Downtime Notice: Tuesday, October 30th 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT)

[Xyy]

So out of the blue you are buffing assassinate? There was no thread discussing this with us—it seems plopped out of nowhere.

I have no idea what to make of it. Why can an assassin assassinate an ooze? Or assassinate someone fully aware/aggroed onto them sans some trick like blindness/bluff etc.? This undernines the skill of the class. I do not like it.

If you allow assassinate on these odd creatures AFTER they have been hit with assassin’s trick, I am ok with that. It is tactical & has consequences.

This quite accurately reflects my feelings. Regarding DDO rules and gameplay, I'm disappointed with many of SSG's decisions and directions as of recently. This move is a whole new level of disappointment.

[zaidm271981]

This quite accurately reflects my feelings. Regarding DDO rules and gameplay, I'm disappointed with many of SSG's decisions and directions as of recently. This move is a whole new level of disappointment.

**** straight!

[Earthbound Misfit]

Apologies if you use this, but:

Fixed an issue where Death from Above would hit the player if the player had no target.

C'mon … you could have just made it do no damage surely, just for the humour alone It's no worse than a warlocks blasts/bursts not hitting 'cos the paving slab you are on sunk 1/8th of an inch lower than the one the baddie is on

[Zites]

So out of the blue you are buffing assassinate? There was no thread discussing this with us—it seems plopped out of nowhere.

I have no idea what to make of it. Why can an assassin assassinate an ooze? Or assassinate someone fully aware/aggroed onto them sans some trick like blindness/bluff etc.? This undernines the skill of the class. I do not like it.

If you allow assassinate on these odd creatures AFTER they have been hit with assassin’s trick, I am ok with that. It is tactical & has consequences.

I believe this is being done because they cant and are not willing to put in the enormous time and money to fix aggro for stealth so they throw them a bone hoping this will quite stealth player down but it wont.

But it does make an op class event stronger Gratx!

[Kenpai]

Fixed an issue where some hirelings were posing strangely.

[Annex]

Assassinate's death effect no longer requires landing a "sneak attack" to apply, a normal hit will do. However you still must be stealthed to use the skill.
Assassinate can now be used on Oozes, Elementals, Constructs, and Undead creatures. The description no longer references "living target" and now just references "target".

I see Standing Stone once again lacks the developer resources to fix a problem. *le sigh* I understand but it makes me extremely sad. When I decided to buy into DDO back in 2013, the main reason, by far, was stupidly fun stealth play on a Rogue Assassin. Other games do melee and ranged and tanks and spell casters and crowd control and buffers and de-buffers way better, but DDO really had something wonderful going with stealth. It was so fun to solo an Elite dungeon with full scaling, slowly picking apart enemy defenses. That disappeared at the end of 2014 and eroded ever since, leaving the the sorry state of stealth play we see today. I shake my head at some of the comments in this thread calling this change an 'improvement' but...opinions.

So, now I can sneak towards a Vampire with a Red Eye and hit my Assassinate button and if I time it right, the Vampire instantly dies before hitting me and knocking me out of stealth. Well, I suppose that eliminates one Vampire slightly faster. Unfortunately, all of Mister Vampire's friends still know exactly where I am and bring the party to me. I either have the gigantic defenses necessary to survive the ensuing monster mash or I die pretty quickly. Meanwhile, a Rogue Assassin operating in a group with a meat shield gets to blow up more stuff, making the rest of the party mad because of the imbalance. Well yay.

I will not even get into how little sense this change makes considering how the class is supposed to work. Whatever. No developer budget to fix it. I get it.

Hope extinguished leaves fading memories of better times.

[CaptainPurge]

Assassinate becomes some kind of new magical instakill ability. Single-target implosion let's call it instead.

[Shadow_Jumper]

So out of the blue you are buffing assassinate? There was no thread discussing this with us—it seems plopped out of nowhere.

I have no idea what to make of it. Why can an assassin assassinate an ooze? Or assassinate someone fully aware/aggroed onto them sans some trick like blindness/bluff etc.? This undernines the skill of the class. I do not like it.

Might as well enjoy it I guess. I presume this is the “solution” to broken stealth mechanics and undoubtedly is all that we will see for a long time.

Assassinate becomes some kind of new magical instakill ability. Single-target implosion let's call it instead.

People with no knowledge/experience will assume this. People will probably TR into rogues to try out the new “OPness” that is the wonders of assassination.

Many will find that since you still have to be in stealth mode to assassinate, it really won’t change much. Trying to assassinate that archer? Well regardless of wether he hits, misses, you dodge/displace/deflect, you will still be taken out of stealth mode. Undoubtedly this will frustrate a lot of new-to-assassin players when they find that they simply can’t both have agro and stealth up to and assassinate a mob at the same time.

Also one of the bigger complaints I’ve heard about assassin is the lack of CC/AoE dmg. This is mainly by design of the class, and obviously nothing has changed.

End result I think it will be a nice benefit to those already experienced with the ability, but those expecting to simply turn to this as the next META shattering build will simply find it likely falls short of their lofty expectations of the new god-build.

[CaptainPurge]

Might as well enjoy it I guess. I presume this is the “solution” to broken stealth mechanics and undoubtedly is all that we will see for a long time.

People with no knowledge/experience will assume this. People will probably TR into rogues to try out the new “OPness” that is the wonders of assassination.

Yes that is how to balance broken stealth since let's just give up on trying to fix it. It hard.

Assassinate to me means something like stabbing a vertebrate in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord, or other weak spot causing instant death. How doth one assassinate an ooze? That is what I mean by now it is "magical" by constructs and elementals who should'n't inherently have physical weak points. Change my mind.

[Talon_Dragonsbane]

Changes were probably made for Falconry tree and benefitted Assassin tree as a byproduct. My guess is that they share the same coding, so both were affected by the change.

[mikarddo]

Wrt the upped xp on some Night Revel quests - please reset first time bonuses on these to allow us to actually take advantage of this xp.

[Gabrael]

So out of the blue you are buffing assassinate? There was no thread discussing this with us—it seems plopped out of nowhere.

I have no idea what to make of it. Why can an assassin assassinate an ooze? Or assassinate someone fully aware/aggroed onto them sans some trick like blindness/bluff etc.? This undernines the skill of the class. I do not like it.

If you allow assassinate on these odd creatures AFTER they have been hit with assassin’s trick, I am ok with that. It is tactical & has consequences.

I might be reading this wrong, but it sais it does not require you to do a "sneak attack", but that it still requires you to be "stealthed" this prolly mean you can assasinate spiders and oozes after they spotted you, but BEFORE they hit you, as getting hit remove stealth.

so an aggroed monster can be assasinated, as long you do it from the sneak position. not easy to do when being pounded on, and you need tot ake time to get into sneak mode, not get hit, then activate it.
this also make falconry user more useful since their version of assasinates will now also work on more stuff, alongside rogues.

[Gabrael]

Yes that is how to balance broken stealth since let's just give up on trying to fix it. It hard.

Assassinate to me means something like stabbing a vertebrate in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord, or other weak spot causing instant death. How doth one assassinate an ooze? That is what I mean by now it is "magical" by constructs and elementals who should'n't inherently have physical weak points. Change my mind.

true, but constructs can have weak spots, and just imagine oozes/elementals have "cores" or smthing vital like that. I know lore-wise, it's far from ideal. but being a fast paced mmorpg you need to throw a bone to various playstyles, this time i guess it benifit solo assassins. At least there is still cooldowns, so its not like you can zerg assassinate.

[Elfishski]

Would like to also note that I think the assassination change is a really poor one.

1. This is unthematic - abilities that are tied thematically to their effect make the game feel more D&D. Abilities that are just tied to a cooldown are less interesting.

2. This is boring - DDO classes are strong and varied and part of that is that different classes are good against different enemies. Assassins good at instakilling enemies that can be... well, assassinated, gives them an incredible strength (it was plenty powerful before), but they also have weaknesses and against other enemies some other classes shine instead. That's good varied design. When all the abilities in the game are moving slowly toward homogenization of being fixed scaling numbers against all mobs equally in all quests equally then we're inching closer to a game that feels like beating down boss kobolds where it really doesn't matter what class you play, the only difference is pressing buttons with different icons in a slightly different rotation.

3. If assassins aren't strong enough (and everything I've heard says they are already plenty strong enough) then work on stealth instead.

If that ability in T5 falconry was too weak then give it some other boost.

[HuneyMunster]

That's interesting.

My difficulty with this is assassins can currently produce very high DPS and have an effective instakill. They have other weaknesses (some of which monks don't) to offset those things, but being able to do both very good DPS and reliably instakill targets is a very powerful combination.

It will be interesting to see what other people think about this issue, especially those playing hard content at endgame on very well geared characters with many past lives and/or reaper points. I don't think assassins that only build for DCs are especially useful in harder endgame content, but a serious tradeoff between DCs and DPS is not currently required by the game.

Thanks.

It does require a lot more player skill to use Assassinate than Finger of Death or Quivering Palm. While sneaking you move a lot slower which often mean failure due to target running off to chase someone else. Both QP an FoD DC's are generally a lot higher especially with no stacks of Measure the Foe or Astral Plane feat. Unlike other death attack its not interrupted by being hit or being missed in combat. The third reason for assassinate failure has been removed which I consider a good thing as the the ability is still interruptible.


I think it might be likely that the decision to allow assassinate to no longer require sneak attack is due to the insane bluff dc's required in legendary content. Its hard to effectively hit sneak followed by bluff and assassinate like you use to be able to before bluff formula was changed a year or two ago. This is the reason why Improved Feint that works great in heroic and lower epics, but starts to become useless towards end game. The only exception for Feint is Reapers whose bluff dc is lower, but you can't bluff pull those due to Tremor Sense. There is just not enough items slots to be able to slot bluff, insightful buff as well as charisma and insightful charisma in combat gear. Even with gear slotted some monsters have over 120 dc to be successfully bluffed.

Also one of the bigger complaints I’ve heard about assassin is the lack of CC/AoE dmg. This is mainly by design of the class, and obviously nothing has changed.

The AoE damage part Im fine with, but CC is an issue. Assassins get Poison Strikes that are fairly weak except when coupled with Weakening and Deadly Strikes from Tier 4 and 5. The DC's for Poison Strikes are not only poor, but also require vorpal for the good effects with a 6 second cooldown.

Also if you compare Shiv to Exposing Strike and Unbalancing Strike it is potentially inferior to both these, especially Exposing Strike. Shiv 12 sec cooldown no save, Exposing Strike 6 sec CD no save, Unbalancing Strike 6 sec CD (DC 10 + Half Monk Level + Wisdom modifier + Trip modifiers) reflex save.

Venomed Blades is another option that could have an non-helpless Paralysis effect added on crit or vorpal with 3 points spent similar to Paralyzing weapon effects. Or something similar to what Drow in Underdark get which would also work well for the playable Drow race.

[HuneyMunster]

Are champions in Killing Time a bug? If so are these removed in this patch?

[C-Dog]

Still no fix for Astral Projector?

I didn't hear about this - what's up w/ that runearm? Just the range appearing misleading?

[DYWYPI]

I agree with blerkington, that there was absolutely NO NEED to include additional monsters that are 'immune to critical hits' or don't have "vitals" to now become vulnerable to: 'hit by Assassinate!'. :-/

I suspect many true Assassin players; don't want such stupid "dumbing down"! We were simply asking to be able, to use Sneak effectively, and motivating play. We weren't interested in killing everything going, e.g. undead, slimes, true Constructs, with 1-hit! :-/

[...]
• Assassinate now displays immunity particles if the character hits an immune target.
• Assassinate's death effect no longer requires landing a "sneak attack" to apply, a normal hit will do. However you still must be stealthed to use the skill.
• Assassinate can now be used on Oozes, Elementals, Constructs, and Undead creatures. The description no longer references "living target" and now just references "target".
...

I'm not quite sure what "immunity particles" are, but it should be pretty obvious, if the monster doesn't die, it's likely [still] immune to Assassinate anyway - or your Assassinate DC is far too low. LOL

If your [Assassin] doesn't need to land "Sneak attack", to Assassinate a monster that reads like: I could walk right up to a 'aggravated' monster's face; click 'Sneak', hit 'Assassinate' and it dies..?

I can hardly believe the DDO Team has been - clandestinely - cooking up on such 'ill conceived' ideas; just to avoid having to communicate with players, about 'faulty monster behaviour'. Who have you been taking counsel from (it certainly WAS NOT the regular devoted Assassin players in the DDO Forums).

Perhaps it was Severlin, that gave you the ultimatum; would you care to discuss or elaborate, as to why you have finally made these "unasked for" changes to Assassinate?

The peculiar monster behaviour; is mostly dungeon design or the current illogical "(mis)behaviour" of some of the monsters. Than can easily cause illogical "chain-reaction aggravation", and so forth with regards to a Character in Sneak, etc.

[...] So out of the blue you are buffing assassinate? There was no thread discussing this with us—it seems plopped out of nowhere.

I have no idea what to make of it. Why can an assassin assassinate an ooze? Or assassinate someone fully aware/aggroed onto them sans some trick like blindness/bluff etc.? This under[m]ines the skill of the class. I do not like it. ...

I'm beginning to question; whether the DDO Developers have a have a deep loathing for [current] Assassin players. A little 'Transparency' of why they are still not prepared to fix the "Monster Aggravation with regards to Characters within Sneak" would have been a far better solution.

Instead of forcing upon us; changes to Assassinate functionality, something that many of us Assassin players were not wanting in the slightest... :-/


(Combat): You hit [Stealth players] with Assassination.

[Ballrus]

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Tuesday, October 30th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 40 Patch 2. Click here for the Release Notes. Thank you for your patience, and we'll see you back in the game soon!

No fix to zero damage on reaper?

"Damage and healing values now have a minimum value of one due to Reaper scaling. If Reaper scaling would reduce a value for damage or healing that is above zero to zero, then the value will now be at least one."

[Loromir]

It is painfully obvious you have not played an assassin. Please go play one and then post your opinions based on actual game play.

I played assassins as my mains for many years then stopped playing them because of the assassinate/stealth issues. Yes stealth issues remain the root cause of the assassinate issues. However, this is a very good change IMO, especially when you consider how much easier and much more often other insta killing classes can insta kill.

Even with this change, assassins are still way behind when it comes to kills per minute compared to other insta killing classes.

-JR

I'm pretty sure he was joking.