magnetic aura

i was doing AB last night when i noticed something about magnetic aura.. the skill description is:
For 5-17 seconds, Magnetic Aura has a 75% chance to "block" melee attacks.

problem is it doesnt work against assassins!! sin attacks are melee arent they? i may be wrong as i havent done a lot of experimentation but it seems that spells like kinetic armour and armour of earth dont significantly reduce damage (if at all) from sin attacks.

i admit i dont really no a lot about assassins as ive never really played one so can someone explain to me why this is?

Magnetic aura works fine, if they aren't using expose defenses or some other antiblock skill (which they should be)

As for kinetic armor and armor of earth, the +damage on attack skills ignores armor. Since huge chunk of an assassin's damage comes from +damage, extra armor doesn't have as great an affect as it would against, say, an elementalist.

As a side note, please tell me you weren't running a geotank in AB.

dont be daft.. no i just had kinetic in the build for defense if anything got too close.

your explanation makes sense i suppose... well back to the drawing board lol

The two best defenses an ele can throw up against assassins are [skill]stoneflesh aura[/skill] - which reduces damage taken from everything, even the armour-ignoring +dmg attacks (coincidentally, it screws over crits, killing their energy management)

... and skills that cause blind/miss chance. Air eles get Blinding Surge/Flash, Fire dudes can run a decent-spec Steam, Water guys get Blurred Vision, and Earth eles get Ash Blast.
Nearly all of the martial classes you run into in AB - warriors, paras, and notably Assassins - seem to lack the cranial capacity to bring any form of condition removal... Playing a blindbot is fun.

^ ^ What alex said. It's also worth noting that defensive warriors stances fit really well on a caster with a free secondary now, far better than magnetic aura, actually. You might give [skill]wary stance[/skill] , [skill]shield bash[/skill] or [skill]disciplined stance[/skill] a shot. Shield bash has the notable bonus that it doesn't matter if they have an antiblock, they get kded and have the skill disabled anyway.

As a side side note, bring a shield with +10 vs. piercing or somesuch in your offhand. You've got a big enough energy pool that +12 energy from a focus isn't anything that critical, and you can always switch to a higher energy set if need me. Personally, I almost always have a +30 health, -2 while enchanted shield up when I play ele.