Vampiric Assassin

Hi,

I'm new to GW and have been playing my Assassin (and the game) for only three weeks, but I made this build which seems to work pretty well and was wondering if you had any ideas for improvements. It's sort of like a "touch ranger" but uses the telport skills of the assassin to get to the kill, and critical strikes to ensure a good energy to fuel vampiric bites, etc. I don't think its as good as expertise from rangers for energy management, but it seems to do well in PVP or PVE, from what I can see. Certainly, with 12 in blood magic the damage of the vampiric attacks is high, and multiple siphon's really keeps me going.

Critical Strikes 11+2
Blood Magic 12
Dagger Mastery 7+2
Shadow Arts (about 6 I think, can't remember)

Life Siphon -degen/regen 3 life (spam it!)
Black Mantis Thrust -damage + cripple
Black Lotus Strike - damage + energy (PVE replace with Unholy Feast)
Vampiric Bite -steal 65 life
Flashing Blades (E) -"good" defense, could be replaced
Critical Eye +6% crit / +1 energy on crit
Sharpen Daggers -13 seconds of bleeding on crits
AOD or Viper's Defense (PVE: Shadow Refuge optionally)

note: energy return on crits comes from basic dagger attacks under critical eye because I haven't really taken much else. Main purpose is energy return and the odd special (in the above case, Black Mantis Thrust and Black Lotus Strike if included). Sharpen Daggers at least makes them bleed, great for us vampires

In PVE I stand back and siphon life from around 3 targets if I can (gives me +9 regen) then I charge in and bite away using flashing blades if things get tough. Vampiric bites on top of this regen keeps me going well, and I use Xuekuo's daggers to maintain a nice long sharpen daggers for bleeding and +15% enchanted damage. I hex my target with Life siphon then hit with Black Mantis Thrust, so he is crippled, loosing life (to me), and hopefully bleeding to my daggers as well. Vampiric Bites and high crits for energy return seems to work well and I've managed to pretty much keep the vampiric attacks chaining away for a long time. Viper's defense makes a nice getaway for its poisoning as well. In PVE unholy Feast seems more useful than Black Lotus Strike, especially with a nice amount of siphons locked on, you can take a lot of damage like that.

Since I made this build i've got few a few missions with little or no healer support, and still been in the thick of things doing what strikes me as good damage - I just need to take a bit more time prepping my food sources with Life Siphon first.

In PVP I'd replace Shadow Refuge (or something else) with AOD (not that I have it yet) or viper's defense. The Black Lotus Strike tends to give enough energy for another immediate vampire's bite straight after it, so it's high damage and good return on life (65 from the bite).

I imagine all this would go really nicely with vampiric daggers too (l'm still looking for Chkkr's Pincers or Urkal's Kamas): life siphon + cripple + life drain + bleeding + (bite + gaze repeated until in danger, then...) + poison (from the viper's defense for the escape teleport)

Anyway, look forward to any feedback

Nice addition: (maybe?)

Life Siphon -degen/regen 3 life (spam it!)
Black Mantis Thrust -damage + cripple
Black Lotus Strike - damage + energy (PVE replace with Unholy Feast)
Vampiric Bite -steal 65 life
Vampiric Spirit (E) - for 17 seconds steal 41 health from random foe when cast spell (+3 energy)
Critical Eye +6% crit / +1 energy on crit
Sharpen Daggers -13 seconds of bleeding on crits
Shadow Refuge

Putting Vampiric Spirit in the build along with Shadow Refuge(and using something like Xuekuo's daggers which enchance duration of enchants), gives a really nice heal + life steal that can be quickly and cheaply recast. That, along with a chain of life from life siphon and as many bites as I can get in, should make a mess of most foes.

How should I put it? It sucks.
If you want to spam degen, make a Necro or Mesmer. If you want to be an Assassin, ditch Blood. If you want to kill a guy while doing degen, here's a thing to consider:
A/X

Critical Strikes 12+1
Dagger Mastery 10+4
Shadow Arts 7+1

Seeping Wound{E}
Iron Palm
Falling Spider
Twisting Fangs
Shadow Refuge
(Black Lotus Strike)
(Entangling Asp)
Res Sig

Knockdown, Deep Wound and 11 degen quite fast. The only thing that might bother you is the 20 second recharge on Iron Palm. But you still have 2 spots left, so you could take Black Lotus Strike+Entangling Asp to get another knockdown and poison, along with some energy management.

This is completely from a PvP aspect, in PvE your build might work, but wammos work there, too.

Xasew seems to think he knows everything, which he clearly doesnt. Because if he did, he would know that assassin builds ARE NOT static, and anything works.

nice build

Harsh words Thanks for the morale boost Lambent.

I tried lots of builds, including A/R and A/E, and basically pure A seemed to be the best in close combat, and the others average at range (don't have barrage yet - I'll hopefully get it soon ).

Basically apart from pure assassin, anything else seemed to die quickly. Even a pure assassin with flashing blades, high crits, and critical defenses, fell over eventually, sometimes really quickly. So that's where I looked into this build, and yes, from a PVE perspective, with mainly henchies and a few times so far in groups where it has worked really well. Maybe because psychology when I'm sitting in the back lines with this build I'm siphoning everyone's life until I'm really well prepared with at least +9 life regen before rushing in.

As for PVP, i've only tried it a few times and it seemed pretty good to me, but I'm a noob so there you go

I still need better elites, maybe Vampiric Spirit or AOD or something cool, but for now it seems to me to be an interesting build and it certainly seems to have more survivability than my pure assassin build with Flashing Blades and Crit Defenses (maybe because I still have Flashing Blades ...). Basically I kill them and heal myself at the same time.

Vampiric Bite? 9 in Dagger Mastery? Vampiric Spirit without decent energy management? I'm sorry but you're out of energy after 2 Siphons.
Only 2 attack skills and the other has a 25 second recharge? Your damage done by auto-attacking is laughable.
No res?

Don't take it the wrong way, this just happens to be how I tell people what I think. I'm here to give people criticism and tell what works and what doesn't. And this doesn't work in PvP unless you're facing RA newbies.

2 siphons WOULD get rid of his energy IF he had 0 (yes, 0 <---) energy regen, and if he never attacked. Zealous hilt = assassin's best friend

Notice his critical strikes are at 13. That gives +3 energy for each critical. Plenty of energy management

In actual fact, before I get into hand to hand range, I'm normally sitting back and using necromancer weapons to siphon life. That sits me currently on about 44 energy, and with 4 energy regen I really can spam life siphon without any difficulty whatsoever. Even if I switch to daggers and spam outside of combat (no critical energy returns) I rarely wait more than a second beyond the cast time to get off a siphon.

When I go into combat I switch to my daggers (currently Xuekuo's), I imagine a zealous dagger would be wonderful for this build, but even without the vampiric bites tend to come very often (if too slow for you, stick a Vampiric Gaze in there as well as it costs less). With the extra energy from critical eye, and 3 from crits at 13, I'm really not having any energy problems at all. Use shrouded armour as well if need be.

Bascially the key parts of the build are:

Critical Strikes 13 (for the 3 energy per crit)
Blood Magic 12 (for the siphon at +-3)
Daggers enough for acceptable white damage (but the goal is not really to kill them with your daggers, they're there fornuisance value, enchants, and above all energy through crits)

Life Siphon
Vampiric Bite
(Vampiric Gaze)
Critical Eye (need those crits and this boosts it to +4 energy per crit)

The rest is up to you.

I still get taken down by spikes obviously (and my life regen drops when my food sources die too quick), and a spellbreaker in PVP totally destroyed me (but it would a touch ranger too I guess.), but in PVE it really is quite nice to have +9 life regen and solid +65 life from vampiric bites (and the odd +140ish from an Unholy Feast). The big thing as well - this is life stealing, so it is not affected by armour - I think I'm doing great damage and healing myself too.

Anyway, it's fun being a vampire assassin so for now it keeps me amused, and that's the big part for me in this game


addendum: looking at better builds based on this idea, maybe this could work:

Life Siphon
Palm Strike (E)
Twisting Fangs
Vampiric Bite
Critical Eye
Dark Escape
Shadow Refuge
Viper's Defense


Nice siphoning and life drain skills, a high damage touch attack in Palm Strike followed by a critical based Twisting Fangs for bleeding and deep wounds. good energy return from criticals + critical eye. Get in using dark escape (and use it for a bit of extra defense if needed), get out with Viper's Defense and poison them as well, and shadow refuge for emergency healing.

Against spell breakers, replace Palm Strike with something like Unsuspecting Strike (highest crit based lead attack), and replace shadow refuge with Dark Apostasy (at 13 crit strikes with critical eye up you will not loose energy when you strip enchantments on your crits), this would give you:

Life Siphon
Unsuspecting Strike
Twisting Fangs
Vampiric Bite
Critical Eye
Dark Escape
Dark Apostasy (E)
Viper's Defense / Shadow Refuge