lvl 16 dagger master vs critical agility

Even then the difference between a 1.03 attack time at 14 dagger mastery and a .99 attack time at 16 dagger mastery is almost nothing This.

I'm just going to say 'no, period' to sup dagger runes unless you're 1337 enough to swap back to minor runed mask if you get in trouble. Frontliners need the HP, especially if there's a puny 70AL hidden under Agility.

Couple of things

1: Increased dagger mastery does not only increase the speed of attack by supplying dual strikes. It also increases the chance of a critical hit at a higher rate/rank than critical strikes does. It also increases the damage done above the 7-17 (I believe the amount at level 16 is an extra 15% dmg). And the critical hits themselves also ensure a maximum hit plus a small amount of added damage. So we are not really talking about 7-17 per hit as a high number of hits will be guaranteed to be above the max. (with critical eye and way of the assassin a huge number of hits are critical)

That being said, the damage from daggers even on a critical hit is still pitiful. you can take down a stone elemental in hm but not much else.

However, damage is not the only consideration. You also have to think about...

2: The skills you are likely to choose with 16 dagger are going to be in the dagger mastery line and, of course, their effectiveness is higher as you raise dagger mastery. (Balky has a good point too. Sup runes aren't always used merely to reach maximum attribute. In order raise another skill high enough, you may need to use a sup dagger rune to reach 14 dagger - the benefit breaking point of number of skills)

3: Energy gain is a consideration. With zealous daggers giving you energy on every hit (plus the extra energy on critical hits if you have points in critical strikes) the extra attack speed and the extra chance to land critical hits by putting points into dagger mastery might be something to think about.

4: Health gain is also something to consider. Enchantments like live vicariously and vigorous spirit trigger trigger on hits (lv) and attacks (vs) so the extra speed from dagger mastery might be something you need. Is the extra healing from the bonus speed enough to overcome the 75 point health hit for a superior rune?

5: Where are you and what are you doing? No sin build is optimal for every situation in every place. Know what you are going to face and then decide whether high health or fast energy/healing is better for what you want to do.

In other words, it's not a straight forward consideration of 7-17 dagger dmg vs maximum health. There are other benefits that also have to be considered.

Given all that, I don't have an answer for you other than ignore those who give you hard and fast rules - they are the real noobs. In general I don't use superior runes but there are other times they are very helpful.

If you want a suggestion I'd say test and see how the attributes work with each other vs energy/health. Goo to sardalac with things like critical eye, critical agility, vigorous spirit, live vicariously, way of the assassin and critical defense (no attack skills) and then go out and attack cobble poundstone in hm. Without attack skills you will not be able to kill him but it is very easy to watch the numbers and observe critical hits/health/and energy gain. Then mess around with the attributes and see what differences they make and if those differences may or may not be worth the health loss to you. A few problems with that though:

1. Critical hits and the +damage from higher dagger mastery is pretty much useless. Why? Base dagger damage is useless. You'll get about 3% more critical hits and the base damage difference from 14 to 16 dagger mastery is only 7% (remember that you although you negate 5 armor per mastery up to rank 12, past that you only negate 2 per rank.) Lets be _very_ generous and say you get a 10% damage increase on a 7-17 damage weapon. Congratulations, that's +1 damage. Keeping in mind that with GDW you will get +20 damage per hit and with asuran scan you can get +75% damage per hit, you can see how the increase is nothing.

2. Using skills means you don't get the double strike increase benefit. Obviously if you were making a dagger chain + dagger mastery could be useful, but were talking about straight out no-skills damage here, so the skills benefit is irrelevant.

3. Almost no effect again. The difference between a .99 attack rate and 1.03 attack rate means you will get an average of 1 extra attack every 25 seconds. So, if you use absolutely no skills at all and just c-space for the entire battle, you MIGHT get 1 or 2 more attacks in. As far as energy is concerned you should be swimming in it anyway, so even if you get 3% more critical strikes you aren't going to need it.

4. Yeah... would you rather trigger live vicariously and vigorous spirit one more time per battle to heal for 15 health, or would you rather just have +75 health? Not to mention all those points you would have to sink in just to get the mediocre heal. Those are horrible skills, let healers heal kthx.

5. I can agree with this.

Here's a hard and fast rule: if you have 70 armor and are going to be staying in melee for an entire fight, giving up 75 health for +1 damage and an extra attack that will happen once in a blue moon is stupid unless the enemies are incredibly weak and have no chance of killing you.

Everyone is assuming he means for general play. But, he did not specify. Note how OP didn't post this in farming forum

If you're a sin that relies on attack skills(excluding the SF dagger farming build) and you don't have Critical Agility, plz stop playing assassin.
That being said, 16 really isnt needed...there's no point. Even 16 crit would be better since it provides e management...still pretty ineffective though. After breakpoint 13 CritStrikes, there's no point in increasing it further

Also: stashing points in weapon mastery does more for your crit rate (1.3% compared to 1.0% for CritStrikes), and a bit of double striking as well

looking for some opinions on running 16 dagger master(0.99 attack rate with lvl 16 dagger mastery)

i wasnt sure if there was a increased attack speed cap for assassins or not

any tips would be great

there is a noticable difference from 1.33>>0.99

but can really see a difference with lvl 16 DM +33% ias from critical agility

im sure about 30 ppl will chime in that sup runes are a *noob* move.

please read the facts before writing something idiotic please(research before you flame)

anyone with assassin exp in this area please reply or pm

ign-Bunny Quickness
where did u come up with those numbers? dagg mastery doesnt affect ur IAS, it only affects ur dagg dmg/crit chance.

sup runes are noob, unless ur running some kind of prot hero setup.

the IAS cap is the same for every prof, 33%

my tips for u:
1. drop dagg to 14
2. crit to 13
3. staple crit agility to ur bar

where did u come up with those numbers? dagg mastery doesnt affect ur IAS, it only affects ur dagg dmg/crit chance.

sup runes are noob, unless ur running some kind of prot hero setup.

the IAS cap is the same for every prof, 33%

my tips for u:
1. drop dagg to 14
2. crit to 13
3. staple crit agility to ur bar not that it really matters(been running 13-14 dm for awhile since this post is pretty old anyways) but the speed increase with lvl 16 dagger mastery if posted on guildwiki(in the weapon section under daggers)

No (good) assassin uses SF in actual PvE, it's for farming and farming only.
That's not true!


It's also used for running. ^_^