One Perk, Two Perk, Red Perk, Blue Perk, Part 1: Assassin

So I said not 30 minutes ago that I was going on hiatus, but, whatever. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think that Assassin is hands down the best perk in the game. For those of you who have recently had a generalized seizure, Assassin makes you undetectable by recon drone, UAV and AUAV, heartbeat sensors, and portable radar, as well as preventing thermal scopes from highlighting you. When pro'd out, you are immune to CUAV and EMP, and also do not display a name when their aim point is on you. The only way to get an assassin to show up on the minimap is Recon or them using unsilenced guns.
HOLY SHIT, THAT'S PRETTY GOOD

Let's recap that list: it shuts down 5/12 support killstreaks (as well as the recon Jugger's radar, and arguably the airstrikes which depend on UAV recon for targeting), two of the highest level attachments, and another perk. Meanwhile, the only counter intentionally put into the game depends on a perk which is, at best, situationally useful. Now, I suppose that sometimes you want people to know where you are and come to you, and in that case Blast Shield or Hardline might come in handy, and maybe Quickdraw shortening your time to kill is worth it on occasion. However, especially since I'm usually not hiding in a corner peering down my sights, I get more mileage out of being proactive than reactive. That means I want them to be surprised by me, not the other way around.

And that gets to the crux of the matter, I think. There are way more people who can't understand the flow of a game and predict where you will be coming from than there are people who can't kill you with bullets or who can use quickdraw to beat you even if we have a UAV up. Assassin forces your opponents to play with their brains instead of their radars, and, honestly, on xBox Live, brains are in short supply. Even when you're playing against opponents with brains, though, taking away that position information changes the game from "they know exactly where you are and what your options are" to "they'd better be damn good at guessing" if you're not the kind of player who gets read like a book.

 In conclusion:

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