[C] [A/W] Appointment in Damascus

Quote: Golden Phoenix Strike, 5e - 8s
Offhand Strike. If you are not enchanted, this skill fails. If it hits, Golden Phoenix Strike deals +30 damage. Am I the only one that saw that this attack doesn't need a lead attack?

Quote: Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

Is Game Warden Robert Muldoon the only one who didn't see the Velociraptor?

But seriously, I have a good reason for posting. A number of skills have been rebalanced since I first posted this build, so I'm going to update the whole thing with the new numbers (and one new skill, because Way of the Fox is quite worthless to me now).

Critical Strikes: 12+1+1
Dagger Mastery: 12+3

Dark Apostasy, 10e 2 15s *elite
Enchantment Spell. For 16 seconds, every time you successfully make a critical hit, you remove one Enchantment from your target. If you remove an Enchantment in this way, you lose 4 Energy or Dark Apostasy ends.
Critical Eye, 5 - 30s
Skill. 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.
Sharpen Daggers, 5e 2 20s
Enchantment Spell. For 33 seconds, all of your critical hits cause Bleeding for 14 seconds.
Wild Blow, 5e - 5s
Attack Skill. Lose all Adrenaline. If it hits, this attack will be a critical hit. If Wild Blow hits, any "Stance" being used by your target ends. This attack cannot be "Blocked" or "Evaded"
Golden Phoenix Strike, 5e - 8s
Offhand Strike. If you are not enchanted, this skill misses. If it hits, Golden Phoenix Strike deals +30 damage.
Critical Strike, 10e - 6s
Dual Attack. Must follow an off-hand attack. If it hits, this attack strikes for +29 damage and results in a critical hit.
Rush, 4a
Stance. For 8 seconds, you run 25% faster.
Signet of Malice, - 1 8s
For each condition suffered by target foe, you lose one condition.

Ok, the major changes are as follows-
Dark Apostasy now has half the recharge, down to 15s and half the duration, now at 16s. Everything else stayed the same, and this means I no longer have to tear my hair out looking for a proper cover enchant.
Critical Strike doesn't net positive energy any longer, but it does do a hell of a lot of damage, and pays for itself with zealous daggers. With +29 on each hit of a dual attack, and autocrit...fear it. The damage ability of this build is not insignificant.
I switched Dash with Rush like I always thought I would. Even at just 8 seconds, it's probably going to stay up damn near all the time. Gogo 100% crit rate against running foes!
Way of the Fox was way nerfed, in my opinion. Now it affects x attacks, but recharges in 45 seconds. Worthless, as it'll almost certainly end in 15 seconds or less.
Signet of Malice went through the opposite change. Once a conditional condition remover with a ridiculous 45 second recharge, it's now a conditional condition remover with a reasonable 8 second recharge. With Sharpen Daggers spreading bleeding on almost every other hit, you should always have a condition to work off of.

/bump!

Awesome idea. This is one of the most well thought-out original builds I've seen in a while. I'm going to seriously consider trying something along these lines in Factions. Keep up the good work, hombre.

Ok...I m confused here. Though I have not created an Assassin in Preview but the description from guildwiki is very explicit...

"The Off-Hand Attack is a type of attack in the dagger attack sequence of the Assassin.

Many Off-Hand Attacks can only be used after first performing a Lead Attack. Exceptions include Repeating Strike which can only be chained after other Off-Hand Attacks."

Description of Golden Phoenix Strike:
"Off-Hand Attack. If you have no enchantments on you, this skill fails. If it hits, Golden Phoenix Strike deals +10...26 damage."

Does it mean you can use an Off-hand or Dual attack as long as it is not stated that "It must follow an Lead/Off-hand/Dual attack"?

Anyway, we may explore Repeating Strikes more thoroughly since it requires only 1 Off-hand? (drunken lemur here) to start off the spamming I love skills you can spam....its always so game breaking.

BTW, nice build swordfisher

Quote: Originally Posted by Blackhand "The Off-Hand Attack is a type of attack in the dagger attack sequence of the Assassin.

Many Off-Hand Attacks can only be used after first performing a Lead Attack. Exceptions include Repeating Strike which can only be chained after other Off-Hand Attacks." I wrote that because the old description was totally false, it said that all off hand attacks required a lead attack first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackhand Does it mean you can use an Off-hand or Dual attack as long as it is not stated that "It must follow an Lead/Off-hand/Dual attack"? That is exactly what it means.

:P I m a drunken lemur...lol

Thanks for clearing that up for me fallot

Wow your reworked build is nothing short of genius.

so-so offensive power, but very nice at stripping out defenses.

but I don't think Dark Apotasy worth the elite slot, simply because there are better ways to strip enchantments(as in relying on another necro's order of apotasy)

lightblade lets compare the two;

Dark Apostasy: 10 energy, 2 sec cast time, 30 sec recharge.
For 10-30 seconds every time you crit you remove an enchant, lose 10-5 energy each enchant removed or Dark Apostasy ends.

Order of Apostasy: 25 energy, 2 second cast time
For 5 seconds whenever a party hits a foe that foe loses an enchant, for every enchant removed lose 20-10% health.

Both are decent elites,however if the necro brings OoA they're denying themselves the use of Spiteful Spirit, Blood is Power, Offering of Blood, Order of the Vampire, Flesh Golem and many other more useful elites. If the assassin bring Dark Apostasy what are they missing out on? Flashing Blades, Seeping Wound, or *gasp* Aura of Displacement? Besides Temple strike the assassin doesn't have a really dominant Elite which allows them to specialize in things like, for example, enchant removal. With boon prot monks so prevalent in pvp what better way to rend them helpless than an assassin with Dark Apostasy? Also so-so offensive power? At 15 dm this assassin's going to be crit'ing at least 3 times through the attack string. Wild blow gives you 1 and critical strike gives you 2. Not to mention Golden Phoenix has a pretty good chance of also being a crit attack, with an added 30 armor ignoring damage on top. Now my math is a little fuzzy but this should give you around 250-300dmg in 3 attacks, not to mention with critical strikes, critical eye, and zealous daggers Dark Apostasy is FREE enchant removal.

So yeah, even in the assassin forums you don't know what you're talking about.

Don't knock Aura of Displacement, with Blackout it's evil

But I get your point, and so, I hope, does Lightblade. So he can stop blathering about Order of Apostasy, which on top of being less comparatively useful than Dark Apostasy is also likely to get the casting Necromancer killed as the fighters strip prot after prot. Order of Apostasy Necromancer? No way, I'd rather see him bring Weaken Knees, Order of the Vamp, Spiteful, BiP, almost any of it. Mostly Weaken Knees. Let the Damascans bring the enchant destruction.

Er, I might be making a mistake here (and you have my apologies if I am), but I noticed a little flaw in your post. Centered around the stats, in fact.

Critical Strikes: 12+1+1
Dagger Mastery: 12+3

For this, I take it you want us to use a minor rune of crit strikes, and a crit strikes mask. And then a superior rune of Dagger Mastery. But quoting another post by you...

Quote: Originally Posted by swordfisher You get the minimum damage from a max weapon at weaponmastery 9. At 12 you get the full damage from a max weapon. Above that, you get bonus damage at a rate of diminishing returns, and additional chance to land a critical strike. 12 weaponmastery gives you a base 16% chance of a crit, 16 weaponmastery gives you about 21%.
So, for example, having Dagger Mastery/Critical Strikes at 16/13 gets you about the same crit% at 15/14, but slightly more damage on your weapon attacks (and a little more damage on your attack skills). So, in that case, why do you want us to to go 15 dagger and 14 crit instead of 16 dagger and 13 crit? You said it would have about the same crit %, but better damage. Not to mention in the case of daggers, mastery actually makes you attack faster as well.

(Quoted from The Dagger FAQ v4.0 (effective DPS versus melee/bow weapons)

Quote:

Originally Posted by shaktiboi Daggers, unlike other weapons, do not have one single speed. Instead, the speed varies depending on your ranks in Dagger Master, ranging from 1.33 seconds per attack at 0 ranks to 1.00 seconds per attack at 16 ranks in Dagger Mastery. Either way, thank you for the submission, it's very nice from what I can see and will probably be the basis of the assassin I plan to make with the release of Factions.

Quote: Originally Posted by MysticPain

Ah, I see! Thank you for clearing that up then, makes a lot more sense.

A/w i think has a lot of cool things to use, like

Bonetti's Defense
Description: For 5-10 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block incoming melee attacks and arrows. You gain 5 energy for each successful melee attack blocked. Bonetti's Defense ends if you use a skill.
Energy Cost: None.
Activation Time: None.
Recharge Time: 8 Adrenaline.
Linked Attribute: Tactics. Increases duration.
Skill Type: Stance.

which could be used while your skills recharge to help gain energy also, or just help protect yourself since after a chain of attacks you would have a lot of adrenline or just use some shouts like watch yourself that take only 4 adrenline, and even with very very low tactics one could keep it up almost 100% of the time while they are attacking

Quote: Originally Posted by unholy guardian

Just a thought, but would Flashing Blade be a good variant in this strategy in place of Dark Apostasy?

The fact that with 30 second recharge time, combined with 30 second lasting time with 15 dagger mastery, would allow only 75% of attack to hit you.

So, in theory, it should work, yes?

Adoboy. This thread is a year old. The build sucks.

While were on current dates.

Recall could be used as a nice enchantment for Golden Phoenix with the new skill balance. It also gives defense to teleport out.

Quote: Originally Posted by Spoony