[C] [A/Mo] Gift of Assassination

Critical Strikes: 10+3
Dagger Mastery: 10+1+1
Healing Prayers: 11

Empathic Removal, 5e 1 10s elite*
You and target other ally lose 1 Condition and 1 Hex.
Gift of Health, 5e 3/4 5s
All of your other Healing Prayers skills are disabled for 6 seconds. Target other ally is healed for 114 Health.
Leaping Mantis Sting, 5e - 8s
Lead Attack. If Mantis Sting hits, target foe takes +19 damage. If this attack strikes a fleeing foe, that foe is Crippled for 13 seconds.
Fox Fangs, 5e - 8s
Off-Hand Attack. Must follow a lead attack. Fox Fangs cannot be "blocked" or "evaded" and strikes for +18 damage if it hits.
Critical Strike, 10e - 6s
Dual Attack. Must follow an Off-Hand Attack. If it hits, this attack strikes for +27 damage and results in a critical hit.
Critical Eye, 5e 1 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.
Dash, 5e - 15s
For 3 seconds you move 50% faster.

Rez Sig
OR
Vengeance, 10e 4 60s
Bring target dead ally back to life at full health and full energy. After 30 seconds, or if this enchantment is removed, the enchanted ally dies. Deaths while enchanted with Vengeance do not incur a Death Penalty.

I had noticed Gift of Health a while back, and it struck me as a perfect skill for a non-primary monk. It kicks out a remarkable amount of health for 5e while disabling all other Healing Prayers skills. Empathic Removal* is ideal for a to-hit character, as it's no-attrib and removes a hex and condition from you even if it doesn't take a hex and condition off target other ally. The rest of the build is fairly standard stuff, with a big energy income from 13 CS and Critical Eye and an attack chain that costs 20e and recharges in 8 seconds flat (while the dual attack Critical Strike will return 8e at the end of the chain).
This build has no self-heal, and so is not meant for RA. It could probably do quite well in Team Arena, with a Boon Prot to support it and it to support the Boon Prot.

I'm not sold on the idea, though I like the sound of Empathic Removal.

First question I have is are you running a type of Monk defense? The build seems tailored that way I suppose, because your damage output isn't where it should be, I think. I like Leaping Mantis Sting, but given the general "meh" feeling I get from Fox Fangs, I wonder if the Lead and Off-Hand can get a bit of an overhaul?

Two, if you're running a more offensive (or at least, a sort of mid-field character, if such a role exists, lol) character, wouldn't Unsuspecting Strike-->Black Lotus Strike-->Critical Strike be more effective?

Three, given the "Other Ally" clause of Gift of Health, I couldn't imagine this character is terribly offensive, so I suppose that's why I'm a bit on the fence about this guy. Should an Assassin really try to heal allies? That's the quasi-philosophical question here, isn't it? Should an Assassin ever try to heal allies, even as an emergency heal?

Gift of Health would certainly be worth bringing as a self-heal, if it could heal yourself, but as it stands now...I don't think it's really worth it for a build of this nature.

The very idea behind Gift of Health seems flawed, actually. Maybe that's why I'm not sold on this build...the only characters who could use it are either Monks or spellcasters with Monk secondaries. Heal Monks wouldn't use it because of the disable effect. Maybe Boon Prots might. N/Mo doing Monk support, absolutely. Rezmers with some WarHate from Illusion, absolutely. But I'm not seeing combat classes doing it.

I think it would need a change in order to be viable...change it from Target Other Ally to just Target Ally, and have its effectiveness both directly proportional to Healing Prayers and inversely proportional to Divine Favor. The higher the Healing Prayers, the more effective Gift of Healing is, but the higher the Divine Favor, the less effective Gift of Healing is. Perhaps even raise it to 10E.

But that's neither here nor there, because we won't see those changes, and either way, the build will still be an Assassin doing so-so damage and trying to double as some sort of emergency back-up Monk. And I can't quite see that as viable.

Going back to Black Lotus Strike, it would need a hex, so if we--though this is changing the entire idea behind your build I suppose, though I'm keeping Empathic Removal, so who knows--slide some points out of Healing Prayers (perhaps drop Healing Prayers all-together?) and into either Deadly Arts or Shadow Arts, and replace Gift of Health with either Siphon Speed (Deadly Arts) or Way of the Lotus (Shadow)...how would that work for you?

Siphon Speed would work as your snare and speed boost, and Dash is there in case Siphon Speed is removed. That seems viable.

If you went Way of the Lotus, your energy return is going to be nuts. From Black Lotus Strike+hex, you're getting 5-17E back. Then from Critical Strike+WotL, you're netting...5-13E+3E from Critical Strikes/Critical Eye:

Critical Strikes: 10+3
Dagger Mastery: 10+1+1
Shadow or Deadly Arts: 11

Empathic Removal, 5e 1 10s elite*
You and target other ally lose 1 Condition and 1 Hex.

***slot for either Siphon Speed or Way of the Lotus***

Unsuspecting Strike, 10E - 4s
Lead Attack. If this attack hits, you strike for +1...25 damage. If your target was above 90% Health you deal an additional 10...34 damage.
Black Lotus Strike, 10E - 30s
Off-Hand Attack. Must strike a Hexed foe. If it hits, Black Lotus Strike strikes for +1..25 damage and you gain 5...17 energy.
Critical Strike, 10e - 6s
Dual Attack. Must follow an Off-Hand Attack. If it hits, this attack strikes for +27 damage and results in a critical hit.
Critical Eye, 5e 1 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.
Dash, 5e - 15s
For 3 seconds you move 50% faster.
Res Sig

Now, the only thing I'm not really liking about that is the recharges. WotL has a recharge of 20 seconds. Black Lotus Strike has a recharge of 30 seconds. What may be a good off-hand for this is Golden Phoenix Strike.

Golden Phoenix Strike, 5E - 8s
Off-Hand Attack. If you have no enchantments on you, this skill fails. If it hits, Golden Phoenix Strike deals +10...26 damage.

I would think it's possible to have some sort of enchantment on you, even if it's Shadow Refuge (in place of the hex, since Black Lotus Strike isn't in the bar anymore).

---

Yeah, I don't know if I helped at all, because my post sounds really wishy-washy, but maybe I gave you something to work with? lol

The damage is not so very so-so. According the the extensively researched Dagger FAQ 4.0, an assassin with 12 DM and 13 CS does 15.1 base DPS, only about 3 points less than a Warrior with 16 in Sword (18.3) or Axe (18.7). However, the Assassin will be able to throw out damaging attack skills much more regularly than either of those two, while generating a huge amount of energy.

I've tried to maximize my energy income, perhaps further than is strictly necessary, and had to lose some dagger mastery to do that. However, I'm trying to make up for the loss of damage from the extra DM by having an attack chain I can spam as frequently as possible, to make use of my zounds of energy. My dagger attacks recharge in 8, 8, and 6- the only way to reduce the recharge of my chain as a whole would be to go Desperate Strike, Wild Strike, Critical Strike for 4, 4, 6. However, Desperate Strike deals no extra damage if I'm above 74% health and Wild Strike is a very iffy skill overall.

This build is meant for the Team Arenas, where a boon prot is often your only healer. Gift of Health kicks out a 114 pt heal every 5 seconds, and Empathic Removal makes the Assassin and a friend just about self-sufficient in hex and condition removal. Both of these relieve pressure on the Boon Prot, which is the greatest weakness of that build (they can respond quickly to almost any situation- except being slowly overpowered).

Thanks for the linkage. I read through the guide. Good stuff. It's nice to see some other people realizing the spike potential of Assassins.

Regarding the build, though, I still can't help but think you could be getting more damage out of it. I can understand wanting to be able to heal allies, handle some hex/cond removal, have fast and spammable attacks, and a CS that can account for the missing levels of Dagger Mastery, because it sounds really interesting, and a neat use for the profession, but I'm leery of the weird trade-off not being worth it.

If it works come April 28th, rock on, but at this point, I'm not sold on it. Let's hope it works, though, because I'd love to be wrong on this one, considering I'm a big fan of Critical Strikes, and would enjoy seeing potential open up for builds of this nature, though not going the Heal route, necessarily.

Quote: an assassin with 12 DM and 13 CS does 15.1 base DPS, only about 3 points less than a Warrior with 16 in Sword (18.3) or Axe (18.7) Actually, it does 3 points less then an assasin with 12 in sword/axe. A Warrior with 16 in Axe does 26.66 dps, and a Sword does 25.59 dps.

According to Ensign

No, those are numbers for a Warrior with 16 Weaponmastery. The difference is that Shaktiboi did not include the 38% bonus that customization and 15^50 (or stanced, enchanted, whatever) add to base figures, while Ensign did. This is noted just below Shakti's damage formula.

Quote: TIP: Since most people PvP with a customized 15/50 weapon, you can multiply each of the following DPS values by 1.38 to determine what the auto-attack DPS would be if you are wielding a customized 15/50 weapon. Using my handy desktop calculator:
shaktiboi's 18.3 for 16 sword * 1.38 = 25.254 dps vs ensign's 25.59
shaktiboi's 18.7 for 16 axe * 1.38 = 25.806 vs ensign's 26.66
shaktiboi's 20.8 for 16 hammer * 1.38 = 28.704 vs ensign's 29.35
shaktiboi's 15.1 for 12/13 daggers * 1.38 = 20.838 vs ----

As you see, they all come to within a margin of error that I'm chalking up to significant digits and perhaps methodology- they're the same numbers. I haven't really looked hard enough to support this, but I think Ensign factored the critical hit rate into his per-hit damage.

Mmm, but Ensign states that his weapons are "unmodded max damage", which definitly throws those numbers off. I don't know if unmodded includes cusomization, but I'd think it does. Oh well, it's not a big differance really, nothing worth arguing over.

The general idea could be good, but I don't like those particular skills - especially those in the chain itself. I think you could squeeze out more damage with Jungle Strike instead of Fox Fangs, etc.