Curse

Yukito Kunisaki · Jul 10, 2006, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Ah, soo many threads, also, it's been a while since I was here since I've almost retired from GW, but playing on my sin brings back good times...

At least, when I could enter a group, GAH!

Anyways, what do we have, in terms of pve [THINK PVE FOR THIS THREAD ONLY PLEASE] where a sin can get in, hurt them, and get out...

After much testing from a whiles ago and now, I've discovered that if your combo is composed of more than 3 hits [aka, the off-hand, dual, off-hand dual setup], you die. In good pve scenario where the enemies are balanced, make no qualms about it, good monk or not, 4 hits meant certain death for me in like 90% of the scenarios. The monster AI will switch targets come late game to the one with lower AL. [aka, YOU instead of your team warrior] upon attack. So even if you DO your job of jumping in and striking, the enemy [probably a melee type] will turn and swing at you 2-3x. Which means, you die... If their casters have anti-buffs in their skill sets [which 90% of the good ones do], then you die... GAH THE HUMANITY!!!

So, now I'm going by the book since that seems to be the only way to survive these days. The 'standard' assassin skill combo consists of a Lead Attack, an Off-Hand attack, and a Dual Strike. We don't want to stay in there any longer for 3 hits since well, DPS isn't the Sin's way... There are two types of effective sins that I'm aware of, the shutout type and the kill eventually type...

[there is no insta-kill type in pve, at least, advanced pve sadly]

I'll try to cover both here, also in terms of weapon usage, we need energy, more so than any other melee modified class in the game, so the hit of 13 critical strikes is good and combined with 12 daggers, the move from dagger mastery to critical hits for Twisting Fangs is now a + and more reason to have a very high Critcal Hits build.

For both builds, I'll be looking at this stat spread [A/X but I love necro secondary so

]

9+1+3 Critical Strikes
11+1 Dagger Mastery [need 100% dmg at the bare minimum]
1+1 to shadow arts [to be unblockable]
rest+1 Deadly Arts [for your damage intake reduction + output booster]

Iron Palm
Falling Spider
Twisting Fangs
Siphon Strength {E}
Siphon Speed
Way of the Fox
Plague Touch
Ressurection Signet

Ah, an unblockable assassin designed to dump a gigantic amount of degen on your target and move with speed. Wtf? NO TELEPORT? That's the price to pay to conserve skill slots. If you don't mind possible blocking, you CAN use Death's Charge in place of Way of the Fox, but I find the recharge on it to be quite ridiculous and as far as mobility goes, you can do a lot worse than Siphon Speed and since your foe will probably be alive after the assault, you can bet you can get your ass outta there before retaliation comes. [and believe me, with lower AL, 20% faster running does NOT hurt] Teleporting takes up too many slots and for increased damage, [AoD vs. Siphon Strength], not worth it to me...

Siphon Strength {E} rox in 3 directions. 1. More crits = more energy after the assault. Your only 2 attacks have a very large chance of critical hitting and that's not bad. Not bad at all. 3. The targetted foe who turns to hit you will be doing less damage. Always a good thing.

Siphon Speed {E} cover hex that helps you move, fast cast, recharge, recycle. Not bad at all.

Way of the Fox. You're only swinging 2x technically so you only need it to hit 2x. If you decide "[I MUST DO MORE DAMAGE AND DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR GUIDE SO I'LL SWING 5X TIMES!!!]" Then go ahead. If you're in an easy part of the campaign, then it'll probably work. If you're in a true winner's part of the game, I can all but guaruntee you'll die...

The 3 hit chain [well two hits actually] are awesome in that you'll be doing a gigantic amount of degen and dropping in a deep wound making it easier for your teammates [you're NOT soloing] to do their thing... They can't be blocked, and with these stats, they most certainly won't be weak, even with high critical % offset by level [yay for elite!]

problem? You will be sitting out of the fight in durations, but lets face it, you're not of the dps insta-recharge insta-kill variety of player so if you don't like it, play a warrior, I personally find them more long term and exciting to play myself...

Yay for AI making assassinating so damn difficult! You will find that fighting enemy monks in this case with the proper setup will stuff them utterly. You'll have them on their asses poisoned, bleeding, and deep wounded AND they have to deal with the rest of your team decimating their attackers...

------------------------------Kill support section end--------------

Shut out?

Ah, to shut out your foes so they can't do their job properly... This is probably the more difficult, and also more fun way to play a sin. It's faster and easier to shut someone out of the fight [thereby 'killing' them] in short periods rather than killing them outright which takes tooooo long at enemy level 25+... [yeesh]

stats? repeated

9+1+3 Critical Strikes
11+1 Dagger Mastery
1+1 to shadow arts
rest+1 Deadly Arts

Disrupting Stab
Temple Strike {E}
Twisting Fangs
Critical Eye
Impale
Siphon Speed
Plague Touch
Ressurection Signet

Now here's a turn of events. Now you disrupt, blind, daze, bleeding, and deep wound your target. It won't pack the degen of the first build, but is that enemy caster going to do anything? Hell no...

Instead of degen, it has the gigantic force that is Impale serving as the main hex with Siphon being the cover hex again. Those enemies won't know what hit them and as you can see, it's really meant for caster foes BUT can be used on enemy melee when the casters die [yay blind]

With 25s. recycle on TS, you'll need to pick your foes wisely. In PvE, it's like, ALWAYS enemy monks... If you do get the chance to wail away on a foe, like when everyone else is dead, this build's use of Critical Eye won't hurt it at all.

As far as what I used to use:

Black Lotus Strike, Horns of the Ox, Falling Spider, Twisting Fangs, it no longer works in smartly packed PvE areas where Horns of the Ox fails and therefore I'm stuck with the BLS + Twisting Fangs setup. 2 skills killed off due to mobs. With the 2 above builds, they'll work in any situation...

Ideas? Think PvE!

Yukito Kunisaki · Jul 13, 2006, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Wow, this is a first...

Must be a perfect build!

Woot!

Kyle · Jul 13, 2006, 04:48 PM // 16:48

i got a little tired of reading it. im kinda tired. i read half and then i was done. Looks good to me. But im more of an aod fan and like my 4 hit combo then aod out. But it looks nice. ill read more when im awake

Pick Me · Jul 13, 2006, 05:22 PM // 17:22

I have a few concerns about your build.

1) no self-healing. You must trust in your monk to heal you. (Sometimes, that isn't a good thing).

2) While, I'm glad to see Plague Touch, it only transfers 1 condition. Again, must rely on monks to remove hexes and other conditions from you (ie: Blinding, crippling, etc.)

3) Without teleportation, do you not find it sometimes difficult to attack a monk when rangers have already laid their traps down?

4) You said unblockable assassin, however with only 2 points into Shadow Arts, do you not only get like 2 unblockable/evadable attacks? The recharge time is 45 seconds.

5) Enchantment Stripping, do you find enemies strip your enchantments often, and if so, does it drastically affect your build?

Your Shut Out build seems nice, but again see concerns #1 & 2.

Otherwise your first build seems quite nice.

Yukito Kunisaki · Jul 13, 2006, 08:04 PM // 20:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pick Me

I have a few concerns about your build.

1) no self-healing. You must trust in your monk to heal you. (Sometimes, that isn't a good thing).

2) While, I'm glad to see Plague Touch, it only transfers 1 condition. Again, must rely on monks to remove hexes and other conditions from you (ie: Blinding, crippling, etc.)

3) Without teleportation, do you not find it sometimes difficult to attack a monk when rangers have already laid their traps down?

4) You said unblockable assassin, however with only 2 points into Shadow Arts, do you not only get like 2 unblockable/evadable attacks? The recharge time is 45 seconds.

5) Enchantment Stripping, do you find enemies strip your enchantments often, and if so, does it drastically affect your build?

Your Shut Out build seems nice, but again see concerns #1 & 2.

Otherwise your first build seems quite nice.

The problem is, there is no efficient form of self-healing worth putting points into Shadow Mastery for and in late game, all you've got is your monk. Since you don't teleport, you won't be out of monk's reach most of the time...

Plague Touch is for when you want to stuff them instead of have your monk remove it. Payback's a pain and fun in pve, I like it...

The lack of teleport vs. traps [this is PvE I take it] isn't too big of a deal... Usually there's another soft target outside of the traps.

He's unblockable because you need only 2 hits. Iron Palm isn't an attack that can be blocked and doesn't count to your dagger attacks which is what Way of the Fox is counting.

Enchantment Stripping isn't usually a be all end all of this build since the only thing it does is remove your unblockable ability. Look at it this way: You lose Way of the Fox or your monk loses Divine Boon. See the benefit here?

One less enchant strip for your monk to deal with... win-win

jesh · Jul 13, 2006, 10:25 PM // 22:25

When I read these, my first thought was, "Why not play a mesmer?"

*shrug*

Pick Me · Jul 14, 2006, 12:55 PM // 12:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yukito Kunisaki

The problem is, there is no efficient form of self-healing worth putting points into Shadow Mastery for and in late game, all you've got is your monk. Since you don't teleport, you won't be out of monk's reach most of the time...

Plague Touch is for when you want to stuff them instead of have your monk remove it. Payback's a pain and fun in pve, I like it...

The lack of teleport vs. traps [this is PvE I take it] isn't too big of a deal... Usually there's another soft target outside of the traps.

He's unblockable because you need only 2 hits. Iron Palm isn't an attack that can be blocked and doesn't count to your dagger attacks which is what Way of the Fox is counting.

Enchantment Stripping isn't usually a be all end all of this build since the only thing it does is remove your unblockable ability. Look at it this way: You lose Way of the Fox or your monk loses Divine Boon. See the benefit here?

One less enchant strip for your monk to deal with... win-win

I figure in PvE, there may be times when there are no soft targets, just rangers (and they stay near their traps). So teleporting outside of a trap could be good.

Divine Boon has a recharge time of 1. Way of the Fox has a recharge time of 45. Clearly it would hurt you more if you cast it then have it quickly removed.

So if you lose your "unblockability", can you still do the dame damage if someone uses a stance? Or are you still subject to every assassin/warrior/ranger in the effect that you just swing away until the defense ends, then do your combo.

Jaesmyn · Jul 14, 2006, 02:09 PM // 14:09

I like that you used Siphon Strength. I've been looking for a feasible deadly arts build, and that always seemed to be an important part of it (because it does both damage reduction and increases criticals)

But, I have a huge problem with Iron Palm. It's the only lead attack in the (first) build, and it recharges in 20 seconds. On the other hand, I also love Falling Spider and Twisting Fangs ... gotta love conditions. But since those two hinge on you landing Iron Palm first, you face a 20s recharge if you miss with Iron Palm. Or you might make a mistake of using Iron Palm, and then be unable to follow thru with the rest of the combo because your group killed the target. And even if you do go thru the combo and kill the target, you're looking at waiting about 15s before you can use the combo again.

I don't like having 15s delay between my combo chains in PvE ... the monsters typically come in groups, not singletons.

Oh ... and you might want to take a second look at your energy usage. Even with Siphon Strength's increased criticals, you're still using a ton of energy: 15 for siphon str (or 5 for siphon speed), 10 for Iron Palm, 5 for Spider, and 10 for Twisting; oh, and 5 for Way of the Fox if you didn't have it up earlier.

Plague Touch is an interesting choice since it is your only Necro skill (??). I'd rather use Signet of Malice, and be able to remove more than one condition at a time, and leave the door open for any kind of secondary.

I'd replace Way of the Fox and Plague Touch with a backup attack chain. Jagged Strike and Wild Strike allow you to open up with a bleed on any target and disrupt a stance every 4 seconds.

But that's my opinion.