank form is a hybrid tank or hybrid dps?

 

is doing 27/7/7 marauder means it's a hybrid?

will sin 32/x/x (in 2.0) be a hybrid?

is 0/27/14 a hybrid now?

I'm not really crying over hybrids, will miss them, but not a biggie.

in 3.0 we will have 2 premade builds which we can switch between, dps one and tanking/healing one (or one dps for snipers/marauders), so it will all be equal, predictable, and balanced.

 

Every spec that does not utilize the 31 point talent is a hybrid. What's a 27/7/7 for Marauders/Sentinels? I can't really imagine Focus without Force Exhaustion or Combat without Blade Rush (lol) so I guess it's some weird freak of Watchman without Merciless Slash? What'd be the point of doing that?

 

The 18/23 Guardian build is definitely a hybrid tank, its damage sucks even in DPS gear, the reason it goes so far up the Vigilance tree is because 1) Overhead Slash is better than Guardian Slash, 2) Commanding Awe is an awesome PvP survivability talent. But Bioware killed that hybrid by tying Unremitting to Shien and by actually fixing the Defense tree.

[Keldaur]

Yet the top tier in Deception and Madness really isn't that great. This is a lot of the reason Shadows have usually been better off going hybrid specs.

 

I would argue that the bottom tier are too good.

[Liryc]

Here is something that I posted the other day that myself and other assassins have known for a while about our specs.

 

 

 

 

 

Just about from launch until now there has never been any reason to not go full 31 points for any tree. Bioware has failed to address the issue that we have which is useless top tier abilities.

 

 

I disagree, the way they changed force breach, they made it much more necessary to go 36points up in infil order to make use of force breach. Call it more of a penalty for NOT going full infil, rather than an incentive.

 

Force breach no longer has a CD, but only does good damage when you have 3 stacks of breaching shadow. It does roughly 800-1000dmg per stack of breaching shadow. So you are forced to wait for 3 stacks rather than wait for a CD. Breaching shadow only procs when your technique does damage. So if you want to speed up your usefulness of breach you must use 2x clairvoyant strike, then project auto procs shadow technique damage (on a separate timer than the 4.5 sec from shadow technique). The extra damage during project is a boost, but nothing fantastic, the real kicker, is the instant breaching shadow proc.

[Atramar]

Every spec that does not utilize the 31 point talent is a hybrid. What's a 27/7/7 for Marauders/Sentinels? I can't really imagine Focus without Force Exhaustion or Combat without Blade Rush (lol) so I guess it's some weird freak of Watchman without Merciless Slash? What'd be the point of doing that?

 

The 18/23 Guardian build is definitely a hybrid tank, its damage sucks even in DPS gear, the reason it goes so far up the Vigilance tree is because 1) Overhead Slash is better than Guardian Slash, 2) Commanding Awe is an awesome PvP survivability talent. But Bioware killed that hybrid by tying Unremitting to Shien and by actually fixing the Defense tree.

 

27/7/7 was an experiment of mine but never got into it since I got bored of marauder gameplay and effectivness is not subject of conversation, but gave me a lot of fun on pvp as it was good for melting people,specially smashers.

 

they did indeed fix tanking tree for pve, not sure about pvp.

[Zakmonster]

I love hybrids. I wish this game had more of them.

 

Hybrids means PvP will be dynamic, exciting, frustrating and enraging. But it will be fun for you - you get to theorycraft builds, you get to experience different playstyles, you get to have very varied fights.

 

However, hybrids require a lot of balancing and fine-tuning, a constant analysis on how each potential hybrid build could affect the game. If Bioware had a larger, more experienced staff, I'd promote multiple hybrid builds for every class.

 

Sadly, that isn't the case. Balance in between classes is the most important thing in PvP right now and the removal of hybrids makes that possibility much clearer. It is easier for Bioware to fix broken talents when they know it will not negatively affect the balance of the game.

 

I love the fact that Assassins have the potential to hybrid and it makes every fight against them a challenging discovery. But if trimming them down into specialized builds is the best way to balance the game, then so be it.

[cycao]

I disagree, the way they changed force breach, they made it much more necessary to go 36points up in infil order to make use of force breach. Call it more of a penalty for NOT going full infil, rather than an incentive.

 

Force breach no longer has a CD, but only does good damage when you have 3 stacks of breaching shadow. It does roughly 800-1000dmg per stack of breaching shadow. So you are forced to wait for 3 stacks rather than wait for a CD. Breaching shadow only procs when your technique does damage. So if you want to speed up your usefulness of breach you must use 2x clairvoyant strike, then project auto procs shadow technique damage (on a separate timer than the 4.5 sec from shadow technique). The extra damage during project is a boost, but nothing fantastic, the real kicker, is the instant breaching shadow proc.

 

 

That is the point I was trying to make. They took away the good builds and are forcing you to go full 36 points which are way way way worse than anything we have now. The changes to deception is just idiotic. You build your charges much slower and you must have one to use discharge. Deception was great in quick small scale battles, that is literally what the devs said the class is all about a "lone wolf" build which singles out targets on the battlefield. Now you are flipping that 180 and making it so you need to stay in the fight longer to deal any real damage.

 

just pointless.

[islander]

Personally, I think bioware adding the class icons was a terrible mistake. It shouldn't be that easy for anyone to identify others.

 

In other news, I sincerely hope BIoware reads this, and makes the top tier assassin builds worth having in 2.0. They certainly aren't now, and that's bad.

 

Somewhat related - As a sorcerer (when not sniper) I'm not sad to see the 'team' bubble stuns go.

Edited February 25, 2013 by islander