User blog:Thousand Troops/Balancing the Assassin Vocation

While I have thoroughly enjoyed the various vocations, the Assassin vocation has really irked me. This is due to the abilities it has being unbalanced, and ultimately taking away the legitimacy of the Fighter and Strider vocations.

While I am not delusional enough to believe that Japanese developers follow random blog posts on a English language wiki, I still hope that someone on Dragon's Dogma 2 team would read this.

Assassin "Perks":

1.) Able to use 4 Weapons 2.) Has an equal amount of Weapon Skills for each of those weapons, relative to the base vocations that also use them. 3.) Not only has an equal amount of Weapon Skills in each weapon category, but some really cool and powerful abilities, that the Fighter and Strider do not get. 4.) The highest Strength Stat growth, through all levels. 5.) Invisibility. 6.) No real weakness
 * No other Vocation has access to this many weapons. Makes little sense that the Assassin can use normal Shields, but the Mystic Knight can not, despite the fact that traditionally Assassin's arent defensive oriented classes, and that Knight's are.  Either remove the Shield from Assassin, or add Shields to Mystic Knight, normal Sword & Maces to the Warrior, and Swords to the Ranger and Magick Archer.
 * This is ridiculous, not only do they have access to more Weapons then any other Vocation, but they also get an equal amount of complete Weapon Skills for them, relative to the base Fighter and Strider class. By "complete" Weapon Skills, I mean upgraded Skills in a weapon category.  In the case of Sword and Shield, Assassin has 10 and 6 respectively.  The Fighter also has 10 and 6.  Honestly, this is an insult to the Fighter and Strider Vocations, and unbalances the Vocations as a whole.  What is the point of being a Fighter or Strider, if Assassin can use both of their weapons, with an equal amount of Skills for all the weapons?
 * Like the above, this unbalances the Vocations, and further strips away the reasons for playing as a Fighter or a Strider. Not only does the Assassin have more access to Weapons, and an equal amount of Skills, they also get some really neat Skills in place of the ones Fighters and Striders have.  Using Swords as an example, the Assassin loses some from the Fighter, but gains an equal amount back that are pretty cool, like Intimate Gambit, Great Windmill, and Clairvoyance.
 * Honestly, I think to rebalance the Vocations, the Assassin should have 2 fewer Weapon Skills per category, and instead those lost 2 should be added to the Fighter and Strider. This way the Fighter would have 12 Complete Sword Skills, and 8 Complete Shield Skills.  The Assassin would have 8 Sword Skills, and 4 Shield Skills.  This would still allow the Assassin to retain its flexibility and uniqueness, without making the Fighter and Strider class looking as weak.
 * This one honestly makes no sense to me, especially when you look at how limited the Warrior vocation is. The Warrior is slow in all aspects, attack speed and movement speed.  Its slower then the all other Physical classes.  The Assassin is much faster in attack, evasion, and outright speed.  So why would you also give Assassin the greatest strength growth?  The Warrior carries and uses massive weapons, and yet it doesnt have as high of a Strength stat as the Assassin?  WTF?  Give the Assassin a 5/2 (10-100/100-200) and give the Warrior a 6/3 growth.  Redistribute the lost point for Assassin to either its StrDef or MagDef.
 * Okay, while the Fighter and Warrior can soak up some damage, the Assassin totally one ups them on this. This should have never been the case, and the Assassin should have been given an ability which increases their damage sustained to 125%, yet to counter that boost their Strength to 200%.  It would make more sense for an Assassin to become extremely more damaging at the cost of defense, then for them to become invincible.  Assassins have always been traditionally instruments of lethality and damage, and not super defensive classes.  Remove this ability from the game alltogether, and give the Assassin a timed "super lethal" mode instead.
 * Currently when you add up all the advantages the Assassin has, the fact that they have a weak MagDef means little. They have; the highest Strength Stat; fleet of foot, attack, and evasion; the most weapons; the most weapon skills; the most flexibility; and the most broken ability in the game.

Dont get me wrong, I think the Assassin class is awesome. The problem though is, it's frankly too awesome and makes the Fighter and Strider classes irrelevant. This is really unfortunate, as the Assassin would still be powerful and flexible, without giving it so many perks. It really needs to be balanced relative to the other classes, both from a gameplay standpoint, and one of logic.

Now before someone chimes in and says "But look at the Mystic Knight, doesn't that make the Fighter look irrelevant!?". The answer to that is no. The Mystic Knight can't equip normal Shields, which are actually better at blocking attacks because the Magick Shield is always strung over the back of the M.Knight, making it slower to deploy and thus block an attack. The normal Shield does not suffer from this. Also, the Sword Skills that the M.Knight loses from the Fighter, are made back with Magick abilities, not more Sword abilities. For this I will use an example. The M.Knight loses Hindsight Sweep and Dragons Maw, but gains Great Cannon and Stone Forest. Both of those abilities are purely Magick, and have little to actually do with the Sword other then cast the spell. In the case of the Assassin, they lose Hindsight Sweep and Dragons Maw, but gain Great Windmill and Clairvoyance. Both of those abilities are pure Sword skills in that they both use the Sword directly to attack. What the M.Knight loses from the Fighter, it gains in Magick, not more pure Sword Skills.