How to play as Assasin

(I'm using R/A. I find it better than A/W, as you will see why)
(I recommend the Zealous mod)

Assasin...is a different class. At first, I thought it was like a kensai from Baldurs Gate. Someone who has no armor, and does a ton of damage.

So, when I first played, I was getting schooled. More or less, I was a detriment to the team. So I was thinking....wait, I remember playing Warcraft 3. The Warden is also like an assasin. Except she has teleport.

So back I go to the see if there's a teleport skill. Voila, there is. And then I was like...Kickass yo!

....
Still got owned
....

Wait.....This does play EXACTLY like the Kensai from Baldurs Gate 2. The added teleport worked even better. Some of you may know that the Kensai form BG2 is hediously powerful with Haste, so I took out Expertise and added in Tigers Fury.

Voila.
The trick to playing, is the fact that the Assasin can do 1 thing well. It's not the best at taking damage, but it can cause a large amount of damage in a short amount of time. So with the conjunction of the tank...(which increases the Assasin's ability by a ten fold)...the assasin is freakishly abusable.

The main idea is for your tank to...well tank. While they're busily fighting the tank, you use Death Charge (teleport). Of course, in the midst of the battle, they won't realize that you're in there. In which, you hit tigers fury (which attacks quickly), and start spamming your combos.

I prefer the R/A, mainly because of Tigers Fury. Quite frankly, it's the best +33 attack there is. Frenzy makes you take double damage, IWAY requires a dead body, and Berserker's stance dissaperes during a skill.

You get the Idea.

This is freakishly similar to an Ian Boyd strategy.

Lightning Reflexes is decent apart from the expertise requirement.
Flurry sucks anywhere but IW due to less dmg
But IMO Tigers Fury isn't that good because it requires points in beast mastery, a fairly obscure attribute to put points in.

let me explain to you why A/W with frenzy is better.... I have 10 consequtive flawless victories to prove that. Yes, off course my team helped a lot, and played a major role.

See, assasin has a skill that makes you have 50% evade rate and heals you at the end when it expires. (forgot the name) This skill lasts for 5 sec. And frenzy lasts for 8. That leaves me really vulnerable for 3 sec. Well, that dont matter, because I'm a killer. Not a fighter. I use shadow step to get to weak casters and strike them when I KNOW that they cant evade my attacks. Usually after my full combo they are either dead or at around 10% life. Then I use frenzy to finish them off. At that point the warrior on the enemy team realizes that I'm killing their caser and comes after me. By the time he catches up to me, my shadow step ends, and VOILA! I teleport a mile away from the dumb warrior leaving him with a dead teamate and scrathing his head pondering what just happened. If I didnt kill the caster the 1st time, I rinse, and repeat the above steps. That is the way to play assasin.
Best of all, frenzy costs me no skil points. Mabe some of you will critisize me, but I have PvP'd a lot today, and honestly I met NO ONE who could kill me.
Yes I was fighting many noobs, but here had to be at least several experienced players among all those I killed. My team composed of 2 assasins(one is me) and 2 ritualists(amp dmg, and heals). Let me tell ya. It was a deadly combination.

Off course ranger/assasin combo is awesome too, and in the hands of a skillful player it will own.

EDIT: accidental triple post

EDIT: accidental triple post

I just thought of an insane build. I've read that (and i quote) "If I've read the skill descriptions correctly, assassin can inflict 5 conditions in 3 attacks. Cripple, Dazed, Blind, Bleeding, and Deep Wound. Pain..." All those conditions, with ViM. That would be uber.

Apart from being a good target for messies and disrupting rangers, I really like playing the E/A pre-made build (I forget the name, i'm not at home ) it's really quite entertaining ...

Uses an assassin elite to shadow step into a big group of enemies, throw out a bunch of hard-hitting PBAoE fire spells (phoenix, flame burst, etc), then (when you double click the enchant to remove) you are teleported back to your starting location. It's absolutely a BLAST to play (especially against the ritualists with all their spirits set up in a cluster and such) ... teleporting smack in the middle and killing all of them with some rapid fire spells and then disappearing is REALLY fun. One ritualist in CA (RA now I guess?) said:

"what the hell was that? o.O"

Positives: listed above, and you get to use a primary attribute with which you undoubtedly have runes/weapons/mods unlocked

Negatives: people like to go after ele's, especially if there is no monk or mesmer, and we all know ele armor is not the sturdiest of stuff

i like how assassin hasn't been out for 24 hours and everyone thinks they know how to play it perfectly

we dont think we can play it perfectly
we are just sharing our insight on what seems to work with the new classes.
no need to flame.

At OP how can you tell people how to play an assassin when you can't even spell it? At any rate you're all wrong cause I made a W/A and with the extra armor and the stances and WILD BLOW (rips stances to pieces) I just rip peoples to pieces with her. And most especially other Assassin main characters. Ranger/Assassins though I'm looking into, I don't use frenzy or speed of attacks because of what I tested on the 100 armor dummy in the training arena, I was astounded to discover that the number of blows required to knock over the dummy were still the same, I got more criticals out of regular fighting than I did using frenzy. Plus I find Wild Blow does the job well since it's always a critical when it hits and destroys those stances.

slightly irrelevant..

I've actually found a decent build, but it deffinately needs tweaking...

Assassin/Necromancer

Dagger Mastery: 11
Shadow Arts: 8
Critical Strikes: 12+1(armor)
Curses: 3

I used the sabatour's armor for the engergy recovery and the condition effects.
My skill bar thus far looks as so:

Unsuspecting Strike
Black Lotus Strike
Critical Strike
Barbs
Rigor Mortus
Shadow Refuge
Aura of Displacement {E}
Rez signet

So far this build has done pretty ok.... it's not briliant, but with barbs, rigor mortus and the attack line with black lotus strike it's doing pretty good damage. I really think that there's some potential here, but I'm missing some subltey somewhere that will make it great... any ideas, or general comments?

I don't think so. (smile)

How could you have a necro secondary and curse attributes without Mark of Pain? that skills rules all with an assassin. PvE anyway... (AI fights.)

anyone run a fragility + assassin yet? im busy with other things.
wonder if you can get the most of those skills coming and going in a quick pase spike

I've got a tip, no one seems to use it yet, which is really weird.
My record so far is 14 consecutive wins in the RANDOM arena by using the ordinary A/W pre-build with Mirror Stance switched out for Bonetti's Defence with only 2 points in tactics. If your fighting another assassin, or just have one on you, using that will completely recover your energy in a few seconds. It works well against any melee too.