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Weaken Armor isn't bad. Actually, it's far and away the best skill for applying that condition in PvE. However, comparing it favorable to Barbs is a mistake in my opinion, because they fill so different purposes. I would think of it as a cover condition for Weakness in PvE, and would be somewhat tempted to include that in a second hexer build. All in all I probably wouldn't bother. Give foes in Hard Mode PvE -20 armor and all it would reduce is damage from sources that do not really matter.

Barbs is something you put on a target you want dead. Sure, Weaken Armor will help non-physicals as well (read: ineffectual elementalists or ele-wannabes who insist that Rodgorts Invocation is ftw in PvE.) However, this is a build to run with physical characters and also preferrably a minion master. Every hit from every physical on your team will do +x damage, armor ignoring. This is sort of the main attraction of the build: Converting every shitty hit of every shitty creature on your team into an armor-ignoring strike. Minions. NPCs. Accidentally aggroed Black Bears. You name it.

The point about Rigor Mortis is similar. When you choose a target for this build, you choose it according to position. Oh, it's a ranger. Too bad.

What you want is to choose the target that will produce the most AoE for Mark Of Pain. The class of the target should ideally not matter. You can run non-block melee and ranged. Sure. You can't run non-block minions.

Another thing to add is that Shadow of Fear is a fish-hex. Cathode has understood this but does not draw the conclusions from it. A fish-hex should be easily reapplied, and preferrably cheaply cast. Shadow of Fear only affects adjacent, on a 5 seconds recharge. If you REALLY want a fish hex, use Suffering, which is Nearby for 15 on the same recharge. However Suffering is a spell lacking any effect at all in HM PvE. Meekness, while sexy with its insane range, has too long recharge to be really good as a fish-hex.

Oh and Trvth, I wholeheartedly recommend Technobabble on the build. Resurrection Signet is lame, added to appease the masses.

btw has anyone noticed that the Ebon assassin ai is bugged? If you cast it on an enemy that's adjacent to another enemy, he often won't attack the target you casted it on. It's really annoying casting MoP on somethin and sending the sin in to trigger it, only to have him switch targets and ruin it >=\

Yeah, he has that tendency. It's not really a "bug", he just behaves like any monster would that appears at a specific location.

It'd be nice if they "fixed" it......using him specifically to trigger MoP looks really good on paper yet he won't always attack your target....it's been happening to me abit lately. It's even worse when you're relying on his damage to trigger AP against tougher enemies and havin him flake out on you

Normally I had "ymlad" over it (dmg+cripple+kd without even havin to cast is goodness) but started using the Ebon sin after I saw how much damage he could do alone...

To be honest... he should target the foe you cast him on. It's no different than manually targetting a pet. But the designers didn't bother with that.

I think the real value of the EVAS in this build is that it essentially expands your skills by 2, although two of those are straight damage. Instead of just one KD (YMLAD) you get one KD plus three MoP triggers from attack skills alone, plus further attacks until it dies, plus some diversion a la minion-effect.

Thoughts:

1. Far and away better than most of the garbage on wiki.

2. I'm starting to warm up to Assassin's Promise a bit. I like it for vanquishing. I'm still not too fond of it for dungeons though. Every time I hit a dungeon boss, I find myself thinking "if only I had brought SS I could just stand behind this rock and let Hidesplitter kill himself."

3. I agree with Cathode that Rigor doesn't need to be in the main build. There's not a lot of block in PvE, and what there is tends to be short-lived and ineffectual. I'd sidebar it into a variant for block-heavy zones.

4. Unless I have some nice person to spam SY for me, I prefer to run two melee-shutdown skills. I really think EB should be on the bar. Even with SY, I like EB better than curse shutdown because of the way it can stack with the armor bonus to bring damage down to zero.

5. SoF vs Meekness vs RH.

I see how SoF can work as a fish hex, but do we need a fish hex? For most of PvE, the monsters don't remove hexes at all. Then you've got a few mobs with like one hex removal, and a few mobs with obnoxious removal-oriented mesmers (Jade Bro come to mind). In the first case, any AoE hex should be enough to fish the removal; In the second case, the removal is coming quick enough (especially with the hard mode recharge bonus) that fishing is hopeless and you have to rely on covering and interrupting.

Second, fish hex needs notwithstanding, I feel like the 50% miss on RH is more effective than the 50% slower attack on SoF/Meek. If I've got my math right, 50% increased attack time should yield 33% less DPS, while 50% miss is 50% less DPS. (Is it correct that HM monsters don't gain the speed boost from RH because the HM boost already puts them at the IAS cap?) Also, RH can cause big-damage attack skills to miss entirely, while SoF/Meek only delays them.

5. I'm not sure I agree that HCT wouldn't help. It seems to me that speeding up Barbs should be a high priority. Also, a chance to speed up AP would help a lot in getting it in at the end of a chain before the target dies. Perhaps a 20HCT focus and a 10HCT spear?

6. Just a random note: It seems that Vanguard Assassins aren't infused.

Just wondering, how is Resurrection Signet *lame*?
It's essentially one of the strongest res skills in the game.

You shouldn't need to bring a resurrection skill on every party member in PvE if you have a clue of what you're doing and a strong team. Especially not on that character, who actually runs a very utility-packed bar and has the option to make it even better by scrapping it.

In response to Chthon:

1. I would very rarely run this build as the only hexer on the team. I would definitely, at least, carry an SS hero with Reckless, EB etc. Well, actually the elite is up to debate, but ok, a Curses hero with Reckless and Enfeebling Blood, if nothing else.

2. There _are_ actually a lot of Nightfall areas which feature heavy blocking.

3. It is possible to exhaust enemy hex removal capabilities, even if those are VERY strong, with a combination of Technobabble and Shadow Of Fear. We even managed to make hexes stick against the Leviathan Mind mob in The Deep (you know, the annoying buggers with two elites, one of which being Expel Hexes), at least long enough to be effective and kill stuff. Sure, you'd prefer getting the full duration on your AP, but if there's some resistance, at least you can get a 3-4 second duration rather than having it instantly removed by these steps.

Another side note would be that when I do heroway nowadays I run with an N guildmate, leave the fun AP job to him and run SY myself.

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