At least, when I could enter a group, GAH!
Anyways, what do we have, in terms of pve [THINK PVE FOR THIS THREAD ONLY PLEASE] where a sin can get in, hurt them, and get out...
After much testing from a whiles ago and now, I've discovered that if your combo is composed of more than 3 hits [aka, the off-hand, dual, off-hand dual setup], you die. In good pve scenario where the enemies are balanced, make no qualms about it, good monk or not, 4 hits meant certain death for me in like 90% of the scenarios. The monster AI will switch targets come late game to the one with lower AL. [aka, YOU instead of your team warrior] upon attack. So even if you DO your job of jumping in and striking, the enemy [probably a melee type] will turn and swing at you 2-3x. Which means, you die... If their casters have anti-buffs in their skill sets [which 90% of the good ones do], then you die... GAH THE HUMANITY!!!
So, now I'm going by the book since that seems to be the only way to survive these days. The 'standard' assassin skill combo consists of a Lead Attack, an Off-Hand attack, and a Dual Strike. We don't want to stay in there any longer for 3 hits since well, DPS isn't the Sin's way... There are two types of effective sins that I'm aware of, the shutout type and the kill eventually type...
[there is no insta-kill type in pve, at least, advanced pve sadly]I'll try to cover both here, also in terms of weapon usage, we need energy, more so than any other melee modified class in the game, so the hit of 13 critical strikes is good and combined with 12 daggers, the move from dagger mastery to critical hits for Twisting Fangs is now a + and more reason to have a very high Critcal Hits build.
For both builds, I'll be looking at this stat spread [A/X but I love necro secondary so
]9+1+3 Critical Strikes
11+1 Dagger Mastery [need 100% dmg at the bare minimum]
1+1 to shadow arts [to be unblockable]
rest+1 Deadly Arts [for your damage intake reduction + output booster]
Iron Palm
Falling Spider
Twisting Fangs
Siphon Strength {E}
Siphon Speed
Way of the Fox
Plague Touch
Ressurection Signet
Ah, an unblockable assassin designed to dump a gigantic amount of degen on your target and move with speed. Wtf? NO TELEPORT? That's the price to pay to conserve skill slots. If you don't mind possible blocking, you CAN use Death's Charge in place of Way of the Fox, but I find the recharge on it to be quite ridiculous and as far as mobility goes, you can do a lot worse than Siphon Speed and since your foe will probably be alive after the assault, you can bet you can get your ass outta there before retaliation comes. [and believe me, with lower AL, 20% faster running does NOT hurt] Teleporting takes up too many slots and for increased damage, [AoD vs. Siphon Strength], not worth it to me...
Siphon Strength {E} rox in 3 directions. 1. More crits = more energy after the assault. Your only 2 attacks have a very large chance of critical hitting and that's not bad. Not bad at all. 3. The targetted foe who turns to hit you will be doing less damage. Always a good thing.
Siphon Speed {E} cover hex that helps you move, fast cast, recharge, recycle. Not bad at all.
Way of the Fox. You're only swinging 2x technically so you only need it to hit 2x. If you decide "[I MUST DO MORE DAMAGE AND DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR GUIDE SO I'LL SWING 5X TIMES!!!]" Then go ahead. If you're in an easy part of the campaign, then it'll probably work. If you're in a true winner's part of the game, I can all but guaruntee you'll die...
The 3 hit chain [well two hits actually] are awesome in that you'll be doing a gigantic amount of degen and dropping in a deep wound making it easier for your teammates [you're NOT soloing] to do their thing... They can't be blocked, and with these stats, they most certainly won't be weak, even with high critical % offset by level [yay for elite!]
problem? You will be sitting out of the fight in durations, but lets face it, you're not of the dps insta-recharge insta-kill variety of player so if you don't like it, play a warrior, I personally find them more long term and exciting to play myself...
Yay for AI making assassinating so damn difficult! You will find that fighting enemy monks in this case with the proper setup will stuff them utterly. You'll have them on their asses poisoned, bleeding, and deep wounded AND they have to deal with the rest of your team decimating their attackers...
------------------------------Kill support section end--------------
Shut out?
Ah, to shut out your foes so they can't do their job properly... This is probably the more difficult, and also more fun way to play a sin. It's faster and easier to shut someone out of the fight [thereby 'killing' them] in short periods rather than killing them outright which takes tooooo long at enemy level 25+... [yeesh]
stats? repeated
9+1+3 Critical Strikes
11+1 Dagger Mastery
1+1 to shadow arts
rest+1 Deadly Arts
Disrupting Stab
Temple Strike {E}
Twisting Fangs
Critical Eye
Impale
Siphon Speed
Plague Touch
Ressurection Signet
Now here's a turn of events. Now you disrupt, blind, daze, bleeding, and deep wound your target. It won't pack the degen of the first build, but is that enemy caster going to do anything? Hell no...
Instead of degen, it has the gigantic force that is Impale serving as the main hex with Siphon being the cover hex again. Those enemies won't know what hit them and as you can see, it's really meant for caster foes BUT can be used on enemy melee when the casters die [yay blind]With 25s. recycle on TS, you'll need to pick your foes wisely. In PvE, it's like, ALWAYS enemy monks... If you do get the chance to wail away on a foe, like when everyone else is dead, this build's use of Critical Eye won't hurt it at all.
As far as what I used to use:
Black Lotus Strike, Horns of the Ox, Falling Spider, Twisting Fangs, it no longer works in smartly packed PvE areas where Horns of the Ox fails and therefore I'm stuck with the BLS + Twisting Fangs setup. 2 skills killed off due to mobs. With the 2 above builds, they'll work in any situation...
Ideas? Think PvE!
