Rogue - Assassin Changes

[SealedInSong]

Okay this seems to be targeted at the "assassinate doesnt play nice with new stealth AI" thing... Im not sure the problem is clear. The code probably doesnt need to be redone really, but Assassinate needs to be coded as a zero-agro attack or something. The issue is when you hit a mob with NOTHING else around, because you are the only target you get the heat. Can you make a successful Assassinate generate zero threat or something? That might fool the new AI into not autojumping you when youre alone. Or make it a "zero sound" attack, so the mobs dont auto-hear it and come running. If you can just make the strike actually "stealthy" by making it a zero threat, zero noise attack, that may do it. Try that if you can? If you can log in, feel free to contact me. Like 3-4 mins and the problem can be fully demonstrated/repo/explained etc... dont think youre looking at a system overhaul just a change to assassinate to work inside the new system.

+1 to this.

Community, instead of attacking Severlin and his inability to say, "Yeah, instead of continuing on with the enhancement trees pass I'm going to also start a 'Stealth Up' campaign," I think bbqzor has an excellent point: just hack assassinate.

It would be a temporary work around, but really the best thing here is probably just to make assassinate attacks special in some way that prevents them from easily breaking stealth.

Better to get assassinate working properly again than to get an assassin update with a bunch of unhappy players that can't...well...ASSASSINATE.

[Wizza]

We get concerned when players make blanket statements about stealth being "broken" without really outlining what they mean. While we love player feedback and welcome specific suggestions about stealth, I just don't want to set up false expectations about things stealth should allow. We wouldn't want players, as an example, to have the expectation that characters should be opening doors and pulling levers while remaining in stealth. This type of behavior would threaten too many types of content. Without specifics we can do nothing to address people's concerns.

Sev~

See Sev~, this is the main problem that I have with you (and rogues) right now.

- First of all: you state that TWF is off-topic. Absolutely false: TWF being so inferior to THF and SWF is one of the top reasons why Rogues are so far behind everyone else in DPS.

- Second: you say that "We wouldn't want players, as an example, to have the expectation that characters should be opening doors and pulling levers while remaining in stealth". That's all good and fine, until we actually see the real gameplay in place, where Barbs, paladins and Bards are tanking Red alert 20+ mobs with 150 PRR and absolutely not in danger of any kind, which leads to the third problem.

- Third: the PRR issue and self-heal. You gave self-heals and 150 PRR to EVERYONE: be them casters, Barbs, Pallies, Bards but you are afraid of giving some to Rogues as well. You think scroll-healing is enough? Not even close. Not in this state of the game. I don't understand why you are afraid of giving Rogues some of those as well, you gave it to everyone. You talk about dodge but do you know that most of the melees run around already with max or close to max Dodge? And Blitz offers either more dodge or PRR. If you don't want to give rogues high prr, then we better reach 50%+ dodge.Which leads to the fourth problem

- Fourth: Shadowdancer. This ED is half good and half bad. We, rogues, don't want to run in Blitz. We don't want to face-tank mobs and blitz them around. We want to sneak, insta-kill, be untouchable for X seconds, have superior Dodge/Concealment/Incorporeality. Some of this already happens, some of this has BROKEN abilities: Consume with no DC Showing and wonky overall; Meld Into Darkness has an horrible animation; Dark Imbuement is overall a pathetic joke; Pierce the gloom is bad as well.


If you want to fix rogues, ALL of these four points are important. Not just changing some enhancements and call it a day. That's not fixing, that's band-aiding.


Wizza~

[SealedInSong]

My problem with Assasinate is it's not really viable to be multiclassed ASSASSIN. A Ninja Assassin for example is totally non-viable you can't have Monk levels without massively impacting your assassinate DC.

I would like to see Assassinate changed thusly:

DC X + 1/2 Rogue Levels

Right now ignoring capstone bonuses a 19 rogue loses 1 DC to a 20 Rogue, and a 14 Rogue 6 somethingelse loses 6 DC (which results in a basically non viable flavor build ESPECIALLY after the Capstone is improved)

After this + 1/2 Rogue Levels (still ignoring capstones) a 18 rogue loses 1 DC to a 20 rogue, instead of losing 2, and a 14 Rogue 6 something else is only losing 3 DC's instead of 6.

Or you could put a version of assassinate into the Ninja Spy tree maybe?

I've tried to think of lots of multiclassed assassin builds, and you're right, they usually fail miserably.

On the one hand, I think it's cool that pure class assassins are actually rewarded the way I believe pure classes should be rewarded.

On the other hand, I don't think it's good for the game for the pure class assassin to be sooo backloaded that you actually can't build a viable muticlass assassin. And as you said, we're not even talking 18/2 here, we're talking 19/1 as being suboptimal to the point of not bothering.

If anyone however does have a 19/1 build they can direct me, or amazingly, an 18/2? I'd love to see it.

[SealedInSong]

Snip...
In terms of "tree" help --- Shadowdancer>Assassin

All very good points, but I suggest creating a new discussion about this so we don't derail Severlin's welcome attempt to improve this enhancement tree.

I too would love to see a revamp of the following:
shadowdancer
magister

small polishing of:
draconic incarnation
grandmaster of flowers
fatesinger

[Chi_Ryu]

A Rogue gets exactly 1 opportunity to assassinate per encounter without a group.

Hi, can I introduce you to the bluff->stealth->assassinate 3 step combo? It took sone practice to master, but now works just fine for me - even when soloing - so long as I'm not overwhelmed with foes, or being plinked by archers - and good play can help with minimising both of those, most of the time.

With the proposed change to Shiv - if it actually works - will also open up shiv->stealth->assassinate which would be likely to work even better (due to the slow animation of bluff).

(And the reason assassins often go TWF is because you can get double assassinations - something your SWF Bard won't be doing)

I'm not arguing the Assassinate is anywhere near as good as CDG, but it isn't as bad as you make out either.

[Ayseifn]

I've tried to think of lots of multiclassed assassin builds, and you're right, they usually fail miserably.

On the one hand, I think it's cool that pure class assassins are actually rewarded the way I believe pure classes should be rewarded.

On the other hand, I don't think it's good for the game for the pure class assassin to be sooo backloaded that you actually can't build a viable muticlass assassin. And as you said, we're not even talking 18/2 here, we're talking 19/1 as being suboptimal to the point of not bothering.

If anyone however does have a 19/1 build they can direct me, or amazingly, an 18/2? I'd love to see it.

Agreed, it's not just the staying pure it's the reliance on int, so Harper and daggers/kukris. Way too narrow in scope, you'll almost always end up with a dagger using 20th level rogue in SD with half their ED AP spent in Int, all level ups in int and the only thing differentiating different Assassinators being base race and a few AP here and there. Very boring and the only way to really differentiate yourself is to drop you Assassinate DC, it's already really tight to get it viable so it's not long before you just ignore their big draw and you just end up with Assassins that can't Assassinate at all.

[IronClan]

Agreed, it's not just the staying pure it's the reliance on int, so Harper and daggers/kukris. Way too narrow in scope, you'll almost always end up with a dagger using 20th level rogue in SD with half their ED AP spent in Int, all level ups in int and the only thing differentiating different Assassinators being base race and a few AP here and there. Very boring and the only way to really differentiate yourself is to drop you Assassinate DC, it's already really tight to get it viable so it's not long before you just ignore their big draw and you just end up with Assassins that can't Assassinate at all.

Yeah it doesn't take much at all for Assassinate to drop off the table due to it's extremely tight DC and lack of other opportunities due to needing INT from Shadowdancer. IMO the DC for assassinate should be reworked with this in mind.

Right now its 10 plus Rogue levels +INT mod + assassinate bonus

A) as already said 1/2 rogue levels with a higher base would be more flexible
B) I'd like to see this become DEX OR INT
C) I'd like to see a couple other gear items that have the same (non stacking) Assassinate bonus for the sake of flexibility, and because Epic Midnight Greetings is so hard to get and is on a weapon (costing you DPS compared to TF) being an old S/S/S item I'd like to see it's bonus bumped up to 1 higher than wearable gear.
D) I'd like to see a new high level Augment that gives a stacking +1 to assasinate
E) I'd like to see a new Affix call it "Skulking" and put it on a new wearable raid item (a Ring I suggest)

"Ring Of Skulking" Dodge 15%, Skulking: When sneaking undetected you are skulking; Your base sneak speed is increased to normal run speed if you have 50% Faster Sneaking Enhancement, or shadow training faster sneaking clickie) for every 10 seconds you "skulk" and remain undetected you gain +1 to your DC to assassinate (As well as the DC's of assassinate like abilities in Shadowdancer) until detected. Passive on the raid item +5% stacking incorporeal


On the other hand shadowdancer having such long standing unfixed issues/broken/non working abilities is largely masked because Assassins are forced to use every bit of their points on INT pips and then have exactly enough points left to buy Shadow Form... which leaves nothing for anything else...

[Arlathen]

Devs/Players: Take a step back and consider the following:

- Why impede sneaking speed at all?

Is it really going to break the game if sufficiently skilled characters can keep up with everyone else in a Party environment while sneaking? Instant way to make the whole system a lot more Assassin, Party and Game friendly is to just not impede the movement speed at all, or provide ways to totally mitigate the speed loss. Say, how about making it a flat 50% reduction to begin with, and then every point of Move Silently skill reduces the penalty by 1%, to the full 100% movement speed by having Move Silently at 50+ ?

I'm not a frequent Rogue player, but seriously, I'd love to use my mains Ranger Sneak skills more often in a party friendly environment.

[Firewall]

If i remember correctly the Assassinate Attack - prior to the enhancement pass - worked on ranged weapons as long as you were in Sneak Attack range. I would like to see that coming back even if it would only work for thrown weapons or more specifically for thrown daggers (for keeping the flavor of the tree).

The vorpal from the Lethality core ability is very weak and does not even provide the usual 100 damage for monsters that are above 1000 hp so it would be cool if at least that would be fixed.

[brzytki]

I'm actually quite torn on the idea of moving Faster Sneaking from acrobat to assassin. I know, I was surprised myself at first.

While it certainly makes more sense for the assassin tree to be the one with Faster Sneaking enhancement line, I'm a little concerned about APs investement. See, after the pass there probably won't be a problem in assassin tree such as wasting APs on things you'd probably never use or just to hit the threshold of APs spent in the tree. If we move the sneaking speed boost to assassin tree, all assassins will pick it just like they did till now, but take a look at what's gonna happen to those that put some investment in acrobat tree to get Haste Boost. They'll be required to waste 3 more APs for useless tier1 acrobat stuff just to be able to pick Haste Boost. It doesn't matter that Haste Boost's cost is being changed to 1/1/1 cause Kensei tree had it for 1/1/1 for some time now, in addition to being tier1.

Right now, i have 2 APs wasted in acrobat tree - one to open the tree and one more to go from 4 to 5 in APs spent in the tree. After you move Faster Sneaking to assassin tree, i'll have 5 APs wasted on stuff that hardly does anything for my assassin. That's not acceptable, unless you put something appealing in tier1 of acrobat tree, for example Extra Action Boosts like in Kensei tree.

Maybe a better way to change it would be, like other posters said, to tie it to assassin cores or APs spent in the tree.

[Silverleafeon]

Devs/Players: Take a step back and consider the following:

- Why impede sneaking speed at all?

Is it really going to break the game if sufficiently skilled characters can keep up with everyone else in a Party environment while sneaking? Instant way to make the whole system a lot more Assassin, Party and Game friendly is to just not impede the movement speed at all, or provide ways to totally mitigate the speed loss. Say, how about making it a flat 50% reduction to begin with, and then every point of Move Silently skill reduces the penalty by 1%, to the full 100% movement speed by having Move Silently at 50+ ?

I'm not a frequent Rogue player, but seriously, I'd love to use my mains Ranger Sneak skills more often in a party friendly environment.

I could go with that approach.

[Severlin]

Edited the OP:

Based on player feedback we moved the sneaking speed into the Assassin tree under Stealthy.

Poisoned Strikes now apply as Assassin's Mark to the target rather than treating them as Poisoned so it will work on all enemies and won't be blocked by enemies immune to poison.

Sev~

[Severlin]

For Assassin's Trick I think we will look into reducing the animation time rather than making it passive so the group can benefit from the debuff (as it works on live) rather than just the Assassin.

Sev~

[Orleano]

Well at least there will be some point in poison attacks now... Although i would rather see them getting their vorpal effect every time, something like "if you struck enemy with it and its normal attack, enemy gets a -1 saving throw, in 5 seconds after that he gets 1d6 stat damage (with save), in 5 seconds after he got stat damaged(failed save) he gets vorpal effect (with save); if you score a crit then evenmy gets -1 saving throw and 1d6 stat damage(without save), and in 5 seconds after that a vorpal effect (with save); If you score a vorpal then enemy gets -1 saving throw, 1d6 stat damage and vorpal effect(without save)." This way you would get enemy stunned or heartseeked (or shattermantled O_o) with better reliability.

[HuneyMunster]

Edited the OP:

Based on player feedback we moved the sneaking speed into the Assassin tree under Stealthy.

Sev~

For me personally that's a nice change as it frees up 4 action points as I want to change to shadar kai which requires 9 points to get 30 sec cd on shadow jaunt.

Off topic, I still feel Shadar kai need a look at in terms on the missing second ability option other races have in their cores. This may make them more favorable choice for assassins as opposed to drow and human.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

(And the reason assassins often go TWF is because you can get double assassinations - something your SWF Bard won't be doing)

This is incorrect. You can get double assassinations with SWF, you just need to be positioned so both mobs are in range of your swing.

[draven1]

How about making "bleed them out" as "open wounds"?

Instead of some bleeding dots, every time you hit the target in effect of "open wounds", the target get additional bleeding damage.
Bleeding dmg is 3d6 per tier, up to 9d6 at tier 3. Scaled up by melee power. Lasts for 10 sec. Cooltime is 15 sec.
Better dmg version of envenomed blade, but it's not a toggle, but active skill.

You can even instakill a target with 'execute' when the target..
1. got open wounds or marked by Assassin's mark.
2. under 30% hp
3. didn't notice you(sneak attack)
4. assassination DC passed

-------
Thrill of murderer
If the target under the mark of assassin or open wounds effect, Assassin get +2 crit range or +1 crit range / +1 crit multiplier with 10% double strike for the target.
If the target murdered in 10 sec, you gain +1 assassination DC, stacks up to 5.

------
Can we get "Sap" feat at assassin lvl 6 for free?

With adding champions into DDO, we need more tactical decisions.
But, rogues doesn't have many tactical movements, even though it is advanced tactical melee.

How about adding 'Sap' feat at assassin lvl 6?


'Sap' is very roguish feat, but rogues are very feat-starved class. So, no rogues uses it.

It will give more flavor(Sapping Infiltrator) & improve practical usefulness for rogues.

Also, poison ability can be improved by adding reasonable DC & some CC ability(paralysis, blindness, daze, even mind control for high lvl rogue) for it.

Rogues need more tactical options.

[dualscissors]

For Assassin's Trick I think we will look into reducing the animation time rather than making it passive so the group can benefit from the debuff (as it works on live) rather than just the Assassin.

Sev~

Excellent. I am (and apparently you are) with the earlier poster that suggested party-group benefit play is more immersive than solely a "me bonus."

Really it's just the loooooo....oooong animation that prevents assassins from wanting to use Assassin's Trick.

[Severlin]

Excellent. I am (and apparently you are) with the earlier poster that suggested party-group benefit play is more immersive than solely a "me bonus."

Really it's just the loooooo....oooong animation that prevents assassins from wanting to use Assassin's Trick.

We changed the animation. It's now slicing motion that take less than a second instead of the three second point animation. Looks pretty good in combat. We also cut the cooldown to 6 seconds and changed the duration to 15 seconds so an assassin can keep it up on two targets.

Sev~

[John_Rove]

Any chance that Damage Boost Can be Changed To Melee/Ranged Power boost, similar to what was done for Paladin. This, to me, makes sense as there are rogues which use ranged attacks that can currently use damage boost. If it is changed to just Melee Power, you are taking that tool away from them.