Hello there people, for this next VCR term we're working on Class rebalance, focusing on all the classes at the same time to make sure there aren't "flavor of the month" classes anymore. And for this, we want to hear the community's voice.
Please use the following format when posting. It's okay if you don't main an assassin, but please post only if you have tried the class enough to know how your changes (or others) would affect it.
IGN:
Skill:
Feedback: Whatever you feel about this skill, if you can add a video or screenshot to further show your point, that's awesome. You can take Screenshots with Print Screen on your keyboard, and find them on the RO2 Screenshots folder (or just use Lightshot and get a link ready to share). Or if you want to make videos but don't know how, refer to Tonitrua's guide for it.
You may include several skills in your post, but if it becomes too long, please use spoilers to facilitate reading. Keep in mind that things like "it's too op" or "It's broken" don't really help, it has to be constructive and detailed feedback so we can discuss it and see what can be changed about it. The more info we have, the better; and on that note, you don't have to limit yourself to skills. Give feedback on whatever you think would contribute to balance (regarding assassins)
To help a bit, I will add the feedback posted in this thread to the bottom of this post, so anyone can have a quick look to know if their concerns have been brought up previously. If you have something to add to a previously given feedback, feel free to do so, I'll condense all related posts under a single spoiler.
If there's anything that wasn't clear or if you have any doubts, feel free to ask.
Skills & Descriptions (with values per level for reference)
Thief - Keep in mind these are shared with Rogue.
Spoiler
Hiding - Buff
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining: 3.00 sec
SP Cost: None
Cannot be used while in combat
Hides in the shadow. Movement Speed is decreased by level while in hide state. The first attack skill casted while in Hide state inflicts 2x damage.
- Level 1: Movement Speed reduced by 40%
- Level 2: Movement Speed reduced by 20%
- Level 3: Movement Speed reduced by 0%
Double Attack - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining: 1.00 sec
SP Cost: 2
Range: 2Meter
Obtain 1 combo point
Attacks the enemy and inflicts damage equaling a % of your Physical ATK.
- Level 1: 170%
- Level 2: 190%
- Level 3: 210%
- Level 4: 230%
- Level 5: 250%
Deadly blow - Active
Spoiler
SP Cost: 2~13
Range: 2 Meters
Strikes the enemy with Blow of Death and inflicts damage equaling a % of your Physical ATK, and consumes all Combo Points and inflicts additional damage equaling 7% of your Physical ATK for each Combo Point.
- Level 1: 170%
- Level 2: 190%
- Level 3: 210%
- Level 4: 230%
- Level 5: 250%
Dark Illusion - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining: 3.00 sec
SP Cost: 2~13
Range: 20 Meters
Appears and attacks from behind the enemy and inflicts damage equaling [%=skill lvl] of your Physical ATK. This skill always lands as a Critical Hit.
Needs to be in Hide State
Obtain 1 Combo Point
- Level 1: 210%
- Level 2: 230%
- Level 3: 250%
- Level 4: 270%
- Level 5: 300%
Combo Training - Passive
Spoiler
When skill that obtains Combo Point is used, 1 additional Combo Point is obtained with a % success rate.
- Level 1: 5% success rate
- Level 2: 10% success rate
- Level 3: 20% success rate
Dagger Throw - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining: 8.00 sec
SP Cost: 2~14
Range: 20 Meters
Throws a dagger to distant enemy and inflicts damage equaling a % of your Physical ATK.
- Level 1: 184%
- Level 2: 205%
- Level 3: 227%
- Level 4: 248%
- Level 5: 270%
Meteor Assault - Active
Spoiler
Active
Cooldown Remaining: 3.00 sec
SP Cost: 2~7
Range: 2 Meters
Generates Shock Wave on the ground and inflicts damage equaling a % of your Physical ATK to up to 3 nearby enemies.
- Level 1: 171%
- Level 2: 202%
- Level 3: 233%
Mark of Genocide - Buff
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining: 3.00 sec
SP Cost: 5~14
Increases Critical Hit Rate of all Party and Attack Squad members by a % for 30 minutes.
- Level 1: 2%
- Level 2: 4%
- Level 3: 6%
- Level 4: 8%
- Level 5: 10%
Cross Impact - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining:** 8.00 sec
SP Cost: 2
Range: 2 Meters
Obtain 1 combo point
Attacks the enemy and inflicts damage equaling a % of your Physical ATK.
- Level 1: 310%
- Level 2: 385%
- Level 3: 460%
- Level 4: 535%
- Level 5: 700%
Poisoning Weapon - Buff
Spoiler
Cooldown Remaining: 3.00 sec
SP Cost: None
When using poison laced weapon attack skill, the target may be poisoned with 30% success rate, and poisoned target will be inflicted with additional damage equaling a % of your Physical ATK every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.
- Level 1: 17%
- Level 2: 19%
- Level 3: 21%
- Level 4: 23%
- Level 5: 25%
Assassin
Spoiler
Hiding Exceed - Buff
Spoiler
Movement Speed while in Hide State is increased by 10%.
- Level 1: 10%
- Level 2: 20%
- Level 3: 30%
Shadow Fiend - Passive
Spoiler
When skill that obtains Combo Point is used, Shadow may appear from the ground below you with 4% success rate and inflict additional damage equaling 220% of your Physical ATK.
- Level 1: 4% success rate
- Level 2: 8% success rate
- Level 3: 12% success rate
Shadow Claw - Buff
Spoiler
Cooldown: 3s
Sp Cost: None
1% of Critical Hit, 50 of Penetration will be increased for 30 mins.
- Level 1: 1% Critical Hit - 50 Penetration
- Level 2: 2% Critical Hit - 100 Penetration
- Level 3: 3% Critical Hit - 150 Penetration
- Level 4: 4% Critical Hit - 200 Penetration
- Level 5: 5% Critical Hit - 250 Penetration
Shadow Fang - Active
Spoiler
SP Cost: 7
Range: 10 Meter
Devours the target and up to 10 enemies nearby the target with the Shadow and inflicts damage equaling 88% of your Physical ATK. Additional damage equaling 1% of your Physical ATK is inflicted for every compounded Combo Point. Obtained Combo Point is not consumed when using this skill.
Raised shadow will attack target with 332% of attack damage. Obtain additional combo point according to target number. Recover 20% of HP. Target movement speed will slow down to 50%
- Level 1: 332% attack damage
- Level 2: 371% attack damage
- Level 3: 410% attack damage
- Level 4: 449% attack damage
- Level 5: 488% attack damage
- Level 6: 527% attack damage
- Level 7: 566% attack damage
- Level 8: 605% attack damage
- Level 9: 644% attack damage
- Level 10: 683% attack damage
Shadow Armor - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown: 120s~40s
SP Cost: None
Encircles your body with Shadow to increase DEF by 50% for 10 seconds.
Level 6 and higher: All damages received within seconds after casting the skill are reduced by 100%.
- Level 1 : Cooldown 120s
- Level 2 : Cooldown reduced to 100s
- Level 3 : Cooldown reduced to 80s
- Level 4 : Cooldown reduced to 60s
- Level 5 : Cooldown reduced to 40s
- Level 6 : 100% damage reduction for 1 second
- Level 7 : 100% damage reduction for 3 seconds
- Level 8 : 100% damage reduction for 5 seconds
Shadow Strike - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown: 20s
SP cost: 6
Range: 2 Meters
Shadow Form state required
Obtain 3 Combo Points
Attacks enemy and inflicts damage equaling 282% of your Physical ATK. Obtains Mark of Shadow buff with 3% success rate.
Mark of Shadow: Shadow Explosion skill inflicts 2x damage when the buff is in effect.
Fully merges with the Shadow Fiend and increases both Physical ATK and Movement Speed by 6%. The effect is canceled if you use the skill again.
- Level 1: 6% Bonus Increase
- Level 2: 12% Bonus Increase
- Level 3: 18% Bonus Increase
- Level 4: 24% Bonus Increase
- Level 5: 30% Bonus Increase
Shadow Assault - Active
Spoiler
Cooldown: 20s
SP Cost: 5~17
Range: 20 meters
Leaps and attacks a distant enemy and inflicts damage equaling 255% of your Physical ATK, and knocks down the enemy for 3 seconds.
- Level 1: 255% attack damage.
- Level 2: 285% attack damage.
- Level 3: 315% attack damage.
- Level 4: 345% attack damage.
- Level 5: 375% attack damage.
Shadow Explosion - Active
Spoiler
I owe you this one. I'll add it tomorrow.
Ymir Child - Buff
Spoiler
Casting Time: 1.46s
Cooldown: 600s
SP Cost: 11
Infuses the magical power of Ymir's Heart with your Faith and creates usable energy. Increases your ATK and Movement Speed by 10%, and Penetration by 150%.
Feedback: The skill has high damage output, is our self heal skill, it helps building up to 5 combo points with a single attack, and it slows down the target.
Personally, I've always considered Grimtooth as an "utility" skill, meaning, it should only be used when you need to heal, or when you're chasing a target (hence the slow effect); even the combo build up is fine as an "entry" skill before using Shadow Fang in grinds, therefore having high damage on top of it is too much and I certainly feel it should be lowered (and this includes the available levels as well).
IGN: TodaiYamikage
Skill: Grimtooth
Feedback: I agree greatly with what Raikuha says about grimtooth: "The skill has high damage output, is our self heal skill, it helps building up to 5 combo points with a single attack, and it slows down the target."
Personally though I think the CD on this move should be docked down a bit, I use this more often when I'm on my own without a healer and it comes in real handy but the slow CD makes grinding pretty hard especially when you reach late game on ML. Also it's a bit sad that between this and Shadow Fang that this deals more damage. I think with the amount of benefits this move gives you can drop the damage a bit (maybe 5%, I don't have the skill maxed so I don't know if this this too much or enough).
IGN: Raikuha
Skill: Cross Impact
Feedback: This is a thief skill, and it has a higher damage than any of the assassin class skills. If this isn't wrong, i don't know what is. Personally I think the best fix for this would be to redistribute that damage in more levels for the skill that would only be available after master class. That way it would mean a "sacrifice" to get it or not.
Shadow Fang
Spoiler
IGN: Raikuha
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: This is the only spammable AoE skill we have (there's grimtooth, but with the cd it has, it's more an opening skill to get the combo points needed to boost shadow fang) so it's our main skill during grinds. Now, I have two personal "remarks" to do about it.
It needs a target: Now, this is only a problem with certain parties when the DPS from other classes is high enough that the enemies are killed before you can use Shadow Fang, since it requires you to be constantly switching targets to make sure the skill is used. However, the way it currently works makes it pretty useful for kitting if you know how to use the camera to keep the enemies "in front" while you run.
Damage is low: This is the biggest problem with this skill, I don't have exact numbers (since i'm still testing this) but i'm pretty sure that for a DPS class, our damage output is pretty low when it comes to AoE skills. And that's even with proper element on the weapon. So overall i think it should be buffed, even if it means some more points to be invested on it.
IGN: TodaiYamikage
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: The biggest downfall for this skill has to be the fact that it needs a target. I honestly would skip this skill if it wasn't for the fact that I'm primary a solo player and thus need the extra AoE. But even with that this skill is super weak at lv.1. It deals 88% of your attack and another 2% for each combo point you have. So you can reach about a 98% damage if you only leave this move at lv.1. Compare that to Grimtooth where you deal 332%, I think you can bump the damage up a bit.
Overall if you can remove the need for a target and bump the damage it deals up a bit that would help a lot..
IGN: xLaFerrari
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: Assassins are never meant to deal so much aoe dmg so the damage is good as it is (nowhere near brandish and grand cross tho), but the animation of this skill really really needs a rework. An omnislash effect style would be sweet but maybe its too pretty
IGN: Raikuha
Skill: Shadow Armor
Feedback: Levels 6 to 8 aren't really neccessary, since a boost in defense is pretty good already to reduce damage taken. Specially with the current vigor formula that allows you to use it quite often, having "100% damage reduction" makes the skill more "powerful" than it should be (more so if we take it to the PvP side).
IGN: Raikuha
Skill: Skills in general
Feedback: I still have to test more carefully this, but it seems some descriptions may be giving a false information regarding the actual damage output on the skills.
Poisoning Weapon
Spoiler
IGN: Raikuha
Skill: Poisoning Weapon
Feedback: The DoT of this skill doesn't really feel useful since it's way too low compared to the HP of monsters you fight at higher levels. The points required for this skill feel better invested in adding more damage to other skills instead. I guess the most obvious solution would be to increase the % or replace it with a different kind of debuff.
IGN: xLaFerrari
Skill: Poison Weapon
Feedback: Seriously needs some buff. What element do you think of when you hear the assassin/thief class? its poison, and how many assassins do we know that has this skill? zip. nada. or maybe 1/10 which tells us something is seriously wrong with this skill. A nice suggestion is not really to buff its damage but to add effects for being inflicted with poison. Anywhere from additional damage taken by the target upto reduced movement/cast/vigor/atk speed/power would be nice. not saying to buff it too much, im just saying something needs to be added to this skill to make the skill worth it.
IGN: TodaiYamikgae
Skill: Stealth skills in general
Feedback: Over all I love these skills, and I think it works out fine and is pretty balanced, the only issue I have is you can no longer pick up items and remain stealth-ed. It is annoying especially for when you are trying to get profession items only to be attacked by something aggressive not even halfway through gathering. If you can return that remaining stealth-ed to pick up items that would be really nice.
Feedback: I agree greatly with what Raikuha says about grimtooth: "The skill has high damage output, is our self heal skill, it helps building up to 5 combo points with a single attack, and it slows down the target."
Personally though I think the CD on this move should be docked down a bit, I use this more often when I'm on my own without a healer and it comes in real handy but the slow CD makes grinding pretty hard especially when you reach late game on ML. Also it's a bit sad that between this and Shadow Fang that this deals more damage. I think with the amount of benefits this move gives you can drop the damage a bit (maybe 5%, I don't have the skill maxed so I don't know if this this too much or enough).
IGN: TodaiYamikage
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: The biggest downfall for this skill has to be the fact that it needs a target. I honestly would skip this skill if it wasn't for the fact that I'm primary a solo player and thus need the extra AoE. But even with that this skill is super weak at lv.1. It deals 88% of your attack and another 2% for each combo point you have. So you can reach about a 98% damage if you only leave this move at lv.1. Compare that to Grimtooth where you deal 332%, I think you can bump the damage up a bit.
Overall if you can remove the need for a target and bump the damage it deals up a bit that would help a lot..
IGN: TodaiYamikgae
Skill: Stealth skills in general
Feedback: Over all I love these skills, and I think it works out fine and is pretty balanced, the only issue I have is you can no longer pick up items and remain stealth-ed. It is annoying especially for when you are trying to get profession items only to be attacked by something aggressive not even halfway through gathering. If you can return that remaining stealth-ed to pick up items that would be really nice.
Feedback: Seriously needs some buff. What element do you think of when you hear the assassin/thief class? its poison, and how many assassins do we know that has this skill? zip. nada. or maybe 1/10 which tells us something is seriously wrong with this skill. A nice suggestion is not really to buff its damage but to add effects for being inflicted with poison. Anywhere from additional damage taken by the target upto reduced movement/cast/vigor/atk speed/power would be nice. not saying to buff it too much, im just saying something needs to be added to this skill to make the skill worth it.
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: Assassins are never meant to deal so much aoe dmg so the damage is good as it is (nowhere near brandish and grand cross tho), but the animation of this skill really really needs a rework. An omnislash effect style would be sweet but maybe its too pretty
Feedback: I agree greatly with what Raikuha says about grimtooth: "The skill has high damage output, is our self heal skill, it helps building up to 5 combo points with a single attack, and it slows down the target."
Personally though I think the CD on this move should be docked down a bit, I use this more often when I'm on my own without a healer and it comes in real handy but the slow CD makes grinding pretty hard especially when you reach late game on ML. Also it's a bit sad that between this and Shadow Fang that this deals more damage. I think with the amount of benefits this move gives you can drop the damage a bit (maybe 5%, I don't have the skill maxed so I don't know if this this too much or enough).
IGN: TodaiYamikgae
Skill: Stealth skills in general
Feedback: Over all I love these skills, and I think it works out fine and is pretty balanced, the only issue I have is you can no longer pick up items and remain stealth-ed. It is annoying especially for when you are trying to get profession items only to be attacked by something aggressive not even halfway through gathering. If you can return that remaining stealth-ed to pick up items that would be really nice.
The cooldown of Grimtooth depends on your vigor and it gets easy to get that as a ML. But I agree, even though the heal ammount (20%) is good, having to wait those seconds is stressful when you're facing an enemy that you know that can kill you (mostly when you try to grind). I eventually semi-replaced (or complemented) my Grimtooth heal with pet heals, so if i grind solo in DW I usually use Elder right after the first attack and leave Grim for emergencies.
Lower CD could be an option but the heal ammount should then depend on the level of the skill, otherwise it wouldn't be balanced. The damage has to be lowered though, there's no way we can have balance with that skill damage (Btw, you can check the spoiler in the Original post to see how much damage it does in each level).
Regarding hide, I have to say (and probably 99% of sins will be against me) that the "unhide" while gathering materials isn't that bad. You only need to choose better what and when to kill; besides it did offer a certain unfair advantage in some quests because you could even gather an item that was protected by a Boss in DWU without having to fight it.
IGN: TodaiYamikage
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: The biggest downfall for this skill has to be the fact that it needs a target. I honestly would skip this skill if it wasn't for the fact that I'm primary a solo player and thus need the extra AoE. But even with that this skill is super weak at lv.1. It deals 88% of your attack and another 2% for each combo point you have. So you can reach about a 98% damage if you only leave this move at lv.1. Compare that to Grimtooth where you deal 332%, I think you can bump the damage up a bit.
Overall if you can remove the need for a target and bump the damage it deals up a bit that would help a lot..
IGN: xLaFerrari
Skill: Poison Weapon
Feedback: Seriously needs some buff. What element do you think of when you hear the assassin/thief class? its poison, and how many assassins do we know that has this skill? zip. nada. or maybe 1/10 which tells us something is seriously wrong with this skill. A nice suggestion is not really to buff its damage but to add effects for being inflicted with poison. Anywhere from additional damage taken by the target upto reduced movement/cast/vigor/atk speed/power would be nice. not saying to buff it too much, im just saying something needs to be added to this skill to make the skill worth it.
Skill: Shadow Fang
Feedback: Assassins are never meant to deal so much aoe dmg so the damage is good as it is (nowhere near brandish and grand cross tho), but the animation of this skill really really needs a rework. An omnislash effect style would be sweet but maybe its too pretty
Regarding Shadow Fang, I kinda want to disagree. We're a DPS class, and the game is forcing us to party and use AoEs. So unless the game is changed to allow players to level up even if they only kill one mob at a time without a party (and it has to change, ofc, but in the meantime...) i think we should have at least a better AoE damage than tank classes. Of course that we'd still be below Cres, Wiz, and other dps classes in average because our focus is single-dps. But currently, even with crits the skill doesn't do much damage and that's even with the proper element, which is thrown out of the window once you hit DWU and FP.
I don't want sins to be just "lurers" when we're actually assassins, we're supposed to deal damage, but right now we can be outdps'd by almost any class XD
As for the poison weapon, I agree that it needs reworks, but i wouldn't go as far as rework the poison debuff itself; one of the things i thought was merging PW with Throw dagger, something like replacing the % chance, for a 100% chance to poison the enemy when you hit with Throw Dagger, but with a higher cooldown. Since that skill is already a low damage skill that most (if any) use only when they need to lure a single target.
Currently, 10~11 ATK will result in +1 weapon damage.
At higher levels, you'll get a lot of ATK, but other things are just more effective.
An example:
Even if you have 2k STR (= 4k ATK), that's equivalent to +380 weapon damage.
An Eddga Claw deals 1208~1245 damage, so all your STR result in a roughly a 30% damage boost.
Compare that with the bonuses:
+20 weapon refinement
power 40% greenseeds
CLS runes
...
Iit might also be good to know that the damage of a few skills was increased lately. In case of Cross Impact f.e. by was almost tripled.
So hopefull, you'll see that the Atk/Str bonus isn't the true troublemaker! However, it might still be advisable to make this ATK bonus level-dependant to make it scale differently.... just think about how effective a "STR I potion" is.
why don't make penetration to decrease the defence in %?
if penetration decrease the opponent defence in % it will be more active on tank classes but less effective on dps classes anyway tank still would have higher hp to compensate and dps less damage increase to compensate.
EXAMPLE lets imagine an assassing has a 10% penetration and this is applied on the defence not as a mere subtraction but a real %
75% def of a tank will be 75%- (10% of 75)%= (75-7.5)%= 67.5 %
45%def DPS will become 41.5%
in this way assasins will be more effective against tank classes in terms of damage increase and less effective against meele classes or INT classes, but if we look also at the amount of HP each class has we would see a balance of the damage dealed respect to the HP of each class.
Regarding insead the high amout of damage out of hide that can reach the 4x due to the double damage out of hide and the possible crit why don't just modyfy the skill
in a way that the double damage become a 100% crit shances out of hide?
In this way the assasin will maintain the reasons to use hide but at the same time will avoid the random 1shot that highly affect this game, not to mention that this sistem (100% crit shances out of hide) will grant to crit whit any skill and whatever is the opponent level (good in PVE).
