Assassin Strategy

Assassins can be surprisingly sneaky in the right circumstances. Until those circumstances arise, Assassins rely on their speed and evasiveness to support and survive.

General Strategy

• Staying out of sight sometimes means taking a long and winding route to flank your opponents. At other times it means being patient where you are.
• Even if you stay undetected long enough to stab somebody in the back, you won't be undetected afterwards. Be prepared to continue stabbing.
• Your footsteps may as well be completely silent, but you can still give yourself away by jumping carelessly.
• Hiding behind things can keep you undetected, but hiding on top of things is often more effective, allowing you to surprise enemies that check their corners, but nothing else.
• Let your teammates go ahead to take enemy attention. Even if one or two opponents notice you join in, the other three or four will probably be too busy.
• Your low overall endurance, short range, low damage and lack of a burst-damage special all amount to you being underwhelming in direct combat. In other words, you fight like a girl.
• Fighting alongside any teammate (yes, even an Archer) makes surviving and killing easier, but other Assassins have all the same problems as you. You might just get each other killed.
• When in doubt, peace out.

Weapon Specific Strategy

Stiletto

Short, but sharp.

• The lightning quick strikes can be difficult to parry, but if one should be parried, you may find survival equally as challenging.
• Try to charge an overhead stab for maximum backstab damage.
• Take your target's dodges and strikes against their target into account before you go for a backstab, and miss.
• Assassins move quickly and crouch low, making it more difficult to hit them accurately while they stab and slash, but crouching isn't as protective as blocking or rolling.
• To minimize messy murders, backstab enemies weakened from current or prior engagements. Enemies at full health can turn around and mess you up, even if you ultimately finish them off.
• The Stiletto's reach is exceedingly short, like the Sharpshooter's Dagger, and it's not much better for combat either.
• An onslaught of charged attacks will bring down anybody obviously trying to parry you.

Crossbow Pistol

That's a crossbow with a pistol grip, not a pistol that shoots crossbows.

• Hitting an enemy will deal minor damage easily enough, but if you want to be efficient, you'll need to score headshots.
• Partly because of the previous point, you'll burn through ammunition like a Pirate through grog.
• Following on from the previous point, you'll spend most of your time using it reloading, which slows you down considerably. Not a good weapon to run-and-gun with.
• In most cases, picking up missed projectiles is good practice. This is not one of those cases, individual bolts aren't worth the effort unless there is nothing else to do.
• The potential damage lost due to a missed shot is negligible, but the dent it puts in your ammunition is not. Get close enough to ensure accurate shots.
• Slowing an enemy with Caltrops almost ensures another safe retreating reload, even if they run straight for you.
• Good for safely charging your special when the enemy is too entrenched to consider using melee attacks. You might still get picked off by a ranged counter-attack if you're careless, though.

Caltrops

A Skirmisher's worst nightmare.

• The bag takes a moment to reach the ground, and the Caltrops themselves take a moment to settle before they become "active".
• There's no "wrong" way to use Caltrops. Consider:
  • Throwing them down near your spawn point, to catch unwary intruders.
  • Keeping them on-hand until you need to escape.
  • Tossing them to a teammate, or near where a teammate is hanging out.
  • Placing them in a narrow or dark spot enemies will probably use, to annoy them to hell and back.
  • Leaving them in an obvious spot to make simply moving around more awkward for enemies.
  • Dropping them in an otherwise unguarded path to inconvenience flankers.
  • Deploying them in an escape route to stop enemies from retreating, or at least from retreating quickly.
  • Scattering them around a food pick-up to deal 10-20 damage to an enemy trying to heal themselves, potentially even finishing them off in ironic fashion.
  • Concealing them around corners to almost always catch an enemy before they can react to the sight of them.
• Also, consider any of the above locations, but used to simply alert you to the presence of an enemy via the "Successful hit!" sound effect.
• The bag will "detonate" on walls and players, including teammates. Ignorance of this detail may result in misplaced Caltrops.

Special: Smoke Bomb

A ceramic pot of non-ceramic smoke to hide your murder, your escape, or both.

• You won't become truly invisible, but you will be very difficult to keep track of in a noisy environment with many players moving around and disguising your outline.
• Despite the merely 80% chameleon effect, the speed boost is considerable, and very effective for quickly hunting down enemies in a nearby area, rather than your current area.
• Picking up a chest won't disrupt your Active Camoflauge, and although it is diminished by holding the chest, the speed boost will persist as well.
• Since the distortion is quite noticeable while moving, holding still might cause enemies to lose track of you; it's not like they can reveal you with a flashlight.
• Due to visibility being reduced in the dark, the special's effectiveness is increased if you choose to hide in shadows. Unfortunately, there are no fancy photosensitive cells distributed through the lining of your outfit to tell you how effective it is.
• Neither performing nor sustaining attacks of any kind removes cloak. Useful if you have a Vendetta against a particular enemy and want to approach them alone (more or less).
• Most classes have combative specials, but the Assassin is not like them, hers is a special of another kind, making escapes easier, and feeding enemies their own specials less likely as a result.
• Enemies near the bomb will be stunned, blinded, and slightly damaged by its detonation. This tip does not contain a stealth reference.

It's not "partially transparent" it's translucent. Transparent is for things which light completely passes through. Translucent is for partial transmission. Partially transparent is for things with transparent bits, like a wall with clear windows.

See Also

Assassin

Tactics

Combat