Assassins

[Shadow_Jumper]

To all the players of rogue assassins, however few you may still be, I am writing this to inform new, and older players who may not know by now that SSG does not give a sh!t about your skill. The players of assassins I have met in game are generally some of the most skilled players of this game. And while I hope SSG has a change of heart, it looks doubtful.

To new players looking to DDO as a possible draw for a fun and exciting game where you could excel based on your skill of stealth, thievery, and skullduggery, those days are past. While an assassin is still a powerful build, the main aspect and draw of the class, stealth, has been decided by SSG to be a non priority for them.

[Kaboom2112]

Not every class feature from PnP can be implemented. Barbarians for example only get to pillage in DDO.

[Vyrzain]

In our new DDO Campaign we are all playing one of the three Rogue types, only level 13 now.

Last Game day our Assassin was getting murdered : (

We would wait outside a room and let her go in to do her job and she would only have about a 30% success rate.

Next, we thought that we would let her Bluff pull so she would not be in the room when things went bad. This increased her success rate some but still she was not able to Assassinate as we thought when we first picked these characters.

So now, in our next Game we will try letting the Mechanic do the Bluff pulling and our Assassin will wait till the Foes pass her so then she can try and do her job.

I would hate to be a Solo Assassin with the way Stealth is now in DDO.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Not every class feature from PnP can be implemented. Barbarians for example only get to pillage in DDO.

Looks like there’s no better time to roll a halfling barbarian to go pillage some giants.

[TheBlueFox]

So the issue with being a party of Rogues is that there's nobody to really HOLD Aggro. Rogues don't live on AC, they live on dodge and displacement. Uncanny dodge is a nifty little ability, and coupled with any kind of displacement clicky that's all you can really do aside from Diplomacy. Not great.

With the changes to stealth it seems that unless you've got MASSIVE amounts of Hide/MoveSilent, enemies will find you after you assassinate your 1-2 targets. So if the assassin goes "First" then he's going to be target #1.

My recommendation is that:

1. Avoid fights, you're 3 rogues for gods sake, don't fight! It's faster anyway.

2. If you do have to fight, don't do it fairly. You have a mechanic who can make stupdily high DC Glitterdust and web traps, do you know how awesome those are? Set 1 of them down, have the Acrobat rogue pull (He probably has the best AC and an aoe trip) and let the assassin act LAST, assassinating any wizard types that don't run like idiots into the fight. Then pop haste boosts and murder them in a cloud of blindness.

3. If you DO have to fight "Fair", just run around like idiots and let the Mechanic rogue plink them with ranged sneak attacks that are stupidly strong for some reason... The Acrobat can just trip people and run, and the Assassin, well, good luck. Shadow dagger someone to blind them and just do what you can to not die. Let the mechanic just blow them up with a timebomb or something.

A friend of mine and I are 2 manning as rogues, I'm an assassin and he's a mechanic, we do this and have no issues with any of the content At level On elite.

[Vyrzain]

So the issue with being a party of Rogues is that there's nobody to really HOLD Aggro. Rogues don't live on AC, they live on dodge and displacement. Uncanny dodge is a nifty little ability, and coupled with any kind of displacement clicky that's all you can really do aside from Diplomacy. Not great.

With the changes to stealth it seems that unless you've got MASSIVE amounts of Hide/MoveSilent, enemies will find you after you assassinate your 1-2 targets. So if the assassin goes "First" then he's going to be target #1.

My recommendation is that:

1. Avoid fights, you're 3 rogues for gods sake, don't fight! It's faster anyway.

2. If you do have to fight, don't do it fairly. You have a mechanic who can make stupdily high DC Glitterdust and web traps, do you know how awesome those are? Set 1 of them down, have the Acrobat rogue pull (He probably has the best AC and an aoe trip) and let the assassin act LAST, assassinating any wizard types that don't run like idiots into the fight. Then pop haste boosts and murder them in a cloud of blindness.

3. If you DO have to fight "Fair", just run around like idiots and let the Mechanic rogue plink them with ranged sneak attacks that are stupidly strong for some reason... The Acrobat can just trip people and run, and the Assassin, well, good luck. Shadow dagger someone to blind them and just do what you can to not die. Let the mechanic just blow them up with a timebomb or something.

A friend of mine and I are 2 manning as rogues, I'm an assassin and he's a mechanic, we do this and have no issues with any of the content At level On elite.

First we wanted a Stealth Game this Campaign trying to move away from the “Slaughter everything in sight mechanics” we have been playing.
In the past DDO supported Stealth type of play and the ability to avoid fights.
There are many recent posts on how this is now broken : (

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...n-for-the-Devs
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...th-and-Reapers
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ll-in-the-Game
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...n-stealth-play

Next, we do use Glitter Dust and Web Traps and as you stated they are very good BUT we are playing this Campaign like a New Player would thus we do not have that many Trap Parts.
The Magical Trap Parts needed are not dropping all that much so we can only use Magical Traps in Rare instances.

Lastly, the Mechanic is not x-bow user, we played one of those before so wanted to try something different. This Mechanic is a Thrown user and will we have yet to find a returning magical named item he could was at this level. Thus he is stuck with what comes off the Wand of Flame Arrow.

We have no displacement clicky.
We have little in the way of what others would call good Gear.
We are not using Tomes unless we find them.
We are first lifers.
We all had to be Humans.
We are all V.I.P. players.

As you stated the Acrobat is doing very well with the AC and Dodge and her Trip works nearly 100% of the time.

The Assassin as stated above is feeling like she is not able to do her job because of the way Stealth is. The Mechanic is doing OK but his Time Bomb only works about 70% of time because of the issues pointed out here…
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...58#post6082758


Please.. please do not tell us that we need to be life long DDO Players with many past lives, tomes for every stat, have the luxury of being able to throw platinum away or be able to get anything on the AH or SE, have all the Crafting items you could ever need and have the best gear pasted down from other characters on the account just to be able to play a Stealth Game of DDO as it is now!

On another note did you not post here…
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...te-and-stealth

“I find it a little irritating that there are so many oddities in stealth that make it such a hard tool to utilize”
“I've noticed that some enemies STILL Make this save. Really!? Like... Come on!”
“I was under the impression that assassinate was a "Silent" action and doesn't trigger aggro on its own. It seems rather inconsistent to avoid detection when singling out an enemy in a group, even one that is off to the side and not in the line of sight of any other enemy. Is this normal?”

Thus you DO see that there are issues with Stealth in DDO as it is now?

[TheBlueFox]

I never said stealth was not without issues, In fact you'll see that I stated "With the changes to stealth it seems that unless you've got MASSIVE amounts of Hide/MoveSilent, enemies will find you after you assassinate your 1-2 targets. So if the assassin goes "First" then he's going to be target #1." I am FULLY and utterly PAINFULLY aware of how the stealth mechanics are. However, that does not mean that I have difficulty sneaking PAST enemies. I have difficulty engaging them from stealth.

Secondly, I am a multiple past lifer with access to moderately useful gear, nothing incredible, but I've picked up a few things that are "Good" for my level, but not necessarily Best in slot. I have access to tools like The Tharnes set, good useful daggers like a good ol "Wounding of Puncturing" dagger. which is unavailable in game currently. The only tomes I've used are a generic +2 to all stats. But nowhere in your post did you say you weren't. All you mentioned was a "New DDO campaign" but not necessarily that you weren't all TRd into it or that you had any item restrictions. Knowing this I can revise some advice.

Third, I am fully aware that there are quests that have mandatory fights, but there are SOME that are still available to be stealthed. Claw of Vulkoor, Blockade buster, Frame Work, there are SELECT FEW quests that actually have a fully viable stealth option to them. Unfortunately there are tragically few of them around, and they are much harder to do. Impossible? No, not if you regularly raise your stealth, dexterity, and wear a moderate Hide/Move silently item (Even the low level Phiarlain Mirror Cloak helps). And since you're playing on Normal difficulty with a first life party, the Hide scores necessary are more generous. Noisemakers aren't AS part intensive, but playing with limited resources like that can hurt, I agree.

Now, With no displacement you're certainly going to need to use Uncanny Dodge all the more. If you're in a guild together, Guild Haste Potions are fairly cheap but I don't know the requirement to get them, Just that you have to be in a guild. Shield scrolls are nice which you should all be able to UMD to get some magic missile immunity. Invis scrolls are inexpensive too, and can aid in slipping past enemies as they raise your hide score if I'm not mistaken. If you're doing bluff pulls it really seems like you're trying your hardest to use everything at your disposal, all I can say is you really seem like you're planning and trying all the angles.

Assassinate does not require you to be unnoticed, only that you're in stealth while it goes off and it must be a sneak attack. Often times I jump in the air, stealth in midair to keep momentum, and hit my assassinate button as I land near an enemy that isn't targeting me. It doesn't always work due to the fact that I play on Elite and am not fully geared out for assassinate, but It works enough on things that don't have a high Fort score to begin with like casters and beasts. But don't be afraid to hit that Diplomacy button to get people off you for a selfish instant kill.

Timebomb does not work on some enemies, period. Due to a crappy programming job likely it just does not register on enemies. However, those enemies are usually in niche content, like certain drow in the underdark or certain hobgoblins in druid pack content. It's unreliable, but when it works it's going to be a mainstay for many fights. Not much you can do when it doesn't work though, but at least it's free.

Are you allowing yourselves to re-play content several times for gear? You likely have to, due to xp requirements to level, but hopefully you'll find some of the random lootgen which has, as of recent, become almost absurdly good. I've found an ML2 vorpal dagger for my assassin, it was dumb... But good luck on that front. At least with V.I.P. Status you'll have access to all the content.

The mechanic isn't an xbow user? That's... tough. You might have to settle for non returning ones for a while, the output of those is going to be much better than flame arrow's extra fire damage.

[Vyrzain]

............

Thanks for the update….

I agree that there are a few Quests that are good / OK for stealth, I posted before that we liked “Stormcleave Outpost” and “Bring Me the Head of Ghola-Fan” last game.
We had fun with these Quests and we felt like we did something more then just run up to 5 to 10 Foes, move 10’ and have to fight 5 to 10 more Foes.
“Stormcleave Outpost” and “Bring Me the Head of Ghola-Fan” had Foes sleeping, taking a bath, etc.
We could use stealth and had lots of options.
“Bring Me the Head of Ghola-Fan” even allows the opening of Doors while in Stealth.

We do put max points in Hide and Move Silently and try our best to get Dex up. We even broke our rules of limited items to make a crafted trinket for each of us of +14 Hide, +14 Move Silently and +7 insightful Move Silently. We also have Heroism.
We only did this thinking that having these Skills much higher then we should have at level… that we would be able to do the Stealth Game we wanted.
We are finding because of how Stealth is broken now in DDO that even with those increases to our Skills that Stealth is not how it once was.

The other two in our Group do not like the idea of having to carry 100’s of scrolls or potions. But I do keep a Shield Wand and have Invisibility I use on them or me when we need that. None of use Haste Potions because the timer is so low and we do not have all that much Platinum for these Characters.

It is funny that you talk Diplomacy because I just told our assassin to try using that more next game. Let the Acrobat take the Argo : )
Diplomacy is one of her skills she has to keep at max anyway.
But she is telling me that Diplomacy shares cooldown with Bluff and Bluff is of more use to her. But maybe because we are now going to try the Mechanic as the Bluff puller that she will have Diplomacy available to use.

I also find it funny, that this assassin was a Bard in a past campaign and we joke that the Bard is /was a better assassin then the assassin class she is playing now… /sigh.
But to be fair that past game was before the Stealth changes and we had a Sorc that was enchantment spec.

We can re-play content several times for gear BUT each time we must increase the difficulty by one each run. So if we start on normal then we only get four chances at said Named Gear when we hit Reaper 1. We cannot do much past Reaper 2 unless very very lucky thus we try to avoid it and that we accept.
But since there are always three of us that is 12 chances at the item.
However, we are finding that even with these 12 chances we do not find said item.. oh well.

We did try the House Deneith +1 thrown weapons for sale but because of the cost the Wand seemed to be the better option. I will have to look again.

[TheBlueFox]

I love Diplomacy, it's never left my hotbar ever since back in the day when the level cap was 12. It drops your ranking on an enemies hate list so he targets another character, giving you ample sneak attack opportunity and works in an AOE.

Bluff is great too, but it's single target. Still, it turns the enemy around and with good timing it's interrupted certain attacks, like a Troll's slam or a minotaur's charge, even an archers backstep jump.

I've never tried Improved Feint, but people seem to speak pretty highly of it, I might try it out sometime.

Another thing that's pretty good for assassins is the "Assassin's Trick", especially with so many rogues. It makes an enemy no longer immune to sneak attacks, so undead and constructs can now be assassinated. You just gotta get lucky, because they still have something like 75% immunity, so you gotta hit that 25% chance for the sneak attack to go through

The only downside to Assassin's trick is that even though performing it doesn't break stealth, it's considered an offensive action and your target will automatically spot you... which is garbage