What's wrong with Assassins?

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So do you make it a point to try and be an unconstructive ass or does it come naturally?

I already said something about him retrying his build, though I said it in a way that wasn't like an overinflated pompus dick, maybe you could try it too.

Why the hell are you even in the assassin forum if all you do is post meaningless garbage?

Oh and just so I can salvage this post from the depths of hells it's going to for talking to you:

1.)Unsuspecting strike
2.)Wild strike
3.)Critical strike
4.)moebious strike
5.)Vig spirit
6.)live vicariously (or a self heal if you prefer)
7.)Dash
8.)Res

Wait until the tank aggros (which I now see the group was lacking) then dash in under the effects of your enchants and wail away. Should someone even LOOK at you funny dash the hell out of there and regen. Works all the time for me should do pretty well for you too, gl.

See that Mera? I just told you off and helped out someone on the thread, go me.

I think it's simply poor work from Anet to teach us all how to play assassins.
The whole game is about killing afflicted. These annoying guys explode when you kill them so that any assassins standing nearby, which they will be cos they will have just killed them in melee, will take huge explosion damage, and will never live to see the next fight. That's why they're hated, because Anet didn't really think about things like that tbh. Assassins dont have the ability to leave the fight before anything around them dies. There aren't enough skills, and missions like vizunah square have so many monsters there that there is no way an assassin can survive it. I'm sure a wide open area like what nightfall looks like will be much better for them, but I don't think theyre available in that game are they?

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Not really an effort to join a group. I know the mesmer in the picture. The monk said he was confident that 1 Rit should be enough so he can do the minor healing ( GoR + divine spirit + spam orison ). Too bad the crit barrager had to leave.

*I don't have a guild atm*

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I didn't say that it wasn't a good build, just that it would get one killed quite often in pve.

Also while I love the shadow stepping ability of AoD, being an elite knocks it off my skill bar as moebious is better for me. While shadow of haste and a cancel work very well together, it's kind of a shame that all other teleports are a bit lacking.

All in all I'd rather have a run skill like dash rather then a teleport any day. Though hopefully one day this will change.

Hated, try the build, if you die alot, it's because you try to tank.


It's a good build to use in Tyria. Really.

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Sure sins can 55... 4 regen....and with a WAND 30 something energy!

and with shrouded armor, i have 38 energy on my build. What i really like, what im using to block rend enchantments is a far superior SB. If you know assasin elites well, its not hard to think of what im using.

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back to some brief thing said earlier. i'm currently at sunjiang with my ass, and am obviously not having an easy time finding a group. my question is, has anyone been able to hench that? i got stuck at the room with spikes the first time, then the second got CREAMED at the poison area. my biggest problem is that nobody even trusts assassins, even tho they are that far (its not really "far", but there are a few difficult missions between that area and beggining) and if said person was to get that far, then they obviously have some sort of potential. either way, there was waaaaaaaay to many f---ing noobs who skewed the original view of the assassin, and bringing that proffesion back up to a good impression is either gunna take alotta work from the talented (shudnt be a prob, with so many ppl improving builds and such), or a minor update to "fix" a few things.

as for the lack of shadow stepping, yes, it is a problem. i love that whole idea of popping in and popping out, its great. another thing that really was disapointing is that when one things of the term "assassin", first thing that comes to mind is stealth. i believe that some sort of steath factor shud be included into the game. its a long shot i kno, but if done properly, it cud really be sweet.

why can't we be like the shrouded oni? undetectable until we pop out and start attacking. LOL

it's a longshot, but hey, that should be really fun!

whats up with assasins? noobs thats it. noobs badmouth the good assasin name.
as long as you use a good build that has self healing u WILL own and everyone will start to like assasins.

Assassins have the problem of not having a defined role in PvE, no one will ever take you to the Deep or Urgoz Warren. Getting into UW/FoW is around the same chance as well. I can just press B, and note that hardly any assassins appear in the guild battles, especially Hall of Heroes. It's not just the bad assassins who account for this, it's the fact that the class itself needs help, especially in PvE, and a little in PvP.

Critical strikes are lacking on monsters above lvl 20, A-net should have made it so the chance to crit on monsters higher than lvl 20 acts as lvl 20, considering assassins have an attribute based entirely around criticals, and assassins are supposed to be able to solo spike targets.

Besides that, skills themselves need attention. Many skills have been weakened or left in a lesser state due to other classes being able to use them better than the assassin can. Plus, assassins are too easily shutdown by others, since their attacks are nearly all conditional. One could say warriors are easily shutdown as well, but at least they can still tank regardless. Mitigating damage is an issue as well; For example, hammer rangers seem to do a better job in PvP. They spike, have high AL vs elemental, and have a 75% block/evade stance.

That aside, Sunjiang District is entirely doable with henchies: http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gw282ck0.jpg

I just went there to cap, just make sure you choose the right henchmen that complements your build. I went with Jamei, Professor Gai, Eve, Zho, Talon Silverwing, Lo Sha, and Kai Ying.

I was LFG for fow earlier, advertised as "experienced assassin or crit barrager lfg for fow ". I got several messages complaing I could not use barrage because I was A/E at that time. That just shows how stupid people are there. I don't even want to play with them.

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@ Sol Deathgard, what makes sins bad in PvE is 70 armor and the fact that you have to be melee unless going crit barrager. Mesmers/Eles/Necros/Casters don't have great healing, but they don't get in the touchrange of mobs.

@ Yanman, you have 3 spirits on you one of which is SHELTER. Not doubting your skill, but to say it's all you is kind of arogant.
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@ OP, Assassins are way better in PvP than in PvE.

Point A; Resilience
In PvE resilience and ease of use is key. If you rely on combos and conditional things you end up way less versatile. Notice all other classes don't rely on combos of more than 2 skills, and the order doesn't matter as much.

Point B: Ease of Shutdown
A sin needs a lead-offhand-dual and a res, unless you use Golden Pheonix Strike or Palm Strike to bypass lead. That's half your bar just right there. Plus, if lead doesn't execute, no offhand/dual.
Diversion = no more combo. Energy denial = screwed unless you are going to stand there using critical hits to charge up energy.

Blind, hexes, energy denial, everything that hurts a caster AND a warrior hurts a sin. Have you been mauled by Oni or Elemental bosses? Guess what, it was the level bonus, and the doublestrike chance that is totally unrealistic for players to achieve like the Elemental bosses' 200+ damage air spikes on casters.

Point C: Effectiveness
When I play monk, I always bring Protective Spirit for Assassins since they tend to get spiked by warriors but generally I avoid assassins I don't know or have had trouble with in the past.

Most don't have a clue. I have only seen about 1 or 2 PUG sins worth their weight in the party that weren't A/R critical barragers.

You could easily bring a warrior with paladin premade build (sever artery + gash, healing hands, etc.) to replace the sins that suck and be more effective as a team.

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First we have to establish what does anet use for balancing. It is GvG. They nerf extremely abusive things in Tombs and PvE, but generally most nerfs and all boosts are made with GvG in mind. Now let's look at GvG assassin build. Due to general sucking of shadow steps elite is completely locked to AoD. We also are locked to falling spider and twisting fangs, 99% of the time we also have dark escape, shadow refuge. This leaves like 3 slots of variation, 2 if you use rez sig on assassin. The question is why do all the gvg assassins look the same. Because everything else sucks, that's why.

1. Deadly arts suck. You really need critical strikes and daggers so deadly arts can't have 12+ attribute, meaning most stuff there like impale really isn't good enough. And the only good skill below 12 attribute is siphon speed.

2. Deep wound is way too powerful. As long as deep wound is so powerful axe warriors will be locked to eviscerate as their elite and assassins will have to have twisting fangs. No other dual attack comes even close to twisting fangs. The highest damage is blades of steel(which has problems of its own) and it caps at +50. Given that twisting fangs has +20 bonus that makes a total difference of 60 damage with both hits combined. Twisting fangs also has deep wound which does a nice 100 dmg spike not to mention free bleeding. The gap becomes even wider when you can't have 5 attacks on the bar, last one being Blades of Steel. With 14 daggers and 13 crit strikes, deadly blossom will have +38 bonus and twisting fangs has +19. So now combo like falling spider+deadly blossom will do 62 less damage than FS+TF.

3. All of leads and most of offhands are junk damage compared to duals. So most people just look for a way to do as many duals as possible without sacrifising slots for leads. Typical example being GLS+HotO+FS+TF, which utilizes the only 2 good damage offhands and 2 duals.

Most leads have around +20 dmg, while duals have double bonus of +30 = 60. Quite a difference there. Some leads don't even have bonus like jagged strike(which only has short bleed, especially compared to something like sever artery).

Let's see what offhands do we have:
Black Lotus strike (too long recharge to be a damage skill)
Wild Strike(+20 and strictly worse than Wild Blow for stance breaking)
Jungle Strike(+20 or +50 if crippled)
Repeating(vanilla +20)
Fox Fangs(again +20)
Golden Phoenix Strike(+30, but expensive)
Falling Spider(+35 and delicious poison)
I didn't list elite offhands as we have to have AoD.

As you can see there are about 2 right choices and plenty of wrong ones.
I have already talked about how the dual choice is limited by deep wound.

Now let's take a look at leads.
Unsuspecting strike

expensive, not so good if target below 90% +30 dmg @ 13 criticals
at 8 criticals it becomes and expensive normal lead.


Desperate strike

a total WTF skill. Most monks will try to keep bars topped. Teams bring heal party E/Mo just to do that. Assassin doesn't have room on skill bar for a skill that he MIGHT use at some point. Should be: if target is below x% HP do +y damage(something like +30 at 15 daggers, even thrill of victory does more).
Designer gets F- for this skill.

Golden Lotus strike

classic +20 damage for this lead, gives energy if enchanted and thus has very long recharge. It is fine, but it isn't the damage skill.

Jagged strike

The only thing going for it is the shortest recharge on 5 en lead attack. Otherwise it is crappy.

Black Mantis thrust

Expensive and you need a hex to get cripple so that is 2 slots on your bar. Damage is boring +20 as always.

Leaping mantis sting

IMO the best of leads. Again plain +20 damage and cripple if target is moving.

Disrupting stab and disruption

The only 2 interrupt skills(if we ignore the KD skills) and Disrupting stab and Exhausting assault. Exhausting assault is complete and utter trash. Being the dual attack it requires you to start with lead and offhand which is a bad bad thing for an interrupt skill. It also completely wastes the damage bonus of being a dual. F- on that one.
The only other interrupt is disrupting stab, which is quite underpowered.
You need 15 dagger spec to delay a SPELL for 10 sec. Disrupting Chop of a warrior delays a SKILL for 20 sec, no spec. I think disrupting stab needs to be able to delay a skill. Especially compared to distracting shot it sucks. Distracting shot also has 1/2 sec cast time , skill disable for 20 sec with same cost and same recharge. I think disrupting stab really needs a boost.

So generally leads and offhands(except falling spider and golden phoenix) need some kind of damage boost so people won't just skip them for duals. Also we need to have attacks to fill a certain niches/roles. To do so, some attacks which already fill a certain role need a bit of buff(like making disrupting stab delay skills) and some need to be completely changed in what they do to something that is needed(i.e. desperate strike and exhausting assault).

Maybe after that we will see more variety.

agree completely with spura

Lol my sin was easy to screw up. It was so easy just to rack up the DP. When I did Vizunah Square (Foreign Quarter) i had 60 DP by the time the mission was halfway done. I never got below 50 after that. I didnt even have enough energy to unleash a combo, or even use recall! I'm starting to get really frustrated.

Yup. Dp>sins.

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Wow, thnx for the insight Spura. I might actually pull my 'sin out of the dust and try some of that out. I do agree however that they should give some serious buffs to 'sins. Since defense or AL buffs would just make a 'sin more like a warrior, damage buffs would be the way to go

I would like to see skills buffed to match the usefulness of the most used ones. That is, I'd like to see other offhand attacks match the power of falling spider.

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Conditions should help, but not be the primary goal IMO. I don't care about bleeding and poison, I just like the Deep Wound.

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That is really useful Spura, thanks.

may i say sins at this point in time are some what unbalanced, a little like mesmers a few months back, when they were getting some hate.

Sins in the serious Side of the Pvp metagame seem to have found a small niche they can fill, so there usefulness can be justified in that sense.

The problem with Sins is that they are quite vunlerable to damage for a melee character, regardless of how you cut the cake. Sins can quickly become dead weight on a team in pvp or in pve if they are careless and take on too much DP.

Most players seem to complain that when they reach 40 Dp they can barely spike anymore as the Dp significantly affects there energy. Compare that to an E/mo who could have substantial amount of Dp, but at least they could sit at the back of the group and spam Heal party.

Also a lot of builds like the monk/assassin and warrior can seem to make better use of sin teleporation skills than sins can themselves.

These are only a few problems i see.

Though alot of you might chuckle now, but i am going to contradict myself here. Alot of sins i have seen in game seem to be a bit naive of how to actually play one.

I see shadows of the past in how people are building there sins, does everyone remember the time when people used to use Sever artery,Gash, Galrath Slash, Final Thrust spike. When nowadays people know that Sever, Gash and final would suffice.

Does everyone remember when people used to use Eviscerate,Axe rake,Penetrating blow,Executioner strike. Nowadays people know Eviscerate,Axe rake and exe strike or just Eviscerate and exe strike will suffice.

People in the game used to actually waste up to 4 or even 5 skill slots just to kill with their warriors in the past. Now because people know better they only use maybe 2 or 3.

The point being, the same is happening with sins, some people from reading there threads are sometimes wasting four or even 5! attack skills just to kill.

Doesn't anyone notice the most popular sin at the moment only spikes with three skills Shock, Falling spider and Twisting fangs. Freeing up the skillbar for other more useful skills.

The point i am trying to make is that the problem is a combination of two factors, they are imbalanced but also sins are suffering from ignorance.

I mean sins are very vunlerable to damage, but other than dark escape does anyone actually bother to bring along any other "serious" damage mitigation skills in Pvp?.

Alot of people complain when they take on too much dp they can barely spike. I guess solely relying on Critical strikes for energy management isn't to great eh. I mean almost "all" energy based characters in the game actually rely on some form of energy management with the exclusion of a few builds here and there.

I know that Critical stikes is a great E-management attribute for sins, but sins are too dependant on energy and to solely rely on it for energy management is rather risky.

Why not take an E-management skill like black lotus that can gain you back energy, that way even when you have dp you can still control your energy gain to a certain degree.