Fix The Shot in next patch??

[Klodovik]

And Assassin is not the same as ganking.

Ganking is either ganging up on an opponent or killing them before they can react, Assassination is killing them regardless of how they react.

No, it's actualy you who got it wrong.

That's exactly what assassination is, unless they react, then it's a failure.

[Ebondevil]

No, it's actualy you who got it wrong.

That's exactly what assassination is, unless they react, then it's a failure.

Try looking them up.

[Hacre]

And Assassin is not the same as ganking.

Ganking is either ganging up on an opponent or killing them before they can react, Assassination is killing them regardless of how they react.

Assassin:
One who murders swiftly by surprise attack, especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person.

Assassinate:
To kill suddenly or secretively.

Assassins/assassinations strike/happen from a surprise element, ie, before someone can react. Ganking would be a term credited to gaming, presumably because it sounds cooler than assassinating or to put some kind of negative context on things.

They are essentially, one and the same. Wearing someone down eventually while mitigating their return fire is neither an assassination or a gank. To gank or assassinate is to kill swiftly, via one or multiple devastating attacks.

Assassins typically strike alone making use of the element of surprise often coupled with range. If Agents are so desperate to fulfill this role then I'd suggest you start asking for things to help you better make use of other weapons, ensuring that your Mimic/False/Assume Profession nanos allow you to cast soldier/shade weapon buffs to glean and hone the skills required to make full use of those weapons.

But then you also need to get used to the fact that if your assassination fails, or you are discovered, you need to either get away, or die.

I recall when if you saw the text "Cortez became visible" anyone flagged would start to move around/look around to see if it was they who were about to die or to try and find him to kill him. He'd strike and be gone. The mark of a good assassin.

If this isn't what you want, then say so but then you need to stop then saying that you're supposed to be assassins.

[Klodovik]

Try looking them up.

I don't have to, I already saw that link Pheddy posted about assasins.

[Pafpuf]

And Assassin is not the same as ganking.

Edit: Assassinations should be short, but give the target some means of escape.

And how do you define ganking ?

Seriously man stop posting you just make yourself appear dumber with every sentence.

[Hacre]

Edit: Assassinations should be short, but give the target some means of escape.

Lol, wat? NO.

Just. NO.

How do you propose this works? "/tell %t You got 5 seconds to gtfo, or Imma gank you"..? An assassination should have one outcome: DEAD TARGET. Not shooting at them while holding a door open and pointing at it, not stopping attacking so they can hit a grid terminal before they die, not anything. Death, is the only desired outcome of an assassination. If they avoid it, or you die instead, then you FAILED.

[Ebondevil]

If this isn't what you want, then say so but then you need to stop then saying that you're supposed to be assassins.

I mostly just want a reasonable chance to be able to kill anyone, instead of having to basically ignore some professions because Agents can't kill them.

Maybe that's not the agents problem, perhaps some professions have been given too much defence, but I don't ascribe to the idea of nerfing others for my own benefit. So I'd much rather see the Agent toolset get improvements/fixes.

But let's go for the Wikipedia definitions shall we:
Ganking

Ganking is a frowned-upon practice in online roleplaying, 
video games which employ player versus player combat (especially
in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, Rohan: Blood Feud, Age of
Conan, Dark Age of Camelot or Ultima Online). Ganking may involve
attacking another player without warning, attacking while the targeted
player is already engaged in combat with a non-player character,
usually meaning they're distracted and/or their health has been
compromised, or attacking where the targeted player is at a high
level disadvantage. Ganking is considered a dishonourable practice
in MMORPGs, since the ganker is engaging in a battle where he will
certainly win, where they might have lost in circumstances where
those participating in the PvP (player versus player) combat had
equal conditions.

Assassination

The definition of "assassination" varies among sources.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines "to assassinate" thus:

    ... to murder [a prominent person] by surprise attack, as for
    political reasons;[8]

Read from it what you will, either way, Assassination and Ganking aren't the same thing. As far as I'm concerned you can kill someone from a surprise attack without Ganking them. While Ganking is also a form of assasination, it's not the only means by which one can assassinate someone else.

Currently the easiest, and from what I've seen, the most common form of Agent's getting kills is from Ganking, but most Agents want to be able to kill people from surprise when the only disadvantage the opponent has is that they are being surprised, not necessarily when the opponent is suffering other disadvantages as well.

Yes the Agent toolset allows for Agents to take advantage of those disadvantages better than most, but my point is we shouldn't need to take advantage of those disadvantages to be viable in PvP.

By the way I personally consider Hotswapping, Teleporter hugging, Kill Stealing, and Damage farming as bad things, but some agents find them necessary to achieve kills. I would like to see the Agent toolset moved in the direction where such cheap tactics are unnecessary. Fixing The Shot and speeding up other Agent perks would be a step in that direction.

P.S. My apologies if I haven't been expressing my point well, hopefully this will clear things up.

[Pafpuf]

By your poor choice of copypasta gank definition every attack in an mmorpg mass pvp environment is a gank. Or do you "/Tell %t hey I'm gonna attack you now, prepare yourself!" ?

Please, stop.

PS. from your copypasta definitions:
1.)Ganking may involve attacking another player without warning.
2.)assassination: to murder [a prominent person] by surprise attack

Same thing hello ?

[Klodovik]

@ Ebondevil

"They are seen as the "fragile, but deadly" ninja-esque character class and are usually recommended to more experienced players in the game."

Maybe you should better roll an adv, like I did.

[Hacre]

So what Agents want (or at least, the Agent professional wants), is to have their "assassination" skills handed to them via perks that they can just click and use, as opposed to designing a character, working out IP expenditure, etc etc and totally obliterating someone that way?

[sultryvoltron]

By your poor choice of copypasta gank definition every attack in an mmorpg mass pvp environment is a gank. Or do you "/Tell %t hey I'm gonna attack you now, prepare yourself!" ?

Please, stop.

PS. from your copypasta definitions:
1.)Ganking may involve attacking another player without warning.
2.)assassination: to murder [a prominent person] by surprise attack

Same thing hello ?

It takes a real politician to pull off that kind of leap. If you go into a pvp zone, or get a pvp flag, you MUST be expecting to get attacked. So, when you get attacked, if you're surprised by it, that is only because you are an idiot.

So you please stop playing the ignorant card, you know what ganking is, you know what the AO community thinks it is, and since you're a fixer... I would assume you've pulled the whole "alpha kill MEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!" gank from the 40% cap days. Considering that you can gank someone while they are watching you run up to their face, I'd venture to say that's not a surprise attack...

[sultryvoltron]

So what Agents want (or at least, the Agent professional wants), is to have their "assassination" skills handed to them via perks that they can just click and use, as opposed to designing a character, working out IP expenditure, etc etc and totally obliterating someone that way?

Executing Nanoprogram Nanobot Shielding...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
Executing Nanoprogram Izgimmer's Triple...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
Executing Nanoprogram Izgimmer's Triple...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
You gained 102 points of PvP Solo Score.

[Klodovik]

Executing Nanoprogram Nanobot Shielding...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
Executing Nanoprogram Izgimmer's Triple...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
Executing Nanoprogram Izgimmer's Triple...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
You gained 102 points of PvP Solo Score.

Heh. T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t touché!

But, still...

[Hacre]

Executing Nanoprogram Nanobot Shielding...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
Executing Nanoprogram Izgimmer's Triple...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
Executing Nanoprogram Izgimmer's Triple...
Nanoprogram executed successfully.
You gained 102 points of PvP Solo Score.

Lol. You'd gank someone like that? Are they afk so they do -nothing- during triple recharge?

Weren't you one of the people who said something along the lines of "lulz all these people talking about Agents when they have never played one themselves"?

Retard.

[Ebondevil]

By your poor choice of copypasta gank definition every attack in an mmorpg mass pvp environment is a gank. Or do you "/Tell %t hey I'm gonna attack you now, prepare yourself!" ?

Please, stop.

PS. from your copypasta definitions:
1.)Ganking may involve attacking another player without warning.
2.)assassination: to murder [a prominent person] by surprise attack

Same thing hello ?

Just because Item A is part of Item B does not mean that Item B is part of Item A, Assassination encompases Ganking, and as far as I'm concerned ganking is an undesired form of Assasination.

While ganking may involve surprise it is not required, what is required for ganking is an unfair advantage, either attacking someone before they're ready for PvP (e.g. Still buffing outside decontamination before they even have a weapon equipped), attacking someone while they're recovering from debilitating effects (e.g. just finished a fight and badly injured) the list goes on, an assasination does not require an unfair advantage, and while it might fail (I'm not asking for it to always succeed) I would like it to be a more viable option for agents instead of the more relied upon ganking which everyone hates Agents for.

@ Ebondevil

"They are seen as the "fragile, but deadly" ninja-esque character class and are usually recommended to more experienced players in the game."

Maybe you should better roll an adv, like I did.

Fragile: yes, Deadly: not so much, to some professions maybe, not to all though.
Oh I did roll an Advy, but I like the complexities of playing an Agent a lot more, I found advy's boring.

So what Agents want (or at least, the Agent professional wants), is to have their "assassination" skills handed to them via perks that they can just click and use, as opposed to designing a character, working out IP expenditure, etc etc and totally obliterating someone that way?

No I would like the agent toolset improved so Agents don't need to rely so much on cheap tactics to kill people. A fair chance of killing the opponent using the toolset we have proper support for.

[sultryvoltron]

Lol. You'd gank someone like that? Are they afk so they do -nothing- during triple recharge?

Weren't you one of the people who said something along the lines of "lulz all these people talking about Agents when they have never played one themselves"?

Retard.

Isn't everybody afk in this game? Last time I tried to look for SFA on my baby MA all the docs certainly were.

Oh and you know you've done it JUST like that at least four times

[Klodovik]

Fragile: yes, Deadly: not so much, to some professions maybe, not to all though.

Who said you have to be deadly to all professions?

In every game out there, assassins have some professions that can withstand their attacks and retaliate accordingly. Why would AO be any different (funny thing is, AO is different, 'cos of troxes)?

[howlin]

Bump, this one makes no sense, fix it to work like other AI perks or make all AI perks requier player to be in combat

Edit: oh and make agent AS pierce reflects and do a 3 capped hits

[Scandium]

Yus, we should all quit the game and QQ from our troll caves.

Ahahahahaha.

<3

Oh, and bump for a fix even though I don't use this perk. It might be nice to try it again.

Faster execution times and lower recharge times on agent perks are BOTH extremely necessary for the whole "assassination" image to be upheld. We have what, three perks that we can fire in under 5 seconds? The rest take another good 15-20 seconds EASILY. Not to mention the 2 minute recharge on some of them, making our alpha basically a 2 minute recharge.

WACK!

[Blackcradle]

It's funny. All the predictably same people who troll this and every agent thread seem to try to list the same points for any arguement, regardless of any relevance or what the thread is actually about. Yet, another persisting trend is the lack of any coherent arguement, especially about this perk. Although it makes sense since agents have like 4 30% 1s cap perks... seriously I wish anyone who wasted there time enough to troll agent forums/threads constantly as MP(lol)/NT/Keeper-s seem to do constantly to get a better grasp on a profession before spewing the same 'uninformed crap,' THAT ALL agent APPARENTLY say about other professions.