[MOD] DEMON ASSASSIN - v1.2 Latest

Nice work. He needed this

Looks pretty good, but what is his death effect?

I think it gives more attack speed to his allies.

I actually like all of the changes.

I would still much rather have Demon Speed and Elusiveness combined into one though.

I just don't think DA is meant to be as fast as a 6.3 character without buying more items than them. I'd rather see demon speed sit at 5/10/15 movement and attack speed. As for the crit damage change, isn't that a DPS decrease?

15%/1.5x = +7.725% dmg

20%/1.5x = +10% dmg

20%/2x = +20% dmg

25%/2x = +25% dmg

I'd wouldn't scale it like this.
Just use 2x from the start. 5%/10%/15%/20% of 2x crit, which is +5/10/15/20% dmg.

Tried out a game with the mod.  I'm liking the changes especially to the passive abilities (10% move speed FTW).

I don't know how easily you can customise he's casted skills but they just aren't offering much synergy to he's other skills at the moment.

Personally, I always though the character should be like its 'assassin' namesake -> deadly ninja if he catches you 1v1 but useless in mobs.  He also lvl and gain money by finishing off he's 'mark instead of any farming kind of activities.  Right now other Demigods can survive him long enough to get away or worse beat him 1v1.

Here's my 2 cents on how to do this, let me know what you guys think

Warp Strike: Also gives -10% move speed for 5 sec / -15% for 6 sec / -20% for 7 sec

Now this becomes an effective chasing tool and gives the DA a better chance of finishing off the Demigod.  It also puts more fear into the opponent cause while the damage can be easily managed, a sudden move reduction and gank is something else.  Imagine in Cataract your teammates going 1v1 with an opponent in a lane, you wait out of sight until they are at 50% hp then warp in -> chase -> kill.  Without the movement reduction, the enemy can just easily run back to their towers.  With the reduction, you are like a deadly ninja

Spine Attack: Also reduces armour by 300 for 5 sec/ 400 for 5 sec/ 600 for 5 sec / 750 for 7 sec

Why does Spine attack only does damage and nothing else?  Right now its only useful cause he need some way to do damage.  Whereas I think he's real damage should be coming from he's passive skills and AA.  With the armour reduction, it complements AA nicely (crit hit at 0 armour anyone?).  He's throwing spines damn it, you would think they would penetrate and mess up the target's armour

Warp Area: Does 8 * 50 damage for 3 sec/ 8 * 75 dmg plus debuffs for 4 sec/ 8 * 100 plus debuffs for 4 sec.  Also can hit the same target more then once

Here's my main reasoning: This should be an assassin skill NOT a weak AOE farm skill.  But it's pretty useless as an assassin skill at the moment: a) If there's only 1 target, he does 50 damage to him... If there's only 1 target, he only warps for 0.24 sec... c) 50 damage at your 'target' costs 800 mana?!?!  Where's the ninja assassin in that?!?!

I want to turn the whole thing on it's head -> If he catches you by youself and use it, you are going to take the full 400 damage (8 * 50) and suffer for your stupidity.  If there's minions around to 'bodyguard' you, its less effective.  This means the Assassin have to pick he's time to 'strike' while opponent demigod have to be more paranoid and surround himself with fodder minions. 

The debuff is just so there's more reward for lvl 10 and 15.  The assassin can then use this to survive 1v1 against UB spit or TB ring of fire (by having Warp area lasting the full 3 secs)

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With those changes above, I think a typical play scenario for the assassin now would be DA sees a lone demigod unprotected.  He throws he's spike to reduce armour, warps in and starts doing kickass AA.  Once armour reduction ends, he pops warp area and further nukes the opponent (or if he got spit or Ring of Fired, this debuffs/evades them).  Enermy starts running, he warps again, reducing their movement speed and finishs the opponent off.

@ Obscenitor

so why should UB and erebus have 6.3 movement speed? Out of the lot i think DA is the one who should have this stat benefit. It only makes sense since he cannot debuff anyones movement speed (unlike erebus and UB who are already fast by default). Whis brings me to Gishmibop's reply...

@ Gishmibop

"Warp Strike: Also gives -10% move speed for 5 sec / -15% for 6 sec / -20% for 7 sec

Now this becomes an effective chasing tool and gives the DA a better chance of finishing off the Demigod. It also puts more fear into the opponent cause while the damage can be easily managed, a sudden move reduction and gank is something else. Imagine in Cataract your teammates going 1v1 with an opponent in a lane, you wait out of sight until they are at 50% hp then warp in -> chase -> kill. Without the movement reduction, the enemy can just easily run back to their towers. With the reduction, you are like a deadly ninja."

This is why i increased his movement speed in demons speed passive. I wanted to make simple changes that will not alter his play style significantly. But i wanted him to live up to his "ASSASSIN" concept which he was not currently doing so well.

Spine attack i think is fine as it is now. It's quick, powerful and combos up nicely with my tweak to warp strike now.

Your warp area suggestion is a little hard to implement. Im no code genius and only really know how to change figures atm but know enough that something like that requires some thought in how it could work. Also, my tweak to warp area is not so weak as u make it out to be. If you have chosen Blade of the Serpent as your fav item, this skill allows you to refill your mana (roughly 600 net mana) for your next "assassination". The additional 100 mana was to cater for the additional time for invincibility and the 2 extra targets that you hit. Warp area is more of a "support" skill more than a dmg skill.
-- (if ur curious) invincibilty time is calculated by how many hits there are in the skill. Each hit takes 0.4 secs to execute and when you multiply that by X hits, youll get ur 'invincibility' time.

This tweak was the one i thought about most coz it can potentially be game breaking if done wrong. However, that being said i wanted to make this skill line was doing something each time you levelled it up. I also wanted it to be something to compete against UB.

What you suggested, was what i steered away from because 5% chance is VERY low (1 in 20 hits). Now by the time you actually score a crit depending on luck, you may never actually get one before you are able to get the next lvl of this skill. Thats why i tweaked it as i did. Dont forget you only need to be level 3 before you can level it up and we all know how long that takes...

This skill is available at lvl 1, so its viability should roughly be equal to those of his other skills. Thats why the % chance needs to be relatively high so you can reap its benefit. And as for the change of crit dmg mid way (2x), it was done to cater for his LOW attack dmg (dont forget about opposition armor making it even more weaker).

which is +5/10/15/20% dmg.

i wouldnt even calculate it like that coz it is pure luck to achieve a crit hit. eg, if you flip a coin theres a 50% chance itll land on heads/tails, but on many occassions u can score heads 10 times in a row. This basically rules out ur method of dmg calculation. TBH, i dont see why ppl do this...

ive been thinking about requesting my assassin tweak mod to become an official patch for the game. But before then i want as much feedback as i can get on this. I would like others out there to test this on real players (not just AI).

I havent had much of a response with this so im just wanting to prompt ppl into downloading this mod for the sake of DA's future viability.

2 things: I think precision needs to be more reliable. Sure, on average it is a damage increase...but it's possible to get a bad string and do far less. When DA goes in, he is risking his neck big time. He needs to be able to rely on his attacks getting the job done. As such, I was thinking perhaps have it 100 percent crit chance, but the actual crit modifier gets changed.

something like: 1.08 , 1.10, 1.2, 1.25 would match the average damage of the numbers you have. I think you could adjust the crit chance a bit lower, but at 40 percent I've had upwards of 10 hits in a row not crit ( yea, I have bad luck some times...). I think 40 percent should be about the minimum ever since it costs a skill point.

Second was a thought for skill synergy: Perhaps give shadow swap a debuff ( something like "Confused. Reduced evade for 5 seconds."...then, if you warp strike someone that is confused, warp strike deals a "Backstab", ignoring armor altogether and/or small crit, perhaps 1.2x )

I'm also for the combined run speed and evade BTW. 5/10/15 is plenty of run speed for him, but it needs to do something else to be worth the skill points.

Well about precision, ive taken a few other facotrs into consideration. These are other equips/items that grant a crit chance. When you stack this skill line and combine it with an equip that grants crit, you can deal a nice heavy blow. Ive achieved this with ease with relatively cheap equip set. So this is why ive done it as i have. However i still believe it needs testing against real players.

As for a debuff for shadow swap, ill see what i can work on. You mentioned 'reduced armor' which i think will go well with this skill (even though thats not what u specified it for as such). I dont want to implement too many new things like "confusion".

I was thinking of adding +5%/10%/15% attack speed into Demon speed skill line. But i rlly do feel DA plays more "naturally" with my current buff to this skill.

but plz test this guys as much as you can. We can keep saying "he needs this though..." but unless we test, we will never rlly know how it actually is.

I'm not familiar with LUA language but i think i know how you could change how many times an enemy can be hit by warp area. Warp Area seems to be programmed in a weird way (pls. dont flame me developers i'm new to LUA ), but simply "removing"/"commenting" these lines in "HDemon_Abilities.lua" would make him hit any target multiple times:

OR just change this value if u want to limit the number of times a target can be hit by Warp Area (2 in this case):

I'm not sure though so try it at your own risk. I might actually test this later, i'll tell u if it works.

Hi nomilarac, you're second suggestion is indeed how you change the number of times Warp Area can hit a target. All you have to do is change the number on the following line. The number you enter is the maximum number of times a target can be hit by Warp Area:

if attackedUnits[v] and attackedUnits[v] >= 2 then

I released a mod last night which does this and it works like a charm.

lol people dont have any idea about balance. If you even want a remotely balanced mod make swap range shortter at high levels.

I disagree here. The range is currently all that swaps higher levels have going for it. As is, most people dont really bother with anything except the first one anyways. However, if it does receive a debuff of some sort, that also scales...I think it would need something that helps.

My proposal is have using Swap prevent using the Warp Strike for a couple of seconds. This means that you have to pick and choose your swaps more carefully. If it is going to put you behind their defenses, you may not want to. ( Right now, you just swap and warp strike right back out. )

and sorry gKrit, I'm out of town and stuck on my laptop that can't entirely handle DG:) So, for the time I can only work on mods/ideas and just test that things work..I can't really play a game. I've got a billion and a half ideas though, if you hadn't noticed:P

Hey tks, i didn't notice your mod, that's what thought when digging gkrit's code . There seems to be some redundant code there cos it checks twice if the target has already been hit by Warp Area, which indicates Warp Area was indeed intended to hit the same target multiple times at first.

Of course at Warp Area lvl2 it was way OverPowered, even with a maximum hits number of two it would deal 1000 damage to single targets for 1000 mana, which is too much for an AoE skill. But lvl1 Warp Area is reaaaaally poor as it is, it should deal more damage to more targets.

At its current cost of 700mana, it should either deal >500 damage to 4 targets OR >250 to 8 targets. IMHO it wouldn't be a good idea to let it hit targets multiple times, as it is an AoE type of skill and DA already has another 2 high damage burst skills.

On a side note, i think you guys are buffing too many aspects of DA at the same time. We all agree he's UP/underwhelming in his current state, but he still has some usefull skills and doesn't need that many and that strong buffs.

I agree, that is why it will try to spread the damage across as many people as are available. The mod that I will make for it, will just tweak it so that IF there is less than the max number of people, it will start hitting more than once ( but the damage will scale down so that it doesn't do too much damage. I will try to scale it so that even if all hits land on a single target, it does decently less than spine attack )

I also somewhat agree too much is being buffed at once. However, this is the natural ebb and flow of buff unbuff, etc. Balancing is a long slow process. The first goal of the mod( I believe ) is to make all of DGs skills viable. Next is to bring them in line so that he isn't OP or UP. There shouldnt be a single best build...each individual situation should dictate where exactly to go.

Patience is a virtue required of all WIP:)

NERF HIM!!!1!!!1!

sarcasm or serious?

he rlly does need a buff.

if you read all my posts above, ive tried to justify as best as i can why i made these changes. If you havent tested this mod, then i suggest you do test it before commenting. Its the only real way your going to have a better understanding of how it works.

I don't think DA needs any boost.  However, even with your changes, his crit strike is completely useless.  It takes simple alegebra to realize that the skill would at best be mediocre even at 20% chance for the first skill.  I can't figure out why anyone currently uses it, Enhanced Attributes (which sucks) is way better.

ill work on crit strikes some more and see from there...

DA balance v1.12 available

lol 25% crit

this "tweaks" are crap man

the point is ONLY if it is a long game or not

if it is a long game even the original passives were good, if its a short game the passive are NEVER good, not even if you put 47457347 crit

so you basically tried to balance passives for short games making them insane in any other kind of games

just let the gameplay stay, normal short game = active abilities

You know what the best part of a mod is? Being able to enable/disable it! If you don't like it, don't use it.

Being constructive is great but being an ass isnt.

i agree, my criticism IS constructive as i explained why its bad to balance passives towards a gametype that doesnt favor passives of ANY other demigod