Dual Attacks

Looking at the assassin's dual attacks there is only 1 choice of what to use. Twisting fangs is hands down the best dual attack. It does as much dmg as most of the other attacks and stacks bleeding and deep wound.

More disappointing is there is no Elite. If assassins are made to do lethal strikes very fast then why is there no dual attack elite.

Just stick with Temple Strike and be happy. Starting off with Fragility and Black Mantis strike is fun to stack 5 conditions on the enemy.

Horns of the ox is a decent dual attack, but what makes it decent is really falling spider. Of course if you just used the trip out of deadly strikes isntead (which is a spell) you would get the knockdown and poison rolled into one without needing to build up to a dual attack.

The palm attacks are kinda interesting too, but the eliete one in critical strikes seems a little out of place and i question how useful it is. Sure you can skip to the dual attack, but you basically give up using the ones that apply bleeding, interupt, or a conditional cripple effect in doing so. 2 of the dual attacks are nice, there rest are kinda forgetable. I think there is a interupt daul attack that causes exhaustion if it interupts a spell, but i cant think of any others atm.

The palm strike is also independant of an attack chain. ye can use it anytime ye need to apply pressure, since it doesn't have to follow anything. Or, if ye need it to, ye can incorporate it into a typical chain. For me though, its real use is as a damaging alternative to Moebius Strike in a five-hit string. Hit yer initial Lead/Off-Hand/Dual combo, then hit Palm Strike, then hit another Dual. A real killer using this strategy would be:

Unsuspecting Strike - Wild Strike - Twisting Fangs - Palm Strike - Death Blossom. Or similar. Given the pitiful supply of off-hand attacks the Assassin has access to, and Palm Strike gives players the option of bolting those two extra attacks on the end of any skill stream you please is most likely why it's Elite. Hell, you could even keep the (mostly cool) Shadow Blade skill stream and just tack Palm Strike and your choice of Dual on the end of it for some truly immense damage.

Hm hm...and if ye're willing to sacrifice yer entire skill bar for it, ye can use this:

Caltrops
Unsuspecting Strike
Jungle Strike
Twisting Fangs
Palm Strike [E]
Death Blossom

Given the huge situational damage both Unsuspecting and Jungle Strikes can do, along with Palm Strike's own direct 50 or so damage and the fairly painful Death Blossom finisher, you could pretty much annihilate anything that breaths with one single skill stream, provided your Caltrops and Unsuspecting Strike hit a fresh foe. Tack Death's Charge or Shadow Step on there to get to the foe quickly and you could easily shred your choice of victims. Want to blow away the enemy's primary healer? Death's Charge up, blast him dead. 'Course, then you have the problem of escaping from several irate foes, but...well hey, as long as the Monk's gone you're good anyways :-P

You can mix up the combos with different skills to fit your own styles and the needs of teammates, as long as they are properly aligned, of course. I kinda find Desperate Strike a nice one for the extra damage because anyone with Asn profession will be a prime target, especially Mesmers and Necros. Putting up conditions is nice too, but successfully completing a combo that kills a caster or Assassin in one set is really satisfying...to me, anyway.

Repeatable strike also works well for variety in chained attacks.

The only problem with assasin primaries and long chains like you listed is energy. Personally i found disrupting strike->temple strike-> repeating strike more than good enough as a r/a. Id use mantis touch as a snare as needed as well, since those non-attack skills do not interupt the chain. I havent really found anything that im satisfied with as a assassin primary. The only use i could think of for critcal palm would be to be able to use it with impale frequently, but again you got distance and energy issues. Personally as a assasin eliete id rather go with the enchantment that makes the cost of offhand and dual attacks free, if i was doing a long chain combo setup.

Moebius is kindof a dual attack elite, since it has to follow a dual attack and is basically the "next in the chain". I guess that was their thinking?

You have a good point, Phades. Energy is a big problem with long chains like that, and myself personally, I prefer a simple lead/off/dual combo. What I was trying to do was illustrate the usefulness of Palm Strike and why it was Elite. Hm hm...Disrupting/Temple/Repeating x Lots sounds like fun as well. And even there, Palm Strike could be yer best friend. Just have Palm and Repeating on the skill bar to do yer damage and you could save all six of your other slots for tecH skills. Hm hm...I'm seriously gonna have to cap that sucker ASAP when I get Factions.

when i made an assassin, i only used like 2-3 of the chain attack skills, i used the unexpected blow lead -> temple strike -> a non-evade/dodge dual, then the rest was critical skills that increased my chanced of landing a critical and bleeding when i do land a critical and warriors cunning

Everybody loves Temple Strike

I would not under any circumstance want to trade out temple strike for palm strike. Repeating by its self isnt that hot and it sucks out the energy fast if you arent a ranger. The sad thing is the assasin needs longer recharge times in order to build up energy to use the combo again. There are a few good offhand and lead off attacks that i would simply not pass up in favor of palm strike as well. The dual attacks are just not that good. Applying bleeding and deepwound is nice and all, but its not that great compared to say, eviserate.

The critical dual attack can do 150+ damage.

Palm strike sucks compared to good builds that do way more damage against warrior armor with attacks, even normal attacks.
Palm strike needs at least a 50% damage increase to be comparable. It's only advantage is that it can't be evaded or anything, and ignores armor. But armor ignoring doesn't matter much with how much assassins can do.

and how does repeating stirke sick the energyf rom you? I made an assassin that could do unsuspecting, foxfangs, twisting fangs, moebius, then repeating strike 5-8 times before running out of energy. Use zealous and critical eye ffs.

Temple is nice. But it's far from all that an assassin has. It's just what people noticed with their shallow views. It's only effective agianst people unprepared for it, still. IF it does become Fotm then there is just oging to be more stuff to make them miss, which there are counters to but that'll lwoer your damage. And it's not like fraiglity won't be removed unless you cary stuff to burry it, which means more damaging attacks. Theory vs practice.

Energy is less of a problem with assassin than any other class unless you're shackled, then you're screwed unless you can remove or someone else can.

You were getting lucky energy gains then. When i used critical eye with 15 in crits, i wound up with 0e rather fast as an assasin primary.

use zealous.

I was....

odd then. Yuo where simply unlucky? Because after killing enough to gain 27k faction during the event, i wasn't having a problem.

I wouldnt count on luck to be the only factor for something like energy management. You can get "lucky" and modify a 5e cost to 1e cost, or you can always have a 5e cost skill cost 1e/10e cost 3e while regening at 2 pips worth and have a better innate defense. The assasin route i ended up running dry at times, while the ranger route i always had energy to do whatever i wanted.

Back to the dual attacks.

Steel blades looked interresting. Didn't get a chance to try it.

The critical strike dual doesn't do as much dmg as you stated. If it did you had some buffs or weaken armor on that target. At 14 daggers my criticals were doing (33-40+7)*2=80-94. Don't know how you came up with 150+ dmg w/o having something increasing your dmg or reducing the targets armor.

That still doesn't compare to twisted fangs. Usually hit 17-24*2=34-48. Add in deep wound (100 on avg) and that's 134-148 with 20% heal reduction and 6 dps from bleeding. Only down side I saw was the condition order. Bleeding is applied first then deep wound. You would need to cover that up with another condition or it gets removed quickly.

Temple strike was ok. I preferred locust's fury over it though. I had a 48% to dual strike. Used with IAS I rarely got a chance to use my attack chains before the target was dead. Be ready to see some major abuse when combined with orders.

On palm strike its going to used for touch rangers. It also has some upsides. Both have a 3/4 casting which is faster than your attacks, ignores armor, and cannot be "blocked" or "evaded." The elite is much stronger than you think. Instead of doing a 3 skill chain you can use 2. Since it counts as an off-hand you go straight into your dual attacks. Since its a skill it has no aftercast to delay your dual attack. Its more of a quick finisher move w/o using up your entire energy bar.

Still don't see why there is not 1 elite dual attack. Moebius Strike is probly the worst elite they have. You have to do a full chain minimum of 3 hits which is hard enough to do normally. Then you have to hit with a 4th attack, have the energy for it, and after it recharges your skills you have no energy to spam another combo.

That's typical at this stage of the game. People like to get creative with numbers to weave some tales of greatness that never happened.

At 16 Dagger / 10 Critical Strikes, an average autoattack with a dagger hits for 33.7. That's extremely comparable to a sword's 34.1, or an axe's 35.5 - as it should be since they all have the same attack rate. If you go all out with a 16/13 spec, your average attacks will hit for 34.4, right in the middle of warrior autoattack damage.

Assassin criticals can hit harder than Warriors because of the occasional dual attack. A double-critical from a dual attack without buffs deals 76 damage.

That's just the numbers, theorized and tested on the punching dummies. What to make of them is your own business.


Deep Wound isn't something that you try and make stick most of the time, it's something that you want to be lethal and kill your opponent outright. The condition order is inconvenient, but not really any sort of issue. I can can you really argue with Sever + Gash in one skill?


You've nailed that skill dead on. I think far too many people are focusing on making really long skillchains to beat upon a helpless opponent with, when that's largely irrelevant in competitive PvP. The blocks and evades always pop up once you're on a good target, and unlike a warrior a single block or evade is deadly if you're trying to execute a skillchain.

Palm Strike never misses, is extremely fast, and sets up your target for Eviscerate, I mean Twisted Fangs. For a quick finisher on a target of opportunity, it's exactly what you want. I would not be surprised at all if it ended up being the elite of choice for 8-man Assassins.

Temple Strike is an excellent skill and it shines in places like the arenas where you're usually going 1v1 with a monk, where the disruption from the daze is outstanding, and your target is generally unlikely to get healing or protection from an outside source. It's similarly good in the longer skill chains that you can get away with in arena for many of the same reasons. That Temple Strike is so good in 4-man has done a lot for its popularity. But that success is not neccessarily going to translate into 8-man formats, where multiple monks minimizes the effectiveness of a single, short term daze. I'm not saying it's going to be bad there, but it won't be as exceptional as it is in the arenas.


Probably because any elite dual attack would have to be significantly stronger than Twisted Fangs, and Twisted Fangs is strong enough to be an elite in its own right. That skill is dangerously close to Eviscerate in raw power as is, after all. (Eviscerate hits for 81 on average plus the Deep Wound, Twisted Fangs hits for 71 plus Deep Wound plus Bleeding.)

You were absolutely right in the original post, that there's only one dual attack to use. The reason you'd ever use any of the others, is because you wanted a second dual attack on your bar.

But if people really want an elite dual attack, what you'll probably get is Twisted Fangs at 1...15 instead of its current 1...10 incarnation and an elite tag. Which, in all fairness, would probably be a good idea considering the power of that skill.


When I look at Moebius Strike I see what should be a popular PvE attack skill. Enemies rarely block, or have monk support, so you can unleash whatever long combo you want in their face with Moebius Strike to chain it even deeper. Flashing Blades falls into the same category - I expect that skill to be just as, if not more popular than Gladiator's Defense is now. Different skills exist for different purposes, the trick is figuring out what has a place where.

Peace,
-CxE