Master Assassin: an int based build

[Mellkor]

Why can't we have both?

for one thing, which feat would you give up for PA?. And second, your to hit on the first swing would be below +50, which for me is not acceptable, as you could no longer hit most mobs on a 2. You cant damage em if you cant hit em. I just cant see giving up any feat I have on this guy for PA, where it would be worth the trade-off.

[krogyy]

seems a fun build to play.

the only flaw may be the to-hit vs high fort bosses, especially when you will need to swap to a DR beater.

afaik you don't get the SA bonus to hit when the SA is resisted by fort.

[Mellkor]

That is what improved destruction is for

[TheDearLeader]

seems a fun build to play.

the only flaw may be the to-hit vs high fort bosses, especially when you will need to swap to a DR beater.

afaik you don't get the SA bonus to hit when the SA is resisted by fort.

The above is true, but the To-Hit issue will plague even the Strength Rogue, I feel. I'll normally try to compensate with Divine Power Clickies, Assassin's Focus, Human Versatility : Attack instead of HV : Damge... etc. And turning off PA where necessary, of course.

[voodoogroves]

Why can't we have both?

Personally, my assassin is more blended as well. Assassinate DCs won't be as high as these on his next life, but definitely pretty solid ... but also will be STR based, etc.

[karl_k0ch]

Thanks for putting up this build. If the numbers you gave are the sustained values, I can really see the advantage of your build, as you are not too far behind the Str-score of a non-outgeared Str-based rogue.

How do you get to that Str-number, actually?

14 base
2 exceptional
6 enhancement
1 exceptional, ravager
3 profance
4 tome (?)
2 rage or ship; whatever you consider more sustainable
---
32.

Is that breakdown correct?

Re: Most DPS comes from SA damage. It's actually a close call, even against 0% fort targets, and assuming that you never have aggro.

I'm going to assume that you have a bard in your party which can grant at least +6 morale bonus to damage (this is achievable by any pure spellsinger, or any level 8+ warchanter).

SA damage is 17d6 + 12 + 5 (plus past lives?) = 76.5, i.e. 1453.5 damage over 20 hits. If I am not mistaken, you are not wearing any item which gives an enhancement bonus to SA damage.

With 30+ Int, an EMG has the following stats:
10 enhancement
2d4 = 5 base
12 str bonus (counting Rage and Ship, but not Madstone, or Titan's Grip)
2 ship
6 bard song
---
35 damage.

weapon base damage over 20 hits: 19*35 = 665 damage.

a kukri is a 18-20x2 weapon, so on 6 of 20 hits, we can add 6*35:

critical damage over 20 hits : 210

additional effects:
EMG has Disintegration, which adds about 250 damage over 20 hits.
The Gloves have shocking blow, which add 20d6 = 70 damage on a vorpal hit.
The Assassins Vorpal ability will usually only add 100 extra damage

665 + 210 + 250 + 70 + 100 = 1295 damage over 20 hits, which is indeed less than 1453.5.

But then, as soon as you can't apply SA damage on the first few hits, the Str-part takes over. Note that other enhancements not included, such as Deadly Weapons or Power Attack (each grants +5 weapon base damage, i.e. 95 + 30 extra damage over 20 hits), a seeker item (+36 damage for a bloodstone over 20 hits), prayer, higher bard songs, etc. will further give an advantage to the non-SA part of your damage.

Edit: Added colors to show where what came from.

[Mellkor]

Thanks for putting up this build. If the numbers you gave are the sustained values, I can really see the advantage of your build, as you are not too far behind the Str-score of a non-outgeared Str-based rogue.

How do you get to that Str-number, actually?

14 base
2 exceptional
6 enhancement
1 exceptional, ravager
3 profance
4 tome (?)
2 rage or ship; whatever you consider more sustainable
---
32.

Is that breakdown correct?

yep. With ship buff, because it is more sustainable.

Add rage for 34 for a nice bonus. You could even madstone at times for more.

Currently, I am a drow and started with 15 str to get to that same number with a +3 tome, But I have a +4 int and str tome waiting to go for me when I TR into HElf.

[Mellkor]

...If I am not mistaken, you are not wearing any item which gives an enhancement bonus to SA damage...

Armour give +3 to hit and +5 damage to sneak attacks. Also assassin set gives a bonus, but I dont know what it is since I am still grinding for the darn ring. Hopefully it is better than what the armour gives.

[Mellkor]

Thanks for putting up this build. If the numbers you gave are the sustained values, I can really see the advantage of your build, as you are not too far behind the Str-score of a non-outgeared Str-based rogue.

How do you get to that Str-number, actually?

14 base
2 exceptional
6 enhancement
1 exceptional, ravager
3 profance
4 tome (?)
2 rage or ship; whatever you consider more sustainable
---
32.

Is that breakdown correct?

Re: Most DPS comes from SA damage. It's actually a close call, even against 0% fort targets, and assuming that you never have aggro.

I'm going to assume that you have a bard in your party which can grant at least +6 morale bonus to damage (this is achievable by any pure spellsinger, or any level 8+ warchanter).

SA damage is 17d6 + 12 + 5 (plus past lives?) = 76.5, i.e. 1453.5 damage over 20 hits. If I am not mistaken, you are not wearing any item which gives an enhancement bonus to SA damage.

With 30+ Int, an EMG has the following stats:
10 enhancement
2d4 = 5 base
12 str bonus (counting Rage and Ship, but not Madstone, or Titan's Grip)
2 ship
6 bard song
---
35 damage.

weapon base damage over 20 hits: 665 damage.

a kukri is a 18-20x2 weapon, so on 6 of 20 hits, we can add 6*35:

critical damage over 20 hits : 210

additional effects:
EMG has Disintegration, which adds about 250 damage over 20 hits.
The Gloves have shocking blow, which add 20d6 = 70 damage on a vorpal hit.
The Assassins Vorpal ability will usually only add 100 extra damage

665 + 210 + 250 + 70 + 100 = 1295, which is indeed less than 1453.5.

But then, as soon as you can't apply SA damage on the first few hits, the Str-part takes over. Note that other enhancements not included, such as Deadly Weapons (+5 weapon base damage), prayer, higher bard songs, etc. will further give an advantage to the non-SA part of your damage.

Number crunchers crack me up. I still dont get what yer trying to point out,

[karl_k0ch]

Number crunchers crack me up. I still dont get what yer trying to point out,

I'm trying to fathom which portion of the damage of a well-geared Int-based assassin is actually generated by SA damage. It's a bit more than half of the damage.

My intentions were not to make anyone laugh (about the attempt? about me?), but to provide some insight into the claims you made. I feel a bit insulted by your statement.

[SableShadow]

afaik you don't get the SA bonus to hit when the SA is resisted by fort.

Eh? What?

How would that even work? Checking the fort resistance *before* the hit, I mean.

[Mellkor]

I'm trying to fathom which portion of the damage of a well-geared Int-based assassin is actually generated by SA damage. It's a bit more than half of the damage.

My intentions were not to make anyone laugh (about the attempt? about me?), but to provide some insight into the claims you made. I feel a bit insulted by your statement.

I dont mean to be insulting. My apologies.

To me (and to many, I suspect) all I see is a bunch of numbers multiplied by this or divided by that and I have no clue where these factors come from. That just makes me laugh, its not about you or the attempt, it is about the sheer wall of text, that, at least in my mind, could be simplified down to one sentence or less.

It is like a geometric proof, page after page of diagrams and math just to say, yep, its a triangle. Those make me laugh, too.

The way I see it, (much simpler, at least to me) is base weapon damage is a constant, whether you are actually sneak attacking or not, and therefore is factored out of the issue. So SA becomes the overwhelming component to DPS, at least in this case. In my mind, this translates as "make sure I get sneak attacks to do nice DPS". If thats what your numbers mean, then I thank you for quantifying it for us. I am a geologist, not a math genius!

[karl_k0ch]

I dont mean to be insulting. My apologies.

To me (and to many, I suspect) all I see is a bunch of numbers multiplied by this or divided by that and I have no clue where these factors come from. That just makes me laugh.

There are no divisions apparent in my dps calculation. Only multiplications.
I tried to make my calculations as transparent as possible, nevertheless, there are a few parts where I did not explain where the numbers came from, indeed.
In particular: 1d6 rolls 3.5 on average, 1d4 rolls 2.5 on average. (This is why the SA damge has a .5 at the end).

For the numbers, I calculated the estimated damage over 20 attacks. One of them misses, 19 of them deal the base damage (including SA damage and other effects), 6 of them (rolls 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20) deal an additional base weapon damage because they are crits. In addition to that, one of them gets the Assassin III extra bonus, and the Charged Gauntlets 20d6 damage.

So, yes if you consider a bit more than half of the cake the overwhelming part of the cake, then, yes I've proven your point. Otherwise, I showed that under ideal conditions for the SA damage, it's contribution to the DPS is essential, but only a bit more than 50%.

Your rogue performs so well because you don't have Str dumped, and you use a weapon with very good base damage.

[Ayseifn]

Eh? What?

How would that even work? Checking the fort resistance *before* the hit, I mean.

I've been pretty lazy on testing this fully but to some extent it seems true. Undead block it when fort is up but not sure if it's an issue when you bypass, the WF in Haywire Foundy have 25% fort and block the SA to-hit when the fort is up some of the time(which is very strange, seems like there's a seperate fort roll for to-hit and SA damage) and the red named dogs in LoB might behave similar to the WF in Haywire but since I TRed my rogue wont be able to test that for a while.

Lots of strangeness with fortification and SA.

[Alleyna]

EDIT: about that highlighted red statement, yeah, you're pretty much correct, rogues aren't made for boss dps'ing, but we get much cooler abilities than those dumb barbs, so no worries

What? Rogues are EXCELLENT boss DPS. Even with the increase in fort, there are several ways to reduce fort. On any boss that can be sneak-attacked (which is most of them), rogues without aggro are kings of DPS. There are many threads floating around about ways to reduce fort since U11. If you can fit improved sunder in, that helps dramatically (need to take PA as a pre-req, which fits in quite well!).

OP, your build looks pretty solid. I also went Helf with Arti Dilly (please fix int enhancement Devs!), but I went strength based with just enough int to hit the 42 DC and max out the enhancement on the EMG. In fact, our rogues look very similar, just swap the str and int scores. There are lots of ways to play rogues, and I think they can all bring something to the table. IMO, it's player skill > gear > build

[Mellkor]

So, yes if you consider a bit more than half of the cake the overwhelming part of the cake, then, yes I've proven your point. Otherwise, I showed that under ideal conditions for the SA damage, it's contribution to the DPS is essential, but only a bit more than 50%.

Your rogue performs so well because you don't have Str dumped, and you use a weapon with very good base damage.

As long as the icing is part of that "bit more than half" then yep, it sure is the overwhelming part

[karl_k0ch]

As long as the icing is part of that "bit more than half" then yep, it sure is the overwhelming part

So you usually slice cake in a way that one part has the icing, and the other has not?

[Mellkor]

So you usually slice cake in a way that one part has the icing, and the other has not?

Whenever possible, my friend! (As long as I get the piece with the icing!)

[dredre9987]

Thanks for the posting...


And Karl...numbers mean **** in real applications...in case you didn't know that yet. They really don't mean anything if that first hit assassinates as well.

[SableShadow]

...numbers mean **** in real applications...

It's a build post.

It's all numbers.