Glass cannon - rassassin

i decided to post my own lil build and i'm sorry for my bad english

Mainly for PvP

R/A

attribudes
beast mastery 9 (8+1)
expertise 13 (9+1+2)
dagger mastery 12

weapon:
zealous pvp daggers of (your choice)
dmg+15%
energy-5

armor: explorer's- (+30hp if remember right) or sentry's (AL +10 while in stance) armor with superior vigor

Skills
1.any lead attack (i use leaping mantis sting)
2.any off-hand attack (wild strice)
3.horns of the ox
4.falling spider
5.any strong dual attack (blades of steel)
6.moebius strice
7.tiger's fury or bestial fury
8.res

your job
so your job is to deal much damage in small time.
you kill warriors, rangers, monks, mesmers, eles, ritualists, assassins and necros.
Start by activating TF/BF and use skills 1,2,3,4 and. After using skills 1,2,3,4 and 5 your target should have hp below 50% so when you use moebius all your attack skills are recharged and you can use skills 1,2,3,4 and 5 again. So it's 11 hit combo. But you have to kill your foes 1 by 1 because otherwise horns of the ox wont do KD. there is 2 ways to kill your foe. a) start attacking with your normal attacks (dealing 3-17dmg) so your foe thinks that you are weak, but after while you release your combo and then it's too late for him/her to run away. b) if there is a monk in enemy team you have to get your team mates to distract the monk so you can kill the weakest link of enemy team

problems
energy is not a problem, for 1 x 11 hit combo you use only about 10 energy, so you will do fine with just 20 energy and 2 energy reg

your bigest problem is your self-healing... 'cause you don't have it! so you have to hope that you have monk or kill your foe, move back and regen...

also blind, empathy, SS, any block/evade stance, guardian or any similar skill/spell will shut you down, but if you see someone using stance just change your target.


i thank you for reading my build thread and i excuse my bad english ...
[EDIT] you only need major expertise rune

Is there a reason you didn't mention Twisting Fangs (this seems to be an assassin build trend that I just don't understand)? I can't think of a better way to deal fast-finisher damage than a Deep Wound.

By doing the horns of the ox/spider combo, it gives you another dual hit in, which might be stronger than 20% hp from deepwound.

So with two skills you can get a conditional 68 damage and poison*, or with one skill you can get 36 damage, deepwound (against a player with 500 max hp this would equal 100 damage), bleeding, and still throw in another attack to try getting a more even comparison with the first set.

Nope, I just don't understand it. Especially since if you're going up against a warrior with Balanced Stance or a team with a warder (new ward that prevents knockdown) your combo is crippled in the first situation, but not hindered at all in the second.


*I assumed stats of 16 dagger mastery and 12 critical strikes

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actually, with a R/A your attempting for a kill even more.

with 0 crit strikes deep wound from Twisting fangs lasts 5 seconds.
thats plenty of time. Infact, if you need anything more than 5 seconds to kill after you apply deep wound, I'm sorry, but your not gonna kill him. period.

Deep wound is a great finisher if you can read the 'sweet spot'. It requires a little guess work and estimation, but once you get someone to within 20% of max health, you can easily finish them with deepwound. I've been playing around with repeating strike, and that would work wonders to get them to within the last 1/5 of their health.


Also....Any reason you call it the glass cannon?

if 1 of your attacks is being blocked, evaded or missed you can still make small combos, like these

1) lead, off-hand, horns of the ox, moebius, blades of steel, (and if moebius striced a foe with under 50% of his/her health) lead, off-hand, horns of the ox and falling spider

2)lead, off-hand, blades of steel, moebius, (and if moebius striced a foe with under 50% of his/her health) lead, off-hand, horns of the ox, falling spider and blades of steel

so you can still do some minor damage with your skills even if 1 of them gets blocked, evaded or misses (unless the Evd, Blckd, msed skill is lead or off-hand, but dosn't every assassin have same problem?).

why i didn't take twisting fangs?
because it's not worth it. It gives you +10 dmg to your duall attack hits (20) and adds deep wound and bleeding for 5 secs, but when you do it second time it only adds +10 dmg to your hits (20) and renews DW and bleeding.
so you will deal +40 dmg and give DW and bleeding for 10 secs.

So why i took blades of steel?
4 rechargin attacks = 4 x 12 = 48, and because it's dual it will hit for +96 dmg
and it will do the same thing when you use it 2nd time, so it's +192 dmg.
unless you need something what recharges faster than blades of steel or your enemy has 800hp, then twisting fangs is beter than blades of steel.

EDIT: reason why i call it glass cannon is that you can deal lots of damage but you die easily...
EDIT2: you can always change res sig for twisting fang and use it after moebius... but i think it's not smart move...

Heh, I've never rezed anyone in PvP before. That's why I leave the rezzing to the monks.

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I WANT TO SAY: Blades of steel +..dmg (max50)
OMFG....

The template Fangs of Melandru use Twisting Fangs at the end and you can finish any one with this combo very fast. You tried a big combo and I see a problems in your bar skills (no more support). FoM use Bleeding+Poison for degen support and finish with Deep wound and remove 1/5 of HP for 5 sec + the dmg you did (+30 to +40) in this dual attack. Blade of Steel, in other way, do over 100 dmg (max +50 each attack) but its reduced by the armor, not the deep wound because its a condition.


(This is an exemple)
You can have a Lead, offhand and Repeating Strike for an infinite combo until you lost all your energy and use only 3 skills for attacks and do average mediums dmg and finish with Deep Wound for a 4th attacks skills. Used the half of your bar for attacks and the other half for support and use an elite.

Generally, I use max 5 attacks, 2 for supports and 1 for rez sig or 4 attacks, 3 supports and 1 rez. The speed is a secondary choice for me. I better using some "defense against melee char and ranger" with stances and/or Throw Dirt than "kill them faster than I can".

If you have problems to defend yourself against others, I said your answer. You have a lack of defense line skills.

yeah just wait to get blinded... and get killed.

as i understand you are using ranger primary for expertise.

if you want to do the BIG damage u better of goin assassin primary, you will do more damage with critical strikes. or why dont you use the same build on a warior primary? you will last longuer. and where exactly do you feet shadow step? if you are playing a "melee squishie" its a must. if no, do same with a warrior.

except "frenzy" what other speeding stance we got there?

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^^ Ranger Touch will never deal enough damage to be considered a serious threat despite ignoring armor, where as an Assassin combo cannot be ignored.

As for sustained damage...

Because Ranger's have the ability to make the most of their energy they can use longer combos more often. Which means the monk is having to spend more energy to keep up with me. The more damage I deal over time, the harder the strain on the monks energy bar. Spikes are what kill people...but a good infuser can make up for a spike. R/W's generally are used to pressure rather than spike... Now that said, a R/A does not lose the ability to spike, which makes it a very versitle character.

I'm not defending the OP build's lack of stances/support/etc, but a R/A is a very viable character, and works really well.

^^ Another thing. A good mesmer know's how to interrupt the lead attack, but then a good player knows how to get by when your lead attack is interrupted. There are many skills that cannot be blocked or evaded, and skills that let you run an entire combo without getting interrupted. So it's not hard to pull off a combo. Yea there are counters. There are counters to casting spells, but people still do that.

I'm just saying, you shouldn't discount his use of a R/A... Just his skill choice.

i know that i don't have any self healing, def stances and i will be in great danger if someone is able to block my first lead or offhand attack...

i use this mostly at random arenas where people usualy target casters first or don't have so many defencive stances ect., so that gives me advance not be killed first (often). i usualy stay near ally caster if opposing team has assassin or warrior and when they come i can almost always kill them. if there isn't, i usualy let others go first so they will be targeted and i go after 3-10 secs and choose the weakest or most dangerous foe. boon prots go down almost as easily as everyone else, exept you just have to time horns of the ox righ so you can interrupt his/her guardian. And because wild strice is same as wild blow (remove stance and recharge only4) i get sometimes lucky and i'm able to remove def stance from foe.

i have not tried team arenas but team like this might work
1 Glass cannon
2 Monks
1 N/Me or Me/N with rigor mortis (rigor mortis: for 18 second your target cannot block or evade attacks)

But has anyone used my build yet?

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i would not make such a long combo, i would rather have 3-4 spike attaks, rest defence+healing. because with 70 armor and no defence you will not make it to the second attak on your skill bar.

if you wanna go R/A, have at least 2 stances. and no need for escape, cuz you can use a better elite to do more damage. try whirling defence! great stance cuz it lasts long and protects vs melee and projectiles. its expertise skill, so since u have it up hight anyways....

long combo is not very god idea... if u wanna do long chain youre realy better off with a warior, at least you still got your protection, but short combo, you come in, throw it on, leave foe with a few conditions...

if for some reason the other team is retarded and is not spiking you, and you HAVE the time to pull a long combo, just repeat your combo second time... about same damage anyways

well you have 80 armor because of stance armor, and how often do you target rangers first?

and if you want to go for more self healing try using this build

1.any lead
2.temple strice
3.horns of the ox
4.falling spider
5.blades of steel
6.predator season (with 0,9 sec attack rate and dual attacks this is prety good selfhealing skill, also monks do less healing power which is good and bad in some situations)
7.tiger's fury
8.res

so... sac firepower for self healing... of'course you have the problem that enemies also get hp from their attacks and spirits can be easily destroyed...

problem with self healing and defense is that you would need good defence/healing skill what recharges fast enought and because you alredy have your att points at 3 dif attribudes so that would make you put some points to 4th attribude to still make your assassination attempt still good and still have decend/self-healing. this build might work with only 8sec lasting tigers fury or even less and have some points in WS so you can get some healing from troll U. but you still would have to use it before the fight (which actualy works because you shouldn't need more time than those 10 secs to kill) or after the fight. It's not smart to use troll in middle of battle because of 3 sec cast time, so you take more damage than heal! what goes for whirling defense is that after you use it you can't do that much damage without speed boost and it has prety big recharge time, also it dosn't evade spells which is your bigest reason for losing your hp. If you are against melee foe in 1 on 1 you don't actualy need whirling defense because you can KD him twice with 11 hit combo so he/she dosn't have time to attack you many times. Whirling only helps you if your foe manages to block your attack so you would have to wait for recharge. Also saccing 6 hits from combo will reduce your damage so that you can't kill warriors or rangers, also you lose your recharge skill, moebius. Blades of steel has recharge of 20 sec so that would mean that you have to sit and wait until it recharges.

So is saccing much damage for healing so smart after all? the only great defence skill is flashing blades, but it only works while attacking.

Sry for long post, i hope you got patiance to read it and i'm sorry for my bad english... ^^

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The biggest difference between escape and Whirling Defense (aside from being elite) is that it also gives you the speed boost, which, as a melee char with no snare, you desperately need.

^^^ In the case of R/A you don't really need your elite slot for a damage skill. Most R/A's will be using Dagger Mastery, and the elites from that line are not all that great. So really, looking at the other possible Ranger elites...there isn't really anything else to consider, unless you're bringing your pet.

Escape combines speed buff, evasion, quick recharge, and decent duration into one elite. That's well worth it's slot.

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