Look, let's be honest, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad operates on a regular four-week season cycle. The second season, Roses and Thorns, has also wrapped up its second-week schedule, leaving just two weeks until the final tally. Securing even a single higher rank by the end of the season requires strategic preparation. Take a look at last week's seasonal family rankings and content changes to prepare for the remaining race.

Modest Shifts in Seasonal Rankings

The sole criterion for Season 2 ranking calculations is content clear scores. Rankings are determined by summing the highest scores recorded in permanent content like the Altar of Memory and the Altar of Abyss, alongside season-exclusive content such as Beyond the Wall Expedition, Wormway, and Elite Hideout. Compared to Season 1, which factored repeat-farming seasonal tokens into scores, this is a completely different ballgame.

While this change brought fairness to the ranking competition, it paradoxically suppressed variables. As user gear specs and clearing levels solidify, lower-ranked players lack a proper breakthrough to climb up. Indeed, comparing week 1 and week 2, the changes remain negligible.

That said, turning points are set to shake up the meta. The September 16 update introduces the final stage of seasonal Wormway, Infinite Space, and the new Altar of Abyss boss, Greywater's Basilisk. In particular, stepping into Greywater's Basilisk's Blood Poison pattern drastically increases attack power, noticeably speeding up clear times. We will have to wait for next week's leaderboard changes to see how profoundly these two newly opened contents will crack the ranking structure.

Community Perception Versus Assassin's Popularity

The recent balance patch brought buffs to mercenaries and assassins. Afterwards, community reactions were mixed. Mercenaries received praise for smoother gameplay, but the assassin's reception leaned closer to dissatisfaction, largely because the buffs were hardly noticeable.

However, looking at the in-game content ranking class distribution, assassins still hold a larger share than mercenaries. Of course, the genre's characteristics make it difficult to easily swap out characters into whom players have already invested significant resources. Even considering this, the data suggests that the actual ceiling and potential of assassins are higher than community reviews imply.

So, what kind of skill trees are top-ranking assassins adopting? The basic framework remains dominated by dagger combinations of Butchery, Dagger Throw, and Ambush, alongside rapier combinations of Flash Slash, Deep Stab, and Rapid Slash. However, a meaningful tectonic shift has been detected in recent dagger skill shares, with Ambush's share decreasing and Retreat stepping in to fill that void.

Originally, Retreat saw extremely limited usage due to its powerful strike damage increase option. However, the recent balance patch changed its effect to an attack power increase, drastically boosting its versatility. Maxing it out to the maximum level causes attack power to surge by 23.9% for seven seconds, and adding engraving effects can push enemies' received damage up to 20%. Compared to Ambush, which merely increases the target's received damage by 20%, Retreat holds a clear competitive edge in sheer numbers.

Naturally, there are pros and cons. Retreat only applies its effects to enemies within the smoke screen range, making it trickier to use than Ambush. Furthermore, players must give up reaching the maximum four stacks of Hemorrhage via Ambush. Ultimately, players must choose based on their individual playstyles: aiming for explosive attack power and debuff ceilings, or maintaining stable Hemorrhage stacks and operational convenience.