[C] [A/Me] Psychic Assassin

[GvG]

This character is built around the new mesmer elite, Psychic Distraction. This skill, alone, is suitable replacement for an entire bar of mesmer interrupts, with a mean side effect and a serious drawback. The skill recharges in 2 seconds, so it's almost constantly available, but it disables every other skill on your bar for 8 seconds when you use it. This, then, is the big gun of the build, and the rest of the bar is built to accomodate periodic skill blackouts.
You may wonder, why not just use a mesmer? Well, because assassins have four pips, critical hits energy bonus, autoattack damage, and a number of nice buffs. But most importantly, it's because Psychic Distraction is like being a dedicated interrupt mesmer, in a single skill, leaving the rest of the bar to be...anything. So without further ado, here it is.

Critical Hits 11+3
Dagger Mastery 10+1+1
Deadly Arts 6 + 1
Domination 8

Psychic Distraction, 10e 1/4 2s *elite
All of your other skills are disabled for 8 seconds. If target foe is using a skill, that skill is interrupted and disabled for 9 seconds.
Critical Eye, 5e - 30s
For 33 seconds, you have an additional 7% chance to land a critical hit when attacking. You gain 1 Energy whenever you score a critical hit.
Unsuspecting Strike, 10e - 10s
Lead Attack. If this attack hits, you strike for +29 damage. If your target was above 90% Health you deal an additional 38 damage.
Entangling Asp, 10e 1 20s
Spell. Entangling Asp must follow a lead attack. Target foe is knocked down and becomes Poisoned for 12 seconds.
Siphon Speed, 5e 1 5s
Hex Spell. For 10 seconds, target foe moves 15% slower and you move 15% faster.
Hex Breaker, 5e - 15s
For 55 seconds, the next time you are the target of a Hex, that Hex fails and the caster takes 29 damage.
Recall, 15e 2 10s -1m
Enchantment Spell. While you maintain Recall on target ally, nothing happens. When Recall ends, you Shadow Step to that ally's location.
Rez Signet, - 3 -
Resurrect target ally with 100% health and 25% energy.

This build has: an interrupt, a snare/runspeed boost, a conditionally high damage attack, a ranged knockdown, defense against hexes, an emergency escape button, and a rez sig. It would always be run with zealous daggers- autoattacking feeds it energy. It doesn't have much defensive ability, aside from being able to kite at 115% (much of the time), and shrugging off one hex every 15s.

Sharpen daggers got dropped because for it to be useful, the assassin would have to be running all through the enemy lines, giving everyone a little tap here and there. However, as a fairly high priority target, this would be probable suicide.

-edit: specified build for GvG, replaced sharpen daggers with recall for more defensive ability.

If you're going for 12 v 12, you will not need the rez signet. Anything else that you want to fill it with? Btw, what is the point of the Psychic Distraction if you are disabling all of your other hexes? Is it like a last resort? and if your Dom Magic level is increased, does the ammount of time that your skills are disabled go down? because for 9/8 it's really not that much of an advantage for you if they have 7 other usefull skills and all you have are a pair of sharpened sticks without any attacks to back them up...

A) I was thinking GvG, actually...maybe I should put this build there.
B) Psychic Distraction is the point of this build. It disables all other skills for 8 seconds, but is an uber interrupt that recharges almost immediately. I don't care about the time disabled on the interrupted skill, really- bumping it from 8 dom to 12 only increases the disable time by 2 seconds. But Psychic Distraction is used as the primary tool, and the other parts of the build refreshed as needed (siphon speed and hexbreaker will be recast pretty much every time they're available).
C) I'm glad you asked if there was another skill I'd rather have instead of rez sig. I'd sub in Expunge Enchantments, stripping six enchantments from a single touched foe while disabling all my skills (except the one attack skill) for 8 seconds. Costs 10, recharges in 30, nice utility for spiking.
D) The build is not meant to do damage like a warrior. At no time would I suggest going to head to head with a warrior, because you will not win. However, it does have a great deal of utility, and the autoattack damage will add up on soft targets. Think of it as a mesmer with knives.

Mesmer with knives would have to hit knife range to use those knives. Thus the dilemma.

I agree that Psychic Distraction is a serious PITA, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to take advantage of it. Any build with Psychic Distraction is going to be centered on it with iron focus, and this one is trying to knife people as well as Distract them. I don't see it falling on its butt, but I don't see it working as well as Psychic Distraction could, either.

It's a funky skill, and I've got little clue how to best utilize it, but my gut says this isn't it. Still, props for a solid attempt and I'm certain it could drive mid-level casters and Guilds to distraction.

I do agree that as an offensive melee character that's going to draw a lot of hate, it does need some more self defense. However, you have to have some way of defending without having reliable access to your skills. I considered an alternate version using Shadow Arts defensive skills instead of Deadly Arts offensive powers, but most Shadow Arts skills are point-hungry- I wouldn't bother running most of that line with only 7 in it. Moreover, I'd lose out on the awesomeness that is Siphon Speed.

Anyway, down to brass tacks. Would running Recall (no attrib maintained enchant, teleport to target ally when recall ends) make this build significantly harder to kill? The advantage of Recall is that you can use it (ie, cancel and teleport) even when your skills are blacked out, which is often.

I like the concept - sacrifice your skill bar to interrupt very often, and then use your attacks to still be useful in between. I have one problem with it though, and that's that it just seems to suit R/Me much better than A/Me.

Assassins are defensively weak by the current melee class standard. They have a number of skills and abilties to make up for that, but if you regularly disable your skill bar, you suddenly lose that advantage. A Ranger on the other hand, can perform a similar role to the assassin, but not have to wade into the front line to do it.

And I just realised, I'm really not looking forward to meeting somebody trying this in PvP.

Also, the ranger could easily apply a stance like Dryder's or Whirling Defence to help him with any baddies going after him, which if you have Wilderness Survival high enough, can last out through the skill disable time. I would have to say that one way to stay safe would be to have someone else covering you while you do this, so that you can lay down your combos and they can interrupt repeatedly. You could also disable the caster's main skill when you see them casting it, and then move in with another assassin to help you take the hit while you wait for regen.

This biuld wouldn't really work for running around a battle field and just killing randomly...

I'm not feeling Psychic Distraction, either. But my reason for it is different than others here. While skill bar disabling is pretty detrimental, I'm looking at that 10 energy cost.

Now, yes. Assassin e-management is breathtaking. I'd be one of the first people to praise the Assassin energy management. But I don't think it'll be an efficient use of your Elite slot, the Assassin e-management, and an interrupt-focused build in general to use Psychic Distraction. I mean, consider the following. The skill costs 10 energy. It has a recharge of 2 seconds. Depending on which kind of caster you're going after, basically spamming (because 2 seconds isn't that long of a recharge) a 10E skill every 3 seconds is going to hurt, even with Crits, the 4 pips of regen, etc.

Even if you were to interrupt every other spell, which sounds more likely, given a 2-second recharge, you'd still be spending 10 energy every 3 seconds. The Assassins have a max of 30-something. You'd burn through that pretty quickly, even with the Crits and such. You could use Zealous daggers I suppose, but I don't know. I just get the feeling that Disrupting Stab would be a better interrupt. Plus it would free up your Elite slot for something like...Temple Strike, hehe. Or Beguiling Haze. And both of those can be very painful interrupts.

Quote: Myodato sez:
A Ranger on the other hand, can perform a similar role to the assassin, but not have to wade into the front line to do it. Rangers do not have the energy management to use psychic distraction, and if you want to be an interrupt ranger- do that. They have bow attacks, nice ones, which expertise will actually help with.

Quote: Sidra sez:
This build wouldn't really work for running around a battle field and just killing randomly... Absolutely correct, this build is not a finisher, and it will not kill by running around randomly. It's designed to pressure, and to complement a warrior. Even though this assassin cannot spike, and does not do warrior-caliber damage, it still has to be hated/protted against. Why? Because if unhindered, it's just going to spit out interrupt after interrupt.

Quote: Siren sez:
Even if you were to interrupt every other spell, which sounds more likely, given a 2-second recharge, you'd still be spending 10 energy every 3 seconds. The Assassins have a max of 30-something. You'd burn through that pretty quickly, even with the Crits and such. Ideally, I'd want to empty my energy pool by chaining interrupts together. Why? Because the more downtime there is between one interrupt and the next, the longer my skills are disabled overall. If I toss off three interrupts as soon as they recharge then run into melee and hit some criticals, I ought to be have something in my energy bar by the time the rest of my skills have recovered from the 8 second disable.

Quote: Originally Posted by swordfisher Ideally, I'd want to empty my energy pool by chaining interrupts together. Why? Because the more downtime there is between one interrupt and the next, the longer my skills are disabled overall. If I toss off three interrupts as soon as they recharge then run into melee and hit some criticals, I ought to be have something in my energy bar by the time the rest of my skills have recovered from the 8 second disable. By including Recall, you're now down by 15E and down to three pips of energy regen. It's a skill that absolutely positively must be pre-cast before doing anything, because when you run into trouble, you need to get out immediately usually. Consider Return instead.

Generally, what you're describing doesn't sound like a sound battle strategy. You're emptying your energy in under...9 seconds, to interrupt/disable three skills. Then you're running in, or you're there already. You've got an initial 8 seconds of being disabled after using Psy.Dis. Then roughly 2 seconds into that, you're adding another 8 seconds. Another 2 seconds, then you add another 8 seconds.

There's your 30E right there, and if my math doesn't suck (I'm an English major), that means your skill are disabled for at least 12 seconds, provided the disable doesn't stack, which I'm pretty sure it doesn't. So you're in the clear there at least, as it relates to disability stacking...or something like that.

After you blow your energy, you'll have to wait before doing anything, pretty much. You'll be running on 3 pips of regen, which works out to be something like 3 energy every 3 seconds. So to even get back to a level where you can use Critical Eye, provided you haven't activated it before the Psy.Dis. spam, you've got a wait of 6 seconds. That's essentially another 6 seconds of your skills being disabled.

Your total skills disabled time is at 18 seconds now.

Oh, and since Recall costs 15E, in addition to dropping you down to the 3 pips of regen, you're down to roughly half energy, even before you start spamming the 10E Psy.Dis. Bad idea.

Let's say you bring Return in place of Recall. You're back up at 4 pips now, which would give you some leeway regarding skill usage. Let's see how the energy performs when you run up first.

You use Critical Eye (5E). From 30E, you're now down to 25. Energy regen begins.

You start spamming Psy.Dis after that.

One Psy.Dis and you're at 15E, able to pick-up another 4E in 3 seconds. Psy.Dis recharges in 2.

You'd use the 2nd one immediately when it's available (another 10E), leaving 1 more second to get the next regen, essentially. You're down to 5E, plus regen, which brings you up to 9E. You wait another 2 seconds for Psy.Dis to recharge, but need an additional 1 second to gain another 4E from regen.

You can't use it a third time, unless you wait for another 3 seconds.

Total time there is...2+3+3, which totals to 8 seconds. The first Psy.Dis. disable lasts for 8 seconds. Without Crits, you're pretty much screwed in that scenario.

Now using Crits, you'd probably have enough E coming in to make it work. With Zealous daggers, even better. But my question is...Why? It's so much trouble just for an Elite slot that could be better used by one of your primary's Elites.

My order of operations.

Critical Eye is always up. It can't be stripped, costs 5e every 30 seconds. No sweat. It's the first thing I do in the morning, last thing I do at night.
Hex breaker comes next, another 5e skill. Both of these are automatic skills- if they're available, no reason not to use them.
(Recall gets cast here, if I'm using it- it's not a necessity, just an escape button that can get me out of a tough situation- even if all my skills are disabled.)
Siphon speed goes onto someone, either my first target or an opposing warrior, and that's when I go to work with melee.

We're currently at 15e spent, or 30 if I've got the safety net that is recall. Again, recall is not mandatory, just helpful. I'm not enormously pleased by having to lose a pip to maintain it.

Ok, assuming that recall is up and the assassin is using zealous daggers against a stationary target (kiting is hard to calculate), the 'sin will have 2 pips of regen, ie 2 energy every 3 seconds. A single hit, delivered every 1.33 seconds (chance of doublestriking, 24%, aside) yields 1 additional energy and has, according to my understanding, something like a 40% chance to land as a critical (20% natural crit rate at 12 weaponmastery, 14% from Critical Strike attribute, 7% from Critical Eye). These should yield 4 energy each, to a total of five with the zealous bonus. An assassin attacking for 12 seconds has a chance to hit nine times. Using the 40% crit rate, we can call four of these nine attempts criticals. If they all hit, that would be a total of 25 energy in 12 seconds, through autoattacking. The two pips of the assassin provide 8 energy in this same timeframe.
But that's a very idealized situation. Assuming a skilled enemy, you can cut that number in half, to 20 energy (with pip regen) every 12 seconds. This is the equivalent of five pips, and remember that recall is running in the background. But remember too, that the enemy has spent time, energy, and effort casting melee hate on you, instead of a nasty spiky warrior.
Quote: Now using Crits, you'd probably have enough E coming in to make it work. With Zealous daggers, even better. But my question is...Why? It's so much trouble just for an Elite slot that could be better used by one of your primary's Elites. That's the beauty of the situation- even though you're not a serious damage threat, the enemy still has to expend hate on you to keep the interrupts from flowing. And if you can interrupt a significant amount of hate, you and your warriors should be able to work almost unhindered.

As for disrupting stab, temple strike, and beguiling haze- each has a drawback, in addition to being touch range. Disrupting stab is not a precision tool- like skull crack or disrupting chop, it hits when your weapon does. Temple strike is expensive and an offhand strike- to use it once is going to cost at least 20e. Also, I'm just not overwhelmed by dazed, as it is in the end, just another condition. This goes double for beguiling haze, as it has double the recharge time. One interrupt, even if it dazes, every 20 seconds does not rock my world.

Something still doesn't make sense...heh.

Quote: Originally Posted by swordfisher We're currently at 15e spent, or 30 if I've got the safety net that is recall. Again, recall is not mandatory, just helpful. I'm not enormously pleased by having to lose a pip to maintain it. So in just the set-up for this one skill, you've already blown through most of your energy.

Quote: If they all hit, that would be a total of 25 energy in 12 seconds, through autoattacking. The two pips of the assassin provide 8 energy in this same timeframe.[...]Assuming a skilled enemy, you can cut that number in half, to 20 energy (with pip regen) every 12 seconds. Though I liked your analysis, these 12 seconds are my focus here.

From the moment you reach your target, you're very likely completely empty. You can't do anything for roughly 12 seconds until you can hit and regen enough energy to start the Psy.Dis spam. Within those 12 seconds, your target will either defend himself, or his allies will defend him.

The success of this build depends on the failure to defend.

So if there is a successful defense, you don't get energy at all, apart from 2 pips of regen. That successful defense is largely dependent upon your target...and if you don't have energy within those 12 seconds or after those 12 seconds...you can't interrupt...which begs the question...

It's a choice to run in with zero energy, especially when the durations of the precast spells are 55 seconds (hexbreaker), 33 seconds (critical eye) and infinite (recall). Siphon speed is the only one on a strict time limit, and that's the last one you cast, just before you go into melee.

Quote: ...what character are you targeting? Autoattacks go on pretty much anyone, and switch to someone else the second they lay down some prot. In this way, your biggest objective is to draw that prot out, not to seriously damage the player.
I will rarely be throwing interrupts at the character I'm hitting with the daggers, though. Most likely, I'll babysit one character with the interrupts (but others will know more about the art of interruption, my reflexes suck too much for me to be experienced in that game).

Or you can use Temple Strike and uh, have a better effect?

I agree with Myadato on this one, R/Me has a better job using Psych. Dis. rather than a sin. I'd like to dump my foe on his ass as well as keep him from casting and double his cast time... But you've got everything needed for any situation, well rounded, but if you use Psych. Dis., then you're a sitting duck when the enemy realizes you can't go anywhere for a few seconds...

Sadly, that's all it takes for a sin to go splat...

Quote: Originally Posted by swordfisher It's a choice to run in with zero energy, especially when the durations of the precast spells are 55 seconds (hexbreaker), 33 seconds (critical eye) and infinite (recall). Siphon speed is the only one on a strict time limit, and that's the last one you cast, just before you go into melee. I just think it's a lousy choice to run in with zero energy. There are so many variables that doom this strategy, and running in with zero energy doesn't help. If any little thing goes wrong, you're really screwed, even with Hex Breaker and such.

Quote: Autoattacks go on pretty much anyone, and switch to someone else the second they lay down some prot. In this way, your biggest objective is to draw that prot out, not to seriously damage the player. Why not just bring Expunge Enchantments then? Instead of switching targets after you draw the prot out, which would probably be more trouble than it's worth, considering that'll impede your energy return even more, because you have to take the time to get another target, get to them (unless they're right next to you), and start swinging.

And the problem there is...it's highly unlikely you'll see another enemy caster next to you for that tactic. The casters will see you approach and very likely move. So if there is another enemy there, it's going to be a Warrior beating down on you, and targeting a Warrior won't be a good idea.

I think that combining Psychic Instability with Assa interrupts is much more reasonable than combining a Mesmer interrupt with Assa skills, esp. since Psychic Distraction is going to shut you down for quite a long while and anything will be able to kill you.

I looked at this build twice, and i must tell it isnt as good as some people might think. Any caster or even a ranger could take psychical distraction. Besides, who would want their skills disabled for 8 seconds. If thats the thing its based on, remove the attacks and dagger mastery, and add it to shadow arts. Those 2 stuff, dealing damage and knocking down with asp, and psy interupt, they bite themselves. Besides, when the enemy team recognizes that ur interrupting and disabling skills of their casters, ull be number one priority target just near monks. What would i do : remove attributes from crits and dagger mastery and add it to shadow arts and deadly arts, so u can survive for longer.

Taking it from the top...

Quote: I agree with Myadato on this one, R/Me has a better job using Psych. Dis. rather than a sin. Rangers have the built in energy management of expertise...which will do nothing for Psychic Distraction. I chose assassin for their passive energy management, and for the fact that they require melee-hate to prevent that energy management from going through (spreading the enemy's resources that much thinner in this warrior-dominant metagame).
Quote: That's do-able in that type of scenario because Rangers have that luxury. A character like your build doesn't have the luxury to Tab/Shift+Tab around. The Ranger has the distance to do stuff like that...but you're locked into melee range. The point is that the assassin is carrying a ranged mesmer interrupt. It can be beating on the ele, while babysitting the necro. Then beat on the mesmer...and still be babysitting the necro. In fact, because there's no possibility of obstacle collision, arrow-juking, or catching the skill too late because of flight time, the assassin is slightly more capale of pulling off ranged interrupts.
Quote:

And that's not even considering that you could only interrupt 3 of the most important spells in a best-case scenario, then you'd have blown your energy reserves completely. Most interrupt builds are limited by the number of interrupts they have on their bar, and the time it takes for them to recharge (25 seconds is a fairly standard value). It's much easier to gain some more energy to interrupt again than it is to speed up the recharge on your spells so you can interrupt again. In this case, I think the build comes out about even with the old standard interrupt mesmer in terms of sheer presence of interruptions, and likely beats them in flexibility (ie, being able to interrupt any skill, not just spells). Quote: Instead of switching targets after you draw the prot out...considering that'll impede your energy return even more...[why not defeat the prot on that one target?] Because I'm playing a game of resources with the enemy. I want them to prot as many of their own players as possible, to the least possible effect. Even if I don't gain as much energy, it's only because they're actually spending energy to keep me occupied. A decent trade, especially if it's coming from an already-taxed character like a monk.

Quote: Originally Posted by swordfisher The point is that the assassin is carrying a ranged mesmer interrupt. It can be beating on the ele, while babysitting the necro. Then beat on the mesmer...and still be babysitting the necro. In fact, because there's no possibility of obstacle collision, arrow-juking, or catching the skill too late because of flight time, the assassin is slightly more capale of pulling off ranged interrupts.

Because I'm playing a game of resources with the enemy. I want them to prot as many of their own players as possible, to the least possible effect. Even if I don't gain as much energy, it's only because they're actually spending energy to keep me occupied. A decent trade, especially if it's coming from an already-taxed character like a monk. There's never a possibility of obstacle collision, arrow-juking, or catching the skill too late because of flight time when you're playing Interrupt Ranger and looking to interrupt the important stuff only. And really, in any interrupt build, skill discrimination is an absolute necessity.

Regarding your target choices and "game of resources," I seriously doubt your enemies will be the ones wasting the most resources in that type of scenario. I mean, consider the following:

You target the Ele. Enemy Monk sees it and casts Guardian in, oh, a few seconds.

You switch targets to the Mesmer. Guardian recharges in 2 seconds. There goes another Guardian on the Mesmer.

You've now switched targets twice, because after the Mesmer is a no-go, you need to find another energy engine, and you're nowhere near the energy you'd need for the 10E triple interrupt spam. If anything, the opposing team forced you to waste resources by having to switch targets because of one or two enchantments.

But if you need to hit the enemy to maintain energy regen, and if you're switching targets constantly (and it's very likely), however, you have no energy coming in...which means you're just wasting time when another, more discriminatory interrupt build just blocked 2-4 skills.

Quote: Most interrupt builds are limited by the number of interrupts they have on their bar, and the time it takes for them to recharge (25 seconds is a fairly standard value). It's much easier to gain some more energy to interrupt again than it is to speed up the recharge on your spells so you can interrupt again. Not necessarily. The Choking Gas build is one such example. My previous versions of the build depended on Practiced Stance {E}, but I recently adapted the build for Serpent's Quickness, with Oath Shot as the Elite in the bar. It works extremely, extremely well.

And now that I think about it...R/Me will be a better basis for your build. Serpent's Quickness, possibly Choking Gas, a zealous short bow with Necro Blood Rit support, and Psy.Dis. Not to mention using an evasion stance or two. You'd lack a stance/enchant killer there, too, but you don't have any stance/enchant killers in your current build anyway.

If you're interested in a second, more standard Psychic Distraction* build, it can be found here. Personally, I still think this Assassin would be successful, but it's all Theory Wars right now.

I can't quite stop arguing it, though. While Guardian and Aegis will certainly prevent me from hitting, Guardian and (especially) Aegis are long casts which are vulnerable to interrupt. But more fundamentally, the fact that there is a monk spending 5-7 energy a pop to Guardian against me means that I've drawn hate away from the very threatening warriors on my team. By forcing the enemy to counter what is essentially a caster build with melee hate, I've futher strained their entire anti-melee capability, while bringing more to the table than the usual 'hit things hard' function of a melee fighter.