Quote:
Originally Posted by Siren
I'm sorry, but as soon as I saw Horns of the Ox I stopped reading. That's a dickish way of saying it, but I don't know why people aren't realizing that Horns of the Ox sucks as a KD. Your target needs to be isolated for it to work. Your target is rarely isolated enough for it to be a consistent KD.
Why are you perpetuating the stereotype that Assassins want to be tanks? The only time I play a tank is in emergencies, when I need to take aggro away from the Monks.
And you're causing crap damage because you don't have Deep Wound. Drop Jagged Strike, because you'll be able to grab Bleeding from Twisting Fangs later in the combo. Drop Wild Strike and go /W for Wild Blow.
You know what? I don't think it's even worth the effort to try to save your build in this form. lol. It's such a jumbled mismatch of attack skills with no real skill synergy that I wouldn't even call it a respectable cookie-cutter build.
Horns of the Ox is taking up space. You've got no Deep Wound infliction. Your lead attack sucks, but you think it's good because of the cost and fast recharge. You're negating stances with an off-hand (which makes no sense when you think about it). Watch Yourself is doing jackshit in this build; going from 0 to 1 in Tactics doesn't help the 5-second duration, and 5 seconds isn't all that impressive...so that's another waste of a skill slot.
...so yeah. This build doesn't wow me at all.
Funny, that. My lead attack is actually an off-hand that costs 10 energy and has a 25-second recharge, and yet my build will outperform yours in every single way. lol
I agree with you in some of the things you say, but I do disagree with your views on Horns of the Ox.
Seriously people, just because you have to choose a secondary profession doesn't mean you need to use it. Believe it or not, some classes are quite a bit better if you only use your primary attributes. I have set up a few builds that can basically turn an assassin into a temporary tank, but I hate them. They are plainly stupid, and they take away the true way you should play an assassin. If you need to pick up temporary aggro while a tank is being resed, you can easily do it with out standing right on top of your enemy. You can still use the basic hit and run tactics, and hold the aggro while the tank is being resed. If for some reason your entire party is for some ungodly reason without a res, and you have no option but to try and tank, if you have the monks there, you will survive mate, even with the paper thin armor. The amount of damage an assassin puts out on any class of monster in pve will outway the aggro from a monk's heals. Please people, for my sake, and most assassins out there, try using just assassin attributes, I can almost garuntee you won't go back to anything else once you do.
Now, on to Horns of the Ox. Hoto is an extremely useful skill, with or without the KD. It costs 5 energy, only has a 12 sec recharge, and has the chance to knock the enemy down of course, if they are isolated. In the later, and even earlier parts of the game, assassins should be shadow stepping to the squishes, namely monks/mesmers/mages, etc. These classes rarely ever stand close together. The programmers arn't gonna place a group of squishes together, just to watch um all get nuked to death buy one Meteor Shower, etc. Yea, this can happen sometimes, but idealily they are isolated just enough for Hoto to work. If you can put one person between two, then they are far enough apart for Hoto to work, and I HAVE tested this. Now, when these assassins should be shadow stepping to the monks at least, or running to them, after the group has been aggroed, knockdown becomes very useful, especially against those monks. Enemy monks will try to save themselves before they try and save a team mate, I see it happen all to often. When you can knock them down to disrupt them, and cause around 80-100 dmg as well, then you have a good skill. Yes, of course, there will be those times when you just cannot knockdown your foe, but you still are going to do a high amount of damage. If you are pveing, check with your group to see if it is ok not to bring a res. If it is, then your setup should be as follows:
Lead -> Offhand -> Dual attack (Hoto is a good choice) -> Offhand that follows a Dual attack (ex. Falling Spider/Moebius Strike) -> Dual attack (DB is an excellent one)
This gives you 5 offensive moves, a Shadow step, a run skill, and a self heal(or if you trust your monks, a res even). I wouldn't recommend using to many skills that cost 10 energy, unless yoiu have high critical strikes, other than that, try and use attacks that cost 5 energy and not to large of cooldowns(although, cooldown really doesn't matter if you have Moebius strike). Also, if you find that you can't knock the opponant down, then just break the chain and jump to DB. You will still get a 3 skill combo, and some nice aoe to boot.
