Rogue - Assassin Changes

[Wizza]

It's hilarious the amount of Forum DDO going on in this thread. A rogue can get to within 15%-20% of the PRR mitigation of a DPS oriented heavy armored non-S&B toon... while being missed a hell of a lot more often, and having Evasion.

Have you really not been breathed on by Lady Vol or Elemental bursted by the Abbot, breathed on by disciples or T1, given the boom, fought Miior? I've seen plenty of people die to Deathlords in EE Deathwyrms, and Dragon breath in Fire peaks. The Lich Lords in EE GOP didn't get your attention? Hell doesn't even have to be EE GOP lol. No idea what content you play or what difficulty but for 8 or 9 years up to a few months ago Evasion was the single most powerful splash in the game if you weren't a CHA build... Now of course it's useless because we're in Forum DDO land, where anything that isn't the shiniest and newest is rubbish LOL.

Lady vol: point taken. One spell in a raid where only in EE it's deadly. Alright, I can go with this.
Disciples dragon breath: second point taken because the element is random mostly. Also few of these around, just in Mask of Deception and a rare in Thunderholme IIRC.
Given the boom? You mean the one that I can tank on my Sorcerer if you just twist Energy Sheathe and equip a PLIS every 10 seconds to avoid the debuff?
Miior? That can be soloed by anyone using some team work and patience? Because you surely know how her debuff works
Deathlords? They use Disintegrates and Horrid Witting. Both non evadeable.
Dragon breath: equip fire shield and fire absorption and you can take their fireballs as well.
Lich lords: use disintegrate and non evadeable force damage.

Good try. Keep trying tho, I like this game. I agree, evasion was good UP TO A FEW MONTHS AGO. Not since they re-worked PRR/MRR, not since they introduced Champions. Keep up with the times.

The truth is Assassin by virtue of almost being forced to use SD (and thus getting 25% incorp) probably should have less dodge by a considerable amount than T/A and Mechanic. If you want to make a argument that a 16+ level Rogue T/A should be able to get 40% dodge because the only way they can get 25% incorporeal is to be in lousy SD or drop 2 rogue levels and take 6 monk levels for shadow veil; then I will whole heartedly agree with you on that. But that belongs in the T/A thread and not this one. Assassins and 14 or lower Rogue Staff builds are almost guaranteed to have 25% incorp.

Almost guaranteed? How? Being forced in a very bad Destiny? OMG YES PLS, I WANT TO HAVE 25% INCORP AND HAVE A BUGGED DESTINY. HOORAY!

[CrackedIce]

The ability to give the Poisoned state to enemies works on any hit. The on-vorpal effects are legacy and we wouldn't want to pull them from existing rogues.



Yes, as we do passes on additional trees these enhancements will be combined as they have here.



The intent is that the debuff works on bosses and has no saving throw assuming they have gained the Poisoned state from the original attack.



See my comments above. The "Poisoned" state is transferred to enemies without a save - even bosses unless they have poison immunity.



With Nimbleness the Assassin is likely to be at Dodge cap or near to it.



Sev~

I would rather see assassin get spell like abilities to help with damage mitigation such as improved invisibility and 15% incorporeal.

[Qezuzu]

I would rather see assassin get spell like abilities to help with damage mitigation such as improved invisibility and 15% incorporeal.

I suggested a few pages back that it should contain things that raise Bluff/Hide/MS skills, some implementation of Ghost Sound (Noisemaker), a Flaming Sphere clone, etc. There are a lot of nuances with stealth that a lot of people don't know about, even I will occasionally stumble upon a spell/ability/clickie that's very handy with stealth... if you want to buff stealth, you should at least make the tools that push stealth to its limits more obvious.

I would at least like to hear Severlin say they at least considered implementing Assassin spells, even if they decided not to use them.

[CThruTheEgo]

Assassins really only have two main weak points currently (three if you care about multiclassing them, but I don't so I'll leave that to others to deal with). 1) Their damage mitigation is weak and 2) their dps is far behind bard/paladin.

Damage Mitigation:
A pure assassin can already reach dodge cap easily enough, so I don't see the point of the additional dodge you propose. Assassins are currently doing fine in the damage avoidance department. What they need help with is damage mitigation. Even with max damage avoidance, if you have low PRR, then you're going to take some heavy spike damage. Couple that spike damage with poor self healing (and no, heal scrolls are definitely not sufficient for the current endgame, so having UMD does not qualify as good self healing) and you can find yourself having a hard time recovering.

Solution: Increase the light armor mastery bonus to 5/10/15 PRR, or at the very least 3/6/10. I saw you increased it to 2/4/6, but that's still not significant at all. Thematically, this makes more sense imo. Light armor mastery makes me think you've learned to maximize the protection you get from light armor (i.e. damage mitigation, not damage avoidance). So this should be more about PRR than dodge. If you think a straight increase in PRR to the current version is OP, then take the dodge part away entirely and just make it 5/10/15 PRR.

You offer an interesting alternative to damage mitigation in the form of the melee power debuff, but I have some questions about that. Do all mobs have melee power? If they start with 0 melee power and get the debuff, do they end up with -10 melee power? Basically does this reduce mob damage whenever it is used? Also, as a mob debuff, this is effectively a buff to other classes, many of which may not need it (e.g. bard, paladin, fighter, barb) and only further shifts game balance in favor of them over an assassin. I like the idea of a debuff to mob damage instead of straight PRR on an assassin, but consideration needs to be taken about how that affects other classes and overall game balance. Some more damage mitigation alternatives would be nice (e.g. a paralyzing poison, obviously with a save that would be effective in endgame content and would continue to be effective once the level cap is raised to 30).

DPS:
If I remember correctly, you yourself, Severlin, stated that bard/pali were the new baseline, so a comparison to them is warranted at this point. Assassins measure up just fine when compared to any class that has not had a revamp yet, but they are far behind bard/pali/barb. I've played an assassin, swashbuckler, and paladin at endgame (see the links in my sig for the assassin and swashbuckler if you want specifics about the builds) and there's no question that the assassin is behind the other two (I won't even go into how my swashbuckler is much better at assassinating than my assassin, and the assassin has a 74 DC so it's not a problem with the build).

Solution: Add some melee power in the tree somewhere. Put 5 melee power in the capstone and make stacks of measure the foe fade 1 stack at a time every 6 seconds. About 3/5 of an int based assassin's dps comes from sneak attack damage. The fact that melee power already affects sneak attack damage provides a simple solution to increase their dps and still have it based primarily on sneak attack damage instead of crits like bard, paladin, and barb. Measure the foe fading 1 stack at a time would make those bonuses more consistent, and that's not a bad thing if we're trying to bring assassins up to the same level of power as bard/paladin/barb. It would give assassins a reason to be in sneak mode at least some of the time while making these bonuses last long enough to actually be relevant without having to spend too much time in sneak mode.

TWF:
I also have to add that TWF being behind every other style is most definitely part of this discussion and certainly belongs in this thread because it is the obvious fighting style for an assassin. There's no point in talking about an assassin revamp if you ignore that they use an inherently weaker fighting style that is in need of a revamp as well.

Solution: The simple and obvious solution is to add melee power just like the other styles get. Considering that swf gets not only 1.5 stat damage, but also 30% attack speed, in addition to 10 melee power, I really don't understand what the problem is with giving twf 10 melee power.

Sneak Mechanics:
The same needs to be said about sneak mechanics, no point in revamping assassin if you ignore that a core feature of the build is broken. No other class or build has a built in incentive to sneak, so a sneak mechanic revamp is definitely warranted. It works fine in a group but not solo. Here is what should happen, and did at one point in the game's history, so it really shouldn't be that hard to get back to it. When I assassinate one mob, his buddies in the local vicinity should go into search mode and start looking for me. Maybe they should even get a bonus to spot and listen. They should NOT automatically detect and agro on me, which is what currently happens. This really doesn't make any sense. It is possible to shed agro of melee mobs with appropriate tactics (lose line of sight and go into sneak mode again). But the automatic agro is especially problematic when it comes to archers because once they agro on you, there's no going back into sneak mode since every arrow breaks you out of sneak mode. This really needs to be changed. The ideal fix would be to make it so that when you drop into sneak mode, they don't automatically know where you are even if they were agroed on you when you went into sneak. Again, give them a bonus to spot/listen, but, thematically, an assassin should be able to slip into the shadows and disappear.

Capstone:
The capstone needs some adjusting. Blackheartox's summary of the new capstones pretty much says it all. The proposed assassin capstone is pretty weak in comparison. Dex is useless for a pure assassin and they already have more than enough reflex save, so drop both of those completely.

Solution: Make it +4 int and, as mentioned previously, add 5 melee power.

Execute:
This is far too weak to be useful at endgame. My initial thought is to turn this into a second assassinate ability, effectively giving assassins two instakills, but I don't know how to do that effectively and with balance.

Nicely Done:
Great job on giving assassins the option to move at full speed while in sneak mode. This will greatly enhance practical gameplay in groups. Also, nice job on reducing the animation of assassin's trick. I never use that ability as it currently is but I will with this change.

Looking forward to a revamp of my favorite build. Thanks for the discussion Sev.

[Mryal]

Peraphs a bit off topic but cant not mention.

Deathlords? They use Disintegrates and Horrid Witting. Both non evadeable.

That alone alredy makes any heavy armor MRR setup better than an evasion based character.

Lich lords: use disintegrate and non evadeable force damage.

This is just a bonus.

Now what if new content follows this trend? wich it probably will.I cant be the only one who sees that MRR is > evasion for the simple fact it works vs all and not vs one type of spell.

[Powerhungry]

~ Assassinate is already a fairly good ability so we won't be buffing the DC in this tree, but instead we will be looking to have items that add to the DC in greater amounts that currently possible in the next few updates.

Disappointing.
As I pointed out in another post, Bard Coup de Grace can easily attain significantly higher DCs than assassinate.
If not raising the DCs in the tree, at least make it usable on targets that are susceptible to Coup de Grace as well (removing the stealth requirement), as I also mentioned in an earlier post. They're Assassins, they should be at least as good at single target killing as a bard...

[Pehtis]

My suggested change to Assassin Tree enhancement is as follows:

The problem with rogues in general is their lack of survivability. Happy to be squishier than other classes as long as there were some options to survive in higher level content. This is where dodge comes in. Dodge begins to become less relevant in high level content due to not surviving the hits you receive.

My proposal is a simple one. Add the dodge number to PRR/MRR of any class that has EVASION as part of their core CAPSTONE. Therefore it is only available to light armour/robe wearers. The increase is no where near game breaking and is simply a useful tweak during level 20+ content. This will also provide an extra incentive for any pure builds. It's a balanced approach without making them overpowered.

My thought behind this proposal is since I am in the process of dodging anything, the hit I DO receive should be like a serious grazing hit (just a flesh wound ). Limiting this kind of damage mitigation to those classes with Evasion keeps it balanced. Hence Assassins would benefit.

Many splash builds will complain it should be much lower of course. I will leave that to the Dev's to decide, if they like the idea enough to implement. Rangers (oh I so want this on my tempest), Monks, and some Bards will also find this useful if included in their trees as well.

Adding dodge number (at whatever number or level) to PRR/MRR is not a good idea for damage mitigation purposes, and in keeping with the theme?

[levy1964]

I tell u something, take yourself these prr and MRR and put, know wherer u should put xD
this is a rogUe ppl. Rogue who have low prr, who have low save to is what decided in by playing this class. chellange (yea when u start create toon u do not see "chellenge" name in character creation?). do u really wanna have a rogue with good prr / MRR ... save? GO PLAY PALADIN, everything related to prr / MRR it's good as it is, with the exception ..... dodge. let us styleplay be other, rogue mitigation should base only on Dodge dmg/attack , this is only what we need is a defensive boost. i know i have right becouse my mix with tempest survivie holy **** / sick / truck damage from the boss in the thrill on the hunt (when other class with not so bad prr are still scared to figh face to face), and can stay / tank this beast even if the boss use this "AoE" dmg hit like truck, even there's a dog who daze my , I can still fight Effective there (without trap). u can ask how to tank him with possible 49prr, When every hit also 1/3, 1/2 hp bar ... I tell u my little secred, it's name "robe" and "elabotarry parry". adding something similar to rogue, and the problem of "ohh but it's not viable on EE, need a boost us whoa" are SOLVED for pure.

btw. don't takie it seriusly this is my private opinion

[janave]

Defense:
Dodge cap increase

Utility:
1 CC that applies a longer bluff + massive slow 25/50/75% ( 3-6-9% on bosses)
Poison weapon imbue for self and allies
Move all your aggro to selected friendly target clicky 30s cd.

DPS:
Allow lvl20 rogues with a T5 in assasins to crit with their SA using their weapon multi + whatever else applies to multiplier like over crit. +1 (the t5 with a req* to have 20 rogue levels, not working in multiclass)

Instakills:
Capstone 19-20 perma vorpal range, 15-20 vorpal range on the 1st attack from stealth (every 1minute).

[Full_Bleed]

That is an interesting thought.

We used to have auto-crits on held mobs. Maybe something similar could be brought back for assassins. At the same time, it could not be wide open. Nothing that would make taking X levels of rogue the new FOTM. When we had auto-crits I made maiming rocksplitters for my casters and even my cleric. Held mobs were dead mobs.

Not much is different today with held mobs though. A held mob is still a dead mob.

My first pass at an implementation of your idea would be to put it in "Knife Spec".

Knife Specialization: You gain a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier with daggers and kukris. Daggers also gain a +1 Competence bonus to Critical Threat Range.

OPTION 1:
ADD: You automatically crit on helpless mobs when using a dagger or kukri.
- this is likely the highest damage option.

OPTION 2:
ADD: +2 range/+1 multiplier on helpless mobs when using a dagger or kukri.
- this is likely the #2 damage option. It will produce slightly higher max crits, but significantly less often.

OPTION 3:
ADD: you do 2x sneak attack damage to helpless mobs when using a dagger or kukri.
- this is likely the lowest damage option. It also plays on the sneak attack concept which is very much a "rogue thing" flavor wise.

How to keep it balanced?
1. Assassins have poor crowd control and little means to produce a helpless state. It would need to stay that way, or narrow the range of states the auto-crit would apply too.
2. It has to stay the knives. Opening this up to other weapons would be too powerful and would set up a 5 rogue FOTM. People have complained that "knife spec" is too weak. This could be ONE way to boost it.
3. Heavy analysis of the actual math BEFORE going forward at all.
4. Knives have poor base damage and crit profile.
5. Any additional damage does not get to "double dip" with the +50% helpless damage already in the game. i.e. if you are getting auto-crits, you don't get auto-crits AND then 50% more on top of that.

Again, this is just an initial pass at an idea. I'm intrigued by the concept of assassins being "the best at killing helpless targets." This is brainstorming.

Interesting options.

Something that scaled a little more gradually could be put in the "Knife in the Back" core (which is pretty useless to most Assassins since they're all using Harper Tree for INT to damage now).

[redoubt]

Assassins really only have two main weak points currently (three if you care about multiclassing them, but I don't so I'll leave that to others to deal with). 1) Their damage mitigation is weak and 2) their dps is far behind bard/paladin.

Damage Mitigation:
A pure assassin can already reach dodge cap easily enough, so I don't see the point of the additional dodge you propose.

Solid, well thought out comments as usual.

On the topic of dodge, I just noticed this in Sev's OP:

Light Armor Mastery: (1/1/1 AP) While wearing light armor you gain 2/4/6 to maximum dexterity bonus of your armor. (This also affects maximum dodge.) You also gain 1/2/3 Physical Resistance Rating.

NOTE: "This also affects maximum dodge." This means you can push the dodge cap to 31 now just using the assassin tree. More if you put points into thief acrobat (or halfing or etc...) This is HUGE in my opinion, so thanks for this one Sev!

Next on dodge, I can still see rogue being capped, even at 31 most of the time. I still see this as an opportunity to have nimbleness in the core enhancements raise the maximum dodge whenever it adds to dodge. (And go back down with it of course.) Without raising maximum dodge with each stack of nimbleness, I see this as a wasted enhancement. The assassins will already have max dodge and the stacks of nimbleness will NOT add dodge due to the cap. (The enhancement Measure the Foe recognizes this limitation already and it raises the maximum dodge.)

[Dreppo]

I like Janave's suggestion about assassins being able to vorpal on 19-20. I would straight add that in as part of the assassin capstone, which is still lacking compared to pally/barb/bard capstones. Notice how this naturally synergizes with the level 18 core Lethality.

I also have an idea for an ability that makes the knife specialization aspect of the tree more interesting. This would allow assassin + ninja spy to have a little bit better synergy (right now they don't have any specialized weapons in common), and just more build options in general. I would put this ability somewhere in the upper tiers (3, 4, or 5). Probably cost 2 AP if put at tier 3 or 4, but 1 AP if put at tier 5.

Selector (choose one):
Option 1 - Daggers and kukris are considered centering.
Option 2 - Daggers and kukris are considered spellcasting implements.

[Alisonique]

Assassins really only have two main weak points currently (three if you care about multiclassing them, but I don't so I'll leave that to others to deal with). 1) Their damage mitigation is weak and 2) their dps is far behind bard/paladin.

Damage Mitigation:
A pure assassin can already reach dodge cap easily enough, so I don't see the point of the additional dodge you propose. Assassins are currently doing fine in the damage avoidance department. What they need help with is damage mitigation. Even with max damage avoidance, if you have low PRR, then you're going to take some heavy spike damage. Couple that spike damage with poor self healing (and no, heal scrolls are definitely not sufficient for the current endgame, so having UMD does not qualify as good self healing) and you can find yourself having a hard time recovering.

Solution: Increase the light armor mastery bonus to 5/10/15 PRR, or at the very least 3/6/10. I saw you increased it to 2/4/6, but that's still not significant at all. Thematically, this makes more sense imo. Light armor mastery makes me think you've learned to maximize the protection you get from light armor (i.e. damage mitigation, not damage avoidance). So this should be more about PRR than dodge. If you think a straight increase in PRR to the current version is OP, then take the dodge part away entirely and just make it 5/10/15 PRR.

You offer an interesting alternative to damage mitigation in the form of the melee power debuff, but I have some questions about that. Do all mobs have melee power? If they start with 0 melee power and get the debuff, do they end up with -10 melee power? Basically does this reduce mob damage whenever it is used? Also, as a mob debuff, this is effectively a buff to other classes, many of which may not need it (e.g. bard, paladin, fighter, barb) and only further shifts game balance in favor of them over an assassin. I like the idea of a debuff to mob damage instead of straight PRR on an assassin, but consideration needs to be taken about how that affects other classes and overall game balance. Some more damage mitigation alternatives would be nice (e.g. a paralyzing poison, obviously with a save that would be effective in endgame content and would continue to be effective once the level cap is raised to 30).

DPS:
If I remember correctly, you yourself, Severlin, stated that bard/pali were the new baseline, so a comparison to them is warranted at this point. Assassins measure up just fine when compared to any class that has not had a revamp yet, but they are far behind bard/pali/barb. I've played an assassin, swashbuckler, and paladin at endgame (see the links in my sig for the assassin and swashbuckler if you want specifics about the builds) and there's no question that the assassin is behind the other two (I won't even go into how my swashbuckler is much better at assassinating than my assassin, and the assassin has a 74 DC so it's not a problem with the build).

Solution: Add some melee power in the tree somewhere. Put 5 melee power in the capstone and make stacks of measure the foe fade 1 stack at a time every 6 seconds. About 3/5 of an int based assassin's dps comes from sneak attack damage. The fact that melee power already affects sneak attack damage provides a simple solution to increase their dps and still have it based primarily on sneak attack damage instead of crits like bard, paladin, and barb. Measure the foe fading 1 stack at a time would make those bonuses more consistent, and that's not a bad thing if we're trying to bring assassins up to the same level of power as bard/paladin/barb. It would give assassins a reason to be in sneak mode at least some of the time while making these bonuses last long enough to actually be relevant without having to spend too much time in sneak mode.

TWF:
I also have to add that TWF being behind every other style is most definitely part of this discussion and certainly belongs in this thread because it is the obvious fighting style for an assassin. There's no point in talking about an assassin revamp if you ignore that they use an inherently weaker fighting style that is in need of a revamp as well.

Solution: The simple and obvious solution is to add melee power just like the other styles get. Considering that swf gets not only 1.5 stat damage, but also 30% attack speed, in addition to 10 melee power, I really don't understand what the problem is with giving twf 10 melee power.

Sneak Mechanics:
The same needs to be said about sneak mechanics, no point in revamping assassin if you ignore that a core feature of the build is broken. No other class or build has a built in incentive to sneak, so a sneak mechanic revamp is definitely warranted. It works fine in a group but not solo. Here is what should happen, and did at one point in the game's history, so it really shouldn't be that hard to get back to it. When I assassinate one mob, his buddies in the local vicinity should go into search mode and start looking for me. Maybe they should even get a bonus to spot and listen. They should NOT automatically detect and agro on me, which is what currently happens. This really doesn't make any sense. It is possible to shed agro of melee mobs with appropriate tactics (lose line of sight and go into sneak mode again). But the automatic agro is especially problematic when it comes to archers because once they agro on you, there's no going back into sneak mode since every arrow breaks you out of sneak mode. This really needs to be changed. The ideal fix would be to make it so that when you drop into sneak mode, they don't automatically know where you are even if they were agroed on you when you went into sneak. Again, give them a bonus to spot/listen, but, thematically, an assassin should be able to slip into the shadows and disappear.

Capstone:
The capstone needs some adjusting. Blackheartox's summary of the new capstones pretty much says it all. The proposed assassin capstone is pretty weak in comparison. Dex is useless for a pure assassin and they already have more than enough reflex save, so drop both of those completely.

Solution: Make it +4 int and, as mentioned previously, add 5 melee power.

Execute:
This is far too weak to be useful at endgame. My initial thought is to turn this into a second assassinate ability, effectively giving assassins two instakills, but I don't know how to do that effectively and with balance.

Nicely Done:
Great job on giving assassins the option to move at full speed while in sneak mode. This will greatly enhance practical gameplay in groups. Also, nice job on reducing the animation of assassin's trick. I never use that ability as it currently is but I will with this change.

Looking forward to a revamp of my favorite build. Thanks for the discussion Sev.

Simply enough : spot on

[brzytki]

Purposeful.

Sev~

Why, oh why?

Sev i have a question, can you try to tell me why are you kinda.. Not being genereous to lv 20 capstone for rogue?

That's my question as well. +2 DEX is meh for INT-based assassins, but it's ok for DEX-based ones (if there are still some of them, i guess F2P people), +4 reflex save is meh as well. There's nothing really appealing in the new capstone. You just added some marginal benefits and called it a day.

Please add something meaningful to the capstone. You don't even have to look at post-pass capstones, which are obviously far superior, look at the acrobat capstone - it's clearly better then the assassin one. If you don't want to widen the multiclass gap even further, don't add DC to the capstone but maybe doublestrike, MP, on-vorpal proc or something similar.

I had originally thought that my assassin would be completely out of the TA tree (which would save me some AP), but now I'm going to try to fit:
- Sly Flourish 3 (for threat reduction)
- fast movement (need to keep up with the group)
- sublety3 from T2

Is there really a need for this? I mean Sly Flourish (15%), Shiv (15%), item (20%), SD (20%), Subtlety (40%). IF all of this stacks, you'll be somewhere around 28% threat generation. Between this and Imp Deception i'd think some of those APs wasted.

[noble_pirate]

so assassin's capstone even after revamp cannot be compared to previous update's capstones - KotC and FB...

where is +4 to ability (INT) ? where is +10 melee power? my main rogue still in sadness ((

[CThruTheEgo]

Peraphs a bit off topic but cant not mention.


That alone alredy makes any heavy armor MRR setup better than an evasion based character.



This is just a bonus.

Now what if new content follows this trend? wich it probably will.I cant be the only one who sees that MRR is > evasion for the simple fact it works vs all and not vs one type of spell.

Except that MRR does not work against all. It does not reduce force damage. Disintegrate does untyped damage and is affected by force spell power, so MRR does not do anything to protect against it. Horrid wilting does water damage and is affected by MRR.

Your point is still valid that MRR is better than evasion and I agree with it (it's the reason I wear heavy armor on the pure ranger in my sig), but the example of disintegrate is not accurate.

[Nothingtoseehere]

A few points

ASSASSINATE:
I am overjoyed to hear you won't be changing the assassinate formula or adding any substantial bonuses to the DC, I think a little more available from gear (stacking augment?) is all it needs +2-+4 and gear is where it should be done.
Though to help alleviate the concerns of the 'buff assassinate DC' group (and since IMO it makes perfect sense as well as giving assassinate a unique edge again in a game full of insta kill clones) make it so that Death Block/Ward doesn't stop assassinate. You really have to work hard to get a good assassinate DC it should be rewarded greatly. (It would also be cool if you could 'assassinate' red/purple nameds, while killing them outright breaks the game completely some cool feature could be added for those cases where they fail the DC? I think it would be awesome anyway though probably not enough time for that right now but a good future change at the very least?? )

CAPSTONE:
As everyone is saying I also think the capstone is rather... lacklustre. IMO this is the perfect place to put something big to bring Assassin DPS back up. It needs full Rogue so won't effect balance with multiclasses and needs to reward you to give competition to multiclassing.
I would propose something that effects your Sneak Attack damage be added. Also the dex and reflex are fairly weak.
eg. SA can now crit based on weap, a heap more SA (or spread more out across assassin/base rog class) and/or SA effected more by Melee Power (say 200% or something), or the lvl 18 core rather than capstone which is also in need of a boost.

eg. Deadly Shadow: +2(0) dex, +2(4) int, +4 SA dice, Your SA damage is now effected by crits and 200% melee power.

Hardly unreasonable to get the odd crit for ~700 SA dmg at lvl 28 when I was in a group with a lvl 19 pally who could crit for 10k the other day.

CORES:
Nimbleness is also useless since dodge cap can be hit easily enough without it so it needs a rethink.
On that note thanks for doubling the PRR on Light Armour Mastery but it still isn't much at all...

Core lvl 1 and 3 are also very weak only giving dex to hit/dmg which almost all assassins superseed with int to hit/dmg from harper.

Most of the Assassin cores are just plain weak and could all use a buff/rethink.
Core 1: add some scaling benefit based on Action Points spent in tree or Rogue lvl or something (SA dmg/scaling? sneak speed?)
Worst case you can just chuck SA, MP, DS and or dodge/dodge cap on cores though other more inventive options are also appealing.

DAMAGE:
I think the above ideas cover damage well enough though adding say 1d6 SA die per core or some other option might help.

DEFENCES:
Assassins PRR is sitting at about the right level I think but probably needs a little more.
Dodge is the assassins main way of reducing incoming damage, but as it stands it isn't enough. If I read Light Armour Mastery right and it does raise dodge cap by 6 this is a brilliant start but needs more. 33 dodge cap with ship buffs isn't enough with their (intentionally) low PRR. Perhaps make nimbleness a passive bonus to dodge cap or stacks to 5 giving both dodge and dodge cap or something.
I strongly disagree with people suggesting some form of concealment/incorporeal bonus to miss chance as those bonuses are easy to obtain via gear and most assassins will already have.

STEALTH:

Sneak Mechanics:
The same needs to be said about sneak mechanics, no point in revamping assassin if you ignore that a core feature of the build is broken. No other class or build has a built in incentive to sneak, so a sneak mechanic revamp is definitely warranted. It works fine in a group but not solo. Here is what should happen, and did at one point in the game's history, so it really shouldn't be that hard to get back to it. When I assassinate one mob, his buddies in the local vicinity should go into search mode and start looking for me. Maybe they should even get a bonus to spot and listen. They should NOT automatically detect and agro on me, which is what currently happens. This really doesn't make any sense. It is possible to shed agro of melee mobs with appropriate tactics (lose line of sight and go into sneak mode again). But the automatic agro is especially problematic when it comes to archers because once they agro on you, there's no going back into sneak mode since every arrow breaks you out of sneak mode. This really needs to be changed. The ideal fix would be to make it so that when you drop into sneak mode, they don't automatically know where you are even if they were agroed on you when you went into sneak. Again, give them a bonus to spot/listen, but, thematically, an assassin should be able to slip into the shadows and disappear.

This. I know you don't have time for a stealth revamp right now but so I'm not asking for that, rather I am asking for you to find something you can do as a quick 'band aid' patch for this that can tide us over until you have time to fix this, if that is at all possible.

THREAT REDUCERS (and increasers):
If these can all be tied into toggles of somesort so you can turn your threat reducers off if you are the tank or turn threat gen bonuses off if your not tanking this time etc. it would be a good change I think. I never take these on my Rogue since sometimes he tanks so he needs at least normal threat even though mostly he doesn't want aggro.

P.S. I would also like to add my voice to the 'make Killer fade 1 stack at a time group' since as it stands on live right now getting that fully stacked up/maintained even for a short while is nigh on impossible. Though making assassin damage competitive with current top DPS builds (I mean if you think about it assassin should have the highest single target DPS of anyone, though partially situational) would possibly help with attaining stacks and is my preferred route. (I like that it isn't a 'guaranteed' bonus but think right now it is just not providing enough up time.)

Thanks you so much for giving Rouges a look in and for keeping us informed

[CThruTheEgo]

Disappointing.
As I pointed out in another post, Bard Coup de Grace can easily attain significantly higher DCs than assassinate.
If not raising the DCs in the tree, at least make it usable on targets that are susceptible to Coup de Grace as well (removing the stealth requirement), as I also mentioned in an earlier post. They're Assassins, they should be at least as good at single target killing as a bard...

Assassinating on a bard is too easy and, honestly, I don't want my assassin to play that way. An assassin can already reach a DC that is effective everywhere in the game, so the only reason to provide more DCs is for multiclassing.

I would prefer that sneak remain a requirement of using assassinate. That's part of what makes assassins a unique playstyle. If you take away that requirement, it will play much more like a swashbuckler.

So personally, I don't really care if bards are better at assassinating since assassins are already good enough and I'd rather they not become another easy button or have their unique playstyle considerably altered.

[CThruTheEgo]

Your SA damage is now effected by crits and 200% melee power.

I'd be fine with one of these but not both. Both is too much imo. Alternatively, just add more melee power to the tree since it also affects sneak attack damage.

I think the above ideas cover damage well enough though adding say 1d6 SA die per core or some other option might help.

I'll second this. Many of the cores are lacking.

[dualscissors]

Sneak Mechanics:
The same needs to be said about sneak mechanics, no point in revamping assassin if you ignore that a core feature of the build is broken. No other class or build has a built in incentive to sneak, so a sneak mechanic revamp is definitely warranted. It works fine in a group but not solo. Here is what should happen, and did at one point in the game's history, so it really shouldn't be that hard to get back to it. When I assassinate one mob, his buddies in the local vicinity should go into search mode and start looking for me. Maybe they should even get a bonus to spot and listen. They should NOT automatically detect and agro on me, which is what currently happens. This really doesn't make any sense. It is possible to shed agro of melee mobs with appropriate tactics (lose line of sight and go into sneak mode again). But the automatic agro is especially problematic when it comes to archers because once they agro on you, there's no going back into sneak mode since every arrow breaks you out of sneak mode. This really needs to be changed. The ideal fix would be to make it so that when you drop into sneak mode, they don't automatically know where you are even if they were agroed on you when you went into sneak. Again, give them a bonus to spot/listen, but, thematically, an assassin should be able to slip into the shadows and disappear.

I posted this earlier in the thread and didn't receive any confirmations.

The instant agro from all mobs in the room upon assassinating thing you are mentioning was something that I *formerly* experienced a couple months ago. However, after one of the updates or fixes, I am not experiencing this anymore. I would have said that it was fixed.

Hundreds of times now in Epic content I've assassinated mobs that are standing right next to other mobs. They don't even blink - just like it was long before. The whole room no longer auto agros after one of their buddies drop.

Is this complaint something assassins are still experiencing?! I don't see how unless Turbine covertly sent just me a valentine fixing the assassinate-agro problem.