Well, doggies. Hit 50 with my assassin last night, which gave me the option to start a new character at level 50. My intent had been to roll with a Bear Shaman, but after further contemplation I decided to delete my level 22 Dark Templar and recreate her as my new level 50 - and my new main. Here's hoping I don't regret this decision later.
Speaking of which, lemme tell ya - along about level 39 or so I was beginning to feel pretty darned sorry I'd chosen to stick with an assassin as my main character. My assassin has had tea and crumpets with ye Olde Grim Reaper again and again and again and again on her way to level 50. Pretty much every quest I've done since the upper 30s has resulted in tombstones littering the landscape. Often, just trying to get from one safe area in a zone to the next meant bloody death - and this is while sneaking around with maxed out Hide. AoC Assassins can dish out some serious DPS, yes indeed, which would be great if they could survive more than three or four hits due to armor that is about as effective as a wet corn flake. To add insult to injury, the game routinely throws three, four, five or more foes at you all at the same time. And if you do manage to survive a fight with three or more foes, all too often it's 'oh crap here comes another one!' while your character has only a tiny sliver of health left. Sometimes running away works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the bad guys follow you - and keep up with you - until you're drained of stamina as well as health and woops, it's death by falling damage from a 5' drop and hello again, Grim Reaper, we have to stop meeting like this, people will talk. It's been years since I've been so frustrated by a game that I have actually YELLED at the screen and pounded my fist on my desk.
Now, I'm sure this is mostly just me not quite grasping the fundamentals of how the class works and making all sorts of noob blunders with feats and combos, and I'm sure there are people out there who can play AoC Assassins and have them be undying engines of death and destruction, but even so - egad. I didn't have anywhere near this amount of trouble figuring out how to play a LOTRO Burglar, and I can play a CoH Blaster in my sleep (and have done so on many occasions).
Anyway, so far this level 50 Dark Templar is doing okay. Only died once today. That's like, ya know, somewhere in the vicinity of 1000% improvement.
