The OA - Stealth Killing without Assassinate

[Haphazarduk]

Stealth has always been an interesting but often overlooked part of the game. Partly thats down to game design partly down to play styles that have developed over the years. There are good guides elsewhere but, with the recent EK pass and the new power of the tier5 ability Eldritch Tempest I started to look at ways of playing through content in stealth without assassinate. Would-be stealthy types haven't always needed to be rogues or assassins - they just needed good hide and move silently - but those that wanted to kill from stealth have and, to be a proper assassin - to be able to move through encounters without coming out of stealth - you need to be able to kill from stealth.

With the EK pass that has changed. The raw power of the t5 ability Eldritch Tempest and the fact that the attack doesn’t break stealth - I call these 'stealth strikes' - means there’s a viable alternative to assassinate. It also lead me to investigate what other attacks can be done without breaking stealth and I was surprised that there were more than I had thought - enough to make viable builds that don't need assassin or even rogue.

As an instakill ET has its upsides and downsides. Its not specifically an instakill ability - its damage based and so always runs the risk of not doing enough damage to take out your quarry but with the right focus on boosting damage I’ve found it to be pretty reliable into low reaper and it has the advantage of being an AOE attack and working on red names as well.

Attacks that don't break stealth;

Eldritch Knight: Eldritch Strike, Eldritch Tempest
Assassin: Assassinate
Thief Acrobat: Sweeping Strikes, Staff Lunge
Vanguard: Shield Smash, Stunning Shield, Shield Charge (and I think Shield Rush but am not 100%)
Renegade Mastermaker: Kinetic Discharge, Mighty Slam, Battlefist
Swashbuckler: En Pointe
Shadar Kai: Spiked Chain Attack, Whirling Chain

That’s quite a few different ways to deal damage and CC whilst staying in stealth. Some are mutually exclusive as they require different weapons although I’ve tested a few builds that weapon swap and they work ok although generally I think you’re better off choosing one route or weapon stance and sticking with it.

I haven’t tested any of the Epic Destiny Attacks yet. I’m working my way towards that on a couple of builds – more on that below - I'm particularly looking forward to adrenaline which I believe works in stealth.

Reaper

Reaper doesn't do any favours for those wanting to use stealth - its almost intentionally broken with reapers autopinging you. You can use it of course but be prepared to get knocked out of stealth regularly (and seemingly unfairly). In addition any damage-based attack will probably fare worse than a DC instakill in reaper (although those fail too) but as stealth isn't great in reaper anyway and assassinate doesn't work on bosses its all a bit of a mess anyway. ET works against bosses of course but they tend to have insane health.

Other things that don’t break stealth

I won’t try to list to everything here but a few other things of note include;

Wild Empathy and Improved Wild Empathy.
This is actually quite useful at times as you can sneak up to a group of mobs, wild empathy an animal, watch the fun ensue then pick off targets from stealth whilst they’re distracted or just sneak past.

Drinking Potions
Casting Spells and reading scrolls breaks stealth and sometimes you need to heal yourself or trigger some other effect whilst staying hidden (although see notes about invisibility below).

Potions of all sorts allow you to top up healing or go invisible or buff whilst stating in stealth. In particular drinking an invisibility potion can help to give you an added layer of protection from prying eyes which helps your sneaking but also means, if you do break stealth your not entirely exposed.

Invisibility potions aren’t readily available from vendors but they come up in treasure from time to time, in daily rolls and occasionally on the auction houses. Buy them when you can.

Action Boosts (including Orcish Rage)
Stealth gameplay is very different from normal gameplay. There’s no zerging (although I guess stealth/invis running is a kind of zerging) and the fun can be entirely focused around one encounter or overcoming a particular monster. Its much more about achieving something in a different way to the usual kill it and move on and that generally takes time. Action boosts offer a great way of boosting your stealth skills for a short period of time to achieve an objective. Boosting your skills to avoid detection, boosting your spell power or, in particular your melee power so your stealth strike does more damage.

Summoning Pets
Whilst all summons spells break stealth, including the eponymous Flaming Sphere, pet summons do not and with the changes that allow for multiple summons and revivals per rest the use of a wolf, dog or undead knight can be really beneficial for distraction. Its even possible to summon a pet, sneak past whilst its engaged with the mobs, then dismiss it before it dies.

You can also cast invisibility on them when they’re running around to help avoid detection but the chances are they'll just screw things up for you so best placed on stand your ground away from trouble.

Breaking Boxes
You can break boxes with stealth strikes and remain in stealth just like you can attack. Its quite fun (weird) to be able to go around smashing boxes right next to mobs and they don't notice. The same rules apply in that they'll notice you per the usual stealth rules but otherwise smash away!

Auras
Most auras seem to maintain stealth. Its quite funny actually but Body of the Sun, Death Aura and Eldritch Aura all maintain stealth although you’ll pick up aggro pretty quickly so you need to take out everything within range pretty quickly.

Wings-like Abilities
Shadow Jaunt (Shadar Kai), Memory of Flight (Dragonborn), Abundant Step (Monk) and all the other wings-like fast charges don’t break stealth and can be very useful in manoeuvring into, and out of, position for a strike or moving past patrols.

Invisibility

A special call out needs to go to invisibility. Whilst its well known that casting it and running past mobs can get you through a quest or sun quest quickly (or trigger a red alert!) its also incredibly useful to the stealth aficionado.

The reason is twofold. Firstly it breaks line of sight and helps with hide rolls. If you come out of stealth for any reason and your still invisible many mobs won’t notice you and you can often pop straight back into stealth. I like to think of this as the second layer of stealth – the safety net. You’re not properly stealthed but you haven’t totally come out of stealth mode.

The second reason is that many effects that break stealth do not break invisibility. Many buff spells for example will not break invisibility and so you can cast whilst in line of sight of a mob then drop back into stealth. Crucially, at attacks that do not break stealth do not break invisibility either. Also, not all attacks that target you break invisibility. This is one of the major issues around stealth. Most melee attacks and all missile attacks will pull you out of stealth mode so if you’re being a stealth elitist going for maximum stealth points !) then much of your time is spent trying to avoid totally dropping out of stealth. With invisibility you can execute a stealth strike whilst in stealth mode AND invisible and, even if the mobs attack you and break you out of stealth, there’s a good chance you’ll reman invisible. Simple move away, go back into stealth mode and get them the second time.

Stealth Strikes

I’ve tried to categorise these into levels of effectiveness (I’d like to use tiers but that would be confusing!). Eldritch Tempest and Assassinate are in their own category as they are the only stealth strikes that realistically can instakill outside easy content.

Gold: The must haves; Eldritch Tempest or Assassinate.
Light Blue: Attacks which CC.
Green: Attacks which move you.
Dark Blue: Attacks which only damage.

Some of you might recognise the color-coding as the scheme used in Pen and Paper guides for D&D. It seemed as good a scheme as any but if there's something more appropriate for DDO let me know.

CC is the stealth strikers friend. It obviously buys you time to dispatch your enemies but, more importantly, it stops them attacking you which knocks you out of stealth. A stunned or tripped mob can’t attack you.

Movement is also important in stealth and getting places fast before mobs notice you is very handy as is getting away from enemies you didn’t take down in the initial strike.

Finally some stealth strikes just do damage. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, you need to damage your enemies to kill them, but as all of these don’t generally do enough damage to kill outright they are less useful and needed to be used in combination, either chained together to kill over a few strikes or used to tactically take out enemies with limited hp.


Eldritch Tempest (Eldritch Knight t5)
This is the definitive non-assassinate assassinate ability. No other stealth strike comes close in sheer damage output and its an AoE to boot. Boost your MP and Force SP and make sure you maximise the damage dice of your weapon as much as possible.

The damage all seems to get converted to your weapons base type. So it all becomes slashing, bludgeoning or piercing although SP still affects damage.

The force damage is character level based and not class level so you can take 5 wizard levels and get all the benefits of max level damage for this ability.

Eldritch Strike (Eldritch Knight c1)
This doesn’t do that much damage, just +1W and a small force AOE but it can be enough to take down a damaged enemy, work into a rotation of stealth strikes or take out a group on lower difficulties.

Assassinate (Assassin t5)
Still the only DC based instakill maintaining stealth. Only hits one target at a time (or two if you're lucky and TWF fighting) and uses rogue levels to detrmine DC so dips work less well. Also doesn't work on bosses but as a DC based kill can theoretically take out anything else no matter how many HP.

Sweeping Strikes (Thief Acrobat t3)
Its sort of weird that this is the only other stealth strike in the rogue enhancements other than assassinate but as most of these probably aren’t WAI perhaps not.

This requires a quarterstaff and a relatively deep dip to 12 points to tier 3 given it’s the only stealth strike in this tree. It’s also class level based for the Dc so is really only an option if you have a decent number of rogue levels.

However it’s a great Stealth Strike as its AoE and knocks everything down so it’s good CC.The 5W damage doesn’t hurt either (well, not you anyway!).

Staff lunge (Thief Acrobat t4)
The distance this attack moves you seems to be less than some others and wings-like abilities but it does 6W to everything in a line so it moves you and does aoe damage.

Shield Smash (Vanguard t1)
This is a pretty basic straight damage option and (obviously) requires a shield but is a good follow up to other stealth strikes.

Stunning Shield (Vanguard t2)
This is a great ability, stealth or not. Its stuns pretty much everything including undead and oozes and works off highest stat so usually lands. Great single target cc. Only downside is the long cooldown.

Shield Charge (Vanguard t3)
I find this ability slightly tricky to use as often there’s a delay between the end of the charge and being able to act again during which the enemies can sometimes knock you out of stealth if they’re not killed outright but its great for closing distances quickly in stealth. Requires a target.

Kinetic Discharge (Renegade Mastermaker t2)
On its own a relatively modest attack giving +3W and 2d6 force damage which scales with 200% melee power. When you have the Kinetic Charge enhancement running you can slow enemies you hit with this attack so it could be used to escape a particularly gnarly enemy but generally quite situational.

Mighty Slam (Renegade Mastermaker t2)
This is very similar to Shield Stun in that it requires a specific weapon (or in this case Rune Arm) and stuns the target for 6 seconds. But here are some differences, good and bad. Whilst Shield Stun is based n character level Mighty Slam uses Artificer levels so requires investment in that class to be viable. It also works on less enemy types – the standard stun targets so to speak – so has slightly less flexibility. But it has one big plus side – a 15s cooldown – meaning you get to use it twice as often as Shield Stun. It has has the follow up enhancement Battlefist to enhance it (see below).

Battlefist (Renegade Mastermaker t3)
Quite an odd one but great if you can get your head round it. On its own its simply a straight damage attack but when a target is under the effect of the stun from Mighty Slam it hits them with some extra force and sonic damage and, more importantly, nocks them prone with no save. The prone condition lasts for 10 (12?) seconds with no (I think) recurrent saves so its really effective for keeping an enemy down and out till you’ve dispatched them and by the time the prone conditions runs out you are probably ready for another stun from Mighty Slam.

En Pointe (Swashbuckler t2)
As damage only stealth strikes go this is a good one. Its pretty much a guaranteed critical and a mini cleave so you can take out two opponents under the right conditions. In practice though its not an instakill in anything but easy content but a useful addition to the attack sequence none-the-less.

Spiked Chain Attack (Shadar Kai t1)
A nice aoe attack that is damage only. The main issue is that the damage doesn’t scale particularly well but its still a handy stealth strike especially if clearing up from a previous AOE attack that has left multiple mobs on low hp. Its Shadar Kai of course so not everyones cup of tea but is also cheap to get to.

Whirling Chain (Shadar Kai t4)
The grown up version of Spiked Chain Attack. At lower levels (15-18) this can take out an entire group but again, the damage doesn’t scale too well and isn’t based on weapon damage, just a flat amount. Use it whilst you can but probably not worth the AP investment in the long term.

Those are the ones I know of currently. I’m starting to look at Epic Destinies to see what there is of use (hopefully Adrenaline at least) and will update later.

Non Stealth Strikes

As any Stealth fan will know the reality of using stealth is that, whilst the ambition is to stay stealthed as much as possible, in practice you’re in and out of stealth a lot. Whether its to open doors, interact with certain objects or NPCs or just because an enemy archer has fired somewhere near you your stealth will drop (although see notes on invisibility). In fact, the good stealth player plans for this and enjoys the skill and gameplay it provides from how you deal with the times you drop out of stealth, inadvertently or not.

Generally I like to have a couple of attacks or spells to hand that I can use when it all goes pear-shaped. Sometimes you won’t kill all the enemies with your Eldritch Tempest and you’ll be left in the middle of a group in full aggro. Sometimes an enemy you thought was in range of the AOE won’t be and it will be left unharmed. Hopefully you can take them out with some of your back up stealth strikes but often you don’t have time or enough attacks to cycle through the mob will pull you out of stealth. In this cases you can either run away, especially if you have invisibility, or try to take them out quickly the old fashioned way before they aggro any more. In these cases a quick kill is useful and there are some abilities that deliver a good punch (although none to my knowledge on the level of Eldritch Tempest)

A favourite of mine is raging crush (Half Orc t4) for sheer stopping power but it is damage only even if that damage is +4W and an autocrit. Better, for the same reasons as the stealth strikes, are the cc attacks. I won’t list them all here but the stuns, trips and other cc abilities will stop your target doing anything and will cut down the time it takes to remove them from the fray. In particular, partly because its within the build framework of my Wherewolf or Wherebear builds I like Roar with the Nature’s Protector’s enhancement Savage Roar. Its somewhat tricky to manage from a timing point of view but it’s an AOE stun with added AOE damage.

Gameplay

If you’re looking for quick levels, grinding out lives or zerging, stealth in general and assassinating your way through a quest is probably not for you. Its definitely a game of patience, trial and error and a little creative thinking. But I find it very rewarding and a breath of fresh air from the normal gameplay style.

It’s mainly a solo style unless you are lucky enough to have understanding guildies or a static group and even then its difficult to convince people to let you stealth everything. What would they do after all?!

Most of the gameplay comes down to getting into position in stealth and then either avoiding enemies or taking them out in such a way they don’t alert others, ideally whilst staying in stealth (to that end).

Whilst stealth clearly isn’t a major consideration in most quests it hasn’t been entirely forgotten and over time you begin to see where design has ben put in place perhaps for a bit of stealthing. Even outside the obvious stealth quests like Stealthy Repossession there are design elements like enemy pathing through patrols, snippets of AI design and dungeon architecture that give a nod to people that want an alternative to just trashing the mobs. There’s great gameplay here though and, although like Sushi or Kim Chi its an acquired taste, there are none-the-less great tasty delight sin store for those willing to make the effort.

Builds

The Wherewolf (or Wherebear)

This is my current build. Like most of my builds it’s a first lifer and I have access to ok but not amazing gear. If it really works out I might TR an old rogue for the past life and extra SA damage but we’ll see how it goes.

The idea is to maximize the initial attack with Eldritch tempest. The build doesn’t have much else in the way of stealth strikes but goes big on making sure that first attack hits hard. The build is strength based as that’s easy to get, uses EK for Eldritch Tempest and Improved crit etc and then animal form to get as much MP as possible. Wizard gives displacement for defence, a couple of feats and Invisibility SLA. One level of Cleric gives Divine Might.

Druid Spells Pass without Trace and Spiderskin more than make up for lost class ranks in Hide and Move Silently. I’m not sure the cleric level for Divine Might is better than 1 rogue for faster sneaking (There aren’t enough skill points for trapping) but as the concept is about big hitting the extra strength makes a fair difference.

Melee Power
Orcish rage doesn’t break stealth but does qualify for Primal Beast so triggering that whilst in animal form gives an extra 10 MP. Add in Natural Fighting giving 4 MP per feat, Ferocity and items and its easy to get temporary Melee Power in the 70-80 range in mid heroics. That makes a big difference for that initial strike with Eldritch Tempest and, as you're playing in stealth, it doesn't matter so much it's only a temporary boost.

Half Orc Druid 13/Wiz6/Clr1
(Viable alternatives: Druid8/Wiz12, Druid 8/Wiz9/Rog3 and Druid9/Wiz9/Monk2)

Starting Stats (32 Point)
Str 16
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 14
Chr 6

All level ups into Str or, depending on tome availability, the first two into Int for more skills.

Feats
1: Power Attack
3: Natural Fighting
6: Natural Fighting
9: Natural Fighting
9: Extend (Wizard)
12: IC: Slashing
13: Quicken (Wizard)
15: Sap
18: Augment Summoning or Improved Feint
21: Overwhelming Crit
24: BoGW (*if Wis high enough)
26: ???
27: Blinding Speed/Epic Damage Reduction
28: First Blood
29: Dire Charge
30: ???
Legendary: Arborea, Ethereal or Fire

Skills: Hide, Move Silently, Concentration, Spot, Spellcraft

Notable Enhancements:

Half Orc (7)
Orcish Rage
EK (37)
Eldritch Tempest
AM (1)
Invisibility SLA
NW (24)
Ferocity
A True Hunter
WP (3)
Divine Might 2
NP (8)
Primal Beast 2
Nature’s Defence

OA builds generally require a bit of creativity and some multiclassing (although I guess a pure wizard OA would be feasible).

The Rune Assassin
Coming Soon.

[skorpeon]

some interesting ideas, does that wolf ability (snow slide?) break stealth?

[Haphazarduk]

some interesting ideas, does that wolf ability (snow slide?) break stealth?

I believe so. As far as I can tell, because all animal form attacks are coded as spells, and all spells break stealth, they will pull you out of stealth mode and break invisibility.

All of the Animal Form enhancement based attacks like Throat Rip break stealth as well which is a shame as of all attacks these have a good argument for not doing so but as those attacks that don't break stealth (I call them Stealth Strikes) don't seem to conform to any particular framework it's perhaps not surprising.

Snow Slide is still incredibly useful/powerful of course but as a 9th level spell is mutually exclusive with Eldritch Tempest or Assassinate.

Hap

[cru121]

So aren't most of these bugs?

[Haphazarduk]

So aren't most of these bugs?

Who knows. I've certainly never seen any of them in known issues. If they're not WAI they're not exactly spoiling the game so I'd hope they get left alone or even added to. In fact there's a whole additional style of gameplay here for people that clearly doesn't break the game or threaten balance. Stealth gameplay is never going to compete in the XP/min race and most people that use it are doing so to play the game in a different way to what has become common more recently. I'd even argue these actually help to encourage play in the true spirit of the game but then I am a bit biased

Hap

[Saekee]

So aren't most of these bugs?

Nice work OP! I have known of many of these, not all but avoided listing them because <ahem> a dev will ruin the fun...But you can add Dire Charge, Flyby attack (ED draconic) and the Divince Crusader cleave to non-stealth breakers.

As we discussed, this could be fun in Fury in which adrenaline-fueled stealth strikes will also drop an enemy helpless, including reapers (they will appear to still float there but will in fact be immobilized).

I would do heavy druid/5 or 6 EK and maybe 3 monk and run centered in fire stance for the additional crit multiplier in Fury.


I learned yesterday that the two druid sneak spells stack with gear

[Haphazarduk]

Nice work OP! I have known of many of these, not all but avoided listing them because <ahem> a dev will ruin the fun...But you can add Dire Charge, Flyby attack (ED draconic) and the Divince Crusader cleave to non-stealth breakers.

As we discussed, this could be fun in Fury in which adrenaline-fueled stealth strikes will also drop an enemy helpless, including reapers (they will appear to still float there but will in fact be immobilized).

I would do heavy druid/5 or 6 EK and maybe 3 monk and run centered in fire stance for the additional crit multiplier in Fury.


I learned yesterday that the two druid sneak spells stack with gear

Well I hope not. Modern game design shows you should listen to your community and embrace their needs!

I'll start adding Destiny stuff in as well now.

Heavy druid is what I'm running. I like monk but the PRR and MRR are very handy for when you end up coming out of stealth in the middle of a group of angry champs

My hide/ms is 50+ on my mid heroic Wherewolf....

Hap

[kamimitsu]

Would-be stealthy types haven't always needed to be rogues or assassins - they just needed good hide and move silently - but those that wanted to kill from stealth have and, to be a proper assassin - to be able to move through encounters without coming out of stealth - you need to be able to kill from stealth.

Snipped a bunch of amazing and useful info

Two of the greatest skulkers that DDO has ever seen (and that did some amazing pioneering work in that regard) weren't rogues: Mr. Cow and Ghoste.

On behalf of the sneaking community, and as something of an informal ambassador, I applaud your work and thank you for your dedication. Hopefully this information will help other would-be shadow denizens to take up the playstyle.

[Haphazarduk]

Two of the greatest skulkers that DDO has ever seen (and that did some amazing pioneering work in that regard) weren't rogues: Mr. Cow and Ghoste.

On behalf of the sneaking community, and as something of an informal ambassador, I applaud your work and thank you for your dedication. Hopefully this information will help other would-be shadow denizens to take up the playstyle.

Ah I remember those videos well!

Thank you - I hope to add more to the guide soon and post some images. It's a unique playstyle within a unique game and definitely deserves to be celebrated.

Hap

[Saekee]

any updates?

[Saekee]

Confront Any Foe (DC t3) does not break stealth. Features multiple attacks and can be adrenaline boosted. Based off of turn undead (which is in Destiny T1, so could be twisted but meh).

There is no cooldown on this attack so you can really spam the keyboard clicks on end fights or mob surfing

btw assassinate easily takes out two enemies & could technically do 4 but unlikely

[Saekee]

hey thought I would try you again. Fury adrenaline shots on AoE stuff seem to only affect the first target, bummer. I can see a wiz/rogue/monk staff build in this for fast movement, stacking sneak speed and that T5 wiz enhancements.

We can add that the active PL of Warlock, Delver of the Forbidden, does not break stealth and has NO SAVE. I plan to get my main a PL in warlock just to abuse it; it has ten uses per rest which might get me by reapers in some quests like Claw of Vulkoor.

[Haphazarduk]

hey thought I would try you again. Fury adrenaline shots on AoE stuff seem to only affect the first target, bummer. I can see a wiz/rogue/monk staff build in this for fast movement, stacking sneak speed and that T5 wiz enhancements.

We can add that the active PL of Warlock, Delver of the Forbidden, does not break stealth and has NO SAVE. I plan to get my main a PL in warlock just to abuse it; it has ten uses per rest which might get me by reapers in some quests like Claw of Vulkoor.

Took a break for a few months but I'm back now and playing around with this again. Shame about adrenaline - I was pretty excited about that. I got the Druid build up to about 15th before I took the break so will probably keep going to epic. It works really well in heroics although you really have to push the MP.

I thought that was the case with the Warlock PL. Thanks for confirming! Thats good news. Annoying as I was levelling a warlock (my first - I've never liked them) but just started taking rogue levels to get a rogue PL on that character. Guess I could go back to Warlock. Its crazily easy to level them in heroic.

I'm slogging my way through a FvS life on my main and will TR into a pure wiz to see how the cap for EK affects damage as the other builds have all been MC.

I've also been playing around with a bard and the new songs. They're actually pretty good for stealth builds. A bit tricky to get the timing right for but Fascinate doesn't break stealth and its a skill based DC so you can get it very high easily. Also the song of spell vigor is amazing for caster stealth builds. The 2 sp a tick quickly adds up and by the time you've got past a couple of groups of mobs or stealth through a long section hey presto you're toppped up with SP again. Problem is its a t5 and there's not much else there to go with it for a stealth build.

As an aside I also found a bug that means you don't move like a zombie if you play bard songs in zombie shroud. You still attack at -20% so its no good but its really nice to move normally!!!

I'll do a proper update soon and try to share some images/vids like I originally promised! I'm looking forward to the wiz tree changes if I run a pure EK. I'm just not sure how workable it will be with no stealth speed. It makes such a difference.

Hap

[TitusOvid]

I saw this just now. Informative +1, ty.

[Saekee]

Have you tried Dark Discorporation of Warlock? I if the stealth strikes would break it. That would be insane if not. Level 7 warlock to get it and now will be given to Pale Masters

I forgot to mention my observations from my Thread Weave in the Fade that anything that does not break invisi will not break shadowwalk! Yeah the screen goes puprle but you are displaced and move even faster. Combining it with Mass invisi scrolls makes for a terrifying sculker for long periods; I have been using them on my R10 Rusted Blades solo runs

[Haphazarduk]

Have you tried Dark Discorporation of Warlock? I if the stealth strikes would break it. That would be insane if not. Level 7 warlock to get it and now will be given to Pale Masters

Yes - it works

I forgot to mention my observations from my Thread Weave in the Fade that anything that does not break invisi will not break shadowwalk! Yeah the screen goes puprle but you are displaced and move even faster. Combining it with Mass invisi scrolls makes for a terrifying sculker for long periods; I have been using them on my R10 Rusted Blades solo runs

Ooh thats nice too. Will update page. Thanks.

Hap