i think r/a is better than a/* see why *click*

Indeed. If you hit, energy is no problem. Having Criticals 10, Dagger Mastery maxed and using zealous upgrades, you'll have effective 8 pips of energy regeneration. IF you hit constantly. Making expensive things like keeping up temple strike + wild fangs constantly affordable.

On the question of defense: If you want to, its not that hard to sqeeze in some protection. Eg "watch yourself". -> Even with energy armor set more defense than rangers against physical damage, and more armor than warriors (if u fight warriors for big damage, use elemental upgrades)


The main problem with the defense in this case would be that the Assassin has, at least at the moment, the stereotype of being weak protected. Thus being (even) high(er)-priority target. Thus dying fast, "proving" the stereotype to be "true". Kind of ironic.

With a ranger, dagger mastery is maxed at 12. Low chances of dual attacks, low chances of criticals, crap damage and less effective daggers skills.
You can't expect to kill seriously someone in one shot with only 12 DM.

i know all this stuff now hmm i gotta go quote myself it seems

I think the r/a is a great light fighter, like AD&D rangers (hihi Drizzt!), but they're more about pressure and staying put than the explosive style of in-kill-out that the assassin will be using.

The ranger has a host of 75% defences and aoe blinds to stay longer than an assassin would want to, and way better armour at standing elemental spells that bypass block/evade/blind, and I love Viper's Defences for bailing out of a tight spot - can always kick into Escape or Dash afterwards.

Ideally the assassin would have done their thing quickly and would want to get the hell out anyway. Assassin defences seem to be only 50% block, but their attacks will be much stronger, short bursts.

I'm not saying X is better that Y - I have a ranger to be the in-your-face dual wielder with infinite combos, but I'm definately going to have an assassin for more teleport tricks

I'd rather have the primary attribute of an Assassin and runes to make me more effective. Energy isn't much of a problem with zealous tangs and skills like golden lotus.

While experimenting with A/Ra build, i come to realise that due the the "luck" factor of the primary Assassin's attribute:Critical Strike, a high speed rate of attack is preferable inorder for it to reach its potential.

A critical hit using sundering shot from a normal bow can hit for anywhere in the range of 60-90 on 60AL. Sundering mod has long been classed as the most useless in comparison to other string types that are more preferable for bows, but seening how chance affect both critical strike and sundering leads me to wonder what will happen if i had CS16, MS12 assassin/ranger with a 10/10 sundering horn bow(innate 10%AP) +15% ^50 +20% damage(customization) with the following ranger skills:

Critical Eye
Serpent quickness (optional)
Read the wind
practiced stance
Tiger's fury
sundering shot/penetrating shot

and not forgetting skills from the shadow tree involving shadow stepping away to keep distance.

Would be interesting if to see if this Critical Archer build is able to match or surpass traditional ranger spikes.

Seran Shimai

well im an a/me and so far i have yet to have any enrgy problems even with my crazy skill chain jagged strike+entangalin asp+falling spider+critical stike+moebius strike+twisting fangs. love my 6 skill chain because it alows a great deal of flexablity. i can use smaller 3-4 chain combos or the full 6 skill chain. when i start running out of energy, whhch usually hapens around the end of falling spider, i activate critical strike and as long as i have critical eye up i get 8 energy which puts me right bak into action. personally its all about timing and getting to know your build.

i forgot too mention that i was also useing zealous upgrade so my critical strike skill actually neted me 10 enrgy and normal crits gave me 5 enrgy which made it almost efortless to use my combos.

I prefer to have a chain that goes something like...

1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4
1 -> 2 /

If for some reason, my lead and second attack miss, or else if I have different uses for both (for instance, the first time I may want Unsuspecting Strike, but the second I may want Black Mantis Thrust or Leaping Mantis Sting), then I can switch out to whatever's more effective. The sacrafice for versatility, however, is a good finishing move like Jagged Strike.

this is what i love about assassins, theirs such a variety in their play style down to the combo size.

I've played with both Assassin/x and Ranger/Assassin, and personally I'm more in favour of R/A but my reasoning is quite different.
Firstly for energy use zealos daggers, you have energy when you need it in a fight and you have a lot of it.
As for damage output, there is a lot that both combos can do that makes it difficult to place one above the other.
So why will I probably choose R/A over A/R?
Flexibility. Expertise works with assassin skills and ranger skills. CS however does not come into play unless you are in melee.
Asthetics. The female assassins are, by and large, ugly. Their armour is really really cool, but they are generally ugly and the rangers are generally better looking.

Something to note:

So far most have admitted you have to be mildly lucky, or have a certain type of weapon to maintain energy on a A/??

Likewise, niether is the case on a R/A with a good Expertise level.

Other Notes:
-R/As kill just as fast if not faster then an assassin because they don't have to wait for energy.

-You do not need 12 DM to kill people, people die just fine at 8-9.

-You do not need critical strikes unless you want criticals, a R/A doesn't need criticals because they already have the energy/dmg output.

R/A is better for PvP, and probably PvE, and even saying that, I still want to be an Assassin...

Lets compare: (no zealous upgrade)

Rangers have to pay half the skill costs assassins have to pay. Energy gain: 1 energy/sec.

Assassins have to pay more, but due to Critical Strikes and higher energy regeneration they gain energy about twice as fast as a ranger.

So no real drawback for assassins who dont spend as much energy ASAP + they do more damage.

The advantage of the ranger is that he can unleash a very expensive attack combo. But which attack combo worth using would burn through all the assassins energy?

edit: Maybe an Ra/A would be more effective under e-denial

While doing some of the luxon 1k faction quests, my group ran in to a bad aggro and got wiped, repeatidly, and soon we all had 60 dp. This ment my A/w had 13 energy if my memory serves me right. However with 10 critical and critical eye, i found at most I still could get my combos off even though i had the energy for 2 attack skills at most. As i was getting 3 en a crit and i was criting lots and with the 4 en regen my energy was at max almost all the time, i tended to at most had to wait for like 3 attacks for the en to do my 10 en attack, twiting fangs.

This is something a r/a cannot do when he just has 13 en and no zelous hilt even with 14 expertise. As such even in the pvp when i was spaming the hell out of my skills at times i never had en probs, and with zelous I would never fail to see at least 4+ en over my head at anyone time.

Ill be short, i think that a/r is better than r/a, not for critical strikes, but that rangers cant have more attribute in assasin class than 12(cuz cant add any runes)

Although that never stopped the blood R/N craze Even though daggers will max at 12, runes are available for Wilderness, Beast Mastery and Expertise for the likes of apply poison, IAS stances, block/evade stances and pet attacks - and there's a lot of build possibilities there.

I'm convinced that both R/A and A/R will be very different to play, so it's not like R/A > A/R or anything... in fact I saw an awesome A/R critical barrager build in this very forum that made me think an assassin would be a seriously deadly archer, which turns this discussion on its head - is an assassin a better archer than a ranger? I'm probably going to have a dagger-ranger and a bow-assassin at this rate!

in repsonse to the above message about whether assassin/rangers will be better than rangers when it comes to spiking with a bow, i am not sure but thinking about it i gather that assassin's would have problems with energy management.

Most of the good bow skills cost up to 10+ enregy such as punishing shot,dual shot and savage shot thats like 30 enegy right there, the good thing with expertise is that you can lower the cost of your ranger skills.

The assassins won't get that luxury, whether critical eye and sharpern daggers will work in conjunction with a ranged weapon will remain to be seen when the final version of the game hits our shelves on 27-28 april as Arenanet might have decided to edit both skills slightly countering this before the release date.

so invariably assassin's could be using a very serious energy costly attack skillsetup if they were to go bow.

Also taking a look at the new bow attacks that are coming out maybe bow wouldn't be the best bet for an A/R but hey i could be wrong.

For A/R it maybe be better to stay with daggers and use the wilderness survival class and use things like
winnowing for extra dmg in melee
or troll ungent for one of the best self heals in the game
or you could take the new trap skill snare which is 5 energy 2 secs casting and 20 secs recharge, stopping oppoents as well as oppoents in the area from moving around a lot.
or you could go for dryders defense giving you a 75% chance to evade attacks and armor against ele attacks.

one or two of these skills in conjunction with some good dagger skills like leaping mantis sting or death blossom would seem more of a solid character build. But as i said before i could be wrong.

Here's my version of that Critical Barrager Cirian mentioned.

Quote: Critical Strike, a high speed rate of attack is preferable inorder for it to reach its potential. Bows have an attack speed that ranges from 1.7 to 2 seconds per attack. This is an inherent disadvantage when you're trying to net energy with Critical Strikes. Usually, you've got to try to hit as often as possible- I propose you hit as many people as possible.

Barrage A/R

Critical Strikes: 10+3
Shadow Arts: 8+1+1
Bow Mastery: 12

Barrage, 5e - 1s
All your Preparations are removed. Shoot arrows at up to 6 foes near your target. These arrows strike for +13 damage if they hit.
Critical Eye, 5e - 30s
Skill. For 32 seconds you have an additional 6% chance to land a critical hit when attacking. You gain 1 Energy whenever you score a critical hit.
Sharpen Daggers, 5e 2 20s
Enchantment Spell. For 32 seconds, all of your critical hits cause Bleeding for 14 seconds.
Savage Shot, 10e 1/2 5s
If Savage Shot hits, your target's action is interrupted. If that action was a Spell, you strike for +25 damage
Distracting Shot, 5e 1/2 10s
If Distracting Shot hits, it interrupts target foe's action but deals only 1 damage. If the interrupted action was a skill, that skill is disabled for an additional 20 seconds.
Shadow Refuge, 5e 1 8s
Enchantment Spell. For 4 seconds, you take half damage. When Shadow Refuge ends, you are healed for 90.
Return, 5e 1 20s
Spell. All adjacent foes are Crippled for 6 seconds. Teleport to target ally.
Open Slot

With a 35% crit rate and 4e per crit (thank you Critical Eye), Barrage is an energy machine- even without a zealous bow. It's also a condition machine, randomly applying bleeding to enemies over a wide area, thanks to Sharpen Daggers. Savage and Distracting make you a bonafide interrupt ranger, while Shadow Refuge and Return supply your defensive needs. Return can be swapped with Viper's Defense. There's one open slot, and it can be filled with a number of things- favorable winds, caltrops for offensive crippling, Marauder's shot for some extra punch...you name it. You could even drop Shadow Arts a point and run a 4 attrib, 7 second Tiger's Fury. Use a Vamp Bow.

Yes, I saw that A/R barrager build a while back. Rather ingenious combination of skills. An effective bow build without a ranger primary...I thought I'd never see the day.

I personally have become quite interesting in playing an A/R as a ranger moreso than an assassin. In my limited ranger experience I have failed to make good use of expertise inspite of putting 10+ points into said attribute. I think that spending those points on the Critical attribute of the assassin base would be far more useful for most ranger types aside from maybe trappers. I would also think the extra energy pip would be extremely useful when playing an assassin in this manner and the increased Crit Hit ratio would be very helpful even without the energy bonus.