Ability Balancing | Forums

[Cronstintein]

Just thought I'd open the floor for discussions regarding abilities and how best to balance them.

Now for me currently the best skills are morph and smoke bomb. I don't so much consider them overpowered as properly powered. I'd like the other abilities to be lifted up so as to be equally useful as these two.

Sprint - Is good at what it does but usually only nets you 100 pts so it's not super useful. My suggestion is maybe boosting the points you get for escaping a chase to 200.

Charge - Maybe I'm a dummy, I dunno, but I can't get this to do anything useful for me. I would welcome anyone's ideas as to proper usage.

Throwing Knife - Could last a bit longer but it's not terrible.

Hidden gun - Works for what it is. Same problem as sprint though, only ever going to net you 100pts.

Templar vision - Not a bad little ability, I would make it last longer though. At least twice as much.

Disguise - An elegant weapon, from a simpler time. I respect people who use this successfully. It should really be longer though. Lengthen the base by 50%
Compare 20sec of this to the infinite length of morph and you can see there's a little bit of a balancing issue.

Firecrackers - On paper seems to be a somewhat flexible offensive and defensive tool. Unfortunately fails to live up to it's potential. Defensively it never seems to do jack for me, if it doesn't already it should break target lock on affected pursuers. Offensively in my experience it doesn't do that great. I've been mildly hit a couple times where all it does is raise my brightness and clue me to run. If you're in the radius, you should be blinded. With those two additions I think it could be ok. Maybe increase the radius by 20% as well but that's not as crucial.

I haven't unlocked the last couple so I have no comment regarding those. Feel free to add your suggestions or critique mine

[Rainie]

I think the abilities are pretty balanced already, but they only work when the player uses them properly. There is timing is key and if the skills aren't used at the right time they become useless.

For the hidden gun; your points can go anywhere from 100 to 300 (without any killstreak bonuses) depending on if you get your target just walking or if they are jumping in mid-air at the time. If I can, I wait for them to jump off a building and get the +200 midair bonus

For Charge; if you notice your pursuer early on you can use charge to run at them and use stun before they can kill you, so it's pretty handy.

My fave abilities right now are smokebomb, hidden gun, mute and decoy. I'll usually end up using some sort of combo of those. I don't like using morph or discuss because I think it makes you too noticeable, that's my feeling about them I know others will disagree

[Wile E Coyoteee]

DISGUISE
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I don't have morph yet, but I honestly think I'd prefer to use disguise for 5 reasons. 1: When blending with a crowd, I notice alot of the time the game naturally makes you move to the back of it. Anyone who's impatient will just stab the first thing infront of them - which is you, since you're at the back and that's usually where they come from.

2: Someone's going to follow you in morph for a long time cause they know you're one of the group, and they're waiting for you to break off or make some kind of mistake to differentiate yourself from the others. That's time you could otherwise be going after your target. Infact, if you know that someone in that current game is using morph, you're going to be attracted to crowds that have a high population of that character and wait it out. It actually draws attention sometimes.

3: If you enter a crowd with only 1 npc that looks like you, and you disguise? The other guy will stab that npc 100% of the time and you can move on faster [see #2]. The "best ever" scenario here is if you know your pursuer is behind you somewhere, and you see a crowd infront of you going around a corner that has 1 npc like you. Purposely dash ahead into that crowd and morph and he'll run up there asap to stab the npc, it's hilarious!

4: I use smoke bombs or firecrackers as a secondary, so, in relation to 3, if someone's trailing behind you a decent way, and your disguise runs out? Again, he's either going to run at the crowd, or nut himself because he knows which one you are now. All you have to do is keep the camera behind you wait till you see the guy not moving like an NPC; that's your pursuer. When he gets close, smoke bomb and punch him in the face for an easy 200points! Or throw crackers, run a couple steps, turn, then stun him as he goes to run by you assuming you ran straight lol. It's 50x more humiliating than a smoke bomb!


5: Offense. If you feel judging by your target's movements that he knows who you are, or you're scared that you ran or jogged too close to him in such a way that he's at least cautious that you might be after him instead of someone else.. Then it's best to go behind a fruit stand or something and disguise yourself and then come back out, because he's not gonna be looking for the a different character.

FIRECRACKERS
________

I'm expermienting with these more, and they do help on the super crowded maps where sometimes crowds collide. If you think your target has spotted you already, sometimes you can catch them off-guard by running at them and throwing the crackers, prompting them to run just like you said. If you do it right they'll hopefully be blinded enough to run into a wall or plow into a crowd, which will give you time to kill them, and while it's only 100-150 points that way, it's better than getting shanked by your pursuer while stalking him, or losing him entirely. I notice when you're on roofs the crackers are nice too, because your pursuer will now run into the roof edges while trying to hit you, and even if he does jump the roof? Cool, you just got away for free. Not to mention it's hilarious when you get behind him and donkey-punch him off the rooftop, hahah.

Is it as effective as a smoke bomb? I don't know yet, I need more time with it. One good thing is that it does recharge faster though, which can definately come in handy! There's that one ability that divides recharge time later on too, and if it works by how many seconds each ability has, crackers are the lowest recharge time in the game I think?

Oh, not to mention with crowd dispersal, there's more of a chance that the crowd will get in your pursuer's way unlike a smoke bomb.

Idk, like I said I need more time with it but I'll be testing it out some more!

[Cronstintein]

Disguise - I agree it has some advantages over morph. You don't think it's too short though?

fireworks - I still need to experiment more with this. Seems much worse than smoke on defense but has more offensive abilities so this may be balanced.

charge - if running at your pursuer is the only use for it, it's weak. You can easily be sidestepped while charging. Takes even more time than smoke to get off since you have to face him first and it's slow to start. Overall it's my least favorite ability.

[DeafAtheist]

I mostly use disguise instead of morph. One reason why is because of rooftop runners. If my target is running around on rooftops forcing me to climb it to assassinate him with morph I'm going to look like myself and whoever is targeting me is going to see me obviously climbing and follow. But if I look like someone else there's a chance I could get up there and assassinate my target before my own pursuer(s) realize who I am.

Another reason why I prefer disguise is because morph requires you to be around other NPCs. Disguise is more effective when you don't have any NPCs for cover. With the large percentage of runners in the game who are impatient more often than not they'll kill someone who looks like you who is nearby.

The drawback to disguise tho of course is risk of being seen transforming into the disguise or being seen when it wears off giving yourself away.

Charge is a very effective ability if used right, but unfortunately sometimes it can miss especially when using it defensively. But it works like a charm to use it offensively at a morphed or disguised target hiding in a crowd. It eliminates the chance of being stunned because it doesn't give them a chance to deploy a smoke bomb or mute you. Charge also has the ability to cancel the effects of the throwing knife slowing you down.

Mute works well too since it prevents pursuers from using their abilities. The only weakness to it is the short range and it it only effects whoever may be in the area at the time of activation. Unlike a smoke bomb that remains in effect for a brief period of time that can slow down another pursuer behind the one you used it on. Mute would not effect a 2nd pursuer behind the 1st one the way a smoke bomb could.

Sprint is really only good for escaping pursuers or catching up to someone you're chasing, but the way I play is I try to avoid high profile kills and I try to prevent being chased by attempting a stun. So I don't use it. But it does cancel the effect of a throwing knife.

Throwing knives are pretty much only good for slowing down someone you're chasing or preventing your target from climbing a wall. But like I said I try to avoid high profile kills so I don't really have a lot of need for slowing a target down.

The hidden gun I don't much like either. Low points for it and it leaves you exposed while you're lining up a shot it paints a bullseye on your back for those pursuing you.

I don't find firecrackers very useful.

Templar Vision is nice but I prefer Charge. It's got that extra surprise factor on targets who are hiding in a crowd and waiting for a confused pursuer to stun when suddenly you rush in and kill them before they can react. The same for pursuers. It's funny when you see someone obviously following you but trying to remain inconspicuous and you just turn around and charge stun them. It's especially effective against runners because they're constantly in high profile and give themselves away with the bright red marker glowing over their heads. You just face them and charge stunning them before they can kill you. It's a beautiful thing.

I've tried using Decoy too, but I honestly don't know how effective it is because your Decoy takes off running and I don't see it effect the pursuer. I guess I'd have a better opinion on it if someone used a Decoy on me but that hasn't happened yet.

[G0DFATHER06]

Decoy is used best when paired with Morph or when you have some NPC that looks like you around you..All you do is when you see your pursuer you target the NPC that looks like you and is around you and it runs off making it look like it is you running and they attack it and lose the contract..One of my favorite abilities

[Eavath]

My favorite skill set up I have now is disguise/morph. I use both offensively and defensively. I'll find a somewhat smaller sized groud (3-4) and morph them all. I've gotten many stuns and hidden kills from doing this, and I always make sure that I try to stay towards the middle of the group.

Disguise I'll use if say I find a smaller group, but morph is in cool down. I'll only do it, though, if there isn't any other persona that looks like me. I dunno about everyone else, but if there's a group of 2 and one persona looks like my target, I'll go for the other one.

Also, offensively, if I see a group of multiples of my target, I'll go to the edge so my compass is lit up, and then morph the group, exposing my target ^^

[ghostoftheunion]

Flash is one of my favorites Blind your attacker and move out the way quickly and alot of time they kill the wrong person. or allow you to get a stun. Templar vision will also reveal attackers in a crowd super usefull to reveal your target then quickly scan for attackers before making your kill.

When you morph dont stand in the crowed of people you morphed sit on a bench or in a haystack near by more often then not they kill someone in the crowed.

[MtnDewAssassin]

I like to use smokebomb and gun because it's offense and defense.

[DeafAtheist]

Originally posted by ghostoftheunion:
Flash is one of my favorites Blind your attacker and move out the way quickly and alot of time they kill the wrong person. or allow you to get a stun. Templar vision will also reveal attackers in a crowd super usefull to reveal your target then quickly scan for attackers before making your kill.

When you morph dont stand in the crowed of people you morphed sit on a bench or in a haystack near by more often then not they kill someone in the crowed.

Haystacks aren't effective hiding places because the assassination button hovers over the top of it so you know someone is in there and NPCs don't jump in hay so an observant attacker would notice you were in there. Only an impulsive attacker would go for someone in the crowd missing the hay. Benches are a better hiding places because NPCs use them too. I only use hay for leaps of faith and escapes when I'm far enough away from my pursuer to get a fast cooldown.