A Monk's view on Assassins

WHOA!

Monk to Assasin, thats a HUGE change, complete opposites, like black and white, chalk and cheese, good and evil, ....

gahhh, the contradiciton is melting my brain

But yea, I think its just gona take a little time for things to settle for the good old assasin, the mental change should happen way before the build does.

Actually, its not that problem. A lot of assassins will run/shadow step behind the main line of advancing meleers (to attack squishies) FORCING monks to move forward of the main group of squishes to go try save them.

This means that either, the monk lets the assassin die, or you go forward get munched by the meleers. That is the problem, same can be said with some warriors.

That is called over-stretching. The thing is, at least warriors CAN tank for a few seconds, notice they have made a mistake and run back. But Assassins generally die very quickly. Yes they will be spiked to death faster than WoH to be activated.

As for using heal seed, its a hideously expensive long recharge spell. Vig Spirit + boon is better.

As for attacking our builds, I must ask, have you ever played a monk?
If you have, then have you ever tried to play a monk where the Warr / Sin drags your ass forwards into the hurt zone of the entire enemy mob?
When I'm in my guild, I can actually be safe behind the other squishies, since the Meleers know what they are doing, and I dont actually have to cast active spells against enemies.

As far as I see it atm, if you take on a ninja mission to take out the backline of the enemy, make sure you know that a ninja mission means your on your own. I would be a bad monk (ie. risking team wipe) if I move forward to cover your ass since if I die, normally the team is heading for a very quick exit also.

Uh, assassins are supposed to be shadow stepping behind to attack monks, etc.

And they are also supposed to have a way to get themselves out...something I rarely see assassins using.

If we are talking about what assassins are supposed to be doing, don't stop analyzing their tactics right before they do the stupid thing that gets them killed (ie. pounding away at a half healed enemy monk behind enemy lines while waiting for thier attack combo to recharge).

Having a Shadow Step skill that gets them out of trouble is 1000 times more useful than one that gets them into trouble.

ya that is very true, hell i was trying to beat the game again with people, he took around 5 trys becuase all the groups i got into sucked, they didn't know who to get, so i started my own group and not only did we beat it, but in a nice time too.

I did the captured son quest with My monk last night. This is my first monk, and she is level 15, I went out with a ritualist and 4 assassins, and we did fine. I did have to rez a couple of assassins, I had to rez the ritualist once, and once, when i got pulled too far forward, I had to get a rez from the ritualist. But we got it done. I dont think you should expect to never die. But if you understand that, then all is well. I dont think I have a cookie cutter build. I just use what I have bought.

I suggest they be called "assos."

ok, i posted what i think to be the perfect assasin build here, it should have been in the assasin section, and thus was moved, but here is the link http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3030538

i am an assasin and use this build myself, made it myself too, and it works great

i can kill most any monster in my first combo, or by the end of my second combo.

So don't bitch about dying when you are almost twice out of our cast range then.

Ok, as an assasin, and since I dislike having to run for cover, I simply take flashing blades, shadow refuge, way of perfection, and critical strikes, I have 50% to dodge all attacks against me(except spells), I get alot of criticals and I have the dual attack that scores two consecutive critical strikes. I also have Nightstalkers armor.

Is that ok for everyone to deal with? I can heal myself well and keep myself safe from an angry ranger/tank most of the time, I can kill casters with a quick combo and maybe one more skill afterwards.

I admit this teleportation tactic is foreign to me, and I am reluctant to try it, but if Im trying as hard as I can to support myself is that ok?

If you're spending time healing yourself, you're NOT spending it hurting someone else.

Your 8 skill bar points should be geared toward killing someone as much as possible.

The only 2 non-kill skills on an assassins bar should be a single self heal [shadow refuge sucks but it's the most efficient of the bunch] and the never-important res-sig!

If it's me and my team hopefully doesn't suck, I'd bring only a single self heal to use AFTER I tele my butt outta that fight...

Well I tend to find that with my 3 hit combo can do around 252 dmg on a 60al opponent, and 203 dmg on 100 amor opponents. I think its around mid-damage range. And I can support myself as well.

Oh and I use way of perfection and critical strikes before I enter the battle so I dont have to waste time on it. All I need now is a zealus mod >.<

And I find that if I try to make a large combo chain, I usualy dont have the energy to complete it.

I disagree. As a warrior, I always carried some defensive skills on my skillbar (like Watch Yourself!) in addition to heal signet and rez signet. I could still deal out tons of damage, but I wasn't taxing the monk as much. I've been playing an assassin for a few days now--have exclusively henched so far. I carry a couple of defensive/self-heal skills in addition to my main combo.

I also agree with the poster above you--I have not found it necessary to step in/step out, probably because of those defensive/self-heal skills. This may change later, but right now, I like the build I've got. It does a lot of damage, and the monk doesn't have to babysit me (very important when the monk is Sister Tai!).

It was not meant as a general slur on all Assassins. These 2 were trying to tank and was on 60 dp and dropping after one hit. My suggestion to them to used ranged weapons was merely, in my view, a constuctive one to complete the mission, which we did.

There is bound to be a learning curve with the Assassin and I never looked upon them as 'noobs', just inexperienced with thier character.

I'm not generalising, so please don't do so yourself.

Oh...I thought you were going to talk about Assassins attacking a monk when I saw the Title...

Assassins are not hard to heal if you know how to heal them. Vigorious Spirit can help a lot on Assassins because of their fast attack speed. The only problem is that if the assassin charge into battle alone, he or she WILL die, but this is true to any class.

In general, I don't find assassins in PvE is hard to heal at all.

I appologize, but I havn't read the whole topic. Instead, I'd like to add a point on this particular point:

I play a Sword Ranger more often than anything else. I'm that crazy Ranger running up to either pull in aggro and tank a bit, or to help a Warrior and soak some damage while I'm at it. And, just for note, Assassins have the same AL as a Ranger: 70.

The trick here is that I have skilled myself specifically for this endeavour. Everything about my character focuses on defense and keeping myself alive. I use armor that best suits my character, a shield with enough points into Tactics to get the benefit of its added AL, and soon even my weapon will defend me properly.

But, that's the fundamental difference between my character and the Assassins I've paried with. While I'm set and prepared to take damage and keep myself alive so my healer isn't having fits, the Assassin is speced to damage. And why not? Sins are great for damage. But, when they have 3, 4, or even 5 or more skills set up to deal a huge spike on a target, they don't have much room left for the kind of defense that they need to stay where they need to go. I've also had a year now to play and perfect my character as much as I can. Assassins have had, what, a couple weeks? I somehow doubt that anyone really knows how to play them yet. And it'll probably be like that for a while yet.

I guess in short, I'm just saying that you should never blame the class or character. You should blame the person behind the controls. Fairly, and only for their faults, and lack of experience is not a fault.

I don't think that the general assassin playerbase will "get better" at it.

Even after a full year, W/Mo's still think Mending and Healing Breeze are useful skills on a Warrior, and that Warriors are only useful for tanking because, supposedly, they don't deal big damage. The general Warrior playerbase hasn't improved, so why would the assassin playerbase improve?

In general, the best thing to do is to not accept more than one assassin into the group. I'd rather stick with none, though, unless the person explains his or her build beforehand.

Just as a w/mo is a paladin.

A/mo is Aladin, point taken.

If more assassins were aware that they are supposed to be quick in/hard hit/quick out then a lot of this hate would go away.

Too many folks see sins as harder hitting tanks when that's just not what they do. Heck I'd almost wish that anet would have rolled the sins out without a single defensive/self healing spell. Just to emphasize the fact that a sin should never be where an enemy can hurt them for long.

I find that there are also alot of noobs playing assassins. They shadow charge into the enemy and think that is sooooo cool to stick it to other player's face but when i asked how you get killed in one hit? they responded "45%DP". Assassins always tries to start a group and invite other assassins, they have their little own group and they believe that they can take the warrior's place in the game. If you want a good party, get one assassin at the least and get more warriors.

Assassadin has a better twang

I have been playing the Ft. Aspenwood competitive mission quite a lot the past few days with my warrior. It's a pretty fun mission and for someone like me who plays very little PvP it's fun to play against real people. I run a pretty cheap warrior build using warrior's endurance and energy attack spams and it just rips up most of the assasins. It's pretty damn funny to see someone use mending like it's gona save them...seems to me like the assasin needs all their energy for spikes and shadow arts to do dmg and get away.

I have to agree that it's a case of a class that is hard to play but loved by newbs....exact same situation with rangers when GW first came out.

The only use for mending AFAIK is a cover enchant for my Life Barrier/bond. xP

Monk LFG w/o ass ass ins

Still seem to get the same number of invites LMAO

For you ass ass ins who are so expert that you don't need heals, then not getting monk heals shouldn't be an issue.

For the rest of the ass ass ins, better learn to become one of those experts LOL.

for the last time: an assasin might be able to stand up against physical damage like a ranger (still think rangers are better in general) - but every assasin misses the +30 vs elemental that makes the ranger hold out against casters much longer than mr & mrs anorexic.

assasins are melee-squishees. and they better realise that ass-nin's armor is NOT like ranger-armor...
i am not wasting ANY energy on an ass-nin that thinks he/she needs to go off-target / shadowstep out of my range.

so far i met one ass-nin who was doing a good job: so i know it is possible... shape up rest of the ass-nin-world!