Curse

Tyla · Dec 09, 2008, 11:40 PM // 23:40

A Shattering Assault Assassin should be spamming his chain practically on recharge. They aren't hurt by blocking at all when it comes to their combo. The only thing you have to be careful of is people disrupting your chain and canceling it.

X Cytherea X · Dec 10, 2008, 12:16 AM // 00:16

in a ta setting, the damage dealers should ideally not do cleanup, that consumes time and energy, which lessens pressure on the enemy, allowing them to do their stuff.

ideas
- keep your wild blow, replace cleanup stuff, add ias, ims, and more attack skills, maybe some buffs
- avoid long recharging spikes, turn your sin into a spike/pressure hybrid (hint: moebius and 2 duals)

- make nec n/mo, give him foul feast, plague sending and 2 hex removals, rip enchant and antimelee for the rest
- replace nec with an expel hex rit, with offensive/defensive weapon spells and direct heals (no spirits) and make your monk drawcond/mendtouch
- replace nec with a smiting monk, who does smite hex/cond/revdmg and some support damage and healing in the process, buffs you and sin/helps other monk

summary:
drawcond+mendtouch is good
foulfeast+plaguesend is good
3-4 hex removals within the team is a good idea. split between the monk and the support guy. 1-2, 2-1 or 2-2... 2 hex removals is too little. standard "balanced" has 4-5 hexes. n/?-me/?-r/p shitway has... a shitload.

Tiresias · Dec 10, 2008, 12:31 AM // 00:31

Wow! We just gave that [Shattering Assault] build a run and I have to admit that its effective is insane. Since I played an Assassin for a bit I know what the animation for Wild Strike looks like, and waited to use my direct damage skills until after it went off, pretty much just spamming [Wounding Strike] on anything nearby while waiting.

The only drawback is that we telegraph the spike a bit more now, since the Assassin is the "lead". Whereas before I would use [Wild Blow] when the spike was called for and our A would Shadowstep in and Spike immediately afterward, now it's pretty much a given that the Assassin has to be there first.

In retrospect after typing that, maybe we are playing the build wrong. Perhaps we should be going for heavy pressure instead of a spike now. Hmmm...

Oh and we got ROXXORED by a team with two WE Warriors and two MO/N's using those "[email protected] enchants" skills. It seems like a pretty hard counter to us, since we are all medium and light armor the games were over pretty quickly as they would knock our Monk down ad infinitum while spamming attack skills until he was dead. It was ugly.

Bobby2 · Dec 10, 2008, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiresias

We have tried Wild Strike in the past and didn't much care for it as it made our Assassin into the "utility" role, waiting on the stance to cancel, but we can give it another run. I have come quite a ways in my ability to handle the Dervish over the last week and feel more comfortable calling for the spike, so I might give a damage role a shot.

[golden fang strike] says hi. Yes, that means having 2 offhands. But it's marvellous punishment to those trying to use their stances as bait. [impale] isn't more than mediocre anyway, and your Sin won't have to delay his spikes.

This way you can Deep Wound just about everyone permanently

CoonerTheRed · Dec 10, 2008, 04:43 AM // 04:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Slave

Shield Bash is Strength.

ha, I lose at reading. Clearly haven't played in Arenas much lately... :P

X Cytherea X · Dec 10, 2008, 06:23 PM // 18:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiresias

Wow! We just gave that [Shattering Assault] build a run and I have to admit that its effective is insane. Since I played an Assassin for a bit I know what the animation for Wild Strike looks like, and waited to use my direct damage skills until after it went off, pretty much just spamming [Wounding Strike] on anything nearby while waiting.

The only drawback is that we telegraph the spike a bit more now, since the Assassin is the "lead". Whereas before I would use [Wild Blow] when the spike was called for and our A would Shadowstep in and Spike immediately afterward, now it's pretty much a given that the Assassin has to be there first.

In retrospect after typing that, maybe we are playing the build wrong. Perhaps we should be going for heavy pressure instead of a spike now. Hmmm...

yeah with that build, you and the sin can probably just gank a non-monk squishy (or maybe even the monk) endlessly, until it dies.

Quote:

Oh and we got ROXXORED by a team with two WE Warriors and two MO/N's using those "[email protected] enchants" skills. It seems like a pretty hard counter to us, since we are all medium and light armor the games were over pretty quickly as they would knock our Monk down ad infinitum while spamming attack skills until he was dead. It was ugly.

in that type of battle you should definitely gank one of the monks asap. over and over, dont switch targets. camp his corpse and repeat when he resses. maybe give your support guy 1-2 monk hate spells to throw on the monk you're not hitting. (mark of subversion? wail of doom? dont forget to rip the veil)

spreading pressure around in that situation isnt too effective when they have 2 monks. meanwhile have your support guy and your monk try to hold out as long as possible. unstrippable buffs maybe? (weapon of shadow?warding?). it's a race to the death.

Tiresias · Dec 11, 2008, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by X Cytherea X

yeah with that build, you and the sin can probably just gank a non-monk squishy (or maybe even the monk) endlessly, until it dies.

in that type of battle you should definitely gank one of the monks asap. over and over, dont switch targets. camp his corpse and repeat when he resses. maybe give your support guy 1-2 monk hate spells to throw on the monk you're not hitting. (mark of subversion? wail of doom? dont forget to rip the veil)

spreading pressure around in that situation isnt too effective when they have 2 monks. meanwhile have your support guy and your monk try to hold out as long as possible. unstrippable buffs maybe? (weapon of shadow?warding?). it's a race to the death.

We are considering unstrippable buffs. Weapons and maybe even Spirits might work well, and I understand that Necros make better Rits than the Rits themselves do, even after the nerf to Reaping (did they ever revert that?). We are trying to find a build that works equally well against Warrior + Ranger (i.e. Balanced) as it does against 2x WE Warriors.

Is it just me, or do Warriors seem to be the defining element of TA? We have been playing in them for several days now and the only other team that we have come across that isn't running at least one Warrior was a Shovesin + 3x Air E/Mos that was very "one-trick"; you can probably guess their strategy.

Sirius-NZ · Dec 11, 2008, 10:54 AM // 10:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiresias

By the way, how do you more experienced Dervishes feel about using a single +2 rune in PvP? I noticed that they reduced the HP cost to -35... thereby rendering my entire array of old -50 runes useless as they were NOT updated! /nerdrage

I'm probably overdue to say this, but just buy a new one. Major runes almost invariably cost all of 100 gold these days because nobody wants them.

Also, I may actually have a major mysticism rune on one armor set to hit a breakpoint (12 myst or something like that). 35 hp isn't that big a deal, but you do want to ensure it doesn't add up too fast.

Also, regarding the topic as a whole even if not the last few posts in particular, running [skill]Avatar of Dwayna[/skill] with [skill]Mending Touch[/skill], I've found, does make it pretty hard to stop you. Haven't seen a lot of anti-melee hexes or conditions lately, though, so I haven't really needed it.