Death in Plate, Tilo's work in progress

[Tilomere]

Okay, I hear stealth and assassinate are weak and playing an assassin is impossible. Now, I've used stealth from time to time, mostly to skip groups I could kill anyway to save time. Occasionally for the larger aggro radius on a warlock. I've used the assassin tree as well, mostly in the past as a dps tree for classes that lack their own dps trees. So, I'm going to accept as a premise that the complaints are true, and build something that is an assassin but doesn't have to play like one if their mechanics really are as bad as people say.

First, lets just bust open a stealthy rogue assassin that people say doesn't work. A stealthy rogue assassin:

1) Is a dps character, that is generally built for fastest kobold boss time dps
2) Wears leather armor, relying on dodge and other people holding aggro to deal damage and survive
3) Fights with dual daggers or kukris for max dps
4) Is int or dex based
5) Has limited healing
6) Tries to engage in reaper in stealth to assassinate, but gets owned by auto stealth detection and increased initial threat assigned to stealth characters.
7) Relies on deception, feints, blind, and spell traps or other party members to enable sneak damage
8) Is too squishy to go toe to toe with red names even if you can stealth to them.

I'm going to toss all of that and build a new playstyle from scratch.

1) First, we aren't going to build for fastest kobold boss time. We are going to build for trash dps, because bosses are less threatening then champions and reapers, and most of a dungeon is trash.

2) We aren't going to wear leather armor. We are going to wear plate. Because, well, duh? No Worries plate armor has no armor check penalty, meaning we have no skill penalties for wearing it. So let's wear that.

3) Off-hand attacks are at half stat damage, so lets just write off off-hand base damage and use a 20/40/60 HAMP GS kama for staying alive.

4) I get that assassinate is int or dex based. I also get that int or dex can be used to hit and for damage, for fastest kobold kill times. However, I also get that due to power creep, I never really have problems with DCs, so I'm going to use another primary stat instead, and just assassinate with a secondary stat. Probably dex for twf qualifications. This will let us stun with our primary stat, for max trash dps instead of boss dps. Since I'm working on racials, I just don't care about epic DCs.

5) I've sorta become addicted to having divine healing in all of my builds. It's not really for me. It's so I don't have to continuously heal other weaker players, especially since I play on the default server. However, when combined with 3) above, it's going to provide solid continuous healing, even in reaper. Plus cleric is going to give us plate proficiency for 2).

6) If we can't stealth up to things, we need a new way to engage. So what we are going to do is just AoE stun everything, run up, and point blank stealth and assassinate while standing right in the middle of the enemy mobs. Cleric gives us an AoE stun as well with Soundburst.

Alternatively, we want to stealth in to the casters in the back and intentionally get detected. As a result, we will not gear hide and move silently in groups (only when solo). The melee will chase you into the casters, and the increased initial aggro from stealth detection will let you group them for a single soundburst even in parties with others attacking them. This is also where the continuous healing and plate come in, to shrug off damage from being intentionally caught stealthing in, and to lower incoming damage and hits so you can make concentration checks to cast soundburst.

7) Better rogues than I use all sorts of traps, deceptions, feints, bluffs, and whatnots to enable sneak damage. I'm going to mostly use 1 button for all situations. Soundburst. Probably will need something for bosses. I'm sure the assassin tree will have what I need. People will ask about DCs and Spell Penetration. But I think those will just work out.

8) Plate and self healing should also take care of squish against red names.

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So now I just need a leveling setup, feat setup, and enhancement setup.

I'm thinking 16 rogue, 3 cleric, 1 monk. Max + levels wisdom, solid dex.

TWFx3, Precision from monk, Completionist, PL:Wiz, Improved Feint free feat swap at level 13 to Evo Focus (Thanks Sakee and Slarden), stunning fist dragonshard feat swap to quicken with 3 cleric levels, Vol, Magic Domain (thanks Sakee), If human: Evo Focus

Enhancements: Assassin, radiant servant divine healing/mighty turning at low levels, NiS faster sneaking

Skills: Level bluff 1-13 for improved feint, then drop it.

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Anyone see any problems with this? I'm not an assassin specialist. I don't think we need Quick Draw if we go Soundburst > Stealth > Assassinate, because we can draw weapons during the stealth action and still be ready to assassinate. Maybe grab it out of VKF.

[blerkington]

Okay, I hear stealth and assassinate are weak and playing an assassin is impossible.

So, just to tease out the 'logic' of this post:

1. You're going to misrepresent the claims in other threads about the states of assassin and stealth made by experienced stealth players
2. You're going to use a build that barely resembles a conventional assassin, doesn't really play like one, and then also not use stealth
3. Then you're going to claim you've made some sort of point about the effectiveness of a build and a playstyle you're not actually using.

This is every bit as silly as your other recent suggestions that rogues should get functional stealth or boss dps, but not both, or that stealth should be a combat only ability removing the stealth playstyle from the game. And then attempting to prove your point by suggesting a build which was a warlock with one rogue level simply so you could cap your stealth skills.

I think you generally make good contributions to the forums here with your comments about the state of the game and build ideas. But for the life of me I cannot understand why an experienced player such as yourself is trying so hard to present stealth as overpowered in its current state, or as properly functional, or as a playstyle that is anywhere near as efficient as other choices. Frankly, it just seems malicious to me, not something that actually advances the discussion or will lead to improvements for the game.

If you want to prove what you're saying about assassins and stealth, it's really easy. Just make a conventional assassin then use its abilities (not those of other classes) to show us all how quick and easy stealth completions are. Run the character from 1 to 30 with this playstyle, solo, at the usual difficulty you run your other builds. Really, really simple.

No-one doubts that you can make clever builds and find new ways to approach content. But you're just shooting yourself in the foot when you make these claims about one build and playstyle, and then attempt to prove them by doing something different.

Thanks.

[slarden]

I'm disappointed you didn't throw 1 warlock or wizard in for charms.

I would say it's a good idea splashing 3 cleric for turns and stuns for just a heroic tr, but assassin is the wrong build to go with it since it doesn't bring aoe dps to go with the aoe stuns. you probably want to go thf with cleaves vs. twf and no mercy is good for a build generating helplessness with stuns. So if you want to go rogue everything seems to be pointing to a dex-wisdom staff build, but probably with a few more monk levels to maximize staff bonuses.

I mean the special quarterstaff attacks with helplessness bonus and no mercy on top of it will be really nice on a stunned group of enemies.

[PhotoRob]

So, just to tease out the 'logic' of this post:

<<Snipped the excellent points>>

Thanks.

Don't forget:

4. Use a piece of gear that won't be available for about 10 more months (No Worries), so the number of people who might be able to test his theories and build are very, very limited.

[Tilomere]

I'm disappointed you didn't throw 1 warlock or wizard in for charms.

I would say it's a good idea splashing 3 cleric for turns and stuns for just a heroic tr, but assassin is the wrong build to go with it since it doesn't bring aoe dps to go with the aoe stuns.

I group too much, and have a bad experience with charms in groups on a default server. The newer players that show up later run into a roaming reaper or champion you left charmed behind and always die. I would way prefer to make a mechanic, and combo zen archery, time bomb, helpless damage, and sound burst together, but then it wouldn't be an assassin build. A cleric domain does get suggestion SLA at 5 though...

Heroic AoE dps is uh, overrated...

Don't forget:

4. Use a piece of gear that won't be available for about 10 more months (No Worries), so the number of people who might be able to test his theories and build are very, very limited.

In groups we want to intentionally fail the stealth roll for the initial aggro to allow us to pull the melee mobs to the backline casters and soundburst them all at once, so go ahead and wear whatever plate you want and test it out now on live. It's only solo when trying to avoid mobs that your stealth scores will matter. Dragonplate also works well with stealth.

The other times we stealth right in the middle of mobs with all of them stunned to assassinate, so we don't worry about our stealth scores then either.

Just make a conventional assassin then use its abilities (not those of other classes) to show us all how quick and easy stealth completions are. Run the character from 1 to 30 with this playstyle, solo, at the usual difficulty you run your other builds. Really, really simple.

Reaper wasn't designed to be soloed at all, let alone by default build paths, intentionally handicapped to only use normal strategies and game play. My other builds for soloing reaper are highly customized and all (except warlock) are multiclassed specifically for reaper.

[blerkington]

Reaper wasn't designed to be soloed at all, let alone by default build paths, intentionally handicapped to only use normal strategies and game play. My other builds for soloing reaper are highly customized and all (except warlock) are multiclassed specifically for reaper.

Reaper has been around for a while now, and by now a couple of things are quite obvious about it.

Firstly, the decisions about how difficulty was set for lower skull ratings were such that many builds can solo in reaper. It's not an accident, and it doesn't require elite level gameplay, the best gear or the very strongest builds possible.

So you claiming soloing in reaper is not intentional when it's possible to get into reaper quests alone and complete them without a lot of trouble on low skulls even on suboptimal builds doesn't make a lot of sense. If the intention was to prevent solo play, the developers have plenty of tools at their disposal to do that. What they did instead is (generally) increment the difficulty slowly from not much harder than elite to significantly harder.

Secondly, even some of the default build paths offer good tools to allow low skull reaper solo completions. Dipping into the by now well-known list of garden-variety abilities that work well in reaper, like charms, cc, instakills, etc, is not the next level of character design or gameplay.

Some of the other default build paths offer more challenge and require greater skill to succeed with in reaper, because they don't allow non-stop mashing of easy buttons. But by and large, the people running assassins in mid to high reaper content are not using default build paths.

Anyway, I hope you and the other people who try your build have fun with it. Just don't kid yourself that it proves any of the extremely shaky and destructive claims you've recently made (and then raised again in this thread) about rogue assassins or stealth play in general.

Thanks.

[Shadow_Jumper]

Okay, I hear stealth and assassinate are weak and playing an assassin is impossible. Now, I've used stealth from time to time, mostly to skip groups I could kill anyway to save time. Occasionally for the larger aggro radius on a warlock. I've used the assassin tree as well, mostly in the past as a dps tree for classes that lack their own dps trees. So, I'm going to accept as a premise that the complaints are true, and build something that is an assassin but doesn't have to play like one if their mechanics really are as bad as people say.

First, lets just bust open a stealthy rogue assassin that people say doesn't work. A stealthy rogue assassin:

From what I remember you were one of those arguing that stealth was fine and we were all making a fuss out of nothing. Now here you are admitting that you don’t play the class, or the playstyle, all while making grandiosity claims about how assassin is completely unplayable, but how you, with your godly building abilities, is going to save it.

6) If we can't stealth up to things, we need a new way to engage. So what we are going to do is just AoE stun everything, run up, and point blank stealth and assassinate while standing right in the middle of the enemy mobs. Cleric gives us an AoE stun as well with Soundburst.

If you don’t know, I would imagine casting a spell like that would gain all the agro. And you can’t assassinate anything if you have the agro, even if your dc is 110. Let me know how this works though, I’d like to see a video of this amazing assassinate skills.

Alternatively, we want to stealth in to the casters in the back and intentionally get detected. As a result, we will not put points in hide and move silently and not wear any hide/move silently gear. The melee will chase you into the casters, and the increased initial aggro from stealth detection will let you group them for a single soundburst even in parties with others attacking them. This is also where the continuous healing and plate/chaos domain come in, to shrug off damage from being intentionally caught stealthing in, and to lower incoming damage and hits so you can make concentration checks to cast soundburst.

This makes no sense. You want to stealth in, but be seen. Just run to the **** casters. It will have the same effect. Your whole build idea is centered on how you want to stealth but be seen? Dude. Think about it.

Anyone see any problems with this? I'm not an assassin specialist. I don't think we need Quick Draw if we go Soundburst > Stealth > Assassinate, because we can draw weapons during the stealth action and still be ready to assassinate. Maybe grab it out of VKF.

Yea. This needs to be a cross with a barbarian with cleave/helplessness, not with an assassin.

[Shadow_Jumper]

I'm going to toss all of that and build a new playstyle from scratch.

So you labeled everything you think makes an assassin, threw it to the side, but still want to call it an assassin? Mmmkay.

[slarden]

I group too much, and have a bad experience with charms in groups on a default server. The newer players that show up later run into a roaming reaper or champion you left charmed behind and always die. I would way prefer to make a mechanic, and combo zen archery, time bomb, helpless damage, and sound burst together, but then it wouldn't be an assassin build. A cleric domain does get suggestion SLA at 5 though...

Heroic AoE dps is uh, overrated...

I am not seeing the synergy with assassin - makes much more sense for a stick build with cleaves and bonus helpless damage - if you want to give a rogue soundburst. I am not saying it won't work at all, obviously you have enough past lifes, reaper points etc. you can make more builds work than people without those things.

Firstly, the decisions about how difficulty was set for lower skull ratings were such that many builds can solo in reaper. It's not an accident, and it doesn't require elite level gameplay, the best gear or the very strongest builds possible.

So you claiming soloing in reaper is not intentional when it's possible to get into reaper quests alone and complete them without a lot of trouble on low skulls even on suboptimal builds doesn't make a lot of sense. If the intention was to prevent solo play, the developers have plenty of tools at their disposal to do that. What they did instead is (generally) increment the difficulty slowly from not much harder than elite to significantly harder.

This seems highly exaggerated based on the lifes where I pugged 3 skull from 1 to 30. The average person doesn't find it easy and soloing reaper is especially unforgiving with packs of reapers/champs .

[Saekee]

This is a hoot, great originality. Some notes:
1) You need to be lawful to take a monk level—will that not obstruct chaos domain selection?
2) assassinate will not work if you have aggro unless the enemy is blinded or bluffed first. So I think a lot is lost here going for an assassin that grabs aggro.
3) The idea of using soundburst is exciting in that it induces helplessness. So the real formula here is 3 cleric/(some build that uses sneak damage and no mercy enhancements). Those are rogue acrobat tree, ninja spy & nature’s warrior. I would build around that—winter wolf gets fast movement, all 3 combat feats & sneak die too. You can have two weapons with the GS hamp stick as a buff one.

edit: consider Improved Feint—no pre-reqs, just need 1 rogue level. It is a 180 degree arc bluff with a 6 second cooldown. Could work great if followed by a cleave of some kind. One needs to buff the bluff skill high to make it work.

[Tilomere]

2) assassinate will not work if you have aggro unless the enemy is blinded or bluffed first. So I think a lot is lost here going for an assassin that grabs aggro.

So soundburst helpless stun isn't good enough, but blind is? The enhancement just says On Sneak Attack: Kills a living target instantly. If the target is helpless, it is subject to sneak attack. Of course, tooltips are just tooltips.

Swapped to magic domain since as you noted can't be chaotic and a monk.

[Shadow_Jumper]

So soundburst helpless stun isn't good enough? The enhancement just says stealth sneak attack. If the target is helpless, it is subject to sneak attack.

Swapped to magic domain since as you noted can't be chaotic and a monk.

No. SA only applies if you don’t have agro. Casting soundburst would gain all the agro. This build is better suited as a barbarian cleaver than a rogue. Make wis the second stat and possibly high enough for mass frog and it could possibly be a decent midskull stunner, dps and frogger.

Though if soundburst stun DC is based on caster levels, then I doubt it would be much use outside of heroics.

[dragons1ayer74]

"Rogues and characters with Backstabbing items can always sneak attack helpless targets if they are subject to sneak attacks regardless of aggro."

I think it might work but would test it.



Interesting build idea Tilmore. I think he only wants it for heroics.

Other ideas:
Blindness - Level 4 cleric servant of light tier 4 SLA
Gnome - Color Spray

[Saekee]

So soundburst helpless stun isn't good enough, but blind is? The enhancement just says On Sneak Attack: Kills a living target instantly. If the target is helpless, it is subject to sneak attack. Of course, tooltips are just tooltips.

Swapped to magic domain since as you noted can't be chaotic and a monk.

now I am not sure :P

[slarden]

No. SA only applies if you don’t have agro. Casting soundburst would gain all the agro. This build is better suited as a barbarian cleaver than a rogue. Make wis the second stat and possibly high enough for mass frog and it could possibly be a decent midskull stunner, dps and frogger.

Though if soundburst stun DC is based on caster levels, then I doubt it would be much use outside of heroics.

Certain things guarantee sneak damage such as blindness and helplessness. I could assassinate enemies made helpless by dire charge every time. I assume stuns would work the same. Of course if just one enemy makes their save....

You are right the stun idea will only work in heroics and tilo sort of qualified that in his op by saying he doesn't care about epics.

[Tilomere]

Red names sneak attack. Best way to enable it within this build?

[Saekee]

So soundburst helpless stun isn't good enough, but blind is? The enhancement just says On Sneak Attack: Kills a living target instantly. If the target is helpless, it is subject to sneak attack. Of course, tooltips are just tooltips.

Swapped to magic domain since as you noted can't be chaotic and a monk.

Red names sneak attack. Best way to enable it within this build?

The usual tricks are shiv, improved feint & deception/improved deception weapon/gear

Plus fort bypass

Shiv usually works well enough for assassins but the duration is based on rogue levels whereas Improved Feint is fixed. So figure improved feint plus gearing you can swap in for red names—maybe an offhand weapon like Assassin’s Kiss and some piece of deception gear like Ring of Lies

[slarden]

Red names sneak attack. Best way to enable it within this build?

having deception on weapon and deception on an accessory is the absolute best way since they stack. There are many named daggers with it and ring of the stalker is the easiest option for accessory. assassin's kiss at 7 is great as it has an improved crit multiplier as well. The dagger from garrison's missing pack at level 2. Philarin dagger at level 4. There are many.

precision gives you enough armor piercing for heroics.

[Saekee]

having deception on weapon and deception on an accessory is the absolute best way since they stack. There are many named daggers with it and ring of the stalker is the easiest option for accessory. assassin's kiss at 7 is great as it has an improved crit multiplier as well. The dagger from garrison's missing pack at level 2. Philarin dagger at level 4. There are many.

precision gives you enough armor piercing for heroics.

the Stalker ring deception attribute doesn't proc the bluff effect though

[Tilomere]

having deception on weapon and deception on an accessory is the absolute best way since they stack.

The usual tricks are shiv, improved feint & deception/improved deception weapon/gear

Shiv usually works well enough for assassins but the duration is based on rogue levels whereas Improved Feint is fixed. So figure improved feint plus gearing you can swap in for red names—maybe an offhand weapon like Assassin’s Kiss and some piece of deception gear like Ring of Lies

So this doesn't kick in until Ring of Lies (upgraded) at level 13. Shiv enhancement looks ... not good enough to warrant a spot on a tool bar. Bluff is a really long cool down for the duration, probably only useful the first few seconds to get to a deception proc on a boss.

It looks like the only reliable method for early heroic leveling is improved feint.

So take improved feint, and feat swap it out at 13 when Ring of Lies + some sort of dagger deception kicks in. I'm pretty sure you can assassinate off of improved feint as well, so maybe keep it. Will see.

I have 12 levels to go on my bear, then I'll give this a whirl!

Thank you all for the help! I wanted to try assassin, but when I partied with Saekee and he was just murdering everything my bear was stunning it made up my mind. For the record, his assassin was doing just fine in reaper!