A skill-by-skill listing of Assassin skills that still need fixing

Nope, it answers this:

If you are going to challenge every poster's assassin skill knowlege destructively instead of constructively just because they don't agree with you, then this thread is doomed to collapse in a flame-fest.

Yeah Zuranthium, don't be a dick.

In any case I agree with most of the changes except for a few of the DM ones.

In particular the LMS and Jungle strike don't need 4s recharges. The damage on JS is already very high, giving it a 4s recharge would be a bit much. 6s would be a happy medium IMO. Blades of steel is mostly fine as it is. Raising the cap to +60 should be sufficient if any buff is required.

Disrupting stab would be better served with a .5 sec activation time.

I agree that jagged strike needs a little something, but I think an unconditional 5..16(21) damage bonus is a bit much on top of spammable bleeding and low cost. I suggest a conditional damage bonus, something like.

If jagged strike hits your target suffers from bleeding for 3...8(9) seconds. If jagged strike hits an already bleeding foe, it does +1..16 damage.

The rest are mostly good, except WoTeP should be a 15 sec recharge. Right now it's a moderate recharge enchant in a line devoid of any spammable cover enchants. Considering the range of builds in which you'd actually want to use it is so narrow (basically if you want to use repeating strike) it needs to be less fragile.

As for shadow refuge-I think the only thing that needs changing is the cast time. If they want you to stay in combat while you use it, then at least make it a 1/4sec cast.

Shadowy Burden could be an useful skill, IMO, if you reduced the casting time to about 3/4 or so. Maybe an increase in duration per points in Shadow Arts.

Entangling Asp definetly needs a casting buff. I dont there is any other touch KD skill that takes 1 second to come out.

IMO, I would like to see the Assassin be to Hexes what the Dervish is to Enchantments. But a lot of them currently suffer from unreasonable cast times, recharges, or just simply suck for the assassin profession.
Edit: To clarify this last statement. I dont meant to make them Hex dependent, but more like, to have more utility hexes that can benefit them in battle.

The current Blades of Steel is pathetic. You can deal more + damage on a group with Death Blossom, without the requirement to have half a dozen skills recharging. It should have 30% more damage and 80% more max damage, if I have 4 other attack skills which are slow enough to still be recharging wile I finish with Blades of Steel, it better freaking hurt somebody.

I think it should deal up to 25 damage per recharging dagger skill (at 16 points) and have a max damage of 75 or 100.

Look, you've already made it clear that you play PvE almost exclusively. This whole thing is about balancing the skills for serious play so therefore there's really no further need for you to comment. Not trying to be mean, that's just the way it is. I wouldn't barge into a thread about FoW and try to sound all knowledgable about it -- I've only been a couple times and have never attempted to farm for hours on end.

Actually, Entangling Asp is a spell with normal range. Otherwise I would agree with you.

Your absolutely right. My mistake.

Where in your opening post did you qualify the posting parameters as being PvP-only? And what makes you think that PvE doesn't bother with "serious play?" This elitist mentality is counter-productive and threatens to sink the very purpose of this thread (i.e., improve assassin skills).

We are still talking about assassin skills. All assassin players, whether PvP or PvE, use the same skill set to do the same thing: kill a chosen target swiftly and decisively.

This is about as convincing as "Cuz Stone-Cold-Said-So." If you plan on using an open forum for soliciting suggestions from other online game players, then always be prepared for opinions from many angles without getting offended. Leave the ego at the doorstep, and you'll win a lot more productive replies.

PS: I am staying on topic. I am contributing suggestions for assassins skills. Heck, I even agree with your suggestions about converting some assassin enchantments into non-strippable skills. However, I don't think anyone here cares for the snide comments.

Back to topic, I hope...

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Here's my contribution for another assassin skill suggestion:

Talon Strike (or any other generic dagger attack name): 5 (or 10) energy, 8 recharge time. Offhand dagger attack. If you are not using a stance, Talon Strike misses. If Talon Strike hits, target takes +5..30 damage.

Assassins already have a "while enchanted" offhand attack, and a "vs. hexed" offhand attack being added in Nightfall. The only thing missing is an "in stance" offhand, which is what the above skill addresses.

I personally think this guy is doing a great job between his ele and sin skill threads. If Anet implemented his updates people would have to think twice before bringing the cookie cutters everybody uses now. They use cookie cutter builds because they are the only decent skills, at least 50% of the skills in this game are worthless beyond stupid people who don't know any better. Sure if they implement this there might be a bump that Zur didn't catch and an overpowered build would arise but that can easily be fixed, the nerfbat is readily at hand Anet proved that with the dervish. It would be nice to watch a GvG and be like oh look an A/E and not know exactly what he is running.

You do realize that with a standard 3 hit chain (lead-offhand-dual) blades does +45 damage on a 8 sec recharge? Death blossom's AoE is worthless outside of PvE anyway.

Hell no. At most bumping the cap slightly- It's trivial to get the bonus for three skills, and not hard at all to get it for 4.

The delivery needs work, but otherwise I agree

If it isn't obvious by now, the point of this "skill-by-skill" series is to make every skill in the game playable for the upper levels of the game - GvG and HA. I'm sorry if I didn't specifically state that in my opening posting, although I do talk about it somewhere else on the first page of this thread and the other one as well.

I do agree that only a small boost is necessary. I wouldn't call Blossom's AOE worthless at all, though. That skill is the reason I think Blades needs to be doing a bit more damage to distinguish itself, beyind the fact that it's indeed conditional and should be doing something worthwhile enough to merit being put on a skillbar. (Lead Attack), (Offhand), (Twisting Fangs), (Blades of Steel) is a powerful chain. Open with your Lead + Offhand, wait for them to recharge almost completely, and then do Twisting, Lead, Offhand, Blades. Obviously 4 attacks takes a bit of time to pull off but in a team setting where you can rely on other people to Knockdown/Blackout the healers, this attack chain will kill most soft targets. Beguiling Haze or Shroud of Silence as your Elite when combined with Way of the Fox or Exposes Defenses allows you to kill any caster by yourself. (Offhand, with no lead requirement), (Twisting) (Offhand, no lead requirement), (Blades) works even better perhaps, as you can fire it off at any time instead of opening with Lead + Offhand and waiting for them to recharge.

This is fine, and I'll accept it. The proposed enhancements will still benefit all assassin players if implemented, but be prepared for a long wait. I posted repeatedly accross several forums for Temple Strike to be reduced from 25 seconds recharge down to 20. ANET finally took my suggestion during the last skill revamp patch, but it took them well over 4 months to comply.

Here's yet a few more skill suggestions to stay on topic:

Devastating Stab (or pick a better name) - 5 Energy, 8 seconds recharge time. Elite offhand attack. If this attack hits, target takes +5..30 damage, and its current action is interrupted. This attack cannot be blocked or evaded. (Attribute = Critical Strike)

Burning Blade Strike - 5 energy, 8 seconds recharge time. Dual Attack. Must follow an offhand attack. If this attack hits, target's current action is interrupted, and target takes +5..30 damage and begins burning for 2..5 seconds (Attribute = Dagger Mastery). (Edited)

Feel free to suggest alternate numbers/effects... these are just suggestions anyway.

UPDATE:

I've changed the first post of the thread to include reasoning behind EVERY skill as to why I think it needs to be improved.

EDIT -- Is there any way to increase text size on this board? I really want to make the heading for each Attribute section bigger.

lord_shar:

Thanks for suggesting new skills. I personally feel they are underpowered, though. Talon Strike would have to be a 4 second recharge and do more damage to make it worth ever taking over Fox Fangs or Wild Strike. Devastating Stab would need to do more damage to be a worthwhile Elite and Burning Blade Strike would almost never be useful because of Exhausting Stab (exact same energy/recharge and interrupting effect).....exhaustion on your target is better overall than 4 seconds of burning.

What I want to see most (where new skills are concerned) is another attack that causes Deep Wound. Twisting Fangs has such a monopoly on that right now and every Assassin MUST use the skill otherwise their build is less than optimal, no matter what.

Oh, in case I didn't mention it: both Talon Strike and Devastating stab are offhands that do not require a lead attack. Talon strike still needs a stance to hit (which is why it is not an elite), but Devastating Stab is an unblockable interrupt offhand with +damage. This makes it pretty scary for setting up some nasty attack chains. I forgot to list Burning Blade Strike required offhand prep-attack, but I will correct that now (added +dmg as well).

What damage #'s or alternate effects would be better for all the above attacks?

Agreed here... but Deepwound is so powerful that it probably won't be implemented on any lead or offhand attack.

You do realize that Death Blossom does +40 damage and another 40 on the target and adjacent foes with as little as one leading skill only 4 seconds slower than blades of steel. At max execution, Blades of Steel doesn't deal as much damage on the single target it hits vs Death Blossom, aside from the AoE damage which has a potential to do around 40 damage on several targets.

With Blades of Steel you need to have at least 4 skills recharging to make anywhere near the very low maximum damage of +50. For Deaths Blossom you simply need to access the attack to deal +80 damage without fail, as well as +40 on adjacent foes. The requirement in skill slots and recharge and the condition of Blades of Steel make it a worthless skill, you can easily deal as much damge plus additional effects with half the hassle with other skills. even at +50 damage, it is a crappy skill, if it was unconditional, or added +25 damage for each recharging skill with a max of 50, it would be decent. Collecting at least 4 skills to barely make +50 damage is utterly worthless in all comparisons.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Blades does already do more damage on a single target (at max potential) vs. Death Blossom...+50 vs. +40 or so. I agree, however, that Blades is not worth taking in current form. It's not so much extra damage than Blossom, it's conditional, and it doesn't have any extra bonuses.

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Oh, that makes all the difference in the world for those first two skills! They would definitely be useful as offhands with no lead requirement. Your Burning Blades update is a little too powerful though, hehe. I'd put the damage bonus on the same level as Twisting Fangs (5 + attribute rank).

Sounds cool... that would make Burning Blades look like this post-revision:

Burning Blade Strike - 5 or 10 energy, 8 seconds recharge time. Dual Attack. Must follow an offhand attack. If this attack hits, target's current action is interrupted, and target takes +5..20 damage and begins burning for 1..3 seconds (Attribute = Dagger Mastery). (Edited)

Energy cost may have to be bumped up to 10 to maintain balance.

Also, assassins need an increased attack speed (IAS) stance... something like this:

Viper's Aggression: (or any other generic stance name). 5 Energy, 10 seconds recharge time. Stance. Attack 33% faster for 2..8 seconds. (Attribute = Shadow Magic).

This would remove the dependency on a secondary class for IAS stances.

EDIT: About death blossom... it should hit all targets in its area of effect instead of just a single target. This would allow better use of per-hit effects like vampiric mods, zealous mods, etc.

I really don't understand where you pull these numbers? SR at 8 gives you 64 health unconditionally. And by the way ATM unguent is probably the best non-conditional self heal. And it's SPAMMABLE! OMG NERF!

Never ceases to amaze me how wild scenarios people present to support their magic bullet theories. This just makes the deficit nature of SR all the more obvious.

I'm sure there are plenty good players but you conveniently missed them since they were disagreeing with you. I'm really sorry I don't see how totally awesome your opinion are but to me SR really is still too weak and shadowstepping skills take too long to recharge.

And to make a suggestion of my own I'd make the description of shadow stepping skills something like this: "Shadow step to target foe. This skill is disabled for 45..15 seconds" I think this would make shadowstepping a true trump card of assassins. Unless you put a lot of point into the attribute line, most other primaries couldn't abuse them that easily.

You should always have a +20% enchant weapon, so SR at 8 gives you 80 health. Unguent will heal for more, over a longer period of time, but it's a 3 second skill. That's hardly spammable.

It's no more wild of a scenario than a caster switching to a negative energy set to avoid losing energy from a Mesmer's E-burn. I'm sorry you're poor at weapon swapping.

Feel free to point them out. I don't even care if someone is a good player or not, actually...just point out ANYONE who has some kind of valid argument as to why it's balanced to give Assassins an uber self-heal whilst still letting them have amazing damage and movement capabilities.

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My head will literally explode if I have to debate about Shadow Refuge anymore.

Yeah, I was going to touch on Temple Strike myself... I think the 15 energy cost is just fine, considering what it does. I mean, how many skills actuallly cause dazed? Which is a pretty powerful condition, and it throws in blinding too!

That, and shortly after the update I made a Temple Strike build that works great in PvP for shutting down and killing off nearly all spell casters.

Just a minor note: SR only has a duration of 4 seconds, so 20% enchant mod weapons have no effect on it This is why I'm in favor of seeing it hit 5 seconds duration, but I doubt ANET will be that generous.

At the same attribute level, it would take 4 recharging skills to do 8 more damage on a single target with Blades of Steel vs 40 more damage on a group with 4 more seconds of recast with Death Blossom. Plus 8 damage on one target is nothing.

All numbers in this game are rounded. A 4 second duration enchantment with a 20% modifier becomes 4.8 seconds which rounds to 5.

I don't want to burst your bubble but Reversal of Fortune alone would out-heal the damage you're doing here and easily get through the dazed condition. An Assassin without Twisting Fangs is not an Assassin at all. Temple Strike is certainly useful but 15 energy is a lot for a skill that requires you to successfully hit with another energy-consuming skill to make it useful.

EDIT: You seem to be under the misconception that DB applies the +damage twice to the target, it doesn't. It's +2x47 damage applied to the target and all adjacent foes. That's it.

You don't get it. With 3 recharging skills you're already doing death blossom class damage on an 8 sec recharge. Again that's with just lead-offhand-BoS since BoS counts itself. Unless you routinely manage to get use out of the death blossom AoE (I can't fathom how this is the case in PvP, but whatever) blades of steel is better.

It's pretty easy to get the bonus for 4 skills too. Put it at the end of a 4 hit chain (typically offhand-dual-offhand-BOS), or do something like unsuspecting -wild-critical followed by unsuspecting-wild-BoS, which is a dual attack every 4 seconds.

BoS may not be an amazing skill, but it sure as hell is better than DB and it doesn't need the ridiculous buffs you're proposing. I actually find it decent now, but if has to be buffed an increase to +60 damage max is all that's needed.

You won't, because I've been using this build for several weeks now, and RoF monks are just as dead as other spell casters.

Clearly you have little experience playing as an Assassin other than a common build.

Ok, the others were right, there's nothing constructive about anything you say. For one, you just conclusively proved that you haven't even bothered to read my build in its entirety where I specifically covered energy use.

How nice of you to brush it off as not that useful.. what's your proof? What you assume about it? Cause my proof is the constant and consistent usefulness it's provided for me.

I was under the impression that numbers were always rounded down to the nearest integer, but testing confirms otherwise.

I do have to agree that an assassin with twisting fangs has dramatically more kill speed than one without it. Twisting Fang is probably one of the most devastating dual attacks based on time trials vs. target dummies in Isle of Nameless. An IAS'd assassin using Twisting Fangs consistently drops 60AL targets in 5 seconds or less. Assassins without TF usually take about 20%-30% longer for the same kill.

You've been using it in Arena Battles. Wohoo? Any smart monk would simply cast Reversal as soon as you hit them; the cast will always go off before you hit them again. This is a mathematical certainty as you have no IAS and no skills like protector's strike or distracting blow that allow you to quickly attack.

Clearly you have little experience playing as an Assassin in high-pressure environments. In organized play that build would be sub-par. You're not doing much damage and your only way to otherwise hinder the opponent is a skill that can be blocked/evaded (in a build that does not have Way of the Fox or Exposes Defenses) and recharges every 20 seconds.

The comment about Temple Strike being energy heavy had nothing to do with your build. I was talking about the skill in general and not the energy management of your build. We can go there if you want, though, so let's look at your build's "energy management" (which there isn't much of at all). To constantly use those attack skills it would cost you 32 energy every 20 seconds (Leaping + Temple + Critical = 21, Leaping + Jungle + Critical = 11). Assassin regen is about 27 energy every 20 seconds, so when combined with the +2 energy chance you have on all your hits (except the Critical Strike skill, where that is already taken into consideration), you'll have enough energy to constantly do those attacks. But you won't have any energy left over to use Shadow Refuge or the Stances. Zealous daggers would help but they wouldn't entirely fix the problem. Obviously in ARENA BATTLES, where you've found success with this build, it's less of a problem because you have a lot more downtime than in HA or most GvG matches.

55 monks also provide constant and consistent usefulness to people for many areas of PvE. It doesn't mean that build works for the upper levels of the game. Temple Strike can certainly be useful but in looking at the risk vs. reward factor, I think 10 energy is needed to balance out the skill.

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You can't just count on your enemy to stand there, though. Critical Strike recharges quickly and if they are moving around at all, it will recharge before you hit with BoS. Not to mention that Unsuspecting or Wild can even recharge before you get to use BoS on that kiting opponent. +60 max damage (and an equivilent increase per recharging attack) would make the risk more worthwhile.

Well that's true in general, but in that particular combo it's not a huge concern. If critical strikes recharges before you get to use BoS, just use CS instead. The point there is just to have two duals available so you can put out a constant stream of high damage attacks. (Ideally you'd use it with a decent snare to make it worthwhile).

As I said, I"m not averse to BoS getting buffed. It is conditional, but the condition is mostly under your control. Something like +1...16 damage for each recharging dagger attack (so at 3 it's already the most damaging dual available) with a cap of +60 would be fine.

I think it's fairly low in the priority list though. In order from most to least important:
1) Making deadly arts not suck
2) Better non-elite shadow steps
3) Buffing unused dagger attacks (and here I think the leads need buffing before anything else, in particular jagged strike and black mantis thrust).

Il agree with all of those except this one:

I dont know WHY everyone hates it, but in the one build I had where I used it (A/Mo, live vicariously+flashing blades and sometimes shroud of distress, if I feel like it), allowed me to tank 2 warrs and 1 sin at once, messes up other sins combos, messes up most warrs, AND by the time someone hits me again (due to the block chance), il normally have healed up. For some unknown reason, the 2 sin elites im really fond of (Flashing and moebus), everyone else hates...lol. Although I will say a 75% block chance would be cool, but it would also be a tad overpowered (look at escape if you will, rangers would cry foul I would think)

/signed


Zuranthium I agree with you whole heartedly, and am happy you looked at the often ignored skills. I think Deadly Arts could really be fun if it was playable.
I'd also like to agree with the shadow stepping - reducing the recharge per rank in CS doesn't sound bad at all, and obstacles in the way are just lame. They need to be at a much lower recharge....



Yessss. I agree with this so much. And you know what? I still wouldn't take it on my assassin.


I spend 97% of my time in PvE and agree whole heartedly with this statement.



Quoted. For. Truth.
My brother beat Tyria on his monk with all res spells.. and a cap signet I think.


To expand on this first part, the reason is, if it's balanced for PvP it's already balanced for PvE. PvE is just PvP with no one behind the enemy's keyboards, and retarded AI.. limited skills and movement.. etc. Balancing for PvP is how you balance, period. There are some issues that need to be adressed, such as the CS vs 25+ mob thing.. but I don't see skill balancing in this light more than 1/100 times.

For the second part? Um.. double you tee eff? It's been suggested hundreds of times, and I don't see why it's a bad idea. As it is, Charm Animal does exactly nothing. It's a res without a res ability, or something. I guess an easy way to fix this would be to make a pet resable through conventional methods.


TF is good because it adds deep wound. Deep wound is good because it lets you spike. Spiking is good because then things die. I don't see how you can afford to NOT have it.


This is interesting information, because guildwiki says something along the lines that it isn't known how numbers are rounded in the game atm. Someone might want to change that.


SR is fine. Leave it, or at most change the last part of the heal to "not attacking".

At 12 attribute points in dagger master, Blades of Steel does 12 damage per recharging skill, which is 36 for 3 skills, which is still 4 damage less than Death Blossom does on an entire group. It takes 4 recharging skills to outdamage Death Blossom, which is a very inflexible build, because you would only have 3 other slots for anything other than attacks. It is a totaly worthless skill, having 5 attack skills is almost always going to be an offense only build, and blades of steel woln't be worth much even then. Blades of Steel is the worst dual attack in the game, and if you think otherwise, lets see you use it, because talk is cheep, and only newbs use blades of steel.

No, only newbs run around making retarded arguments based on running with 12 in DM and assuming that "entire group" is somehow synonymous with "adjacent AoE". Come back when you discover what runes are and why having more than 12 in your weapon attribute is a good thing.

Energy cost and recharge time make it.. not-so-worthwhile with the build. Don't get me wrong, TF is a great skill, but it doesn't have to be in every Assassin build. Also, don't you think it would asinine for me to say such a thing about it unless I had tried it myself first? It didn't increase kill speed by that much simply due to energy cost mainly - I had to wait to use it after Temple Strike most of the time. Then there's the recharge time combined with the energy cost, which didn't allow me to make consecutive kills nearly as often.

Good finishing attack for the build of high spike damage? You bet! Greatly increased actual kill speed? Hardly. Almost any complaint about this build I've had, is something I've already tested and dismissed as being not as useful.

You act as though good players never play there, or like this comment really actually proves or disproves anything.

That's a great theory... theory. In practice, I'll inturrupt their RoF at least 50% of the time, due to my high double-strike hit rate. Secondly, I wait until they use RoF and use the Assassin's standard weak attack power to my advantage, then hit em hard with my skills afterwards - usually with jungle strike (as we're talking about a smart monk, any smart monk will run once dazed, letting me cripple then) - jungle strike will hit a monk for 90-120. Congrats, he just healed for 15, then lost 110. Jungle Strike followed by my duel attack quickly thereafter almost always results in inturrupting a follow up RoF.

So again, you only have theories - flawed theories that leave out important details, and assumes I play like a bot. I have actual results, and my results show that RoF monks are no harder to kill than others.

Obviously, it's about as clear as mud - I've come across many good, organized players, and constantly have to use it in a high-pressure enviornment with 4+ attackers, and I'll still get my kill and get out before they can kill me.

I definatly run into a lot of bad players, and it shows greatly... most of the bad players just stand there trying to cast spell after spell.

That's funny, cause I do plenty of damage, especially against what it's designed for - nearly all my kills are in < 10 seconds, well before the duration of TS is even up. And no, TF doesn't increase that much, if at all.

As for blocking, it only takes a little over a second to get the TS in, and if I play like an Assassin should, and surprise em, or get the jump on them while they're already casting something else - and then factoring in their reaction times, once it gets through, they're done. Again, this is from experience, not guesstimates.

Again with the calculating... that turns out to be wrong, one being that you've completely discarded the thought that critical hits will be made constantly, especially when they run after being hit with TS. The biggest thing against you here are the facts though: I have no problem continuously keeping up SoH, or using SR with necessary... or having the energy to activate Dash to cancel out my SoH.

That's the thing... there isn't a problem.

Because in HA or GvG there won't be any healers, right? But wait, that would mean you'd be contradicting yourself by simultaniously claiming that GvG and HA are high-end play, but also imply that my team would be without healing or protection.... which would be, in a word, stupid. I should note that I only need any downtime because I have no one to rely on but myself for my own survival - but even then, I don't need much downtime, I can outrun anyone without a speed buff, and even then I can outlast anyone with a speed buff - and shadow stepping always trumps all other speed buffs. IOW - SR is not my main method of survival.

And just to cover it incase you try to bring it up - whoever I'm attacking is not going to be able to fight back, as I'll have shut them down.

Except my build doesn't have such glaring flaws to exploit that totally destroy it. You're comparing apples and oranges. Considering TS's ability to shutdown virtually any class or build since it inflicts both blinded and dazed, I still don't see the problem with its current energy cost.

I've done literally hundreds of Isle-of-Nameless target-dummy time trials with and without Twisting Fangs over the last few months while trying to find the highest sustained damage assassin. Details in this thread: http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=414387

TF's energy requirement is not a problem if you have decent energy management, shrouded armor, or both. 3-5 seconds slower kill times due to not having TF may not matter to some, but from a kill-time optimization perspective, that's 3-5 extra seconds an enemy monk has to save the assassin's target.

I agree that TF does not have to be in every assassin build, but it's pretty much a given that TF-equipped assassins will drop almost any target faster than a non-TF-user assuming no condition removal. If you don't believe me, I'll be happy to run kill rate time trials with you at the Isle of Nameless.

oh, a rather important note - the build is for killing spell casters of all types, especially Monks. See, I don't worry about "the monk" healing my target, cause the monk itself is my target, and being dazed they can't really heal themselves.


BTW, when using my build, I have partial shrouded armor (28 energy), but it easily works just as well without it.

Besides, even if I don't kill the monk I'm after, that monk is still shutdown for those 11 seconds, giving my teamates plenty of time to take out a target or two.

And again, I agree with you on TF's usefulness, it's just that its usefulness in this build is limited.

AB simply does not require the same amount of skill as GvG or HA and there is incredibly less risk as well.

You really don't even know what you're talking about. If you Jungle Strike someone a single RoF will immediately negate the damage of your entire Dual Attack (actually, they'll gain life). They have an entire second to cast.

I don't think you understand what Deep Wound does.

Yeah, you do that...good luck on consistently hitting a monk with TS in organized play where there are things called Aegis and Ward vs. Melee going on (among others). 15 energy for nothing, sweet.

Critical Hits will not be made "constantly" against a foe who is actually moving around and has some protection.

Once again, LMAO. You have a single shut down skill and it's not even constant. Blind/Daze once every 20 seconds is hardly going to pressure the opposing monks into not being able to remove those conditions. The damage you deal is crap too so there's no pressure there either. If Leaping and Jungle Strike were 4 second recharges (one of my suggestions in the main post), then you would actually be able to sustain more pressure with constant Leaping/Jungle/Critical Strike chains (of course only if you properly set your Critical Strikes at 13 to have the energy to constantly do it). Even then, you would still need help from someone who can actually inflict Deep Wound to be able to kill a good monk.

#1 - TS is a melee attack that recharges a lot slower than the duration lasts, it's not total shutdown. The skill is very useful at times but you make it sound like some magical button that demolishes anyone. Aside from the fact that the conditions you inflict are not constant, the attack itself can be blocked/evaded. You yourself could be blinded. Your capabilities are hardly infallible and they rest entirely upon that one skill.

I don't see how this is relevant to the thread topic. Lets get back on track.

Yes, you've made that claim already, but other than that...


You mean the RoF I just made them waste on a weak attack and they're waiting on it to recharge before they can cast it? Maybe if you actually read what I posted you could've made a useful response, instead of just repeating what you've already said ad nausiaum.

I do, and this isn't an argument, concession accepted.

Because those things are always up, and I never surprise anyone, as an assassin should do... </dripping sarcasm>

Fleeing foes take critical hits, that and the crippling...

I'm sorry, when did this suddenly become an entire team vs just me? Oh, and I see you conviently forgot about the part where I'm the one taking out the monks. And vs spell casters, the damage is not "crap." Oh wait, that's right, when I pointed out that I kill them before the duration even wears off, you ignored it, and apparently forgot about it here. Meaning I already delt with this - just because you ignore it doesn't make you right, in fact, it means you conceed. Thanks.

That's funny, cause I can do that now. With dagger at 16, the crippling applied by leaping mantis sting is twice that of its recharge, and can easily be reapplied.

Again, you've failed to provide any proof, where I constantly do what you say I'm unable to. And I know the difference between a good and a bad monk when I go to off them - and don't give me the completely unsupported cop-out of "well obviously you haven't fought a good monk" as though no good players ever play in AB, Aspeenwood, or Jade Quarry - which is just asinine.


Concession accepted. Again you ignore where I point out that I make the kill before the duration of TS is up. Meaning they're basically shutdown until they're dead.

Did I say anyone? Oh no wait, that's a starwman. And yet again you futher prove you didn't actually bother to read my entire post where I already covered such things - they don't have to be constant cause the kills are made before it ever wears off in the first place.

1) I see you have no qualms with continuing you already proven to be void argument, which is based on an extremely fallicious comparison of unlike things - the counters to the 55 monk kill it instantly, not so with mine, but hell, to humor you...

1a) Oh noes, standard anti-melee stuff! I never said it was unstoppable, now you're just getting into the counter - counter-counter - counter-counter-counter that can go on forever with GW.

2) It doesn't rest entirely upon one skill, I can still dish out plenty of damage to spell casters (and do, despite what you might think) without TS...

3) Why the hell do you assume I'd use my attack skills while blinded? Seriously...


Anyway, being as this is going way off on a tangent, as the point was that TS is worth the 15E for what it does, and since Zuranthium's debating "technique" is to just ignore what he doesn't want to see and thus just repeats his already invalided arguments... ... and mostly to get the thread back on track, I'm done here.

ooooooooooo