Need Advice

T N Player

T N Player

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Nov 2006

The Bay Area

W/

I am thinking of making a Sin. What I really need know is how sins work. I know they do damage really fast, but what makes some people really good sins. I hada sin with Factions first came out, but due the fact that lots of people don't know how to use a sin, I deleted it. Now i want to make one again. Please just tell me what skills i need to for regular PvE in NF and Factions (Only for beginning).

How should a sin be played because I have seen many stucky sins in my day. I know that a sin doesn't have a lot of armor, so you shouldn't aggro. What else should I do?

I need to know, what mods to put on sin weapons. What elites are good. Whats are good combos attacks. Whats are good heals. What kind of armor I should have, like armor for health or for energy.

P.S. If this is in the wrong forum, please move it. Thank You

Toutatis

Toutatis

Walking Wiki

Join Date: Nov 2006

Isle of Medication

Visitors from Aranna [VFA]

Me/E

The basics of playing a PvE assassin are relatively simple. Let the tanks grab the aggro, then head into the fray to unleash your attack chain of choice, and then retreat to the back row before any monsters decide to target you. Lather, rinse and repeat as necessary.

As far as skills go, I've found that the free attack skills you get during training work under most circumstances. I'll occasionally use Death Blossom in the chain because of its AoE damage. Heading over to Nightfall, one Elonian skill that you should definitely consider investing in is Feigned Neutrality (more than doubles your armor and gives you decent health regen as long as you don't attack or use any skills - perfect for the retreat phase).

For weaponry, vampiric and zealous upgrades can be extremely effective because of the daggers' fast attack speed and ability to doublestrike. It's always a good idea to have 2 sets of daggers with you as well - one set doing slashing damage and the other set doing piercing damage. general dagger damage is low enough as it is without having to worry about damage type resistances.

SilentDaunt

SilentDaunt

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Apr 2007

Stewards of Ancient Rites

A/

A common mistake at the introduction of sins in GW was too many people played it like a tank (which generated the famous sin hate)so make sure you don't make that mistake, atleast not until you have ample experiences (it can be done). Sins are generally squishy so situation/environment awareness and target picking will not only help you survive but accomplish your tasks more easily. Sins are usually gankers who strike an preoccupied opponent to take him/her down fast without drawing too much fire on him or herself so as to live to kill again. Ofcourse that doesn't mean you can't go on head to head 1vs1, it just depends how good your opponent is at repelling deadly fast spikes and ur own skills.

Usually there is two style to sin play in PvP. One is constant pressure builds which exploits low recharge loopable skills such as Death Blossom coupled with Moebius Strike and the sins natural energy management Critical strike to literally tear an opponent down with high continuous damage that can go on forever and ever. It is usually used to take out tough targets that otherwise wouldn't be killed easily with a spike and apply pressure against healings and hopefully exhaust the opponents energy: eg warriors/dervish

The other popular play style is lightning fast spiking. A spiking assassin usually take out its target around 4 secs with an IAS and Shadowstepping to maintain the elements of surprise and speed. Since spiking usually has a long cool down cycle-around 15 to 20 secs I think- thus it is best used on low AL targets like casters to ensure a kill or else ur opponent will recover when your spike has ended . The strength of this build is sheer speed and unsurpassed damage output. Usually a target can't response fast enough to a sin spike, especially when preoccupied. However the con of this build is that after one spike your pretty much in retreat until ur skills recharge again. Meaning there will be times when your literally deprived of all offensive, hopefully not at the wrong times.

In PvE there is much much more different builds and variations but mostly all synergized to provide good damage and survivability mainly either using Shadow Arts or a secondary attr like prot. For eg. you could use Protective Spirit/spirt bond to offset Afflicted explosion to a lv that is easily manageable by the party monk. Or just shadow step skills to quickly get out before the afflicted dies. Afflicted explosion is the most threatening to young sins starting out at cantha, always watch your health and make sure the explosions don't stack on you. Elona is not hard at all in the beginning atleast not in normal mode.

Some elites that are pretty much dominating the current sin builds both PvE and PvP are:
Aura of Displacement (often considered the best Shadowstep skill due its ability to let the sin decide when to get in AND out)
Assassin's Promise (most often used before obtaining Moebius Strike, recharges all skills plus giving a nice amount of energy. I guess you can call it sin's soul reaping)
Moebius Strike (offhand attack that follows a dual! with a short recharge and the fact that it recharges all attack skills when hitting an opponent beneath 50% health means you pretty much create an endless loop of attack, perfect for pressuring)
Temple Strike (cause both blind and daze to shutdown any character. Best against Dervish in my opinion. Its versatility makes this truly a skill to be feared although it adds no extra dmg)
Shadow Prison (ShadowPrison is the new AP, IDK what they call assassin's promise now... Its a shadow step, snare and a start hex all in one! Perfect for the black line or hex relying line of the assassin combos, an essential of the AP burst assassins)

Now there're alot of other useful assassin elites but to list them all and when its actually useful would be a pain so feel free to do some research on wiki to learn more. The ones listed above are what I use and see most often.

For sin mods its usually zealous to keep the attack skills coming or vamp for more dps. Armor is another thing that goes with your style of play, but personally i perfer NightStalker or Shrouded for that extra armor while attacking or more energy. If you think you can do without the extra armors then go full shrouded, more energy never hurts.

Above are just my personal experiences gathered from playing 7 months of sin so it might not be completely accurate and it is full of my personal opinions. I apologize for its poor organization, I just wrote what came to mind. I hope it will help you with your sin. But really sin is very challenging class to play and it would be hard to describe every tactic and configuration without writing a full out guide, so just go ahead and try the sin out and see if you run into any trouble before asking again. Don't forget to search the forum for more infos, guides etc. Research till you heart is content!