Some feedback regarding Assassin Uber Skills:
Right now we have 3 Uber Skills, which compared to other classes are either borderline useless or geared towards very specific builds.
Most Uber Skills either provide big chunks of damage, or a big upgrade to one or more defensive layers (or both). In the case of Assassin we have:
Doom: Only useful for Psionic builds, and not that useful all in all. It does increase damage, but not a game-changer at all, or at least not to the extent of other classes' uber skills. Getting Doom definitely doesn't give the same thrill as getting Paragon, Runemaster, SuperBeast, Rathma's Chosen, etc.
Way of the Raven: Only useful for Tri-Elemental Claw, Naginata (only if using ZKT or Black Ice) and Limpet Laser/cold Oskills (VERY niche builds). Again, not a game changer. Doesn't significantly increase damage, and doesn't provide anything besides cold damage.
Beacon: Only useful in its entirety for the Trap build, which is arguably the least played build for the class. Usually the most chosen Uber Skill, only because the other two Uber Skills are completely useless unless you are playing the exact builds they are tailored for. For any other build the only benefit is 20% MS (non scalable), which is laughable when compared to other classes Uber Skills, but you still have to chose it because it's the only one that will provide any kind of benefit.
For comparison's sake, lets take Gladiator's Dominance. It gives scalable MS, but it also gives DS, poison skill duration, block speed, and block chance. This makes it useful for many different build paths. Or Paragon, where you get a huge defensive layer that can benefit any Amazon build. Of course, you might chose other Uber Skills, but choosing Paragon with any build would still give a benefit because any build benefits from a big chunk of HP... while the number of Assassin builds that benefit from cold spell damage/pierce or magic pierce is very limited and won't give any benefit at all unless you are using those specific builds.
I mean, you can just take a look at almost all Assassin guides, and you can easily see that there never is an emphasis on what Uber Skill to choose, and it's usually just "one point in Beacon for the MS".
Here's a list of Assassin builds that receive no direct benefit from any of the Uber Skills:
- Phys claw
- Light claw
- Nagisin without ZKT or Black Ice
- Scorpion Blade
- Maelstrom
- Storm Crows
- Wychwind
- Batstrike
- Any non-cold Oskill build
My view (and it might differ from the devs, I don't know) is that Uber Skills should be game-changers (and this is true for all other classes' Uber Skills). Either by giving an edge to builds that start falling off in damage or survivability by level 90, or that can change the way the game "feels" after investing in them. As of now, none of the Assassins' Uber Skills comes even close to that.
Also as a side note, we used to have Way of the Gryphon as Uber Skill. It was removed and transformed into a normal skill because it was essentially the same as the other "ways"... and now we've had another Uber Skill replaced with exactly the same but for another element that has no direct support in the rest of the skill tree? I don't get it. Am I missing something?