Curse

Mercury Angel · Apr 24, 2006, 07:06 PM // 19:06

Assassin/Ranger

Critical Strikes: 11 +1 +3 (15)
Marksmanship: 10
Wilderness Survival: 10

Dark Apostasy {E}
Critical Eye
Sharpen Daggers
Apply Poison
Called Shot/Alternate
Critical Defenses/Alternate
Troll Unguent/Alternate
Resurrection Signet

Poisoner's Bow

The goal of this build is to spread -7 degen to as many targets as possible. With the nerf to Mend Ailment, it's slightly better than it otherwise could have been.

What makes Apply Poison mediocre in the hands of a melee-er is the lack of ease in spreading it across many targets. The same really applies to Sharpen Daggers as well, in the end.
The only reason Poison Arrow is elite, in the end, is probably because of Melandru's Arrows; The ability to spread 7 degen across many targets with ease (not to mention the extra enchant damage).

So here we have a build made to accomplish a similar goal. High Critical Strikes in conjunction with Critical Eye, and the natural weapon critical rates, to give both high amounts of critical hits, and to return a large amount of energy.

Dark Apostasy is to synergize with the build, and provide additional support. What's not to like about a character that strips enchantments [cheaply and fairly often] from a distance? One of the problems with that is that some of the enchantments you want to strip cause your attacks to miss, hence the presence of Called Shot to aid when you need to strike a foe. Unfortunately, no bow attacks to my knowledge ensure crits, so that's still a gamble.
Dark Apostasy, on a Critical Strikes crit, causes only -1 energy (+3 energy for Critical Strikes attribute 13 or greater, as of the FPE. -4 energy for Dark Apostasy)

One of the perks to the build is its flexibility. You can swap in flag running skills in the alternates, or even another elite in place of Dark Apostasy. Nature Rituals, and other such skills that don't require heavy investments to be effective would also be good swap-in's.

The basic build, however, is just to be a nuisance in many situations. It's not heavily useful in any, but it's ideally a nice utility character to have. Spreading enough pressure in the form of degen can be very taxxing on the opponent's healing. And losing enchantments here and there can be a pain. Particularly since the energy loss lacks parity; 5+ to cast the enchant, -1-3 to strip it. (Depending on whether or not Critical Eye replaces the Critical Strikes bonus.)

Not really sure where this'd be useful, and what skills would serve best as the alternates. Right now, it's more geared towards arena play (and possibly PvE use), where, sadly, there aren't quite enough people for it to be of much use.
That's what input is for, though, I suppose.

One of the main skills I wanted to swap in that I didn't quite have the attribute points for was Tiger's Fury. Faster attacks = less time to spread it across the opposing team, and more tries in a given time to strike/bleed a certain foe.
If I drop Wilderness, I lose poison length. If I drop Marksmanship, I lose some of the inherent critical hit rate it gives. If I drop Critical Strikes, I lose bleeding duration, overall duration, critical rate, and such.

The biggest flaw of this build would be that I have minimal experience with the Assassin. I'm not certain on how a handful of mechanics interact with each other. Or even that Sharpen Daggers works with non-dagger weapons <_< (That doesn't specify dagger in the skill description, so I'm assuming it's just a name choice). And one of the more important aspects that this build hinges on is outputting the criticals, and I'm not certain how often it'll really crit, with the values for Marks, CS, and Critical Eye.

Suggestions for improvement?

[Edits in brackets]

As a note, for more Bow Assassin'y goodness -
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3000451

Didn't notice it. My build was actually sparked from playing around in Isle of the Nameless with a R/Me and the Archer Hench, using Melandru's Arrows and Poison Arrow's to spread 7 degen on to every target in range. The problem was that Arcane Mimicry has too long a recharge to be any good, and the post-use recharge is set at 60 seconds, regardless of whether or not you have QZ/SQ on.

7 Degen from a single character on multiple targets pulls out some crazy DPS, particularly in conjunction with the base weapon damage DPS. Tossing up something like Favourable Winds somewhere in the build would probably help even moreso.
So I turned to the assassin to see if it could be done.

It'll be a few days before I can actually get any testing done on it to see if it's any good.

Anyway, that's it for this edit update.

lightblade · Apr 24, 2006, 07:13 PM // 19:13

{off-topic comment}

Ugh! Why can't they just rename sharpen dagger to sharpen weapon? Sharpen Dagger just sound so misleading, like it only work on daggers. Either change the name, or make it only work on dagger.

swordfisher · Apr 24, 2006, 08:49 PM // 20:49

I reworked your numbers to

Critical Strikes: 10+3+1
Marksmanship: 12
Wilderness: 7
Beast Mastery: 4

But I'm still not satisfied with a build. This puts your critical rate at 16% (base 12 weapon) + 14% (CS) +7% (Critical Eye); 37% overall crit chance. Having a 7 in Wilderness gives 9 seconds of poison from each application of apply poison- with the 33% poisoners bow, that's up to 12 seconds. Sharpen Daggers does 14 seconds of bleeding. BM of 4 gives us a 7 second Tiger's Fury.
Critical Eye adds one E to every critical- you naturally get 3e per crit at CS 13- with Critical Eye, you get 4e. At 14 CS, Apostasy breaks even.
I noticed that you only had one attack (called shot, no-attrib), and thought of Focused Shot (+22, 5e - 2s) because it disables all other attack skills. You could get some cheap damage in like that, but I guess that's not the point of this build. The thing about called shot is that, though you're ensuring a hit, you're not ensuring a crit- there's still no certainty there. If you're trying to kill a Guardian, you have a 1/3 chance of stripping it with called shot- but it'll be gone on it's own practically before you can get the next called shot off. My guess? You'll become a pro at using called shot (3x faster arrow flight) on running foes for that auto-crit. Good luck, though =P

LaserLight · Apr 24, 2006, 10:16 PM // 22:16

*Laughs* Thanks for the plug, Angel

This degen Bowazin is actually doing a different job than my Bloodstorm build, though. You're going for GvG work and concentratng on degen over damage; my Bloodstorm was meant for damage, with the Bleeding extra/finsher. Stll, I think you're trying to do too many jobs here. You've got Apostasy, Apply Poison, Sharpen Daggers, Critical Eye...stacking all those costs muay Energy, and A/R don't get passive Expertise bonuses. A/R, to my eyes, need more attacking and less preparing to keep themselves going. Assassins as a whole are a very offensive-minded class, and that doesn't change when there's a bow in their hands instead of knives.

Mercury Angel · Apr 24, 2006, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaserLight

*Laughs* Thanks for the plug, Angel

This degen Bowazin is actually doing a different job than my Bloodstorm build, though. You're going for GvG work and concentratng on degen over damage; my Bloodstorm was meant for damage, with the Bleeding extra/finsher. Stll, I think you're trying to do too many jobs here. You've got Apostasy, Apply Poison, Sharpen Daggers, Critical Eye...stacking all those costs muay Energy, and A/R don't get passive Expertise bonuses. A/R, to my eyes, need more attacking and less preparing to keep themselves going. Assassins as a whole are a very offensive-minded class, and that doesn't change when there's a bow in their hands instead of knives.

I realize that they're for 2 different tasks, but I still do like yours, for more than just its concept, time of posting, and that it was actually tested. It's overall more thought out and some other things I couldn't say to boot.

But I digress.

Sharpen Daggers is a cheap enchant that can be cast before the battle, and, with an enchantment mod (should that be chosen), lasts for up to 42 seconds at a time (all numbers assume 15 CS). Critical Eye is cheap with no preparation time, and lasts for 35 seconds.
Apply Poison is probably the most energy hogging preparation for initial cost, while Apostasy (20 seconds with enchant mod) is the most expensive for over time cost.

Dark Apostasy is merely there for the utility though, and doesn't have to be cast all of the time.

Assuming people don't bother to strip Sharpen Daggers, we're looking at 2 casts of Apply Poisons over 42 seconds, 1 Sharpen Daggers, 2 Critical Eyes, and 2 Dark Apostasies. 30+5+10+20 base en cost, in addition to a loss of energy for each enchantment. (-1 if Critical Eye doesn't trigger along with Critical Strikes base bonus, -3 if Critical Eye overwrites it, -0 if they both trigger). A total of 8 seconds preparation time, 3.75 seconds aftercast. About 1/4th the time casting preparations to keep them all up.

Certainly not the greatest, but it could be worse I guess >_>

The base energy cost to setup the first run is 5+5+15+10, 35. With the regeneration during the preparation time, and casting Sharpen Daggers a little early, it'd be tight, but I think it would be manageable.
Then you have nothing to do but recover energy while you spread the degeneration.

Perhaps more importantly, none of the skills are a necessity, and the build isn't shut down if any one skill is disabled/interrupted/removed. If I hit energy denial, I can always stick to Critical Eye and Sharpen Daggers occasionally.

But yes, I would definitely like to give it some real testing to see how the energy needs work out in practice.

If Apostasy is a real problem, due to either the added preparation time, or the energy constraints, I suppose it could always be dropped in favour of another elite.
There're always Equinox, Famine, a very remote chance of Melandru's Shot, and... omgwth this! http://www.gwfreaks.com/Library/Assa...ing-Wound.aspx

Kidding on the last one. Somebody made a typo.

I don't know really. It'd be a lot easier to tweak myself if I could play with it for real. Cheers for the incoming factions release though.

Thank you for the input though.

Edit:
Doh, somehow, I missed this post <_<

Quote:

Originally Posted by swordfisher

I reworked your numbers to

Critical Strikes: 10+3+1
Marksmanship: 12
Wilderness: 7
Beast Mastery: 4

But I'm still not satisfied with a build. This puts your critical rate at 16% (base 12 weapon) + 14% (CS) +7% (Critical Eye); 37% overall crit chance. Having a 7 in Wilderness gives 9 seconds of poison from each application of apply poison- with the 33% poisoners bow, that's up to 12 seconds. Sharpen Daggers does 14 seconds of bleeding. BM of 4 gives us a 7 second Tiger's Fury.
Critical Eye adds one E to every critical- you naturally get 3e per crit at CS 13- with Critical Eye, you get 4e. At 14 CS, Apostasy breaks even.
I noticed that you only had one attack (called shot, no-attrib), and thought of Focused Shot (+22, 5e - 2s) because it disables all other attack skills. You could get some cheap damage in like that, but I guess that's not the point of this build. The thing about called shot is that, though you're ensuring a hit, you're not ensuring a crit- there's still no certainty there. If you're trying to kill a Guardian, you have a 1/3 chance of stripping it with called shot- but it'll be gone on it's own practically before you can get the next called shot off. My guess? You'll become a pro at using called shot (3x faster arrow flight) on running foes for that auto-crit. Good luck, though =P

Yes, I was considering the raise in Marksmanship for the inherent critical boost, and I noticed that the breakpoints for Critical Strikes were often at 14 (Dark Apostasy and Critical Eye). The duration of Sharpen Daggers is not so important.
The attack damage isn't all that important to me, though attacks might make better replacements for the alternate slots.
As for the lack of an auto-crit attack, that was the first thing I ran a Ctrl+F search on through skill databases. I wasn't aware arrows tagged moving foes for crits, though I knew melee weapons did that. Interesting enough.
As for stripping spells specific enchanted, I didn't really think that was going to happen in the first place. The lack of a solid skill like Wild Blow prevents that. But I guess I'll just have to toy with it and do the best I can.

Thank you for the input.