Assassin Gear

6

After logging in over 200 hours on Martyr with over 100 playing the assassin I figure I would provide some feedback and a full breakdown of every weapon, armor and utility slot items available to the class.

The reason for doing the weapons, wargear and armors is simple, they dictate how you play since they provide the skills you use. 

This means that your gear selection impact your gameplay and to me gameplay is the most important aspect of any game.

Armors

Stealth Bodysuit: Strange that this armor is given at the start to the Infiltrator subclass when it is far more useful on the Sniper subclass due to the ability to do full aim shots from stealth. Nonetheless this armor is great for hit and run tactics and possibly my favorite armor. The adrenaline cost for stealth needs to have an initial cost added to it because right now you can use this armor as much as you want due to the cheap stealth adrenaline cost.

Hololithic Armor: Like the stealth armor this armor would be better off on the Infiltrator than on the sniper due to what the clones do; they cause so much suppression damage as melee that they make this a far better/safer option for a melee focus character. Cost and duration of the clones seems balanced and overall this is a solid armor choice.

Fabricator Armor: My least favorite armor but not because of its effect. This distortion field is fantastic but the cooldown at 90 secs is too high for me to take it over the two armor choices. Consider lowering the cooldown to 30 sec, especially since the Psyker time warp armor does almost the same thing on a 10 sec cooldown.

Add-Ons

That equipment slot requires an overhaul. 90% of the wargear is worthless, the personal void shield is overpowered and a lot of the options just don't work with a supply system (grenades and mines for example are just not good enough to warrant "ammo or charges").

Personal Void Shield: Let's address the elephant in the room first. The Personal Void Shield (PVS from now on) is the most overpowered add-on in the game. When Neocore published the usage stats of items from the Alpha it was unsurprising that the PVS had an overwhelming majority across all classes except Psykers but that's because of the Psychic focus. 4k HP is more than most character's max HP and full suppression on a short cooldown with no expiration makes this even better than the inoculator. Heck, when I use a void shield I use a max yellow slot inoculator instead because the PVS will keep me alive better than the inoculator anyway. This item needs a lower HP shield, an expiration and the green suppression needs to go away once the shield is gone.

Grenades (Flash, Frag, Haywire and Fuse): I am lumping all grenades in this single category because they all have the same issues: Almost no damage, special effects that are useless on anything with a suppression bar (you won’t want to waste items with limited charges on normal enemies). Grenades need to do away with the charges system and simply have unlimited ammo with a cooldown. This would make them useful. The crowd control grenades (flash, haywire) need to have their CC apply even vs green suppression so they are useful against more than just normal enemies.

Digital weapons: This one is actually decent, it does what it's supposed to and does it well. Consider updating the description to explain that it also adds damage not just crit chance.

Mines (Remote and Stun): See grenades. Mines also need to work like the granted minefield ability; a single mine is worthless; a small minefield could have some uses. Better yet, consider having one of them the new floating mines you added as traps.

Personal teleporter: Needs to work as a cooldown item instead of charges (Assassin gets a perk to make it work with Adrenaline but that's too steep of a cost for something marginally useful).

Fabricator Scatter field: See Grenades. Same issues as grenades, damage is low and ammo/charges feel wasted on that item.

Deflector field: This one is somewhat ok, I feel that since the reflect only work vs Melee attacks that it should not deplete when taking  ranged damage, this way it would work as intended 100% of the time. Right now if you are being shot at there's a good chance the 1000hp shield will be gone before melee gets to you and thus would have no effect.

Refractor field: This one is ok, i expect to see a lot more use out of if once the PVS is balanced. Maybe consider upping the duration to 30 seconds as 20 feels a little low for a marginal increase in survival.

Rosarius Forcefield: Great for emergencies, but a really niche item for glass canon builds doing really hard content.

Speaking of add-ons, where are the Meltabombs and Plasma grenades?

WEAPONS

General weapon issues across all classes

Melee + Ranged hybrid setup: Across all characters I have found no way to make a successful build that had a melee one handed weapon with a one handed ranged weapon. The biggest issue with such a setup is that you lose ability number 3 and 4 on both weapon; those are often the best abilities. The second issue is that it always feels clunky and unnatural to control.

Please consider making dual purpose contextual skills. Imagine your left click skill (or whatever button you have it mapped to) behaving like this: You have a sword and bolter, when at range it will shoot the bolter (maybe even move forward while shooting for that iconic 40k run while shooting) however that same key when in melee range would swings the sword instead. This would make for a much smoother melee/range gameplay, free up some keys so you don’t need 4 abilities just to cover basic shoot/spread/stab/cleave. As for ability number 3 and 4 on both weapons, can we please get to pick which ones we bring along (or you could make them all contextual/melee ranged but you would have to figure out how to address ranged melee attacks).

Mixing 2 ranged or 2 melee weapons.

This second issue is when you bring 2 weapons of the same class, like two pistols but not the same type, like 1 bolter + 1 auto pistol. Those setups are almost universally weak because the first 2 skills on most weapons are similar and having 2 sets of the same skills just ends up being redundant. This could be addressed by being able to pick which skills we want out of both weapons allowing us to have a custom setup of 4 skills we picked.

ASSASSIN WEAPONS

Snipers

All snipers are somewhat slow and have the Sniper shot ability, allowing to charge “aim” the ability at an enemy for up to 8 times the damage. In the original tech demo over a year ago it was demonstrated that you could aim shot enemies to break weapons, make them fall down, or just head shot them. While the 8 times damage head shot works great, what ever happened to disabling weapons and being able to make tactical decisions based on what you shoot at. The aim wheel still shows all 4 options but I have yet to see any effect from any of the options save for head shot dealing more damage. Was this idea scrapped?

Assassins get 4 choices of sniper guns.

Sniper Rifle: The starter sniper rifle is about as generic as its name impies but that’s not to say it’s bad. In fact, it is the most versatile sniper rifle and my go to whenever I have the option. It has the best crowd control, via Exploding shot + Shoot and retreat and the Sniper shot has all the tags to make it do great damage vs anything.

  • Single shot: Works well with a decent fire rate, knockback on top of armor breaking.
  • Exploding shot: Probably why this sniper is so well rounded, it makes this the best horde clearing sniper and sometimes can get you kills behind cover. It also deals good suppression damage and the rate of fire is excellent.
  • Sniper shot: Nothing fancy here but since it has the all-important Armor penetration so you are not useless vs armor it works decently. The CC is ok but it wont matter since enemies you will use it on will more than likely have enough suppression to resist.
  • Shoot and Retreat: This helps rounds up this weapon even more as it allows you to shoot while retreating and has SLOW + STUN attached to every shot on a .5 sec cooldown. I think the stun here is a little too much and should be removed but compensated with a wider spread to better handle crowd CC.

Longlas Rifle: The 2nd sniper you unlock is an energy heat weapon. This sniper has terrible crowd management and is almost completely dedicated to single target but it works by being the best option for a "single shot" build out of all Sniper rifles and being heat based means more damage to fleshy targets.

  • Single shot: Provides good damage down range at a somewhat slow pace but with great precision. This single shot trades armor piercing and knockback from the normal sniper for Critical and higher base damage. The slower shot generates almost no overheat so you can keep shooting almost forever.
  • Full auto: If there’s a weak skill on the Longlas rifle, this one is it. Full auto is technically more DPS than single shot because of the fire rate but the overheat is way too high to sustain this ability long enough to deal any significant damage. Overheat needs to be lowered from 0.8 to 0.2 this would still mean more overheat then single shot but the damage per heat would be closer to single shot.
  • Sniper Shot: This one has all the elements I want out of a sniper shot. Armor breaking so you can deal with armored enemies and Critical for that higher chance of dealing massive damage. Same cooldown as the normal sniper rifle makes this one a better pick for a pure sniper build. Where is the DoT that the other laser based weapons have on Aimed shot?
  • Prismatic Shot: This ability took me a while to love but now I use it fairly often. It is in my opinion the best piercing attack in the game because the 30% splash damage in 6 meters accidently fixes the issue with piercing shots being so narrow that they miss most targets past the first one. Neocore please consider making piercing attacks/beams wider to address this issue.

Needler Sniper Rifle: What looks like a possible DoT option for snipers; the 3rd sniper you unlock looks like it is designed for a damage over time build, except it’s not. The Needler is the worst sniper out of all 4 options. It suffers from multiple failed design choices including but not limited to: Low damage, no armor penetration, low damage over time and not doing anything that the other 3 sniper rifles can do better. Needler toxins is so weak as a debuff that its easily overlooked (10% movement speed debuff when fully stacked).

  • Short burst: On paper this ability looks good, 3 round burst, rapid fire with critical chances and a damage over time component. Except the damage is pathetic even when counting all 3 rounds and the DoT component is 20% of that pitiful damage and doesn’t stack making the rapid fire 3 round burst all but worthless. This ability needs more damage and the damage over time needs to stack so if you shoot a target full of needler shots he will take serious damage over time.
  • Shoot and Retreat: Basically, a full auto version of short burst with even less damage that lets you move backwards as you shoot and had SLOW on top of needler toxin for a 50% total movement slow. It’s not a horrible ability but it’s not great. The regular sniper does the same thing but has a STUN on top of the slow.
  • Sniper Shot: Like all sniper shots, it’s a 3 sec cooldown chargeable ability except this time you get 0 armor penetration so it’s terrible vs anything armored. Instead you get Cellrot and Restrain which are very niche and will not work 90% of the time due to requiring Red and Yellow suppression respectively. This sniper shot needs to be tied in with a DoT build, maybe does more damage when target has dots, maybe detonates all dots on the enemy dealing their full damage instantly. Anything to make this work because right now it’s the worst sniper shot of the lot by a large margin.
  • Needle Blast: This is an OK ability, it’s a decent size AoE with decent damage + that 20% doT (which is still weak). The issue here is the 8 sec cooldown. I can squeeze 6-8 explosive shots from the base sniper in the time it takes for this to cooldown not to mention way more damage. This needs a much lower cooldown or a persistent damage field to justify the high cooldown.

The Exitus Rifle: My biggest disappointment is the Exitus rifle. You unlock this weapon last and while it is not the worst Sniper in the game, a title firmly held by the Needler, it fails to meet players expectations of the most powerful iconic sniper gun in the 40k universe.

  • Single shot: When you think exitus rifle you expect slow and powerful shots that can penetrate anything and Single Shot is exactly that, slow, powerful, ignores armor and even stuns. Exactly what one should expect out of this gun.
  • Hellfire shot: The next ability feels a little out of place, at best it’s serviceable. Fleshbane helps a bit but vs hordes but the long 3 sec cooldown kills any potential as a horde clearing weapon. This is even worst when compatred with the basic sniper’s exploding shot. 
  • Sniper Shot: This one get shield piercing, which could be nice if there was more than 2 enemies in the game that actually uses shields, critical which is also nice and... wait, where is the armor pen? Remember when I said I was disappointed in the Exitus, this is one of the major reasons. It’s the most powerful rifle in the imperium and it has no armor penetration / ignore on the attack where it matters the most.
  • Pervasive shot: The last ability on the exitus is a piercing shot that doesn’t ignore armor or shields but will hit enemies in a strait extremely narrow line for low damage. Oh, and it causes bleeding... which strangelly enough is the assasin’s only source of bleed. Piercing shots should be a basic feature of the Exitus rifle on every ability (maybe not hellfire).Also see the Longlas Prismatic shot; that’s how you make a piercing shot that doesn’t suck because it so narrow that you miss everything.


One handed melee / Dual wield Melee

Most one-handed melee weapons perform adequately but they pale in comparison with their 2 handed counterpart. The damage and abilities need some upgrades and a general QA pass to bring them in line with 2 handers.

Arc blade: The arc blade works decently as a  heat-based melee weapon, it suffers from having almost the same skills as it's one and two abilities but gets better when paired it with another arc blade for the 3rd and 4th skills.

  • Bladestorm: Good high damage single target ability with the added benefits of death cult combo. 
  • Voltaic Arc: Unlike the two other melee options the second skill is not an aoe, instead its a STUN + SHOCK single target skill that is very similar to bladestorm but with less dps. It does have the lightning arc when you use it on something that can survive a hit. this needs to be changed to every hit no matter if the target lives or not.
  • Whirlwind Attack: It's a channelled whirlwind attack that does low dmg but decent dps and lets you move around while being a human blender. Not too great due to the low damage and area of effect but your best option for a 1 handed melee horde clearing skill.
  • Voltaic Leap: Leap in air at your cursor's location dealing decent damage in a large area and causing stun and shock. Great ability but the cooldown feels too long for what this does.

Death Cult Blade: The one handed "DoT" option for the Assassin. the death cult blade to me felt like the best of the 3 options for one handed melee. The damage and mobility are superior to the other two, however the dot component needs to be across the entire range not just a single ability.

  • Bladestorm: Pretty much exactly like a physical version of the Arc blade. This deal good damage, gets the death cult combo bonus and while it's a little lower dps than the one from the arc blade this one has base critical. (Where's the DoT?)
  • Wide Strike: Your standard frontal cleave attack, except this one has the only DoT available attached to it.
  • Phasing assault: Low cooldown mobility with crow control and good damage. This skill is fantastic.
  • Killing Blow: Takes all your death marks and performs an armor breaking attack that gains 10%-100% dmg based on your death marks. On paper it looks good until you see the dmg, it's so low and the ability takes almost 2.5 secs to execute that even with all marks stacked holding left click results in higher damage. This ability needs a serious damage boost or the Death marks need to provide a much larger boost.

Null Rod: As a non-dual wield one handed weapon, the Null rod performs the best out of the 3, it does the CC and dmg of the Arc blade on it's basic combo attack and also has a cleave like the Death Cult blade. The issue with this weapon starts when you start using it and realize that the cleave has a 2 sec cooldown, the leap a 6 sec cooldown and the null wave has a tiny range and area. Then there's the anti-psyker... it doesn't seem to work; Psykers get the debuff on them but still use their abilities as if nothing happened.

  • Null Strike: Do you want the dmg of the arc blade's first skill with the CC of the arc's blade second skill on a single button? If you said yes then this is the skill for you. A fantastic base attack.
  • Wide Strike: Basic frontal cleave with a blind attached. all good until you factor in the 2 sec cooldown. Consider lowering this to 1 sec, the 2 sec cooldown is just too slow for a 1h melee.
  • Null Wave: Piercing wave attack that deals medium damage. Issues here is the wave is too narrow and too short. The 4 sec cooldown seems high for the damage being dealt but if the wave was larger and longer this would balance itself out.
  • Annulment: Leap in the air at your cursor's location dealing decent damage and causing a variety of effects like knockback, no healing and knockdown but the cooldown once again is quite long and prevents this being used as a good mobility option.


Two handed melees

I feel like most two-handed melee options are in a great spot. Very minor tweaks would be required to make them all fantastic and they are leagues ahead of their one-handed counterparts.

Arc Sword: The arc sword can be summarized as one thing: FUN! While it's the least effective of all the two handed melee options it is the most fun due to the mobility and the aoe's. This could be my favorite with bug fixes and minor changes.

  • Voltaic Strike: Your standard basic melee that shoots lightning arcs at nearby targets but only when attacking targets that survice the first hit. With a quick fix to make sure it triggers on killing blows as well this would be fantastic.
  • Thunder Slide: A movement skill with decent damage and aoe explosion at the end and some CC, an excellent ability. Cooldown is a bit high but seems balanced.
  • Voltaic Backflip: Your typical leap and land to do some aoe damage with some crowd control... except this leap only goes backwards resulting is a somewhat weird playstyle. Either remove the backwards only or bring the cooldown in line with Thunder slide so you can leap away then thunder slide somewhere.
  • Shock Nova: Point blank shock nova that delivers satisfying damage and also knockdowns. Long cooldown but a good ability (great synergy with the AoE skill tree).

Assassin Power Sword: If I had to pick only 1 melee weapon to use it would be a hard choice between this one and the Carthean sword. The assassin power sword is super versatile, offers the best mobility out of all melee weapons and deals pretty good damage on top of it. Death mark is kind of weak as a debuff but I can live with it on this weapon due to the rest being great.

  • Bladestorm: Same as the death cult blade, decent single target damage with the bonus of the death cult combo.
  • Blade Bite: Slow cleave but has the death cult combo and death mark with the added benefits of being a much largest cleave than most weapons.
  • Phasing Assault: What happens when you combine the 3rd and 4th skill of the Death cult blade? You get Phasing assault, a movement skill that deals extra damage based on death marks, has armor breaking, can stun and has good dmg on a low cooldown. Stellar ability.
  • Serpent Strike: It's a leap to cursor ability that deals dmg but this one has 2 things that all the other do not have: A decent DoT and a low cooldown. My only complain is that the DoT should not be poison it should be bleed as assassin have no melee bleed options.

Carthean Sword: For me it's always between this sword and the Assassin's Power sword. Unlike the power sword, this one has no mobility at all, it compensates for that by having the best cleave in the game, better dps and ranged attacks. On this one you trade Death marks for needler toxins which is also a very weak debuff that I chose to overlook because the rest of the kit is great. My only concern with this weapon is that we need a damage over time focussed weapon and this seems like it could be tweaked into filling that gap.

  • Carthean Strike: Your usual death cult combo attack, this one is fast resulting in better overall dps but has no bonus crit.
  • Crimson Path: A channelled movement-based frontal wide cleave. This is my favorite horde clearing skill, it's large, deals good dmg and has a low cooldown.
  • Severance: This is basically phasing assault from the power sword except it's a ranged ability instead of a movement skill. Nothing bad about this, great skill.
  • Blade Dance: Throws a bouncing ranged attack that poisons enemies, deals damage and also stack vulnerability. This is quite good, although I wish that the poison had a larger damage component.

Ranged single handed weapons

One handed Pistols make up a large portion of the assassin’s options but they sadly suffer from the one-handed issues mentioned earlier. Some are viable options when used as a dual setup but none of them really shine when used single handed. The assault tag is also confusing, if I understand correctly the developers made all pistols around 30% weaker and added the assault tag to compensate at lower ranges. Why not just make all one handed ranged weapons do the same damage and change assault for some kind of damage penalty at long range. Wouldn't that make much more sense?

Auto Pistol: The auto pistol is a starter weapon that feels like it could work with some minor tweaks but fails to provide any benefits in the later stages of the game. The fleshbane / weak vs armor relegates it to a purely regular enemies clearing weapon but the lack of any real aoe means really limits its potential.

  • Short Burst: 3 round burst low overall damage, average ability at best.
  • Full auto: decent dps in a wide cone, probably the best part of this weapon but the area coverage feels low and even with a wide cone of fire this doesn’t deal with hordes very well.
  • Crippling Salvo: Low damage stun and shock attack that for some reason is not fleshbane or weak against armor. Once again, an average skill.
  • Assault Gunnery: Run towards your target while shooting. If this was not the 4th skill and instead was first then it might work as a combo gun/melee skill but it’s skill number 4 so no using it unless you use 2 auto pistols so 0 uses.

Bolt Pistol: A serviceable weapon and a not horrible single pistol pick, this weapon works similar to the auto pistol but has absolutely fantastic abilities when paired with a 2nd bolt pistol.

  • Single Shot: A decent shot with average accuracy low dps but good damage. Has the advantage of being viable vs armor.
  • Full auto: Just like the auto pistols full auto this is a wide spread automatic fire designed to mow down large packs of enemies but it suffers from the same issues as the auto pistol in terms of coverage and the lower rate of fire of the bolt pistol makes this even worst.
  • Concussive shot: Packs quite a punch and has CC to boot. I find it really strange there’s no armor breaking on it though.
  • Suppressive Fire: This is supposed to be an aoe and “suppressive” but instead it’s a very high damage close range burst that spreads so little you are very likely to land all 10 shots into a single target for some impressive damage. So, it’s a great skill that fails to do what’s it’s designed for but instead deals amazing damage.

Grav-Pistol: The grav-Pistol is a little like the grav gun, except worst in every possible way. It’s advertised as an anti armor pistol but overheats so fast while dealing so little damage that it cannot even kill a single champion space marine before it overheats. It also has really weird mix of abilities.

  • Single shot:  Nothing really wrong with the single shot except that for a 2 overheat attack it lacks damage.
  • Temporal anomaly: a stun / slow low damage single target range attack with no anti armor. This ability is garbage.
  • Gravity Well: First of all i think this skill has the wrong name/tooltip and is suposed to be called Gravity Explosion. I quite like this skill as a CC option, it’s great as a tarpit while I kill stuff except this weapon has 0 killing potential. The skill has a 15 sec cooldown which feels like its 33% too long and it’s also available on the Grav gun (Gravity Explosion) along with better abilities.
  • Gravity Flare: The only use I have found with that skill is killing nurglings when surrounded, something that a lot of weapons would have handled better especially without the 7sec cooldown.

Inferno Pistol: Average heat-based weapon that falls short of the mark in many ways. It could have been a good DoT burning weapon but doesn’t take advantage of that.

  • Single shot: Decent dps with stacking vulnerability makes this a good attack.
  • Melting Ray: Armor piercing and reduces armor by 50% for 2 secs (needs to be much longer). Issue is the massive 4 overheat from this attack, 3 shots and you are overheated.
  • Melta blast: Needs a bigger AoE and some helpful tags, like fleshbane.
  • Inferno beam: Needs to be wider like all piercing attacks it’s too narrow. Overheat needs to be lowered to 3 at most. The damage overtime needs to either stack with itself resulting in multiple Dots while channelling or it needs a much higher base dmg.

Laspistol: This one is somewhat ok because it provides decent overheat with a set of usable abilities. Nothing feels horribly wrong with this weapon. It does suffer from low damage.

  • Single Shot: Your basic single attack, does average damage at best but for a pistol it’s par for the course.
  • Short burst: a 3 round burst with terrible damage on a 2 sec cooldown. This needs a higher damage ceiling.
  • Aimed shot: Like the sniper ones but capped at x2 it’s a useful attack as it hits through cover and can deal some pretty decent damage hits.
  • Dual Beams: works ok but like all piercing attack the hit detection is too narrow. Make this one wider and it will be great.

Plasma Pistol: I tried to like this gun and while it’s not as bad as the Plasma Gun (or heavy plasma) it still lacks its role in the game. It seems they are advertising plasma guns as cover destroyers but its simply not something required in the game. Plasma guns should be slow heavy damage hits that sets targets on fire, burns through armor and melts cover.

  • Single shot: very boring attack that deals average pistol dmg and does high dmg to cover.
  • Focused bolt: This attack has potential, but its too slow to apply vulnerability with its long cooldown. Move the vulnerability to single shot.
  • Piercing strike: Like all piercing attack this needs a wider area and could use some tags to make it better.
  • Overcharge: Basically a “sniper shot” with no armor pen and super low base damage. Useless skill.


Ranged two-handed weapons

Autogun: This gun is simply a two-handed version of the auto pistol that is better in almost all points. While both the first skills are a copy paste with better damage the 3rd and 4th skills just perform better than the ones from the auto pistol. The new sound on this weapon is a lot better than the Alpha one.

  • Single shot: Same as the autopistol but with more damage and more ammo capacity making this one better.
  • Full auto: once again same as the auto pistol but with more damage once again making this better.
  • Aimed Shot: Nothing too special here, it does ok damage and works like all non-sniper aimed shots. An average skill.
  • Shoot and Retreat: this one should work like full auto but with less dmg and slow+backwards movement.

Boltgun: With the autogun being a better version than the autopistol you’d expect that the Boltgun following the trend of copy pasting the first 2 skills with higher damage to be a better version of the Bolt Pistol, except here it is the opposite: The last 2 skills are not better compared to the one-handed version.

  • Single shot: Same as the bolt pistol with slightly higher damage but no spread tag for some reason.
  • Full auto: Again, same as the bolt pistol with higher damage.
  • Aimed Shot: Trading concussive shot for aimed shot comes out as a wash as both skills are ok in their own rights.
  • Frag Burst: A skill borrowed from the heavy bolter this skill has potential but the low rate of fire gives it such low coverage that it’s not a great option for horde clears. Consider upping the area of effect or the rate of fire to compensate.

Grav-Gun: This one took me a while to truly enjoy but it is now one of my favorites. The ability to deal decent anti armor damage coupled with fantastic CC and horde clearing makes this weapon a well-rounded contender. While Single shot and temporal anomaly are both on the pistol the higher dmg and overheat capacity of this gun makes them far more usable.

  • Single Shot: Just like the grav-pistol but with more damage and half the overheat cost.  This skill works decently and helps make this gun useful vs armor.
  • Temporal Anomaly: A slower higher damage version of the same pistol skill. Once again, the higher dmg and slower attack means less overheat making this one marginally better. I still hate this skill in general, it lacks a lot in terms of uniqueness.
  • Gravity Surge: The best skill to come out of this weapon, this aoe, damage over time, channelled slow field is great. If the pistol lost it’s terrible 4th skill for this it would be an awesome weapon too.

Melta-Gun: An exact copy of the inferno pistol with the 2nd and 3rd skills swapped and some weird nerfs/design decisions. I don’t have much to say about this weapon except that while arguably better than the pistol (as are all 2h weapons) the extra damage and additional overheat just doesn’t make this weapon shine. The Multi Melta from the crusader ends up being a much more usable weapon than either this or the pistol.

  • Single Shot: Same as the pistol but slower resulting in almost the same dps.
  • Melta Blast: Exactly the same as the pistol’s 3rd skill but with a burning effect. Not sure why the pistol doesn’t have that part.
  • Melting ray: A slower higher damage version of the pistol’s 2nd skill. This one suffers from the same problems as the previous weapon. (2 sec is too short for a debuff).
  • Inferno Beam: Somehow, they managed to make this skill worst than the exact same skill from the dual pistols. While it costs half as much overheat to use, it also deals half as much damage as the pistol version.

Lasgun: I normally compare the two-handed range options with their one-handed counterparts but on this one I will also include the sniper version as it shares some similarities. The Lasgun is not a horrible weapon, it’s just an ordinary one that feels like it’s slightly underperforming and doesn’t bring anything special to compensate.

  • Single shot: An average single shot, when compared to the  longlas rifle this one is shot for shot faster but lower dps than the longlas rifle. This ability needs a damage boost.
  • Short Burst: Same skill as the pistol but with more damage and a better overheat capacity makes this a better option. Still think the damage is way too low for the cooldown.
  • Aimed Shot: This one trades assault for a DoT and very slightly more damage. Still a good skill. Why doesn’t the longlas get that DoT as well?
  • Hot Shot: A different name but arguably the same skill as the pistols but with less damage this time around. Like all beat piercing skills it needs to be made wider so it has better hit detection (see longlas prismatic shot). The damage of this skill needs a review as well.

Plasma Gun: Like the pistol the plasma gun lacks a niche, being good at blowing up cover is not a desired function for a weapon. Probably the weapon I like the least out of all the assassin’s weapons. This weapon has terrible horde management, bad anti-armor and doesn’t work well vs champions or harder enemies resulting in a worthless weapon that is even worst than it’s one handed counterpart. The plasma gun needs anti armor across the board, lower cooldowns (let the low overheat handle “cooldowns”) and a ton more damage.

  • Single shot: Exact same as the pistol shot without the “assault” range penalty. Needs more damage.
  • Short burst: This skill could be functional if the cooldown was not 5 sec.  Damage could be higher.
  • Focus Bolt: Armor ignore is good but damage is low for the cooldown. Vulnerability on a long cooldown is a mistake and needs to be moved to single shot.
  • Compressed Plasma: The concept is good but it needs more damage and the area of effect needs to increase along with the charge (3x bigger at max).

Shotgun: The last weapon in this long review is also the only one with no one handed counterparts. So, with nothing to compare it to, I will be evaluating this one at pure face value. I don’t dislike the shotgun, in fact I tried to run it as long as I could but ran into issues. The biggest one is ammo, for the amount of ammo this weapon uses the damage output seems low, you end up constantly reloading. The 2nd issue is a lot of “ghost hits”, meaning that you shoot and stuff within your shooting cone do not get hit. I see this issue often with spread weapons but it’s extremely noticeable here. If ammo was increased and ghost hits were fixed this would make it into the widely used category.

  • Single shot: This skill needs a lot more damage considering it is already weak against armor, short range and have instant damage falloff via the Shred tag.
  • Manstoper round. Swap this skill with burst shot for consistency and drop the cooldown to 1 sec. The damage on this skill does not warrant the 3 sec cooldowns either.
  • Flechette round: Confused skill, needs to be redesigned as either a champion/elite killing skill or a horde clearing skill (and for that one it would need to be better than single shot).
  • Burst Shot: Basically, full auto for the shotgun. So, why the weird cooldown + ammo count? Just make it work like full auto, reduce cooldown to like 0.5 so you get to shoot fast, wrecks your ammo count but output good dps down range.


And i guess that's it, thanks for reading all of this. I may try to do the same for the other 2 classes (as there is a lot of overlap anyway) but i would prefer people with more experience do them to ensure optimal feedback. If anyone feels like i got some details wrong, please let me know and i will make the necessary corrections.

 Hopefully we can see some positive changes from this feedback.

-Nalfen


This post was edited 5 years 303 days ago by Nalfen
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5 years 299 days ago
Nicely done, well written and informative....

Now, you have two more gear reviews to do... chop, chop....

5 years 300 days ago
Thanks a lot for your post! I couldn't agree more!
5 years 304 days ago
Alright, it's fully done.

Enjoy :)

5 years 304 days ago
Great feedback. Agree with it all. Have over 1000 played hours on assassin and can see your feelings. Well written as well. 
5 years 304 days ago
Awesome Feedback!
5 years 304 days ago
+1

Thank you for your feedback! Really appreciate it!