Curse

Nightwish · Feb 07, 2007, 07:39 AM // 07:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok Omen

I'm sorry if I am mistaken, but isn't Guild Wars all about dual-profession versetality???

Honestly, the skill itself (Shadow Prison) has a 1/2 second slowdown after casting it, which gives any decent monk the reaction time to RoF that Hex and follow heal it. And even if they are Galed, the skill was nerfed by 1 second.

Burst of Aggression doesnt need any fixing, either. Assassins need to fully chain their skills in the correct order in order for the next attack to activate. And anyone who hates Dervishes, Warriors, Assassins, and Rangers themselves will bring the still-powerful Blinding Surge in their slots, even if they are in RA/TA/HA.

Even if they dont and get rolled by the Assassins, the saying still goes: You can never be prepared for everything.

Agree. What is with the suggestions to stop warriors from using teleport and assassins from using burst of aggression? Thats what you benefit from combining two classes...

Riotgear · Feb 07, 2007, 09:40 AM // 09:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightwish

Thats what you benefit from combining two classes...

Inspired Hex, Drain Enchantment, Mantra of Recall, Irresistable Blow, Wild Blow, Offering of Blood, Blinding Surge, Ebon Dust Aura, Sand Shards.

What do all of these skills have in common?

Sabe · Feb 07, 2007, 09:51 AM // 09:51

How fast can these assassins kill a soft target? 3 seconds?

Well thats fine can heal one...but the problem in random arenas when you get two? What can you do.

I run on my monk:

ROF, Zealous benediction, Spirit bond, SoD, Dismiss, Shielding hands, Holy veil and hex breaker.

This normally makes me fine coz i prevail and have hex breaker.

Spirit bond works great against the spike but still needs condition removes and on two targets you could spend about 30 energy or more. to keep them up. Then you got the DPS from the daggers after the spike - which I add to the fact that you need to keep allys on full hlth coz you dont know who they will spike and if they can kill someone on full health in 3 secs, it takes even less to kill someone on half!!! - Maintaining nrgy also comes a problem.
Then obviously you have another enemy on you which in two my cases last nite one was a surger, other a grenths dervish.

Lol, both happened to be on my 9th consec win. - so was so annoyed when i saw them along with monk and one with healing rit.

Is it worth changing my build now coz of this to the following:

ROF, Zealous benediction, Spirit bond, SoD, Dismiss, Gole, Holy veil and Ward against melee? Just to stop this sins!

Either that or keep quitting till I find someone in my group who has anti melee skills! and knows how to use them!

Div · Feb 08, 2007, 08:02 AM // 08:02

Sins are built for spike damage. Take it away (or make it weaker) and they will be completely useless in pvp (they're always useless in pve). They can't stand in front bashing on people, and rely on quick jump ins and outs to get their kills. In a 4v4 situation, they can be quite hard to counter, but who really considers RA real pvp?

Sabe · Feb 08, 2007, 01:43 PM // 13:43

True.

Just hate losing.

urania · Mar 17, 2007, 06:54 PM // 18:54

go mo/w with shield bash.

Thom Bangalter · Mar 17, 2007, 11:12 PM // 23:12

It's really not that hard to keep yourself up from a sp/boa sin as a monk.

Thomas.knbk · Mar 18, 2007, 09:43 AM // 09:43

I once encountered a boa sin in RA, and his name was 'good monks will pwn this'
I think that covers it pretty well.

I lost Q_Q

FoxBat · Mar 18, 2007, 06:36 PM // 18:36

In TA you need a melee shutdown guy in your build anyway, and cripshot won't cut it anymore on those burst sins.

My personal favorite is ebon dust paragon, catching them with disrupting spear when they teleport in. There are many other options though, standard blindbot, reckless haste, insidious parasite, wards (somewhat, too much expose these days), and so on. Unlike say mantra of flame these skills are fairly useful against builds without burst sins too.

bungusmaximus · Mar 19, 2007, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Sins are built for spike damage. Take it away (or make it weaker) and they will be completely useless in pvp (they're always useless in pve). They can't stand in front bashing on people, and rely on quick jump ins and outs to get their kills. In a 4v4 situation, they can be quite hard to counter, but who really considers RA real pvp?

RA isn't, TA however has a fairly decent level of play.

Quozz · Mar 19, 2007, 06:42 PM // 18:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Sins are built for spike damage. Take it away (or make it weaker) and they will be completely useless in pvp (they're always useless in pve). They can't stand in front bashing on people, and rely on quick jump ins and outs to get their kills. In a 4v4 situation, they can be quite hard to counter, but who really considers RA real pvp?

This in a nutshell explains why Assassin as a profession is completely broken. Its the only profession that is totally one dimensional. They shadow step and do spike damage. Thats it. They serve no other purpose and their skill lines don't allow for any flexibility. Honestly, assassins need a complete overhaul. Messing around with a skill or two is not going to fix the underlying problem.

Patccmoi · Mar 19, 2007, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quozz

This in a nutshell explains why Assassin as a profession is completely broken. Its the only profession that is totally one dimensional. They shadow step and do spike damage. Thats it. They serve no other purpose and their skill lines don't allow for any flexibility. Honestly, assassins need a complete overhaul. Messing around with a skill or two is not going to fix the underlying problem.

Assassins don't need a overhaul... it's this build that needs a small tone down still and people playing assassin that need an overhaul.

I mean, yes, some assassin skills need help. Deadly Arts is still overall fairly unattractive because of the lack of emanagement to use the skills in there (critical strikes doesn't exactly work, since the more deadly arts you use, the more emanagement you need, but the less you hit and the less energy you get back. It also makes attribute split a nightmare) and the fact that they're balanced around Deadly Paradox which prevents them from being used decently along with dagger skills (a lot of Deadly Arts skills are great ONLY with Deadly Paradox but horrible without, and full Deadly Arts sins tend to run into serious emanagement trouble cause of no crit strikes). Lead and offhands requiring a lead all need a fairly significant buff in effect and MOSTLY in recharge (12-15s lead attack is a total, and i mean total nonsense. Even 8s recharge is. Lead/offhands requiring a lead should have 2-6s recharge at most depending on their damage/effect).

But you CAN make other very decent assassin builds atm, either around Moebius-DB for high pressure, or around Assault Enchantment for offensive support/utility, or around Shattering Assault for a mix of both (sadly the skill being so bugged takes out a lot of its interest when it comes to pressure. I have no clue how come they didn't fix it yet after all that time the bug is known, but then again some bugs go unaddressed forever). And all those other Assassin builds can have very useful utility and something to do out of 1 spike every 20s.

SP/BoA build is totally one-dimensional. But i'm sick of people talking as if SP/BoA = Assassins. Assassins is still more than that, in fact they are more 'more than that' than ever since the last patch that buffed other skills, and if SP/BoA wasn't so ridiculously easy to play yet effective, people might realize it and play other setups. But it's also likely gonna take some buffs to other sin skills at the same time, EVEN IF THEY'RE OVERALL MEANINGLESS, just to make people try stuff with sins again in case of a nerf to SP/BoA. Some buffs make people just try old things as if the buff really mattered and in the end they don't even use the buffed skills but make new builds out of the old stuff. But still, a few meaningful buffs wouldn't hurt either.

Just nerf SP/BoA combo slightly still and give some nice little buffs around (like an emanagement that isn't linked to attacking, say Way of the Empty Palm now makes half range spells cost 50% energy, i dunno) and you could see a lot more interesting sins builds. And you don't need a big overhaul at all, most of the required stuff is there.

Symbol · Mar 19, 2007, 11:00 PM // 23:00

I posted a thread on improving deady arts in the PvP Skills forum, for anyone who's interested.

Quozz · Mar 20, 2007, 01:51 PM // 13:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Assassins don't need a overhaul... it's this build that needs a small tone down still and people playing assassin that need an overhaul.

You are spot on in the second part of that statement. The mentality of most people playing sins is one on one ownage period. That definitely needs to change. However that type of thinking is not going to change unless the profession is overhauled to give it more options on a role it can fulfill on the battlefield. When cycling through targets in the area everytime I see an assassin the only thought in my mind is shadowstep/gank. In the same context if I see a Mesmer, I have no idea what that player might have his character geared for until I actually see some skills being used.

Prior to the series of buffs to assassin attack skills you almost never saw them anywhere. Too weak and too much of a liability. Now they are everywhere only because of their ability to take an unprepared target down in seconds.

The profession is in sad shape and skill tweaks are not going to fix the problem of their one dimensional nature.

ToxicWasted · Mar 20, 2007, 02:24 PM // 14:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

yes, but deflection is a hundred times more effective against sins (and it's better in general) so I assumed he meant that.

And King Kong Monkey, I'll say it again, you can do that if it's the only hex in their build.

Actually, I find regeneration more useful against sins. Deflection only grants the +armor as most Sins generally take Expose.

Patccmoi · Mar 20, 2007, 04:56 PM // 16:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quozz

You are spot on in the second part of that statement. The mentality of most people playing sins is one on one ownage period. That definitely needs to change. However that type of thinking is not going to change unless the profession is overhauled to give it more options on a role it can fulfill on the battlefield. When cycling through targets in the area everytime I see an assassin the only thought in my mind is shadowstep/gank. In the same context if I see a Mesmer, I have no idea what that player might have his character geared for until I actually see some skills being used.

Prior to the series of buffs to assassin attack skills you almost never saw them anywhere. Too weak and too much of a liability. Now they are everywhere only because of their ability to take an unprepared target down in seconds.

The profession is in sad shape and skill tweaks are not going to fix the problem of their one dimensional nature.

They do not have such a one dimensional nature. I play sin often in HA/GvG and never use a SP/BoA. Hell, i very rarely have a shadowstep. And i faced good teams playing other kind of sins too, Assault Enchantment, Shattering Assault, Moebius, Temple Strikers, etc.

But people are so convinced that it's all they do, since they nearly never see anything else and don't TRY anything else, that this overall (mis)conception of the sin prevails.

Assassins can easily have, and by far, the highest DPS on a single target for an 'unlimited' amount of time (i.e. maintainable as long as you're not shutdowned or your target is heavily protted without running out of energy or having skills going on long recharge). Nothing i can see in any other prof compares to Moebius-DB, especially with an IAS, doing substantial 'splash' damage in the process (which goes overboard combined with Splinter where you do 200 armor ignoring damage that goes through prot spirit with 1 DB to everything adjacent), and the Moebius-Horns kd lock is quite impressive too. Moebius-DB does about the same damage a warrior would do doing Galrath-Final Trust-Galrath-Final Trust and critting all the time against a target below 50%. A Dragon Slasher doesn't actually put the same kind of raw damage pressure and it's possibly the closest thing, and it has a total absense of utility in general while a Moebius-DB can still pack snares, interrupts, a way to go through block if needed or some enchant removal, etc. Sin's weakness though is that you can pressure them away from their target through damage, something that is much harder to achieve against a warrior, and thus it limits them when it comes to pressuring a team's backline (which is why i still consider a DSlash better for this kind of pressure, i tried before with sins and no matter the setup you're just too frail to keep the pressure up. However, that's different when it comes to pressuring frontline/midline).

And sins have good utility atm (very good interrupt, very good single target snare that doubles as a speed buff, good enchant removal, decent kds, good way to go through block/evade) and have the energy engine to use interesting utility from other prof too. A sin's energy engine is about the highest in the game if you keep attacking consistently, except for Necromancer abuse. Hell, i could use Frozen Burst nearly on recharge when i tried A/E with water without using an attunement (I'm not saying it's a good build btw, was just a test). As a whole, Deadly Arts and Shadow Arts ARE lacking (because they're basically so-so support lines) but there's still a few key skills in there that allow for good builds.

SP/BoA and playing 'shadowstep + combo' sins in general is just by and large the easiest way to play sin, which ISN'T easy otherwise, especially as a stand character, because you have to gauge very carefully what you can risk attacking and what not, what might get you killed and what will allow you to score kills. Without having the mindless 1-2-3-4-5-6 combo that allows you to kill or fail every 20s, it's much harder to play a stand assassin. Which is a big reason why people consider that SP/BoA is about the only viable sin build, because when you give them a stand assassin setup they go charge after monks and get destroyed.

Thom Bangalter · Mar 20, 2007, 07:56 PM // 19:56

shadow stepping is broken, sp/boa not so much.

Evilsod · Mar 20, 2007, 08:17 PM // 20:17

They really need to do something about this... I don't know how common they are in HA/GvG. But in AB its just going too far. They're just like SF eles. Searing Flames was perfectly ok on its own, throw in 2 or 3 more, it becomes overpowered. BoA/SP is easy to counter on its own if you have the right skill. But its just not possible to counter 3 or more of them when most of them carry Expose Defences.

Why not just give BoA a scale of 1s +3X/4 per rank in Strength. Aggression is suppose to make you more liable to make an error, not allow you to kill people in triple time before running off and cowering in a corner for 20 seconds.

Teh [prefession]-zorz · Mar 31, 2007, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

go mo/w with shield bash.

beat me to it.

jummeth · Apr 02, 2007, 01:29 PM // 13:29

Just nerf BoA a little by setting 0 strength to 1 second and 1 strength to what it is now.

Problem solved.

Warriors can still use the skill as intended, and assassins don't have an unconditional IAS. They now need to choose between Frenzy (ouch), Flurry (low damage) or Flail (needs preperation, although not a bad alternative)

The problem about BoA sins, is not longer the SP since its quite a good level atm. Its their IAS with absolutely no penalties. 12sec recharge syncs great with their dagger skills, and SP takes 20 secs anyway.