Question about this blocking combination

Would running the following 3-skill combination give give you at the very least (you land only one critical hit) an 8-9 second window where you theoretically/probabilistically have a 150% chance to block an attack?

Critical Strikes: 13 (12+1)
Dagger Mastery: 12

Flashing Blades [Elite] (Dagger Mastery)
For 25 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block incoming attacks while attacking.
Energy:10 Cast:0 Recharge:30

Critical Eye (Critical Strikes)
For 32 seconds, you have an additional 13% chance to land a critical hit when attacking. You gain 1 Energy whenever you score a critical hit.
Energy:5 Cast:0 Recharge:30

Critical Defenses (Critical Strikes)
For 9 seconds, you have 75% chance to Block. Critical Defenses refreshes every time you land a critical hit.
Energy:10 Cast:1 Recharge:30


I haven't tried this yet, but I definitely will when I get home tonight. I woudl also utilize the jagged strike, wild strike, death blossom and critical agility for faster and faster recharging attacks. The last skill spot would probably be Shadow's Refuge or Mystic Regeneration or a Res Signet.

Anyone have any opinions on this? If someone has tried this, does it work well?

It's impossible to get a block rate of over 100%.
The way the game treats each block chance is to multiply the chance to hit from it, ie. for the two 75% skills you stated, it is 25%*25%, which is a 6.25% chance to hit.
However, Flashing Blades sucks, don't use it.

Can you explain your reasoning for the calculation you mentioned

You weren't really specific lol.

If you pull the 25%'s (instead of the 75%'s), you're stating that there is a 6.25% chance that I could get hit...am I understanding this right?

With this logic, if I couple (.75*.75)*100, I get a 56.25% chance to block...that's if I use your method and I am understanding it correctly.

No, he's calculating the chance that you get hit. With a 75% chance to block is a 25% chance to get hit. The chance that an attack passes two 75% blocks is .25*.25 because it has to succeed against both blocks.

Your logic fails because you only need to succeed one block, not three in succession. One of the three means either the first block succeeds OR the first fails and the second succeeds OR the first two fail and the third succeeds, or .75 + .25*.75 +.25*.25*1= 1

You aren't. The first 75% is just that.. You will block 75% of attacks. The next 75% applies to the remaining 25% of hits that will hit you. In other words, the first 'filter' blocks 75% of all attacks. 25% still get through. Of those 25%, the second 'filter' will block 75% of those, meaning that 25% of that 25% (or 6.25%) of the original number of attacks will get through. It gives you severely diminishing returns, if, for instance, you stacked Aegis on after that, you'd only reduce 3.125% of the original attacks, since it would act as a third 'filter' of 50%.

EDIT: ok, everyone is forgetting that for critical defenses to work, we have to account for a critical hit, which is 13% (from attribute) + 13% (from Critical Eye).

I'll do the calculation for that in a sec, but Minwanabi is actually closer to the right answer.

Thanks everyone for the input though

Ok, so I just did the calculations on a piece of paper (yay for dimensional analysis).

Anyway, it boils down to the following.

The percentage in which I will get attacked will stay close to 3.125% for 25 seconds out of every 30 window.

If daggers hit 1.5 times every second (not sure if this is right), I will land approximately 12 critical hits during the duration of critical eye.

Since Critical Defenses only lasts 9 seconds, so in thsoe 9 seconds, with an even distribution of probability, I'll land up to 4 critical hits.

45 hits in 30 seconds
9 is little less than a third of 30, so a bit less than 15 hits
Only 26% of those 15 hits will be critical, which is about 4.

If eveyrthign I am saying is true, then I wil be able to succesfully chain Critical Defenses, giving myself a 3.125% to get hit for 25 out of every 30 seconds.

When Flashing Blades expires, and leaves me open for 5 seconds before it recharges, that chance to get hit will go up to about 25%, iff (if and only if) I am still succesfully chaining Criticla Defenses.

I also haevnt accounted for running flurry, or critical agility, nor my zealous weapon to regen energy.

But overall, this should work.

Am I wrong in my assumptions/calcualtions?

[skill=card]Flashing Blades[/skill][skill=card]Critical eye[/skill][skill=card]Critical Defenses[/skill]

If I am using logic correctly, you are trying to create an invincible stance/enchant scenario by using an enchantment that for 10 seconds, matches the block percentage of an elite stance. Now, logically, you never surpass 75% blocking ratio, due to the fact that stacking doesn't matter in the case of both happening to fail simultaneously or both working to block simultaneously. The only other scenario would be if your stance or enchantment blocked when the other failed, still giving you no more protection than the other, due to the randomness of blocking in general.

Fact: If a skill says X% to block, it can't be perfect.
Fact: If you match a skill that has the same percentage to block, it doesn't logically increase your chances of its success, but makes the possibility to cover with a second skill/spell plausible-though not infallible.
Fact: 150% blocking would make the build combination beyond perfect, and thus impossible to achieve in a logical sense of terminology and its usage.

Those facts being stated don't make the idea to be invalid, but shows that the usage of these 3 skills makes for a slightly better chance to cover the occassional random break in the defense of one or the other defense stance/enchantment. Will using both make for an invincible target? Not in the least.

Critical eye only effects 2 things;

1)Energy gains
2)Instantaneous recharge of Critical Defenses.

That makes its attempt to keep the enchantment constant like an echo/shout combination. In a situation with no enchantment stripping envolved, this enchantment could be constant with a CS of 10, since every 10 attacks will usually score 2 to 3 critical hits anyway without the use of Critical Eye.

The Filter idea is probably the closest to correct, but also making the use of both stance and enchantment to look logically flawed, where an increase in armor is the normal and prefered course of action as to further limit the damage done by attacks that penetrate the blocks as well as damage mitigation which would seem to be the better alternative to hoping for more Criticals when not appealing to increased damage output. Yet, if Dagger Mastery is at 16, the need for Flashing Blades as the elite is questionable when you could use a Dagger Elite,Critical Agility, and Critical Defenses and achieve a better Assassin. Just pray for no mesmers

Well if stacking doesn't matter then, and I am attacking and flashing blades is activated, I will block 56% of attacks - so every other hit will be blocked.

But this is if stackingdoesnt matter. But it seems more logical if I am attackign and flashing blades is active, that I will block 75% of atatcks and critical defenses will minimize the 25% chance to get hit that is left open by flashing blades.

Either method, comes down to the fact, that the highest chance of getting hti would be 43.75%, and the lowest chance would be 3.125%, both of which are less than half, menaing at least 1 out of every two hits will be blocked.

Now, if I can chain this, + critical agility + mystic regen, I will be regening health +6/second, and hitting 33% faster, increasing the chance in which I hit a critical attack and block an attack.

So regardless, this is still a decent idea in my mind - proven until tested, and I'll test it tonight, once I go out and cap flashing blades.

As long as I don't use many dagger skills, the chance to land a critical hit should be higher, thats if normal hits can be critical, which I have witness to be true, well I thnk I have, so please tell me if I am wrong.

Here is a sample build:

1. Hex Skill
2. Black Lotus Strike (to Regen energy - use sparingly)
3. Flashing Blades
4. Critical Eye
5. Critical Defenses
6. Critical Agility
7. Mystic Regeneration (Derv skill, +3 regen for every enchantment, 2 enchantments in this case over a 20 second period)
8. Shadowy Refuge or Ressurection Signet or something else.

I think this, coupled with my zealous weapon of fortitude and critical agility, should work decently in PvE - not soloing of course, but with two heroes, a monk and either an MM or a tank.

Bad idea? good diea? I feel like I might be missing something heh.

Sin builds with one attack skill = bad. Daggers are even worse than other weapons for c-space DPS. As a sin you're there to do damage.
And as I said before, Flashing Blades is AWFUL. Don't use it.
A good PvE sin build would be:
[skill]leaping mantis sting[/skill][skill]exhausting assault[/skill][skill]death blossom[/skill][skill]moebius strike[/skill][skill]critical eye[/skill][skill]critical defenses[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill] and Critical Agility.

Mystic regeneration actually includes itself as an enchantment as well, so you would be maintaining three enchantments, also the breakpoint for +3 regen is 8 in earth prayers, which will take away from your available attribute allocation for dagger mastery and critical strikes.

Wait a minute? You want to be a sin tank? I thought you just wanted to live long enough to be effective...*sigh* another assassin who doesn't assassinate anything for the hope of staying alive forever.

Also, none of his enchants are maintained enchantments, so he loses no regen beyond the zealous tang usage. He just can't kill anything.

No no, I don't want to be a primary tank lol, I have a couple heroes who I have setup for that.

As for my attributes, this is what I have now:

Dagger Mastery: 12 (10 + 1 + 1)
Critical Strikes: 13 (12 + 1)
Earth Prayers: 8

Yes, you are right about mystic regen being an enchantment, so regen would be +9/second.

As for, being a tank, this is just a support build - nothing more. I just wanna test it for fun since I have all but one spell - I'm not seriously looking into doing minimal damage for long periods of times, but it looks like an interesting build (mathematically and statistically).

I would be maintaining 3 enchantments from 10-20 seconds, which is a maximum of 180 health, but I'll be maintaining critical defense at all times so I will at least do +6/sec regen for 8-9 seconds upon activation of the mystic regen.

This is my current build:

[skill]Jagged Strike[/skill][skill]Wild Strike[/skill][skill]Death Blossom[/skill][skill]Moebius Strike[/skill][skill]Critical Eye[/skill][skill]Critical Agility[/skill][skill]Critical Defenses[/skill][skill]Mystic Regeneration[/skill]

Sometimes I switch [skill]Mystic Regeneration[/skill] for [skill]Shadow Refuge[/skill] or [skill]Feigned Neutrality[/skill]

As soon as I get [skill]Way of the Assassin[/skill], I'll use it in place of [skill]Moebius Strike[/skill]. I figure WotA suits that build better, due to the fast recharge times.

I think I'll be switching my current build to include one Lotus skill, to increase energy - I seem to run out of energy (if I am fighting multiple mobs), near the end of the third mob - so I want to rectify that problem.

Regardless, since all of us can't agree on which statistical method has been adopted/utilized by ArenaNet when attempting to stack two 75% spells, I'll test it out tonight and post the results here.

Again, I am not trying to be a primary tank, but a support tank, to either a PC or Koss or Melonni.

We'll see how this goes.

Again, I too think this is more of a theoretical build that should work in principal and is quite interesting just to calculate out, but I guess it will only matter when it's put out in the battlefield.

Thanks again to everyone for throwing in your opinions.