I spent a large part of the first few years on HG learning both,
the assassin class (Dex based) and toon design in general. I found it an absolute
blast to play all they way till hells ... From then on, I found it
a rough road in both damage output and survivability. When you have a
hard time staying alive, and then cant hurt any thing when you are, well....
kinda takes the fun out of the class. Doesn't help when all the other
class sneer at you for even suggesting to bring one on upper end game runs.
I too believe that adding a festering wound feature would
absolutely help to round out the class.
If penetrating strike dealt festering wounds, it would be comparable to ranger's constitution damage. (Still worse since the constitution damage actually helps called shots unlike damage). Since it's affected by constitution saves (and don't damage it) it'd be probably balanced for paragon mobs.
The Death Master Ninja is my baby.. Was my first scratch built toon and am proud of it.
However, once I decided to put it down and focus on other classes, well....
Nearly 6 years has gone by, and I haven't missed it much.
Ever since the somewhat recent update, which allows 2 MS per round, I have
been wanting to knock the dust of my ninja. So far, that seems to have helped
the class a bit.
With all that said, I also believe the class suffers from the elitist dilemma.
"If your tank cant stomp castles to dust and your caster cant wipe an entire map
clean by simply entering the zone ... well ... they just suck and should be trashed"
To this point.. the ONLY reason the bard has a place is because it feeds both those
egos.
I find the reality of the assassin falls somewhere in between.
In part I believe this exists because the assassin has no real defined
roll in the eyes of the party. To slate them as "Party Picker", does
nothing for the class but provides another way to feed the 2 main egos.
Tanks give them a bad rap because they really cant tank the serious baddies.
Casters give them a bad rap because the only real things they kill are casters food.
However, my assassin most always out kills every tank it runs with. As a matter of
fact the only real competition it has in kills are the casters, in which sometimes
it out kills them. So if a caster can kill several creatures per cast, if not many,
and I still kill as many as they do. Why is that considered weak. If were 2 casters
with the same kill count, no one would blink, and casters generally cant tank the
big baddies either.
In general I find the tank build mindset to be shaped around dealing with the real
end game baddies.. As a matter of fact .. that seems to be their only REAL job. If
other classes, started tanking with the best of them, then what use would they be..
Every one would say poor tanks need lovin too.. especially if we started condemning
them for not killing as much as the casters do.
Heavy Tanks should do their job, and not expect other classes do it for them.
Outside of that, I believe deciding on some defined battle related roll would help.
My personal play style, I find they fit very very well as guardians of the casters.
You generally find the heavy tanks in fray, which is also where the casters focus.
However, there are always those strays that break from the battle and attack the
casters. ( this is usually not the big baddies the tanks are managing )
I find it useful to position my self to where I can break from the battle, and MS
those that may charge the casters, or at least pull it off them..
This keeps the casters focused, the tanks focused, keeps me free from the
KD nonsense that wrecks my world, and I still compete with casters in kills.
In a nutshell, I do believe something like festering wounds would be an easy way
to balance the class, now that you can 2X MS per round. Definitely something to make
them less squishy sure wouldn't hurt. Being able to do even minor damage to
the big baddies would definitely give a fuzzy feeling inside.
I have tweaked my ninja build, just finished reincarnating it, and I believe is
geared very well.. I plan to run it a lot in the near future and get it's second
demi level. I will record the run data, and plot it all on graphs similar to how
I did with the original build.
This is way longer than I intended, but it is my 2 cents.
Cheers