Curse

Eej · May 01, 2006, 11:03 PM // 23:03

I've been playing around with my Assassin in RA/TA the past few days trying different things out, such as Fragility Assassin, amongst others. However, I kept coming back to this build because it's so effective and relatively simple to use. However, I don't really see anyone using it all.

Assassin/Warrior

Tactics: 8
Dagger Mastery: 11 (+1, +1 Minor)
Shadow Arts: 6
Critical Strikes: 10 (+3 Superior)

Shove
Wild Blow
Falling Spider
Twisting Fangs
Recall
Death's Charge
Shadow Refuge
Healing Signet

Bladed Mask: +1 Dagger (+Superior Critical Strikes)
Vanguard's Guise: -20% Blind (+Superior Vigor)
Nightstalker Leggings: (+Minor Dagger Mastery)

Vampiric Daggers of Fortitude (+3 lifeleech, -1 Health regen, +30 Health, +15% damage when above 50% health)

Yeah yeah, I don't have my Minor Shadow Arts yet, but that's not really essential.

But as you can see, the combo is exceedingly simple. Make sure you tether yourself with Recall on your Monk (or whoever likes staying in the back). As the Warrior runs into the fray and starts beating on the enemy Monk, you take your pick of a soft target (say, an Air Elementalist who is confident that they can Blind you before you reach them), Death's Charge in.

If you're fast, you can open up with Shove before they can do anything, and from that point on it's Falling Spider, Wild Blow in case they turn on a blocking stance of some sort (most Rangers do anyhow) and then Twisting Fangs. Feel free to sneak in a few extra hits as the combination of Bleed, Poison and Deep Wound does its magic, then break your Recall to get the hell out of there.

Of course, this combo can easily be broken with a Monk who is really paying attention, but that's what the pressuring Warrior is for (or if you're feeling evil, you can pull off that combo on the same target as the Warrior). The only real problem, however, is systematic with most other Assassin builds. When your combo is cooling down, you're pretty worthless. If you're trying to kill a Monk who has a million enchants on, he's not going down. If you forget to Wild Blow or time it wrong and a Ranger puts on Whirling Defense, Recall and get the hell out.

I've been experimenting with using Return instead of Recall, because Recall can hurt you in a few ways, for example when they break the enchants on your Monk, or your Monk dies, or you only needed one more energy to pull off a Twisting Fangs but they just got a heal in time. However, using Return means Shove will put it on a 7 second cooldown from the moment you use it, so that's 7 seconds of you not having an escape route. Of course, you could sacrifice points to buff Tactics, but that seems kind of silly to do.

Shadow Refuge is pretty simple, if you got hit hard by degens when you were killing someone, spam it when you've shadow stepped out. Hell, spam it when someone's hitting you, spam it when you're attacking someone and your combo isn't up!

For the purpose of single target elimination, the build does fine, and since I've been playing it mostly in TA and RA, it works well. I can't say how good it is in HA or GvG because I haven't tried it, so nuts to that.

Blind is an Assassin killer, hence the usage of the Vanguard chest piece. Your Monk isn't always capable of cleaning Blind off you immediately (i.e. when he's being hammered), so having it just last shorter is good enough. Weakness is pretty bad too, but Weakness usually doesn't last long (and if it becomes a big enough problem, swap in the Vanguard Gloves). Haven't bothered with Shrouded because I haven't really run into energy problems.

Like almost all other Assassin builds, double the Assassins equals double the fun and double the quickness of death, especially if they both have Shove.