Rogue - Assassin Changes

[Severlin]

We are behind on this thread and will be catching up in the next two days. Feedback won't be incorporated into the next Lamannia build but we plan to go through the thread and discuss internally before live.

Sev~

[Bobby88888]

Assassins really aren't anywhere near there yet...
The revamped Assassin still does a lot less damage than the unrevamped Mech before xbow animation fix (thank you for that btw it was badly needed) and has less utility and survivability. They also have less survivability and damage than Acrobats.
The way I see it within Rogue Mech is utility, Acro is survivability and Assassin is damage. That is where each is best but they are still good in both of the others but right now Assassin is last in them all.

Make Assassins the absolute kings of SA damage and crits, and at killing helpless targets. More SA dice and let SA damage crit. Maybe even more multipliers on crits and crit range but you gotta make sure you don't go too far there. This is where an Assassin should fit into DDO.

Assassinate is the 'iconic' insta kill ability but in DDO it is the weakest and imo it should be the best. DCs are fine (I have heard you can assassinate almost nothign in ToEE but???) but it is a "Stealth Melee Assassinate Attack" by description so why exactly does DB etc block it when they say they block MAGICAL death effects. Nothing magical about a dagger across thee throat, through the heart, etc. Let assassinate ignore DB (I like how DW can block it but since adds more tactics to your play so just change the description there OR make it pass that too if you want.), let assassinate hit orange nameds on EH/EE and reduce the CD on assassinate to 12 seconds.

I also think to open up more build diversity you should put Int to hit and damage with daggers and kukris in core 1 and 2 since that frees up a high amount of mandatory AP spent, at the least it lets you reallocate a few points.

To make hitting moving targets with assassinate easier a slight bump in reach even if only with daggers and kukris wouldn't go amiss, even if only when stealthed. When server and comp don't agree on location hard to get assassinate off on your target.

Drop Sneak Attack Training cost to 1 AP per rank. Everywhere except for here and in Ninja Spy tree 1 SA die = 1 AP and often comes with more abilities tagged on. Add more SA dice too, either 1/core or make Sneak attack Training 2 or 3 per rank (at 2 ap a rank) though I like the idea of cores better to make it more unique to high level assassins. Or both but that seems a bit excessive to me.

Lethality is worthless atm but the perfect place to make assassins 'lethal' again. Your SA damage can now critically hit using your weapons multiplier (or static x3 or something if that is too much). Also either make it so SA damage and normal damage does 2x damage to helpless targets OR you do +0.5x damage to helpless targets (for 1.5x with SA damage and 2x with normal damage.). Assassins have no way to create the helpless state themselves so this seems perfectly reasonable to me and may help to make CC a more common thing if an Assassin is in the group just to get their extra damage flowing. This adds build diversity to the whole game and give Assassins a small boost depending on the party. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

I saw a suggestion somewhere to change executes name and make it work on mobs below 50% hp instead so the name nolonger implies killing blow which is fine if thats what it takes to get a better trigger point (much easier to tell 50% hp than 30%) can this damage crit?? if not maybe it should? OR if damage doesn't crit just making it so it can crit in some fashion but the main concern here is the trigger point because 30% is hard to determine, even a little marker on HP bars at 30% or % value of HP left in focus orb is enough.

Poison Strikes right now are worthless. Make the base abilities better and either bump to DC or get rid of it and drop AP cost to 1. Same story with the follow up abilities, especially deadly strikes.
Actually how about remove all of the Poison Strikes abilities and put a new ability in that triggers Assassin's Mark or tie that into Shiv and add something else entirely here or leave the old Poison Strikes there as legacy but no one will use, even with Assassin's Mark the cost makes it a poor choice compared to Harper MP, at least if it was tied to Shiv people would probably invest in the higher abilities.

To complement Assassin we also need more support of stealth gameplay in the future and to find out what is causing all the AI issues that gets messed up most updates.
*In particular see Mask of Deception. A quest that supports stealth play except that a Rogue can't do it stealthily thanks to wilderness lore being required. Simple fix to that is give Rogue Wilderness Lore at level one and move forwards. Quests like Mask but that Rogues can do sneakily are needed more in the future.

So while that is a lot of damage boosts I suggested there Assassin will still have relatively poor defences with low PRR so is something of a glass cannon but thanks to their low damage to start with their damage shouldn't be getting that high in the end anyway and actual numbers can be changed to balance it but the point is they need a big damage boost. Mech is going to see a big damage boost with their pass and they are already ahead of assassins who should be the top damage dealer rogues but at the cost of survivability. So I see nothing wrong with a huge damage boost to Assassins, they might even get a little more damage than Mechs.

Also on a Quality of Life note for Assassins; remove the faster sneaking from Stealthy and give 15% faster per core for 90% all up, you are still slower but you can at least keep up and position better. Or at least make Stealthy give 25/50/75% or something.




This really also needs a Shadowdancer pass to be done NEXT update due to time constraints to finish the Assassin pass. Please!!!!

Any chance that Shadar-Kai can get Racial traits though? I mean really they are a bought feature supposedly aimed at newer players and they are unfinished. How is that going to make a new player think about DDO??? It is bad enough I have to put up with the Iconic nonsense just to play a Shadar-Kai without having no racial traits.

Sorry for the wall of text.

EDIT: Push Assassin back if you have to but make sure it is right, better late and right than early and wrong forevermore.

[Pehtis]

Assassins are supposed to be the masters of eliminating any enemy no matter what (outside of bosses and red names of course). Perhaps we should incorporate a stance toggle for the assassin. The stances should be Banishing, Disruption, Smite, Vorpal. You get to choose the stance you need to be in. Your assassinate DC is added to the enemy save requirements.

Level 18 Lethality core would be a good place for this.


Just another suggestion.



P.s. I like to mention again, add dodge to PRR/MRR only when evasion criteria is met (I.e. Light, robe, no armor). Assassins need the extra survivability when forced to fight multiple hard hitting epic trash. I do not want any heal buffs.

[Augon]

Wow, lots of great thoughts on Assassins. I apologize for not reading all 57 pages so what I say may have already been said but here are my thoughts.

The name of the tree is "Assassin" and the tree has a single enhancement that accomplishes this goal. An enhancement that effectively requires 3 different Skill checks based on two different Stats. Perhaps we could add a few more ways an assassin can assassinate.

First the skill checks. In order to successfully assassinate an enemy, the assassin must sneak up to the enemy, making a series of Hide and Move silent checks while doing so (based on Dex mod) and then make an assassinate attacke (based on INT mod) If an assassin focuses on INT, he cant sneak up well enough, if he focuses on DEX he cant pull of the DC of the Assassinate. If he tried to pull off both stats, he will either be too low in both or have to sacrifice something else like CON. And then the squishy becomes squishier.

Some folks have commented that a bard is a better assassin than an assassin. For a Bard to instakill all that has to happen is for the opponent to be incapacitated in some way. He can be knocked down, fascinated, etc. then the Bard need only make one DC check based on his primary skill. Why not allow assassinate be allowed to work under those conditions as well. If an opponent is incapacitated, assassinate can be used.

I've played assassin and I've play Swashbuckler, but I think the BEST instakiller is the Wizard. Finger of Death and Powerword Killl can be used at a distance - with no situational requirements -nothing but a DC stands in the way of FOD and nothing but a long cool down slows down PWK. and of course there is the mass instakill spell - Wail of the Banshee. that's three different instakills that wizards have. Assassin has one.

And in between using their instakills, Wizards and Bards can do other stuff while waiting on cool downs, assassins cannot. Because if they do anything else, they break stealth and then are nothing but a low HP fighter until the next fight.

Some ideas I have for assassin include:
1. Allow assassinate to work under more conditions than just stealth. An incapacitated character should be just as easy of a target as one that is not aware.
2. Speed up stealth movement for assassin even more - some great ideas from other players are already mentioned for doing that in this thread.
3. Have an enhancement, even if its a core at 18 or 20, that allows INT to be used for Move silent and Hide. This way one stat can be the main focus of a dedicated assassin and the skill checks can be dependable while allowing a decent DC for assassinate
4. I love the idea someone else posted of making an assassin master of vorpal etc. perhaps an enhancement that gave doubled the HP requirements (i.e instead of 1000hp or below it would be 2000 or below)
5. Allow fewer actions to break stealth mode - an enhancement that allows things like opening doors and flipping switches to not break stealth.
6. allow some kind of ranged assassinate, even if it is very short range like point blank shot range. perhaps if an assassin has point blank shot feat, he can assassinate at that range as well. it could even be a feat and enhancement requirement to make it a bit costly. not all assassins would want it but some builds would.

Thanks for your efforts! We appreciate it.

[brzytki]

We are behind on this thread and will be catching up in the next two days. Feedback won't be incorporated into the next Lamannia build but we plan to go through the thread and discuss internally before live.

Sev~

I'm disappointed because without any changes to assassin tree in another patch for Lama, it's more likely that there won't be any significant changes to go live at all. It'll probably be only tweaking numbers, that's what i fear.

[CThruTheEgo]

To be honest Sev, it feels like assassins are not getting much of an update. Yes, there are a few minor changes and tweaks, but nothing major like we've seen with every other revamp. That's disappointing. The bottom line is that assassins have the weakest defenses of any class, as well as the second worst self healing (only fighters are behind them), and still have considerably lower damage than the revamped classes. As I've said before, I don't want assassins turned into an easy button and their defenses and self healing are not what should be improved, but their dps definitely should be. Plenty of suggestions have been made about how to improve their dps. More sneak attack dice (a lot more), make sneak attack damage affected by 200% melee power, make sneak attack damage crittable, more instakills, reduce the cooldown of assassinate – any or some of these would bring them up to the offensive capability they should be at for the amount of defensive capability they lack. Improving their defensive and/or self healing would change their unique playstyle and that's a bad thing. But improving their dps would not change their playstyle. Assassins have always been a glass cannon kind of build, but they've lost the cannon and don't seem to be getting that back with this revamp.

You said previously that assassins were getting a lot of little dps boosts, like deadly strikes, and that those would add up. But altogether they are very costly and won't add up to be worth the investment. As others have mentioned in the Lamannia thread, melee power from harper will be the better investment. Venomed blades, bleed them out, and the poisons are all too weak to be worth the points. The poisons are inneffective and weakening strikes and deadly strikes are not worth the total cost to get them.

To put things into perspective: bards were granted the ability to effectively fulfill every capability in the game (dps, instakills, AoE dps, CC, damage mitigation, damage avoidance, tanking, self healing, group healing, party support) on a single build (see The Count of Monte Cristo in my sig for an example of such a build); paladins were granted top tier dps, defenses, and self healing, so much so that they don't need to to perform any other function; barbs were given self healing, that's right, self healing on the most non self sufficient class in the game. Assassins are being given some minor dps boosts which are not nearly enough and are too costly, a minor defensive boost in the form of more damage avoidance which was not needed in the first place, and 2 assassinate DCs which frees up only 8 AP, 8 ED points, or some combination of the two, neither of which is going to provide a great deal of improvement. I'm not sure why assassins are getting the shaft here. What is the reason for keeping them behind in every area? If it goes through like this, I have to wonder why you bothered to revamp assassins at all.

[dualscissors]

...

Plenty of suggestions have been made about how to improve their dps. More sneak attack dice (a lot more), make sneak attack damage affected by 200% melee power, make sneak attack damage crittable, more instakills, reduce the cooldown of assassinate – any or some of these would bring them up to the offensive capability they should be at for the amount of defensive capability they lack. Improving their defensive and/or self healing would change their unique playstyle and that's a bad thing. But improving their dps would not change their playstyle. Assassins have always been a glass cannon kind of build, but they've lost the cannon and don't seem to be getting that back with this revamp.

...

Venomed blades, bleed them out, and the poisons are all too weak to be worth the points. The poisons are inneffective and weakening strikes and deadly strikes are not worth the total cost to get them.

^This and this.

I've seen a number of comments that echo the notion that the limited survivability boost with Dodge and Bluff procs keeps the rogue in a rough spot in top EE content, but that is *okay if the damage for assassins gets appropriately pumped up*. If certain classes have amazing dps and defense and self healing and CC, it seems very reasonable that assassins at least get amazing dps.

[Saekee]

Let's also not forget how hard it can be to play a rogue in its lower levels. Until you get knife spec at level 12 it is very rough. I see pure rogues mostly avoiding the assassin tree at first and using acrobat staff speed and mechanic's thunderstone. (I am level 9 with my Twilight blade build and its worst moments were as a level 1 rogue in Korthos--died in my first two quests there lol.)

Everyone seems to love endgame balance but please consider those lower levels. Tempests at level 1 get an enhancement to fake TWF. SWF and THF work well from the getgo.

Can rogues get something to serve as a helper? Suggestions:
1) add Sap feat for free in core 3
2) add full offhand damage if using INT or DEX like it once was some time ago. Add this into first two cores
3) some kind of competence bonus to INT and Dex that would not stack with gear, maybe?

no idea what else--maybe some kind of non-stacking defensive or offensive buff.

[nokowi]

To be honest Sev, it feels like assassins are not getting much of an update. Yes, there are a few minor changes and tweaks, but nothing major like we've seen with every other revamp. That's disappointing. The bottom line is that assassins have the weakest defenses of any class, as well as the second worst self healing (only fighters are behind them), and still have considerably lower damage than the revamped classes. As I've said before, I don't want assassins turned into an easy button and their defenses and self healing are not what should be improved, but their dps definitely should be. Plenty of suggestions have been made about how to improve their dps. More sneak attack dice (a lot more), make sneak attack damage affected by 200% melee power, make sneak attack damage crittable, more instakills, reduce the cooldown of assassinate – any or some of these would bring them up to the offensive capability they should be at for the amount of defensive capability they lack. Improving their defensive and/or self healing would change their unique playstyle and that's a bad thing. But improving their dps would not change their playstyle. Assassins have always been a glass cannon kind of build, but they've lost the cannon and don't seem to be getting that back with this revamp.

You said previously that assassins were getting a lot of little dps boosts, like deadly strikes, and that those would add up. But altogether they are very costly and won't add up to be worth the investment. As others have mentioned in the Lamannia thread, melee power from harper will be the better investment. Venomed blades, bleed them out, and the poisons are all too weak to be worth the points. The poisons are inneffective and weakening strikes and deadly strikes are not worth the total cost to get them.

To put things into perspective: bards were granted the ability to effectively fulfill every capability in the game (dps, instakills, AoE dps, CC, damage mitigation, damage avoidance, tanking, self healing, group healing, party support) on a single build (see The Count of Monte Cristo in my sig for an example of such a build); paladins were granted top tier dps, defenses, and self healing, so much so that they don't need to to perform any other function; barbs were given self healing, that's right, self healing on the most non self sufficient class in the game. Assassins are being given some minor dps boosts which are not nearly enough and too costly, minor defensive boosts in the form of more dodge which was absolutely not needed, and 2 assassinate DCs which frees up only 8 AP, 8 ED points, or some combination of the two, neither of which is going to provide a great deal of improvement. I'm not sure why assassins are getting the shaft here. What is the reason for keeping them behind in every area? If it goes through like this, I have to wonder why you bothered to revamp assassins at all.

I can get behind all these ideas.

For optimal stealth play, players will come in and out of stealth for max efficiency. This style of play takes the most skill, because your choices have huge consequences and there are a huge number of play options. Right now, roughly 1/2 of kills come from assassinate and 1/2 from DPS. I would like to add that I feel it is important to preserve this ratio so that a very skilled play style can still exist.

If the assassinate timer is dropped to 12 seconds (this is needed), DPS should be boosted by about 20% as well. This gives each and every play style a 20% boost. DPS should come from additional sneak attack (preserving the same weaknesses with undead, constructs, etc), not melee power.

There are really easy ways to add dps. I suggest changing each sneak attack from Assassin Tree to 2d6 (costing 2 AP) and changing Shadowdancer to 2d6 Sneak attack core per rank.

A stealth assassin would receive 9d6 more SA. I think I have around 25d6 SA right now.

34 vs 25 is a 36% boost in SA damage. Roughly 1/2 of damage comes from SA (the rest is from base weap + effects) netting a 18% increase in overall damage.

These 2 changes (more SA dice + 12 sec timer) can give assassin the boost it needs without any major design changes, and without harming any existing play styles. These numbers show that 10d6 additional sneak attack is not the huge boost that dev's seem to think it is (it is only a ~20% bump in dps).

I would separately suggest that 1 SA die every rogue level as an alternate fix, but I see that enhancement changes are preferred over class changes right now.

[Saekee]

I can get behind all these ideas.

For optimal stealth play, players will come in and out of stealth for max efficiency. This style of play takes the most skill, because your choices have huge consequences and there are a huge number of play options. Right now, roughly 1/2 of kills come from assassinate and 1/2 from DPS. I would like to add that I feel it is important to preserve this ratio so that a very skilled play style can still exist.

If the assassinate timer is dropped to 12 seconds (this is needed), DPS should be boosted by about 20% as well. This gives each and every play style a 20% boost. DPS should come from additional sneak attack (preserving the same weaknesses with undead, constructs, etc), not melee power.

There are really easy ways to add dps. I suggest changing each sneak attack from Assassin Tree to 2d6 (costing 2 AP) and changing Shadowdancer to 2d6 Sneak attack core per rank.

A stealth assassin would receive 9d6 more SA. I think I have around 25d6 SA right now.

34 vs 25 is a 36% boost in SA damage. Roughly 1/2 of damage comes from SA (the rest is from base weap + effects) netting a 18% increase in overall damage.

These 2 changes (more SA dice + 12 sec timer) can give assassin the boost it needs without any major design changes, and without harming any existing play styles. These numbers show that 10d6 additional sneak attack is not the huge boost that dev's seem to think it is (it is only a ~20% bump in dps).

I would separately suggest that 1 SA die every rogue level as an alternate fix, but I see that enhancement changes are preferred over class changes right now.

Great point. I prefer the boost per rogue level like you recommend at the end since AP is always so stretched. Plus, mechanics and acrobats will also derive benefits and there are further rewards for rogue levels (ie going pure).

[CThruTheEgo]

DPS should come from additional sneak attack (preserving the same weaknesses with undead, constructs, etc), not melee power.

I should have specified this in my previous post. I agree the dps boost should be based on sneak attack damage. At this point, I don't care how they do it. There have been plenty of good suggestions about how it can be done. I'd be fine with just about any of them, so long as assassins get a significant dps boost by the time this goes live.

Sev, can we please get an update about what you all are thinking after catching up on this and the Lamannia threads? I'd be interested to know what further changes you all are still considering and/or working on. Thanks again.

[nokowi]

I will try to post a timed dps run on the DPS thread later today, so that dev's can see how far behind assassin will STILL be, even with a 20% boost. I will also link it here.

[General_Gronker]

Let's also not forget how hard it can be to play a rogue in its lower levels.

Only if by lower levels, you mean 1-3. After that, it's really not.

[nokowi]

Let's also not forget how hard it can be to play a rogue in its lower levels. Until you get knife spec at level 12 it is very rough. I see pure rogues mostly avoiding the assassin tree at first and using acrobat staff speed and mechanic's thunderstone. (I am level 9 with my Twilight blade build and its worst moments were as a level 1 rogue in Korthos--died in my first two quests there lol.)

Everyone seems to love endgame balance but please consider those lower levels. Tempests at level 1 get an enhancement to fake TWF. SWF and THF work well from the getgo.

Can rogues get something to serve as a helper? Suggestions:
1) add Sap feat for free in core 3
2) add full offhand damage if using INT or DEX like it once was some time ago. Add this into first two cores
3) some kind of competence bonus to INT and Dex that would not stack with gear, maybe?

no idea what else--maybe some kind of non-stacking defensive or offensive buff.

I recently ran all of korthos on elite (no gear, no guild buffs) on a first life rogue (solo with hire). I never died. I am unsure why our experiences are so different.

I have to disagree with your statements. Low levels are where players learn skills like not getting agro, equipping gear, who to attack, etc. Making things easier at low levels is not going to prepare players for the skills they need at higher levels. There are settings like hard/normal for less skilled/geared players.

EDIT: I think I actually recorded these runs. I haven't had the chance to edit them with advice for new players yet.

[Severlin]

Feedback in this thread isn't reflected in today's Lamannia build. We will be going through the thread and talking changes soon.

Sev~

[Severlin]

Only if by lower levels, you mean 1-3. After that, it's really not.

I recently ran all of korthos on elite (no gear, no guild buffs) on a first life rogue (solo with hire). I never died. I am unsure why our experiences are so different.

I have to disagree with your statements. Low levels are where players learn skills like not getting agro, equipping gear, who to attack, etc. Making things easier at low levels is not going to prepare players for the skills they need at higher levels. There are settings like hard/normal for less skilled/geared players.

EDIT: I think I actually recorded these runs. I haven't had the chance to edit them with advice for new players yet.

I agree with General Gronker and nokowi; I am really not seeing an issue with Assassin in the earlier heroic levels. My concern is more overall DPS later on.

Sev~

[UurlockYgmeov]

I recently ran all of korthos on elite (no gear, no guild buffs) on a first life rogue (solo with hire). I never died. I am unsure why our experiences are so different.

I have to disagree with your statements. Low levels are where players learn skills like not getting agro, equipping gear, who to attack, etc. Making things easier at low levels is not going to prepare players for the skills they need at higher levels. There are settings like hard/normal for less skilled/geared players.

EDIT: I think I actually recorded these runs. I haven't had the chance to edit them with advice for new players yet.

yep - low levels are there to train the players... in tactics and teamwork....

[Equatis]

I've not noticed anything posted here or in the other rogue tree threads yet. so I wanted to say Thank You to Severlin and the Dev staff for listening to those of us who play Rogues.

I don't know if it was there before this last iteration on Lammania, but thank you for allowing thieves tools to stack. I got some stored tools from my bank and was surprised this afternoon when they actual stacked with the tools in my inventory. I don't know how many will stack as I only had 250 in the bank, but that stacked 331 tools in one slot, so thank you very much for this, as it's a big help for inventory space starved Rogues/Arties/Bards.

[Full_Bleed]

Right now, roughly 1/2 of kills come from assassinate and 1/2 from DPS. I would like to add that I feel it is important to preserve this ratio so that a very skilled play style can still exist.

If the assassinate timer is dropped to 12 seconds (this is needed)

This is only true for top-tier, no-fail assassinate assassins. *They* might get half of their kills from assassinate (depends how they prioritize their fighting and what risks they are willing to take... which, of course, is greatly diminished by being no-fail.) And the 12 second timer will disproportionately assist them as well. If that's where the focus is going to be to cross the threshold of an effective revamp for assassins I think the revamp will be sorely misguided. Every no-fail assassin build I see on the forums is geared to the gills to make up for the things they give up in the trees (a lot of that "worthless stuff" you guys always talk about.)

With most of the EE's I run now I do not have an assassinate chance above 50%, so I rarely even attempt it (granted, we're almost always running under level because if we don't the barb, pally, and sorc aren't challenged and it's a joke.) That means that nearly 100% of my kills come from "aggro management" (i.e. making sure I don't get aggro--which is still a form of "stealth play"--and taking out the weakest sheep in the heard... aka "kill stealing".) The reward is that I still beat the barb, pally, and sorc in kills (which goes to show how useless that measurement is, because while an assassin that's not assassinating is a great kill-thief, he's not necessarily a great killer.)


As for the extra SA damage being lobbied for, it seems to me that it will just make us even better kill-stealers/finishers. Is that really what we're looking for? Are you guys losing kill-counts because you're not doing enough sneak damage?

I get that people want to level the DPS playing field a bit and it sounds good to use the conditional DPS from sneak attacks for a rogue... but I know that jacking up my kill counts isn't what I'm looking for in this revamp. Frankly, I think they've made a good number of sensible/convenience changes to the trees which I appreciate. But past those, what I'd like to see is the abilities that we do have (poisons, bleed, and assassinate) all be *more effective*.

[Bobby88888]

To be honest Sev, it feels like assassins are not getting much of an update. Yes, there are a few minor changes and tweaks, but nothing major like we've seen with every other revamp. That's disappointing. The bottom line is that assassins have the weakest defenses of any class, as well as the second worst self healing (only fighters are behind them), and still have considerably lower damage than the revamped classes. As I've said before, I don't want assassins turned into an easy button and their defenses and self healing are not what should be improved, but their dps definitely should be. Plenty of suggestions have been made about how to improve their dps. More sneak attack dice (a lot more), make sneak attack damage affected by 200% melee power, make sneak attack damage crittable, more instakills, reduce the cooldown of assassinate – any or some of these would bring them up to the offensive capability they should be at for the amount of defensive capability they lack. Improving their defensive and/or self healing would change their unique playstyle and that's a bad thing. But improving their dps would not change their playstyle. Assassins have always been a glass cannon kind of build, but they've lost the cannon and don't seem to be getting that back with this revamp.

You said previously that assassins were getting a lot of little dps boosts, like deadly strikes, and that those would add up. But altogether they are very costly and won't add up to be worth the investment. As others have mentioned in the Lamannia thread, melee power from harper will be the better investment. Venomed blades, bleed them out, and the poisons are all too weak to be worth the points. The poisons are inneffective and weakening strikes and deadly strikes are not worth the total cost to get them.

To put things into perspective: bards were granted the ability to effectively fulfill every capability in the game (dps, instakills, AoE dps, CC, damage mitigation, damage avoidance, tanking, self healing, group healing, party support) on a single build (see The Count of Monte Cristo in my sig for an example of such a build); paladins were granted top tier dps, defenses, and self healing, so much so that they don't need to to perform any other function; barbs were given self healing, that's right, self healing on the most non self sufficient class in the game. Assassins are being given some minor dps boosts which are not nearly enough and are too costly, a minor defensive boost in the form of more damage avoidance which was not needed in the first place, and 2 assassinate DCs which frees up only 8 AP, 8 ED points, or some combination of the two, neither of which is going to provide a great deal of improvement. I'm not sure why assassins are getting the shaft here. What is the reason for keeping them behind in every area? If it goes through like this, I have to wonder why you bothered to revamp assassins at all.

This