For PvEers: Introducing the New Wammo!

Assassins can be quite powerful in sneaking into the back lines to pick off enemy casters. However, they don't even come close to tanking like a warrior.

Some people believe that warriors are good tanks because they have 80 armor, but that is not true. They also have absorption runes, ascalon/knights armor that gives more absorption, a shield (the stance collector shield with a stance build will always have the -2 absorption on), and several other warrior skills that boost armor and give chance to evade. The absorption is the difference between taking 15 damage a hit and taking 8, basically allow a warrior to tank twice as long as another character. Absorption is not that important for high damage attacks (ex. lightning orb), but you actually take most of your damage for low damage attacks (think of absorption as gaining 5 to 7 hp each time you are hit, it's like an automatic healing breeze).

The assassin can use some defensive stances and skills to avoid some attacks, but the lack of absorption and a shield severely limits their ability to take hits.

Good idea but Unyielding Aura was nerfed a while back so that it exploits the corpse when it ends . The death Nova part is still viable. It would be funny if the most eagerly awaited class ended up as nothing but 'suicide bombers' though.

The 'sins that keep dying just need to learn how to use shadow arts. IMO you can't play a sin primary without it. Shadow stepping is a tricky concept to learn and requires more mesmer like thinking than warrior-like thinking; you have to wait let things develope and react to mistakes your enemies make. The problem with assassins, I think, is that the wrong people are playing them.

Im going to try and make one ( I promised my guild Id prove assasins can be good cause they feel the same like you guys )
An assasin should jump in, do his thing, and shadow step out of there. Or use some nasty shadow trick to defend himself. And pick the weakest targets out there indeed.

i dont think assasins wer made to tank, i think thay are for teliporting to the monks a eles and geting of a kill or to and jumping to you monk for some good healing utimenty making them one of the most usefull players you can get, but to meany wouild not be a good thing at all.

I made an assassin for Factions, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job.
I've definatly got a habit of standing back to assess a situation before I go charging in, so I usually go somewhere that I'm not likely to die really quickly. And if I start to take heavy damage, I back out and just throw some Deadly Arts.

I'm thinking an assassin could benefit from a skill like serpent of quickness, infact I already have an assassin in mind right now.

I love how people base surveys, if we can call this a survey, on the idiots of the population. Though I must say that from the assassins with which I have partied with, be it on my mesmer or on my assassin (yes... they are both from Lyssa), people who play assassins think them to be warriors... and don't know what kiting is.

If you are having a hard trouble kiting with an assassin, god knows why, try these skills; Recall, Shadow of Haste, and Dash. If you use recall, you will quite frankly never die. "Whats this? My HP is low? I have pulled of my combo? Well then... recall!" If you are even more savee, you can use Shadow of Haste, rush in spike, and get warped out a few seconds later. Its all a matter of understanding that an assassin is a unit made for burst of damage but not found on the front lines.

Refusing Assassins because of idiots is equally moronic, but people are stupid so what can you do. When you simply deny someone an oppurtunity because of the actions of others, you yourself become as aweful as the wipes that messed you up the first time.

I too thought that the assassin blew but when I gave it a fair chance I kicked ass. Keep three healing skills then make the other five a five hit combo. I was able to kill any enemy douple my level by the time the combo was done. Then heal then combo again. Don't know what the big deal on energy was, never had a problem. I was able to get the 250 fangs in an hour.

That's it right there. You can't use the assassin like a warrior and tank, you have to use the assassin as it is and tank. With my warrior I usually run into a mob then take them all on while focusing on the most damage dealing enemy first. As an assassin I move in quick upon the enemy I think I can do the most damage to in the shortest amount of time and take them out before the other enemies start engaging me. I preceed then to take out the next one I think I could take out with one combo.

So as a warrior I take out the ones that I think can do the most damage to me then laugh at the others as I take my time to take them out. For an assassin all enemies are dangerous so I take out the ones I think I can in one combo to lighten the burden. The healing skills are usually enough to take care of the damage I recieve from the others once they begin engaging. Once I take on ranger as my secondary I will have Troll Unguant and Healing Spring to choose from as well as having a pet and traps. I can even lay my own spirits down to use. I'm thinking about necro too so I can be a death assassin. Move in and kill one enemy before the others engage then when my hit points get low I can use the corpse to heal myself near full and focus more on taking the other out, repeating the process.

The assassin is an excellent class if you learn how to play it. They just have to do something about the running. He runs like a characters in a bad anime.

You hacked my brain!

Shadow of Haste is a bit annoying because of how long you run for. You may want some healing skills from Shadow Arts with you, but have less "stay in combat till this skill runs out" time and then there is your dilema.

One bad thing I saw happening was people forming all 'sin groups just to "prove a point". That's completely off-kilter. I had a friend join the group just to see how they did and, needless to say, they got owned. The Assassin class isn't supposed to be played like that. The problem is, not only do the noobtards who play the class think that they are supposed to tank, most of the monks and other assassin haters think that too.

Ok so there's a lot of people here saying how to play an assassin correctly...

...but why take one over another warrior? Sure, the warrior does slightly less damage, but he can take a beating no problem and adds an extra line of defense for your squishies. Also, if the assassin's job is to pop in, do a bunch of damage, then get out, don't you think that overall a warrior would be doing MORE damage, since they're doing it constantly from the beggining to the end instead of in bursts?

Because when combined with 1 warrior, the 'sin class can effectively disable more enemies on their own when they are distracted than another warrior killing while the other tanks.

its because assassin was designed to be a secondary to ranger. its all about the 1 energy combo chain.

Not true at all. My main is a Mesmer. I'd rather take a mesmer over an assassin anytime.

If you talk to the Assassin Headmaster, he mentions they're supposed to deal huge damage, using the shadows to avoid being killed (i.e. you can do damage but you'll take it too).

As an A/W I'm trying to go for the high damage with decent defense (stances etc). As others have said, the assassin should be following the warrior in, so that the warrior can still tank whilst you dance between targets, spreading conditions or inflicting mass damage. The armour, whilst better than casters, is less than Warrior and possibly less than my Ranger (don't have max armour yet) so of course they can't take a lot of damage.

Course the reason they're the new Wammo is because of the "zomg ninjas rule!" mindset of a lot of people... who then conveniently forget that ninjas don't charge into battle with 7 enemies shouting "i'm gonna pwn u!"

Also don't forget that once you're off the island, some of the other classes you see are gonna be old chars from Tyria. People who have 1, 2, 3+ months of experience with that class. Assassins have what, 3 days of experience. It's always tough getting used to a new class. It took me a good 2 months to truly 'master' my first char, a R/Me, and there are still things I'm learning about her 12 months down the line.

Personally anyone who kicks an assassin just because its an assassin are the kind of people I wouldn't want to party with either. It's just stupid to get rid of someone because of their class. Just another of the many reasons I never group anymore

If you want to run an assassin up in the line of fire all the time in PVE, maybe going elementalist secondary and using Armor of Earth constantly would work? Then maybe you can use aftershock with a knockdown attack or something eh...

why the hell would anyone consider sins as tanks? from what ive seen my bro use his sin it doesnt take much skill to keep alive oO you just have to be smart enuff

There's a much better way to do this. Take 2 stances. Keep in mind you can only have 1 stance up at a time and then when SoH ends you go back to where you cast it.

I like to use shadow of haste in the back line, then death's charge to teleport to a group of squishis, and use double dragon/inferno/lead attack/offhand attack (I'm an E/A) (Earth magic with its knockdowns is probably better but I don't have the skills to do it yet). This takes about 5-6 seconds to pull off and leaves the casters dead or near dead. I then hit dark escape to get back to the backline (ending shadow of haste). Dark escape is good because if the place you took off from have been overrun, it' provides good defense. Any of the squishies you just attacked can probably be wanded to death at this point.

I'm sure there are better elementalist skills to do this with. But I'm still experamenting and this works pretty well.

And that same mesmer that makes warriors look stupid makes you look stupid.

So uh... exactly how great are you again?

I don't think Dahl was trying to say that he was SO MUCH BETTER than ANY OTHER ASSASSIN or something like that, but It is easy to be a little arrogent if you've had previous experience with a class, e.g. played during preview etc. and took the time to figure out how its skills work. I think the skill "Aura of Displacement" should be a must for all PvE assassins. When low on health, you can teleport back away from the fight and regen. You sacrifice an elite slot, but It doesn't require a spirit or anything other than an enemy to work.