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This PvE build is built around the Assassin's primary attribute,
Critical Strikes. Using Way of the Assassin and Critical Eye to raise
your chance of a critical hit to about a 77% chance per hit, and Critical
Defenses for a near-permanent 75% chance to block, nearly every
hit you land will net you +4 energy. Using a skill chain of
unblockable attack skills, you can be sure to consistently get your
damage through.
[edit] Attributes and Skills
- Your optional slot is quite flexible, but there are a few
especially good options, most of which will be based on your
setting (PvE or AB).
-
- Resurrection Signet is obviously an
important choice in PvE, but near-useless in AB.
- Way
of Perfection is useful as a long-term heal, and can serve to
keep Way of the Assassin active (the downside
is the short duration and small heals at lower levels of Shadow
Arts).
- Critical
Eye will grant a huge boost to energy-management, not to
mention the sizable extra Critical Hit chance.
- Siphon
Speed is a huge boon in AB especially, allowing you to chase
down other Assassins and force one-on-one fights (which is an
optimal situation for this build in many cases).
- Expunge Enchantments is a very useful
enchantment removal skill, which will serve well in AB (though not
so useful in PvE). Especially deadly against Elementalist Tanking builds and 55 Monks.
- If survival is an issue, you can go A/D and switch Shadow Arts
for Earth Prayers (see Variants, below). The A/D variant loses a
bit of the original build's flexibility, but more then makes up for
it in pure staying power.
[edit] Equipment
- Nightstalker's Armor is
recommended.
- Daggers with an "of Enchanting" mod is best, and preferably a
"+15% while enchanted" or "+15% while in a stance" mod. Daggers of
Xuekao may be the best green daggers for this build.
- The build's defense is high enough that you'll be able to
afford the HP loss from adding Superior runes to the build. A
Superior Daggery Mastery can increase both your damage output and
your critical hit chance by a small amount. You should always be
careful with having too many high-end runes on a single build
though, as the health loss might outweigh the offensive
boosts.
- The build centers around keeping three key skills up at all
times: Shroud of Distress, Critical Defenses, and Way of the
Assassin. In the heat of battle, you'll need to remember to check
your status bar often, and make sure to keep all your skills up as
much as possible.
- When first initiating battle, activate Shroud of Distress as
you charge. Right before you engage, activate Critical Defenses
(make sure not to activate this skill too soon, or you run the risk
of not getting a critical hit fast enough to recharge it). Once you
engage, activate Way of the Assassin. Be careful when first
starting this all, as you will lose a pretty sizable chunk of
energy. Once you get a few hits in, your energy should recharge
quite quickly.
- Make sure to use your attack chain often, as it will deal a
large amount of consistent, unblockable damage thanks to your high
critical chance. Keep an eye on your status at all times. When
anything starts to run out, make sure to re-activate it right away.
Pay special attention to Critical Defenses in particular. When your
target dies, make sure to switch to a new target as quickly as
possible to keep Critical Defenses up.
- Shroud of Distress serves two major purposes here; keeping Way
of the Assassin active, thanks to its long duration, and also
granting you a very sizable amount of evasion when your health gets
low. At seven Shadow Arts, it should last for 44 seconds (not
counting any bonus from Daggers of Enchanting). This should be more
then enough to last the duration of the battle, and the recharge
time is one second longer, in case you need to re-activate. With
your Enchanting Daggers, you can easily keep it up constantly.
- Keep in mind that you have an increased chance of a critical
hit when attacking lower-level monsters (this increased chance is
more easily noticeable when attacking creatures around level 10 or
below). Target a nearby spirit or a weaker monster if you're in
desperate need of a critical hit (Ritualist Spirits are normally easy to find in AB).
- When facing foes with Enchantment removal, keep in mind that
Critical Defenses will almost always be the first to go, regardless
of the order you activate your enchantments. This is because
whenever you land a critical hit, Critical Defenses will re-apply
itself, thus moving back to the top of the list. If you know that
you're going to be losing an enchantment, it's probably a bad idea
to get yourself in a fight with another melee character.
[edit] Counters
- There are a few counters, but most of them are too narrow to
consider a real threat.
- Enchantment removal and the Blind condition are your main
worry. When Blinded, your best bet is to get out of combat. Without
a critical hit, you'll lose Critical Defenses and be easy prey for
most attacks. Enchantment removal can also get rid of Critical
Defenses, but this can normally be fixed by killing whoever is
wielding the enchantment removal.
- Degeneration or anti-melee curses do a good amount of damage to
this build, as do spiker elementalist setups; your high block
chance only affects melee attacks, so spells are a weakness. Shadow
Refuge will only do so much against degeneration, and you don't
have any hex-removal in the main build (consider using skills from
your secondary to fix this).
[edit] Variants
- For superior self-healing and defense, consider going A/D and
switching all of your points from Shadow Arts into Earth Prayers.
This will allow you to use Vital Boon and Mystic Regeneration (replacing
Shadow Refuge and Shroud of Distress). The large Block chance
granted by Critical Defenses, in addition to the +9 Health
regeneration provided by Mystic Regeneration (at 8 Earth Prayers
and with all three enchantments active), should serve to keep you
alive for a much greater amount of time and especially against
other melee classes (don't forget the +72 maximum health bonus
you'll gain from Vital Boon). Your attribute points should be
re-ordered, like so:
| Attributes and Skills |
| Critical Strikes |
11 + 2 |
| Dagger Mastery |
11 + 1 + 2 |
| Earth Prayers |
8 |
|
|
- This variant works much better against melee foes than casters,
and the quick recharge times on the Dervish enchantments means you
don't suffer nearly as much against foes with enchantment removal,
as it's not a big deal to simply re-cast one of your cheaper
enchantments to keep Way of the Assassin active.
- With this setup, you can add yet another good choice for your
optional slot; Pious Restoration, which grants you a quick
and simple way to deal with Hex skills. Make sure to activate Vital
Boon just before though, so you can take full advantage of the
large health gain when you remove it. This also reduces the risk of
removing Critical Defenses by mistake.
- If a Dervish secondary isn't what you're looking for,
Assassin's Shadow Arts attribute has plenty of tricks to boost your
survival even higher. Drop your Critical Strikes attribute down to
11 and add a Major Rune of Critical Strikes (11 + 2), and drop
Dagger Mastery down to 10, keeping the current rune and headgear
setup (10 + 1 + 2). This will allow you to boost your Shadow Arts
attribute all the way up to 10.
- You'll need to switch out Shroud of Distress for Way of
Perfection, and switch Shadow Refuge for Critical Eye. With your
Shadow Arts all the way up at 11 (10 plus the minor rune), Way of
Perfection lasts 28 seconds out of the 30 second recharge, and
grants a 32-health heal every time you land a critical hit. With
Critical Eye as well, you'll gain tons of energy, and everything up
and running grants you a massive critical hit chance, which will
keep health and energy topped off during nearly any fight. The
optional slot can be anything, but preferably you'll want to bring
either a resurrection skill (when in a party), Shadow Refuge as an
out-of-battle self-heal (just in case), or even Sharpen Daggers
to add bleeding to the attack chain. If enemy casters are a
problem, you can bring Disrupting Stab or Disrupting
Dagger, both of which are nice, easy interrupts skills (D. Stab
can also help to start your attack chain, while D. Dagger won't
mess up the chain if used halfway through).
- Going A/E will allow you to replace a skill (preferably Shroud
of Distress) with Conjure Flame/Frost/Lightning, which will not only enable
Way of the Assassin (thanks to the fact that they're Enchantments
with a long duration), but grant an additional +1...17 damage per
attack. This of course will require a slight investment into the Fire/Water/Air Magic attribute, and
your Daggers will need the corresponding Elemental
damage modifier (Fiery/Icy/Shocking).
[edit] Templates
Below is the skills template for the A/D Variant:
[edit] See also
Assassin / Any
