[Class] Assassin v 1.8

[Ninjasassin]

screenshots:

Spoiler: show

download: http://www.runicgamesfansite.com/torchl ... wnload/422

v 1.8

A flexible class designed to fill the role of the lighter, more damage oriented warrior or rogue type. A new skin, recolored armor and a custom icon distinguish him from the alchemist and give him a killer/roguish feel. I am currently refining the ability balance and diversity to give the class an even more distinct feel. I have done only a little early game testing but so far it seems fairly well balanced and fun to play, enjoy my first mod.

Hopefully I can get some feedback on skill balance and overall playability fo the class, so far the class seems moderately balanced, but I can only see and test so much. In addition I have played the class too much in it's early development and am too familiar with it to be a completely unbiased tester of it's balance. Have fun, hopefully this will fill that gap where the archetypal rogue class should fit in this game, especially if I can refine it some more.
Skills to be posted later today, if I get the time.
More screenshots, etc. to come later as well.

Skill Trees:

Killer: Focuses on close combat damage skills and passive abilities that increase overall damage.
active skills:2 buffs:3 debuffs/auras:0 passives:3

Sniper: Offers some long range skills, debuffs and passives, focuses on wearing down the enemy without being hit.
active skills:4 buffs:1 debuffs/auras:1 passives:5

Ninja: Focuses on traps and croud control as well as skills that keep you from taking as much damage.
active skills:4 buffs:1 debuffs/auras:1 passives:5

Change Log:

Spoiler: show

v 1.0
Initial release
v 1.1
Added a new ability, Deflect, based on the Desroyer's disabled skill wind wall.
Fixed several typos.
Changed some skill descriptions.
Tweaked Ember Phase damage and cooldown to alter it's role.
v1.2
Major filesize reduction.
Skill name changed: Blade Dance to Dance Of Death
Skill range reduced for Oil Bomb and Ice Bomb from 8 to 6.
Skill range reduced for Poison Dart and DPS damage changed to poison type.
Icons changed for the Lethality, Vital Strike and Dance Of Death skills.
Leather glove recolored to fit the rest of the leather set better.
Character Icon changed slightly, (now includes red hair) new description.
v 1.3
Two new abilities, Incapacitate and Multishot.
Removed stun affect from Whirling Chains and added damage to compete with Multishot.
Moved skills to arguably more appropriate positions.
Tweaked skill balance for Vital Strike, Dance Of Death and Adrenaline.
Renamed the skill tree Shadow to Sniper.
Removed Thorns Aura.
v 1.3a
Tweaked balance for Multishot, it now costs more mana per level.
Really did tweak balance for Adreneline this time.(15% slow so Dance of Death can compete with it later.)
Moved Arenaline to lvl 10, same tree.
Moved Whirling Chains up to lvl 5 for early close range splash
Added inital damage to Whirling Chains but cut its damage growth (10%->5%)
Lengthened stun and cooldown for Incapacitate, increased speed ratio slightly.
Vital Strike no longer does splash damage, added damage and slightly reduced cooldown and mana cost to compensate.
Added a Screenshot of the class.
v 1.4
Added several new custom icons, edited some previous ones.
Added two new abilities, Precise Striking and Deadened Nerves.
Renamed Ember Escape to Vanishing Act, slowed skill speed slighlty,changed skill description.
Renamed Oil bomb to Firebomb, added cooldown and slightly cut AoE radius.
Renamed Vital Strike to Impale, as the name no longer fits and I plan to use it later.
Impale does splash damage again, but with a smaller radius and longer reach.
Impale now uses the sound from Cleave and Devestate as well as a devestate based texture.
Moved Whirling Chains to lvl 10 and buffed it slightly.
Removed Flechette trap.
Buffed Dance of Death slightly.
v1.5
Added two new abilities, Infamous and Toxicology.
Replaced Poison Dart's bleeding attach (Hamstringtheme) with a poison attach.
Lowered Impale's %DPS, and increased it's damage affix (This way there is more incentive to upgrade it.)
Impale now costs 7 mp to start out with, making it a more viable, but still tactical, core skill.
Adrenaline and Dance Of Death are now Trances, you can only have one of the two active at a time.
Lowered mana cost for Adrenaline, you shouldn't be using much MP for something that would really give you energy.
Lowered mana cost for Ice Bomb and Firebomb, Firebomb now has a longer cooldown than Ice Bomb.
Moved several skills to different trees/tiers.
Removed Frailty, Magic Weapons Mastery and Adventurer skills.
v1.6
Weakened Exp gain on Combat Expertise.
Weakened Toxicology's Poison Resistance.
Weakened Lethality's Critical Damage and Critical Rate.
Drastically lowered overall Armor Penalty for Infamous, increased initial penalty slightly.
Buffed Defelction's reflect percentage and made it lower attack speed.
Buffed Firebomb and increased its cooldown.
Increased Cooldown for Whirling Chains.
Fixed a fairly major problem with 10 points in Spell Mastery, now it should be 1.
v1.7
Added three new skills, Executioner, Angel Of Death and Tactician.
Combat expertise now increases attack speed slightly, making it more useful, especially if you use Deflect or Precision.
Removed Critical Damage Increase from Combat Expertise and moved it to Angel Of Death.
Gave several skills have higher level caps, ranging from 15 to 25, to better support high level mods and gameplay.
Removed Spell Mastery, Tactician was meant to replace it.
Enlarged Character Select Icons since only the four are used.
Firebomb Cooldown is now 8 seconds and the skill has been re-nerfed.
Increased mana cost of most abilities.
Added a 30 second cooldown on precision to help keep track of its duration.
Buffed Venom Dirk's damage % increase per level.
Weakened Impale's damage % to encourage leveling it.
Weakened Precision's critical rate and increased it's damage bonus and attack speed penalty.
Adrenaline now gives a roughly 10% bonus to it's affect per level.
v1.8
Recolored character select icon to better fit the Assassin.
Increased duration and cooldown of Precison to 45 seconds and slightly increased mana cost.
Increased the mana cost for Impale, Dance Of Death, Poison Dart and Executioner.
Buffed mid-high level damage increases for Firebomb.
Buffed Whirling chains slightly.
Fixed an item pathing error, thanks to Webbstre for pointing this out.

Mod Conflicts and Issues: Conflicts with any other mod that uses charactercreate files, I recently ran into a single isntance where a buckled helm was not showing up with the right mesh, I have yet to fix this but it shouldnt be too serious of a problem.

(Note, I have yet to completely balance the new executioner skill, I suspect it is slightly OP at the moment. If anyone finds that the Executioner skill stands out asbeing overpowered or underpowered please tell me)

[goro3d]

Haha that looks cool downloading now! Thanks!

[Rodin]

Downloaded the class, seems very cool so far.

Playing on Hard/HC, my first one made it easily to level 5 before getting ganked by one of those stupid fire dart traps in a chest. Doh!

Second Assassin is underway now, and here's some opening comments:


"Adreneline" should be "Adrenaline"

In that ability, "Hightened" should be "Heightened", and possibly drop the capitalization to "heightened".

"Fourty" should be "Forty".

Ice Bomb has a 150% chance of chilling foes, which doesn't seem right - should be 100%, I would think. On the other hand, I don't know the mechanics of Torchlight where Freezing effects are concerned, so I could be wrong.

I'm not sure I like the name of the ability "Carpet Bomb". It seems inappropriate for tossing a single fire grenade, and out of place for the setting. Not sure what to suggest in its place though - Oil bomb? Ember Grenade?

Poison Dart states that it slows enemies, but the ability itself does not.

Finally, the Killer tree seems very empty in Tiers 2 and 3 - only 2 passive abilities, one of which is the standard spell mastery.

I'll let you know more as I keep playing, I love the class design so far - seems like a high damage but frail melee fighter who relies on speed and DoTs to soften his enemies up before polishing them off in close combat.

Edit/Update:

Now at level 11, some notable stuff:

Poison Dart seems perfectly balanced, very fun skill. Right now it does a bleed effect, maybe make it Poison the enemy instead?

Carpet Bomb has been my go-to skill up to now, but I just ranked it up level 4 and it's now overpowered. I think it went from 28 DPS to 112 DPS, which is too strong. I'm killing equal level mobs with a single Carpet Bomb - even Fast mobs die before they can reach me.

Venomous Dirks is still really underwhelming as a skill, but then I was never a fan of the original Vanquisher skill. It's easier and more effective to drop a Carpet Bomb on myself (even when it was dealing 28 DPS).

Overall, having a great deal of fun. I'm running a DoT build that plays very much like a Warlock from WoW. Bosses are generally tough, but that's a consequence of my build - I just have to kite them down.

[Ninjasassin]

Thanks for the feedback so far Rodin, it has been very helpful at finding things that I seem to had overlooked, as well as confirming what I thought balance-wise about some of the skills. Its good to hear that someone is having fun playing a class that I made.

So far on my own copy (which I haven't updated yet on the download site) I have been working on making poison darts do poison damage. I'm also trying to fix the carpet bomb (now oil bomb by your suggestion, I thought the name and reasoning behind it sounded good enough) damage past level 4, when I made the skill I wasnt exactly sure how the damage scaled, so its fairly hard to balance it without playtesting for quite some time every time I change it.

I tried to fix most of the problems that you mentioned in my recent version, 1.1, though I could not fix the freeze percentage, as I am unsure of how it scales at the moment and how that translates to the Affix file. In the new version I also added anew skill, which I am probably going to test more soon and should open up some melee oriented builds, I hope. I am currently working on the mod fairly rapidly, so changes may come quite quickly if you are trying to play one character for a long period of time.

Poison Dart deals poison damage now, unfortunately I simply don't know how to change the filepath for the particles to match it yet, so I cannot yet add a look that fits the poison damage. (If you noticed, I have only used direct game textures and particles so far, basically because I dont even know where to find the right file path to edit, and I dont know how to rewrite the .layout files effectively)

[Ninjasassin]

Bump for update 1.5, this class is fairly different from even the last version so I decided to represent that as two updates. I would have updated sooner if not for my perfectionist nature. I would really appreciate any comments people have on balance, playability, etc., otherwise I am mostly doing meium-upper level balancing in the dark. I'm busy working on some future skills that I thought I would have done by this version but I seem to have hit a wall with them, so the next update might be in a few days. I hope you enjoy what I have done in the last few days or so, thanks for downloading my class so far.

[MikePushkin]

Hi there! Wanted to thank you for your mod because I really like it!

Now back to the point, I wanted to suggest you to change few things. I don't know if you will or not , I just wanna do that.

Impale - makes assassin's attacks look like a bee, which is anything but serious, when you use this attack frequently assassin looks kinda stupid.

Lethality - this skill is OverPowered. I would like to suggest you to reduce the number of benefits it does, especially the weapon damage and critical hit chance, because this skill makes the Assassin way too powerful.

Combat Expertise - I think it is OP. Maybe you could change the number of additional expirience to 2%/lvl, because it's whole 40% on the 10th level of skill! It's a lot!

Precision Strikes - doesn't work properly, doesn't add a critical hit chance. For the comfortable usage lacks cooldown, because you just don't remember when the hell did you casted it so you cannot keep yourself buffed all the time.

Infamous - I think it's OP. Maybe you could change it to something like +2% fame/lvl; 8% prices decrease/lvl; 3% armor decrease/lvl.

Incapacitate - really hard to use it effectively it's UnderPowered. It has way too long cooldown, which increases from level to level I guess. I would love to suggest you to make cooldown fixed to 2 secs and the stun time lower 2x times. Then we will be able to use it more efficiently on hard targets, 'cuz the bosses and champions are immune anyway.

Fire Bomb - I think you should make the firebomb depending on DPS just because it feel to be so weak, and by increasing strenght of this firework skill, also increase the cooldown! That'd be the Independence day then!

Thanks for your attention, keep up the great work!

[MikePushkin]

14h level so far, wanted to share my thoughts about the class.

Assassin seem to be a very efficient class, doesn't feel fragile at all, very strong, very quick, highest ammounts of dmg I seen around, so I thought it might be cool to change few things due to their OP:

-Poison Dart: This skill is OP, because no matter how much you will use it the mana of the assassin will never run out which means that this PEW PEW will never end as well. The skill is not very much devastating, but it sure does a bunch of damage. Bunch of damage + High DPS + Endless Mana = Overpowered Assassin which comes to be more efficient than vanquisher. I think that has to be changed, and there's a suggestion: to increase the overall damage of the skill, but also increase the cooldown of the skill and make it like 10 seconds or something, then this skill will become an opener for a fight, poisoning and weakening your enemies.

-Whirling Chains: The skill has way too little cooldown - 1 sec only. This factor, combined with the endless mana of the assassin gives the user a unique opportunity to whipe legions of enemies away in a very effiecient firework show. Yes, it's beautiful. Yes, it's damaging. Yes, it's nearly endless. NO, it's ANYTHING, but not balanced. It has to be balanced, because this skill just lets me destroy no matter how much enemies in few wipes. Swooooop Swoooop and I'm the last man standing!

-Adrenalin: I like the way Champions and undead legions slow down when I turn adrenalin on. The problem is that doesn't seem too balanced to me. Also, I would like very much to ask you to change the description of the skill because you don't really know how much seconds the skill last. Also when on the first level of the skill you get the same benefits of this skill on 10th, but the time of usage 2x less, I believe that you pretty much don't need to invest more points into skill, because 20 seconds pretty much enough to slay any champion.

-Precision Strikes: 1st level of this ability for some reason increases the critical hit chance by 2%, but the description says that it's 8%. I believe the skill, if it was working, is not comfortable to use and also, not really balanced. By sacrificing a meaningless 10% of attack speed you gain a great damage boost and a little critical chance boost, which completely elimintes the negative side of speed drop. And to be honest, it's pretty much a usable skill, if only you would be able to see when you have to recast it again, because it's not visible... My suggestion would be to increase the cooldown of the skill according to how long it lasts.

-Advanced Spellcasting: I understood your idea, to make a character which uses rather energy than mana, but.... The game mechanics is built the way that you are buying mana potions, and by removing this part of gameplay you make the gameplay dull, because you let the assassin's user gather countless ammount of gold pieces, just because he NEVER uses a mana potion. I mean come on, having this skill and having this skill maxed out at the beginning of the game is two different things, mate!

[Duds]

-Advanced Spellcasting: I understood your idea, to make a character which uses rather energy than mana, but.... The game mechanics is built the way that you are buying mana potions, and by removing this part of gameplay you make the gameplay dull, because you let the assassin's user gather countless ammount of gold pieces, just because he NEVER uses a mana potion. I mean come on, having this skill and having this skill maxed out at the beginning of the game is two different things, mate!

Agreed, please remove those 10 points. I really love this class but the infinite mana is boring. Please remove it fast.

[deathtakeslast]

Ok I have download this and its in my doc. folder how do I go about getting into the game ?

[Duds]

Hey if anyone wants to remove that Advanced Spellcasting already, download TorchED and look for the guide on creating skills. It's in the part where you edit units, select player then character go to the skill tab and there will be a lvl column that while all skills are 0 advanced spellcasting is 10 just change it. I'm going to try creating new classes in the future that's why i did this too.

[natzkee2k9]

for some reason, everytime i click its icon my game crashes.
any workaround for this? i really want to try this class bro.

[Ninjasassin]

Very sorry about the mana regen, I must have put it up for my own skill testing convenience and forgotten to take it out, it must suck having it balance wise. Since I am thinking of doing a minor update today I will get to changing that.

Mike Pushkin -Once I edit the levels in spellcasting out there probably shouldnt be a problem but just in case I am going to put a 2-5 second cooldown on the skill.
I should change adrenaline too, I suppose, I just have to find a balanced growth rate for it.

Seriously though, the mana regen was almost entirely unintentional, though I think it may be an interesting concept to have 1 level of it from the get-go.
Some of these problems seem I to simply be some things that I changed in my own version but forgot to update.

Also,to get the mod to work put it into your appdata/roaming/runic games/mods folder. If you get torchleech, it will actually unzip the file and put it in the right place for you.

EDIT: In my recent update there is only 1 rank of spell mastery, which will make it so you regenerate mp, but not nearly as fast as you would before. I also lengthened the cooldown on Whirling chains and fixed a few other things.

[piinyouri]

So the uber mana regen isnt a part of the class?

[Ninjasassin]

No, the uber mana regen was not part of the class, it was due to 10 extra points in Spell Mastery that I put in for my convenience while testing and apperently forgot to remove. In 1.6 I took 9 points out of spell mastery so that the Assassin would still have regenerating mana, but at a level that isn't completely broken. I plan to make most skills cost a little more in the next version to fit this mechanic in a more balanced manner.

[MikePushkin]

Heya there, Mike again.

Restarted the game again, created the character again.

-The bug with additional skill points in skills Toxicology and Fletchette Trap seem to be resolved, no more additional points except one in the Tactician skill.

-Precision Strikes: Dammit, hate to tell it to you, but the number of additional critical hit chance just doesn't seem to be working right, maybe instead of that you could change it to critical damage and make it like +50% and +10% with each level of ability. Also, would be fun if you'd increase the duration to 1 min and cooldown as well. It would remove the pain in the ass of recasting all the time. Skill seem to be working fairly, except this minor ****ness with critical hit chance. it gives me incorrect ammount of additional crit strike chance.
P.S. on Precision Strikes: Well... dammit! The skill appears to be not just bugged but also harmful. When I had a basic critical hit chance of 8% (thanks to items and Lethality skill) I casted PS. I got a slight attack bonus and my CritChance (will use CC instead) became 10% (it's only +2, not +6 as skill description says). When the PS expired, my critical hit chance became 4% (instead of 8%) and remained until the very moment I left the dungeon using te scroll of Town Portal. That sucks.

-Fire Bomb: Skill is way too UP. Whenever I have a imple fight, I throw a FB in the crowd of enemies. At the very beginning of the game it was fun and refreshing, - the bastards were burning during 5-6 seconds, leaving only corpses left. With my level growing, the FB becomes less and less useful. It's absolutely useless against Champions, so I won't even mention that, but for the crowd control it has to be better! My suggestion is: increase damage and increase cooldown OR decrease fire damage and make skill dependant on strenght 100%, that will let fir bomb be more powerful with the same level enemies OR decrease fire damage and set skill damage dependant on one's DPS (I think something about 20-40% DPS).

-Evade: Skill has only 10 levels which is Booo for Level cap remover, for example. I mean, we will have 40% Evade chance on 10th level of the skill? It's OP I believe. My suggestion would be to decrease the Evade chance to 2% (and maybe add additional effect) as well as increae the skill cap to 20.

-[Quote] Adrenaline now gives a roughly 10% bonus to it's affect per level.
-> If it is true, the description in game is incorrect and have to be fixed. Also, if it is true, then this has to be nerfed, because even 1st level of adrenalin let me cut down whatever enemy or Champion I meet :O Indeed an OP skill.

-Whirling Chain: Skill is not OP anymore, but at the moment it appear much less effective than the first attacking skill in assassin's arsenal. My suggestion is to increase the damage of the chain by 10% - 15% and give more space to level it, maybe up to 18 or 20. If that sounds a little harsh, then you can add 1 more second of cooldown, which will make Whirling chain an efficient mass controller, without making it OP again.
P.S. - So far, Whirling Chain and Fletchette Trap have the best animation on my taste, they look cinematographic. I also love the Adrenaline's animation,, the aura effect on enemies

-Impale: An awesome skill which lets assassin easially fight with overwhelming ammounts of enemies, lets him cut through the enemy lines. The problem here is that the mana cost is a little too little (lol), that's why I would like to make a suggestion of increasing it JUST a little. It might be that an increase on 5-10 points will be just right, since assassin start with +1 additional mana regen.

Gonna keep the feedback coming, like your mod a lot.

Right now: 11th lvl.
Sincerely,
Mike.

[mistwolf]

I'm waiting for this to be completed, I wanna make a sniper haha

[taeurio]

He's very fun to play!

Thx a lot for this class.

But I've changed some skills about "leech".

I edited "impale, psn dart, vn dirk, multishot" can leech health and mana hehe.

before that, he was just very fragile T.T

I tried to edit "chain" too, but it's so overpowered ~_~. so I leave it original designed.

Anyways, after work, I'm very busy at home too. lol thx to you guy again.

[ninjaninja]

is there any chance someone has gotten the class to work with the classcreator mod by umogjoe?

[IMissHGL]

is there any chance someone has gotten the class to work with the classcreator mod by umogjoe?

Been over a month and a half since the class designer posted. I hope it isn't yet another abandoned class from someone who moved onto another game.

[JoeShmo]

is there any chance someone has gotten the class to work with the classcreator mod by umogjoe?

Been over a month and a half since the class designer posted. I hope it isn't yet another abandoned class from someone who moved onto another game.

I dont mean to poke fun....but a month and a half is small fry compared to what some of us had to deal with when we were working with diablo 2 mods .