Curse

LifeInfusion · Aug 26, 2006, 02:17 AM // 02:17

@ Sol Deathgard, what makes sins bad in PvE is 70 armor and the fact that you have to be melee unless going crit barrager. Mesmers/Eles/Necros/Casters don't have great healing, but they don't get in the touchrange of mobs.

@ Yanman, you have 3 spirits on you one of which is SHELTER. Not doubting your skill, but to say it's all you is kind of arogant.
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@ OP, Assassins are way better in PvP than in PvE.

Point A; Resilience
In PvE resilience and ease of use is key. If you rely on combos and conditional things you end up way less versatile. Notice all other classes don't rely on combos of more than 2 skills, and the order doesn't matter as much.

Point B: Ease of Shutdown
A sin needs a lead-offhand-dual and a res, unless you use Golden Pheonix Strike or Palm Strike to bypass lead. That's half your bar just right there. Plus, if lead doesn't execute, no offhand/dual.
Diversion = no more combo. Energy denial = screwed unless you are going to stand there using critical hits to charge up energy.

Blind, hexes, energy denial, everything that hurts a caster AND a warrior hurts a sin. Have you been mauled by Oni or Elemental bosses? Guess what, it was the level bonus, and the doublestrike chance that is totally unrealistic for players to achieve like the Elemental bosses' 200+ damage air spikes on casters.

Point C: Effectiveness
When I play monk, I always bring Protective Spirit for Assassins since they tend to get spiked by warriors but generally I avoid assassins I don't know or have had trouble with in the past.

Most don't have a clue. I have only seen about 1 or 2 PUG sins worth their weight in the party that weren't A/R critical barragers.

You could easily bring a warrior with paladin premade build (sever artery + gash, healing hands, etc.) to replace the sins that suck and be more effective as a team.

ShadowbaneX · Aug 28, 2006, 06:47 PM // 18:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by BahamutKaiser

Besides that, Recall and AoD are too expensive. AoD is an advancing teleport, which means casting it puts you up to start your combo, using 10 energy and one energy regeneration right before you start a combo is a significant loss, and it could certainly stand to be 5 energy. 5 energy covers the cost of reaching your enemy, maintenance covers the cost of a ready retreat, it doesn't need to be 10 energy. And 15 energy is half an Assassins energy pool at the least, more than half with most armors, the ability to jump to another players location can be useful, but 15 energy is excessive, it could easily stand to be 10 energy.

I like the idea of dropping the cost of AoD, but I think that ANet is probably worried about it being cast too often and assassins becoming Nightcrawler clones appearing and disappearing at will. However this could be offset by perhaps losing some energy (5-10) when the it's dismissed/removed, or perhaps delaying it's recharge until it's dismissed/removed.

My personal fav skills are Jagged Strike, Wild Strike (very similar Fox Fangs, but with a faster recharge), Horns and Fangs. With the fast recharge times of the strikes, you can use one of the duals and then jagged, wild and the other dual. Usually I'll run with Moebius to chain them together, otherwise I'll use AoD. I usually use mesmer for my 2nd for Hex Breaker and Shatter Hex. Being able to remove Blurred Vision or whichever other annoyance happens to be dropped on me is, I find, very useful. Monk would be a tempting 2nd as well for hex removal and condition removal, but I like Hex Breaker.

Yanman.be · Aug 28, 2006, 10:19 PM // 22:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

@ Yanman, you have 3 spirits on you one of which is SHELTER. Not doubting your skill, but to say it's all you is kind of arogant.
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Never said it was all me. If you show this screenshot to most people in ToA english 1, they'll believe it's edited. No way! only 1 monk? ZOMG ! A mesmer! WHAT? 2 assasins? One already left? he's the smart one! What do ritualist do?

It was an accomplishment as a team.

Spura · Aug 29, 2006, 04:54 PM // 16:54

First we have to establish what does anet use for balancing. It is GvG. They nerf extremely abusive things in Tombs and PvE, but generally most nerfs and all boosts are made with GvG in mind. Now let's look at GvG assassin build. Due to general sucking of shadow steps elite is completely locked to AoD. We also are locked to falling spider and twisting fangs, 99% of the time we also have dark escape, shadow refuge. This leaves like 3 slots of variation, 2 if you use rez sig on assassin. The question is why do all the gvg assassins look the same. Because everything else sucks, that's why.

1. Deadly arts suck. You really need critical strikes and daggers so deadly arts can't have 12+ attribute, meaning most stuff there like impale really isn't good enough. And the only good skill below 12 attribute is siphon speed.

2. Deep wound is way too powerful. As long as deep wound is so powerful axe warriors will be locked to eviscerate as their elite and assassins will have to have twisting fangs. No other dual attack comes even close to twisting fangs. The highest damage is blades of steel(which has problems of its own) and it caps at +50. Given that twisting fangs has +20 bonus that makes a total difference of 60 damage with both hits combined. Twisting fangs also has deep wound which does a nice 100 dmg spike not to mention free bleeding. The gap becomes even wider when you can't have 5 attacks on the bar, last one being Blades of Steel. With 14 daggers and 13 crit strikes, deadly blossom will have +38 bonus and twisting fangs has +19. So now combo like falling spider+deadly blossom will do 62 less damage than FS+TF.

3. All of leads and most of offhands are junk damage compared to duals. So most people just look for a way to do as many duals as possible without sacrifising slots for leads. Typical example being GLS+HotO+FS+TF, which utilizes the only 2 good damage offhands and 2 duals.

Most leads have around +20 dmg, while duals have double bonus of +30 = 60. Quite a difference there. Some leads don't even have bonus like jagged strike(which only has short bleed, especially compared to something like sever artery).

Let's see what offhands do we have:
Black Lotus strike (too long recharge to be a damage skill)
Wild Strike(+20 and strictly worse than Wild Blow for stance breaking)
Jungle Strike(+20 or +50 if crippled)
Repeating(vanilla +20)
Fox Fangs(again +20)
Golden Phoenix Strike(+30, but expensive)
Falling Spider(+35 and delicious poison)
I didn't list elite offhands as we have to have AoD.

As you can see there are about 2 right choices and plenty of wrong ones.
I have already talked about how the dual choice is limited by deep wound.

Now let's take a look at leads.
Unsuspecting strike

expensive, not so good if target below 90% +30 dmg @ 13 criticals
at 8 criticals it becomes and expensive normal lead.

Desperate strike

a total WTF skill. Most monks will try to keep bars topped. Teams bring heal party E/Mo just to do that. Assassin doesn't have room on skill bar for a skill that he MIGHT use at some point. Should be: if target is below x% HP do +y damage(something like +30 at 15 daggers, even thrill of victory does more).
Designer gets F- for this skill.

Golden Lotus strike

classic +20 damage for this lead, gives energy if enchanted and thus has very long recharge. It is fine, but it isn't the damage skill.

Jagged strike

The only thing going for it is the shortest recharge on 5 en lead attack. Otherwise it is crappy.

Black Mantis thrust

Expensive and you need a hex to get cripple so that is 2 slots on your bar. Damage is boring +20 as always.

Leaping mantis sting

IMO the best of leads. Again plain +20 damage and cripple if target is moving.

Disrupting stab and disruption

The only 2 interrupt skills(if we ignore the KD skills) and Disrupting stab and Exhausting assault. Exhausting assault is complete and utter trash. Being the dual attack it requires you to start with lead and offhand which is a bad bad thing for an interrupt skill. It also completely wastes the damage bonus of being a dual. F- on that one.
The only other interrupt is disrupting stab, which is quite underpowered.
You need 15 dagger spec to delay a SPELL for 10 sec. Disrupting Chop of a warrior delays a SKILL for 20 sec, no spec. I think disrupting stab needs to be able to delay a skill. Especially compared to distracting shot it sucks. Distracting shot also has 1/2 sec cast time , skill disable for 20 sec with same cost and same recharge. I think disrupting stab really needs a boost.

So generally leads and offhands(except falling spider and golden phoenix) need some kind of damage boost so people won't just skip them for duals. Also we need to have attacks to fill a certain niches/roles. To do so, some attacks which already fill a certain role need a bit of buff(like making disrupting stab delay skills) and some need to be completely changed in what they do to something that is needed(i.e. desperate strike and exhausting assault).

Maybe after that we will see more variety.

Tingi · Aug 29, 2006, 09:27 PM // 21:27

agree completely with spura

runeseeker1 · Aug 31, 2006, 07:27 AM // 07:27

Lol my sin was easy to screw up. It was so easy just to rack up the DP. When I did Vizunah Square (Foreign Quarter) i had 60 DP by the time the mission was halfway done. I never got below 50 after that. I didnt even have enough energy to unleash a combo, or even use recall! I'm starting to get really frustrated.

Yanman.be · Aug 31, 2006, 08:36 AM // 08:36

Yup. Dp>sins.

pve-er · Aug 31, 2006, 05:38 PM // 17:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by runeseeker1

Lol my sin was easy to screw up. It was so easy just to rack up the DP. When I did Vizunah Square (Foreign Quarter) i had 60 DP by the time the mission was halfway done. I never got below 50 after that. I didnt even have enough energy to unleash a combo, or even use recall! I'm starting to get really frustrated.

How do you die fo often?
what build did you use ?

the key of assassin is not to draw attention, the saver way is to attack enemy from 1 side of the map then move on to other side so the foe is busy with your teammate and not you while you are attapting to kill it. by doing this, you are not stand there wait for skill and energy to recharge or auto attack that really draw attention

the key of playing low AL charactor is to deal damage but don't looks like you are doing much to your enemy.

XvArchonvX · Aug 31, 2006, 06:00 PM // 18:00

Wow, thnx for the insight Spura. I might actually pull my 'sin out of the dust and try some of that out. I do agree however that they should give some serious buffs to 'sins. Since defense or AL buffs would just make a 'sin more like a warrior, damage buffs would be the way to go

Spura · Sep 03, 2006, 04:03 PM // 16:03

I would like to see skills buffed to match the usefulness of the most used ones. That is, I'd like to see other offhand attacks match the power of falling spider.

TaiClaw · Sep 03, 2006, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spura

I would like to see skills buffed to match the usefulness of the most used ones. That is, I'd like to see other offhand attacks match the power of falling spider.

I agree that Falling Spider is powerfull, when you compare it against ALL of our other skills it seems OVER-powered, 5 Energy, 8sec Cooldown, 38 Damage, 18 Seconds of Poisen.

The reason I don't use it, and others assasins I would assume, is because to be able to knockdown a target requires a long combo that is often way too energy in-effecient and has a longer than usefull recharge time. Meaning that it is great for single spiking enemies to death, although when it comes to mulitple enemies in pvp (where it's hardly 1v1) you just can't afford to have 15 seconds or so of down-time.

This is why I think Jagged Strike is one of the most powerfull skills in our arsenal. A 10 second Condition that costs 5 energy, and has a 4 second cooldown. I personally think that 70% of our damage should come from conditions, as most classes have a way to mitigate flat melee damage.

Yanman.be · Sep 04, 2006, 11:53 AM // 11:53

Conditions should help, but not be the primary goal IMO. I don't care about bleeding and poison, I just like the Deep Wound.

pve-er · Sep 04, 2006, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yanman.be

Conditions should help, but not be the primary goal IMO. I don't care about bleeding and poison, I just like the Deep Wound.

Condition really help IF the foe has low HP, those lvl28 warriror just don't care for thing like bleeding + poison on them. 1 healing signet will counter all the degen make to them.

A monk foe can remove all the condition you spend 30+ energy to put on with single spell or few spell (purge condition, mend ailment...).

some foe just immune to poison, disease and bleeding. make condition pretty much useless (skeleton, jade, stones...).

the only condtion that help in PvE is deep wound, rest of the condition are either too low or the skill that apply them are overly situational. that is why I never use the Ox combo with groups during mission or quest.

Skuld · Sep 04, 2006, 09:29 PM // 21:29

That is really useful Spura, thanks.

Gosu · Sep 09, 2006, 06:43 PM // 18:43

may i say sins at this point in time are some what unbalanced, a little like mesmers a few months back, when they were getting some hate.

Sins in the serious Side of the Pvp metagame seem to have found a small niche they can fill, so there usefulness can be justified in that sense.

The problem with Sins is that they are quite vunlerable to damage for a melee character, regardless of how you cut the cake. Sins can quickly become dead weight on a team in pvp or in pve if they are careless and take on too much DP.

Most players seem to complain that when they reach 40 Dp they can barely spike anymore as the Dp significantly affects there energy. Compare that to an E/mo who could have substantial amount of Dp, but at least they could sit at the back of the group and spam Heal party.

Also a lot of builds like the monk/assassin and warrior can seem to make better use of sin teleporation skills than sins can themselves.

These are only a few problems i see.

Though alot of you might chuckle now, but i am going to contradict myself here. Alot of sins i have seen in game seem to be a bit naive of how to actually play one.

I see shadows of the past in how people are building there sins, does everyone remember the time when people used to use Sever artery,Gash, Galrath Slash, Final Thrust spike. When nowadays people know that Sever, Gash and final would suffice.

Does everyone remember when people used to use Eviscerate,Axe rake,Penetrating blow,Executioner strike. Nowadays people know Eviscerate,Axe rake and exe strike or just Eviscerate and exe strike will suffice.

People in the game used to actually waste up to 4 or even 5 skill slots just to kill with their warriors in the past. Now because people know better they only use maybe 2 or 3.

The point being, the same is happening with sins, some people from reading there threads are sometimes wasting four or even 5! attack skills just to kill.

Doesn't anyone notice the most popular sin at the moment only spikes with three skills Shock, Falling spider and Twisting fangs. Freeing up the skillbar for other more useful skills.

The point i am trying to make is that the problem is a combination of two factors, they are imbalanced but also sins are suffering from ignorance.

I mean sins are very vunlerable to damage, but other than dark escape does anyone actually bother to bring along any other "serious" damage mitigation skills in Pvp?.

Alot of people complain when they take on too much dp they can barely spike. I guess solely relying on Critical strikes for energy management isn't to great eh. I mean almost "all" energy based characters in the game actually rely on some form of energy management with the exclusion of a few builds here and there.

I know that Critical stikes is a great E-management attribute for sins, but sins are too dependant on energy and to solely rely on it for energy management is rather risky.

Why not take an E-management skill like black lotus that can gain you back energy, that way even when you have dp you can still control your energy gain to a certain degree.