a blinding Assassin build.

Profession:[Assassin/X]
Name: my current build
Type: whatever you want really. I use it mainly in AB and sometimes in GvG. Works quite fine in PvE too, though there are much better builds for that.
Category: interruption + conditions

Dagger Mastery 11+3+1
Shadow Arts 10+1
Critical Strikes 10+1
Rune of Superior Vigor

Skills:
Jagged Strike (lead) (cheap lead attack which causes bleeding)
Temple Strike (off-hand){elite} (causes daze and blindness on foes for 10 seconds. interrupts and makes interrupting very easy)
Wild Strike (off-hand) (cheap off-hand attack dealing a good +35 with the chance for the enemy to lose 1 stance)
Death Blossom (dual-attack) (cheap and dealling very VERY good damage)
Blinding Powder (AoE blindness for 12 seconds)
Critical Eye (Energy Management)
Dark Escape (makes it possible to finish of runners and a great runner itself)
Shadow Refuge (good heal)

Summary and Notes:
First round: you shoot of: critical eye, jagged strike, temple strike, death blossom. Enemy can’t hit you, you keep interrupting his spells.
Second round: jagged strike, wild strike, blinding powder as soon as temple strike has worn off and death blossom again. Once again you prevent him from hitting you and deal a good amount of damage.
After this you can pretty much repeat the process. When in a pinch you can of course use dark escape and shadow refuge to save yourself.

If you manage your skills well, you can solo all but the elementalist shrines in pvp. Also you can beat most of your opponents 1on1. up to now this build has only lost from R/N vamps, because there to good at preventing you from hitting them, which is crucial for any sin since attack spells follow themselves up. Ofcourse you can run away until you CAN hit the vamp, but beside that, you won’t beat them. Furthermore a disadvantage of this build is that you can’t cripple your enemies, and in that aspect, be dependent on your allies for slowing down the enemy. I simply didn’t see any space in the build because all the skills are quite crucial as they are. If one has zealous daggers, I guess you could replace critical eye for a cripple skill, but since I don’t have those, I use critical eye.

The reason for all the skills being 5 mana costing (except temple strike), is of course because temple strike itself is quite expensive, and if you want to keep shooting of your combos you need everything to be cheap.


I’m in for any criticism, so feel free to post any comment you have on the build.

Might as well put this in before yanman does, tf for amazing spike dmg.

the thing is, twisting fangs is already again 10 mana. so that means i'll most likely have to wait a sec before I can cast it after jagged and temple strike, not to forget that my second round will be completely slowed down by about 3 seconds. I would then kill my enemy faster without twisting fangs, jagged strike + wild strike + death blossom together certainly deal more damage then twisting fangs.

edit:
besides. twisting fangs doesn't fit in the second round because of an extra 3 second cooldown. I'd really rather have deathblossom then

If you want a fast recharging combo, just do jagged+wild strike+critical strike(this dual has half the recharge time of death blossom)

but deals a total of 40 damage less in the first round, not to forget it won't help me when I'm fighting mobs (or shrines). big chance that the cooldown already complete before I need it again, while blossom fits perfectly with only a 1.5 second interval. it still might be a good adaption for GvG though.

Dont forget the always critical part, which will net the skill at... prolly.. im guessing near 40 damage per strike, sorry i dont know the math with that atm, but its always been a fav of mine for the low cost.

Twisting Fangs indeed.

The problem with Temple Strike is that it basically asks for a silencing tang. But if you make combo's like that, zealous will be much appreciated. Dilemma.

Besides, not much use in a special blinding assassin. Might aswell knock'm down and kill them before they could even hit an attack? (hint hint)

the problem I discover with those builds is that often, if you don't kill your enemy in 1 attack row, you can't kill them anymore at all, or it will then again take a lot of time, not to forget that there's quite a huge chance that you fight an enemy using gladiators defence or whirling defence, which are extremely popular in AB.

elementalists, rangers, and almost anything beside warriors die when the second death blossom strikes. so in that aspect the build is (nearly) equal to the usual knockdown falling spider combo. but this build can keep going on and on and on so the chance of you dying is a lot smaller.

if I had zealous daggers, the build would most likely look as followed: jagged strike, temple strike, wilde strike, twisting fangs, blinding powder, leaping mantis string, dark escape, shadow refuge. but since I don't...

and no Yanman, there is no way I'm using the falling spider build. reasons? for starters, everyone uses it so I don't want it, and I figured that enemies will find you much more anoying using temple strike, though I love to mirrormatch

edit:
nevermind the death blossom part. critical strike indeed works better, though I did not test it against shrines yet. ty for the tip oranos

edit2:
I come back at edit1. death blossom works better. though critical strike is slightly better for my mana, I still kill my enemies about 3 to 4 seconds faster with death blossom, cuz second strike death blossom most of the times means death for the enemies, and second strike critical strike gives enemies time to heal, so they can even undertake the third critical strike (simply didn't notice this in ab because of good teammates, but did in 1on1).