Skull Crack vs Temple Strike... Comparison

So I played for a long time with the Assassin. I've unlocked their runes and a couple of mostly complete builds.

The ability Temple Strike is my favorite elite to bring so far. It's a dagger mastery skill that adds Blind and Dazed to the target. The desciption says it interrupts as well, but I believe this is bugged or misdescribed. I have yet to see it interrupt on the actual swing.

Temple Strike is considered an 'off-hand' strike, which for those that haven't played an assassin yet means that first a 'lead' strike must connect with the target or else the off-hand automatically misses. So the player must bring two skills in order for this to function. A small price to pay...

Compare two skills from the warrior: Belly Smash and Skull Crack. Using these two skills, a warrior could feasibly add the same conditions to the target. However, as most anyone knows who's played a warrior, Skull Crack is almost impossible to use in practical situations for two reasons: first, it costs 10 adrenaline and therefore takes forever to charge up, and second it must be timed to interrupt the target. Belly Smash requires a knockeddown target in order to function, requiring another skill and timing.

Now, I am NOT saying the warrior should do the same thing as the assassin, nor vice versa. I'm merely saying how can someone look at these two elites Temple Strike and Skull Crack and consider these two as equal?

This should seriously be looked at. If they leave Temple Strike as is when the expansion is released, I'd like to argue for Skull Crack to become non-elite.

Skull Crack is no attribute based. Assasin can deliver a lot more conditions than warrior, but as we all know - he is not that tough, neither that damage capable.
Anyway I think Skull crack needs a little boost, like attack speed (this is not little actually). Better part is that it does not have recharge time. Bersekrer, Battle rage, Dark furry and etc, can fill it really fast.

I agree Temple strike is better. They will do a lot of tweaking for sure till the game goes gold.

Don't forget the soon-to-be coming Ranger elite:

Broad Head Arrow{e}: This elite skill dazes your target upon a successful hit.

No matter what the recharge time on this skill is, it would still make for a better skill than Skull Crack, because you can actually manage to get it off even once.

Skull Crack definitely needs some massaging to bring it up to its peers.

A lot of the current elite skills are totally worthless, not just skull crack. ANet has already stated that skill balance would be done after the Championship Tournament.

I hope skull crack gets boosted - attack speed or daze on hit, not just interupt.
(and that Gale spell nerfed once and for all)

Broad Head Arrow{e}: This elite skill dazes your target upon a successful hit.
Sweeeeet...

Where did you find info about the new skills? Is there a list of some more somewhere?

It's part of some magazine article or other. Posting the full text would probably get me banned which is fine because I don't have it.

Personally I think all these new ways to put daze on a subject is really taking a lot of pvp gameplay away from casters. While playing in TA and random arenas today there have been tons of assassins using that elite skill and just raping the other group. I think concussion shot and skull crack are all right because they have to be timed just right in order to daze someone. I just think this skill should be tweaked so that it only dazes if it interrupts, because as it stands TA and random arena are no places for casters: we just cant do anything atm. 8 man teams like hoh and gvg may be ok since you have a larger group to remove that condition.....but when its one monk in TA....even when using guardian....the person just gets mutilated when temple strike has 12 sec recharge. I dont know.....I just hope Anet uses this weekend to study the balance of certain skills. I would hate to see an Iway in hoho with this skill....that just wouldnt be cool at all the way it is now.

Are there any new skills for pets?!!

Hmmm. And we have only one skill that directly addresses that:

Glyph of Concentration
Glyph. Your next Spell cannot be interrupted and ignores the effects of being Dazed.

Randoms will suffer,.....any Ritualist Counters? Or is it back to monks only with Mend Ailment etc.....?


This will have to be watched. As soon as I get a chance to get home and play that is.......

Temple strike is just... better. But so what? Some skills will always be better than others...

... lol?

I don't think Skull crack should be changed from non-elite, I'm not entirely familiar with Temple strike, but it's non-elite right? If so then an A/W could easily bring Temple Strike and Skull Crack and really screw over enemy monks, adrenaline goes up really fast with Assasins I've found.

Unless I've missed something in either of the skills, in which case ignore this post...

Temple Strike is elite.