Laodaron

This is fun that the devs post here.

Raina

OOO, I feel special, my thread got a dev post :P

As far as utility goes, I look at the way the current tree is set up and right off the bat Excessive Bleeding just pops out and screams utility, but it doesnt seem to even work or if it does work because the HP debuff is attached to the duration of each of the Bleed abilities its impossible to even get the full 5%. Mark triggers instantly and Scraping Blow only lasts 12 seconds (10 if you recast as soon as it refreshes). And with the variability of each Bleed CAs duration its never going to be a set amount for any decent amount of time.

Why not change Excessive Bleeding to something that would give like a 10sec window to cast as many of the Bleed abilities as you can and after the 10sec it debuffs the target for an amount proportional to the number of Bleed abilities used for a set duration. Not is that much easier to measure on parse data, it also allows for the full effect to be realized. I personally would respec to Bleed line if I knew it actually worked and could realize its full potential. I could get a little bit of extra DPS and have a utility ability that would seem pretty useful in raid situations.

Elvanshalee

He'll post here, but not on the actual post. Interesting.

I think the assassins are the one of the few classes that only perform on par or better than other dps classes when played by good players. I have no problem having to work hard to achieve dps, but the AA line for assassins is just pathetic. I would like to have some bugs fixed, and some actual nice choices to go down for an AA line. We get almost no boost from our AA line at all which I think is the biggest complaint.

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Jayad

Assassin DPS is okay. The EOF AAs are terrible. Give us something we'd like to get. It doesn't have to improve DPS, but right now 50 AA or 100 AA is very little difference. A lot of classes got some very nice abilities. (Although there are other classes with bad EOF AAs as well)

In particular, not only are most of the AA abilities pretty worthless, but they are even contradictory. The AAs seem to make you want to use hemotoxin... but frontload increases the proc rate which actually is bad for hemotoxin. The bleeding line has an improvement for Mark proc rate - and it's part of the 1% HP debuff - but they go off instantly on raids, so why would you want it? You can reduce the recast timer on a debuff which already has a lower recast time than duration.

They might be okay AAs for a soloer or PVP but for raiders they are terrible.

Edit: I'd also add that certain directions for classes haven't been well thought out. For example, the general path seems to be that Rangers are the "caustic" predators, while Assassins are the "hemotoxin" predators. Well, the end result of this is that when you get other buffs like the Dirge proc boost it helps Rangers while hurting us, because you don't really want a higher proc rate necessarily - just wastes poisons. Rangers get double attack in their AA and set gear, which is much better in terms of giving you options. Rather than reducing the hemotoxin duration, a better option would have been to move a decent chunk of the damage into the first 2 ticks or something. As a player, I hate being penalized for improving myself and stuff like moving Assassins into hemotoxin does that. You just get the feeling the person designing them either didn't understand all the rammifications, or it was purposefully done.

Raina

Well one reason they dont post on the actual thread is that for the most part they are restricted from voicing oppinions and what on the actual boards and Im positive they arent allowed to get involved very much with any discussion they did not themselves start. On these forums they dont have the restrictions of the EULA to keep them from saying stuff.

Elvanshalee

Jayad has it pretty much right on.

Our AA lines seem contradictory to our playstyle which is why you'll see 100AA assassins and 50AA assassins and 0AA assassins having seemingly very little difference.

As for the whole dev thing not posting their opinion on the official boards, seems very strange if you can go somewhere else, and publicize yourself as a developer, and post your opinion on something, and it be ok because it's not the official boards.

Also, as for the reports of the parse thing that they get, I've spoken a bit to my RL friend of over 10 years who just also happens to be a dev at SoE for EQ2 and when I had him look at particular class, he just flat out told me that my parses are wrong, ACT is wrong, and the classes are balanced. I gave him a parse of an encounter where a swashbuckler was able to do over twice as much dps as a similarly geared assassin (over 4k dps) and I was informed that swashbucklers top out at 3k dps according to server parses.

I asked him to explain the difference in the total damage parsed and that he had no reply for. But this isn't supposed to be a nerf swashbuckler thing (*sighs*) but that was just one experience I've had dealing with these 'server parses' that these devs recieve.

Anyways, the point is, that the assassin AAs in no way help define the particular assassin from another. The whole point of the achievement system seems lost on the assassin as no particular line seems to compliment the class and the way it was designed and there is just confusion by many assassins who look at our AA's, look at things like the finishing blow ability on our set armor, look at the stats on other class gear like dirge or ranger gear compared to our set gear, and just wonder if the person who designed these things for the assassins had any idea of how assassins work.

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Jayad

Well, no doubt SOE has a very broad range of parses to look at. They can't balance classes around what some people say. One way to balance classes is to look at how everybody does overall. But, you also have to look at the extremes at the top, say the top .5%, who can really maximize what a class can do. There's a huge difference between a really good player with all the right gear and buffs and a merely good player. Which do you balance around?

In any case, I really think you can make a solid argument for Assassin AAs being pretty bad and having to be fixed. When you get into class balance in terms of DPS it just gets pretty ugly. I'd just like to get something from EOF. At the moment playing my warlock is a lot more fun, because getting AAs is actually exciting.

Raina

The problem lies in how do you give AAs to a class who is defined by the DPS they do when they dont need more DPS and still compliment the class. DPS is variable and very often greatly dependant on player skill and also overall skill of the raid, but I dont think very many people actually think that assassins need more DPS. So what then do you do?

Some would say than give us more utility, but really because we have little inherent utility to begin with the only way to get more is through the final abilities or like a Murderous Design AA, but I really would prefer not to be in the MT grp which is where an ability like that would naturally lead and as it is it does more than enough to keep aggro off me most of the time. Bleed line would do some of that if it actually worked properly. Repeated Stabbing could easily be changed to a more utility based ability because even though it helps some while soloing and in PvP I doubt the benefit is that much greater than if it didnt exist. I like Getaway a lot, use it all the time and I dont really know what to say about frontload.

I agree some seem contradictory. The bleed line just makes no sense in how it is actually set up, the idea is really cool, but the actual thing is quite bad. Hemotoxin and Frontload is definate contradiction, especially now with the change to hemotoxin. I think though that giving us hemotoxin was more or less a balancing move and not for any desire for us to actually use it. Rogues being more utility based got the Mental and Vitality breach which is more utility in nature, while predators being DPS based got the more DPS based in nature and since assassins were at the head of the pack it makes sense that rangers got caustic in an effort to close the gap between us and them.

Pryz

Contradictory? are you kidding? take repeated stabbing for example, one of the biggest killers for assassin dps is the time spent in stealth, increase recovery to chain faster and that makes the puncture blade combo and conceal combo that much more bearable which comes out to more dps. With the changes to hemotoxins i went from about 9% of my dps as caustic to about 14% with hemotoxin......that's a pretty solid upgrade if you ask me. I'm not a big fan of frontload but you guys need to think outside the box, use frontload, pop cloaked assault and slaughtersault on an ae encounter and you just got most of them poisoned.

The ONLY thing that really needs to be looked into is group buffs/procs breaking stealth and when it seems to drop randomly when the game gets choppy, maybe add a set number of times you need to get hit while in stealth before it drops? and for the love of god please let mark not break stealth. (although in the devs defense it's considered a spell so i can understand the game mechanic)

Sure, swashes own, sure with the right group stacking some classes can pretty much do anything, i've seen pickme parse 4k single target consistently for crying out loud with an ideal group and i parsed in the 3.5k range on multi encounters in that group. My strength is the fact the only thing at all i need to do good dps is a bard, everything else is just cake but i'd rather us have better raid dps. So i gotta ask you assassins saying your dps is on par with other dps classes in zonewides what are you doing wrong?

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Pinski

Dirge, you mean. You'd do shit dps with a troubadour :\

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