For a Fist ful of Flowers

[Tilomere]

nerfed in u57

(offhand versatility, relative tankyness to tanks)

[magaiti]

Ah, apparently another guide for people who can't read, only look at colorful pictures.

[kmoustakas]

Great guide, thank you.

[magaiti]

I like how the profanity filter squelched "ndfu" from to "handful"

[Synthetic]

Is defensive roll kicking in when you have temp hp? I.e. if you have 49% of your hp and get a big temp hp buff you still get the 50% damage reduction.

[Tilomere]

Defensive roll turns off if temp hp brings you over 50%. But that may change in a patch when they fix how EA healing aura also stops healing players that temp hp brings to full.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Moar screenshots !!! Moar screenshots !!!111eleven

[Tilomere]

Moar screenshots !!! Moar screenshots !!!111eleven

You're wish is my command, this build might solo a few legendary raids as well:

[Saekee]

hey fun stuff Tilo! I have not tried out the new system with my main yet but I like the idea of pushing Defensive roll (we did this before VKF) and temp hp through sentinel (I did not know Sentinel even had this stuff). Sounds like the centerpiece here of your approach.

1. I am not sure SWF comes out ahead of TWF since you get all the sneak procs on the offhand with TWF as well as combo daggers like Pain and Suffering
2. I did a twink ml 21 gearset here if you are curious. I have not done much endgame so cannot comment yet and mostly lack the right gear.
3. In the past I would run in Fury not Shadowdancer since I could knock out anything (except bosses) flat and helpless. This worked on reapers too giving me a huge edge. I was thinking that I might try getting the adrenaline knockdown hits and then run in some other setup, maybe SD mantle for faster sneaking etc. but now you got me thinking of this approach. Always the only problem for me was the red named so this seems like the solution.
4. Carpone should be posting an update to his endgame assassin setup
5. Skills--Jump is halved while sneaking so good to max; listen allows you to hear mobs that you might not spot (you see red blips where they are standing). I use bluff heavily. I know a lot of folks dump Improved Feint but I like it more than anything mainly because it breaks the TWF attack chain, like old twitch fighting
6. For some sneaking situations, you might try my weaving in the fade: essentially, use shadowalk scroll and mass invisi; you can move faster, be constantly displaced, and just assassinate stuff. Thread here. Fun in some circumstances.
7. You can group mobs too by using noisemakers, flaming spheres, or invisi stepping (the latter if they do not have true sight/see invisi etc.). A quick invisi step will draw them to investigate the sound, then you got them clumped or even just out of the way.

[Tilomere]

Ya improved defensive roll is pretty beastly. It is one of those abilities that grows on you. When you are new and die in 1 hit it is useless, but as you climb Mt. Powercreep, it definitely grows on you.

1 Most of your AoE damage is from chains, which are cleaves, so I think SWF comes out ahead on tanking and dungeon trash mob clearing, but is worse for raids and red names.
2 Ahh, yea that may help others. I don't believe in using assassinate gear. I don't feel 1 or 2 weakest of the weak mob kills every 12 seconds is good enough to warrant building for, especially since you are left with the reapers and DW champions which are the real threats. The weak mobs generally will die to chains damage anyways. In general, I don't feel assassinate and stealth are worth primary hotbar space. I use stealth when solo, but grouped as the tank you have to be fast and in front to be visible to get aggro and move at group speeds. Oh, also need more HAMP and +Lore and Fortification and spell saves, since we are acting as the tank.
3. Dire Charge works on reapers, so you can just use that, now that you have a dex trance to boost the DC to a bajillion due to same stat as dps.
4. Ahh good, then I can retire from my build. I read of paladins unhappy with KoTC, EK unhappy with Fatesinger, monks unhappy with GMoF, and Rogues unhappy with SD, and hybrids unhappy with hybrids, so I am just stepping in to fill a void. There are definitely better rogue assassin players.
5. For solo, bluff and feint do help a lot on red names though. I just usually group, where I can't use them or the mobs I'm tanking will spin and kill the squishies behind them. So I end up just not skilling them or putting them on hotbars.
6. Heh, good tip, but I can't do this solo clearing groups out its too slow, or grouped as the tank.
7. Yes, better rogue assassins than I use these other methods. I use unstealthing/restealthing since it uses less hotbar space.

Rogues have a lot of things they can do, I just don't end up finding as much of it fitting hotbar space for a tank playstyle. Probably because rogues weren't designed as tanks. But then U51 hit, and people didn't find dps builds they were happy with. Since only tank, healer, or dps roles are available, and rogues definitely aren't healers, I just sorta crammed them into tank as best I could. With enough grease it seems to sorta fit though.

Now that Legendary Rally +2 multiplier has been fixed, T5 LD as a SWF dps also opens up.

All that being said, my rogue assassin can roll up to a pure combat legendary raid and solo it as a longer quest. Heh.

[VinoeWhines]

Now lets quickly take a break from gearing to share with you the actual best combat use of stealth.

Hey Tillow, your concepts are always appreciated and interesting.
But actually the best combat use of stealth in R10, is sneaking up to a mob, any non deathwarded mob, and assassinating his buddy and sneaking away and having his partner swing around nervously trying to find out what took out his partner, the paranoia in their actions is quite amusing and quite sad as they are next on the menu of being taken out.

Though if for any odd reason, your spotted and "the gig is up" then ya, those chains can be a beast for AOE, with D.C.

They patched cut the strings already but before you were able to dance Reapers, Red Names, Champs and my Rogue would Hell Ball them out of existence in one shot. The whole group, it was their last Dancing With The Stars rendition.


Pre U51, the best use of stealth was to make a shadow puppet, shadow phase and Consume the mobs down and Execute the remaining ones standing.
No rhyme or reason why they nerfed Shadow Dancer the most of all the Epic Destiny Trees, making it the weakest of the bunch. It's just pitiful. If they didn't have the time to do the pass right they should of just left it alone and worked on it, just like they plan to work on E.D's. for Artificer, Warlock and others.

[Tilomere]

Agree to disagree on stealth!

On another post, one of the players said, "Ya I can't sneak around and kill stuff, so I recommend going full into Unyielding Sentinal Tier V, then Legendary Dreadnaught Tier IV Dire Charge aggro every mob in room Dire Charge them and cleave them till there are no more." That doesn't sound like a stealth player, he changed his play to Barbarian/Paladin and threw a cosmetic skin and called it a Rogue. Sounds more like a Fighter/Barbarian/Melee Paladin to me check box playstyle. Oh but wait the icon shows Rogue so The Kids Are Alright...

Heh, I hear ya! Fortunately for me, I happen to like the barbarian playstyle.

[VinoeWhines]

Agree to disagree on stealth!

I'll concede that you disagree; besides... every one is entitled to define a word to mean something else, I think the stealth you speak of is more a Taunt enemies.

Heh, I hear ya! Fortunately for me, I happen to like the barbarian playstyle.

I think it is interesting to bring other playstyles to a class and form it into it's Class Pre's. I enjoy the Casting aspects of builds and was sad to see this go only to a spliced Mechanic Rogue in Artificer(casting) and not get grown into the Mechanic Tree. (we had mechanical dogs before, but ddo gave it to Artificers now only)

Though in looking over your postings, I didn't see specifically a break down in "Tank" studies in what you view is part of the Tank features. I know you weren't looking to possibly dissect this build, but I think it would make a case for an interesting read and case study on why things work with either gear/enhancements/feats and Epic Destinies.

You are proficient in putting together a cobble of theories and would be ideal in the write ups you present.
Requesting this specific part of your build may help others to draw out a part of your build which you aspire to create and play.

What specifically are the "Tank" parts of your build? Do you equip a shield to go along with it?

I guess the breakdown of the Tank part would be -

Which specific parts of this build is put aside for: Tank(synergies?)

Feats:
Enhancements:
Gear:
Weapons:
Epic Destinies:

[Tilomere]

Which specific parts of this build is put aside for: Tank(synergies?)

Feats: Slippery mind to make up for lower will save, Defensive roll explained above, and Scion of Feywild to self-heal better are the defensive feats picked. You master's touch a shield, so shield proficiency isn't needed. Epic Fort and Reflex are tank feats to absorb spell hits and stun attacks.
Enhancements: There is a lot of dodge for tanking built into assassin, less in acrobat talked about above, and some in horizon walker and SDK chains. A key tanking concept here is just stuffing as much as you can in the 50% remaining life of defensive roll.
Gear: Winter 4 set is used to tank, and I show the raid swaps to double MRR vs. reflex and pick up more elemental % absorb when needed. Some tanky augments are used and shown.
Weapons: Weapon was picked due to slowing mobs down, which reduces their damage and ability to move to other players.
Epic Destinies: Unyielding Sentinel is tank, which is more than half the ED points. I talk about how this cuts magic damage in half due to absorb %, and how to start using renewal and the temp hp strike at level 20 against red names. 450% threat from US combined with dire charge into chains AoE really makes aggro simple.

There was planned a follow up build, For a Few Flowers More, that uses a shield full time, but I'm not there yet! This one only uses a shield when it has to deal with evasion-prohibited reflex raid damage. Some raid bosses were intentionally designed to not allow evasion characters to tank them, like the dragon in KT, so for those you have to use a shield. I'm not done testing, but I'll toss my thoughts below this in a separate post if you want to try it.

Generally to tank dungeons, you need to take reduced damage, which we do for both physical and magical hits, and if you are squishier like a pure 20 rogue assassin, it helps to pile in a bunch of AoE CC and burst, which stealth use makes more consistent. You also want a few cooldowns like uncanny dodge and undying vangaurd when you need them. Some healing helps for soloing, which we also have. Good saves, which we also have. Solid hp/prr/mrr which we also have. There is a bug that came out after I put this build up where reaper spell points are giving hp instead, increasing the hp on tanky builds by 800 or so, but that's not in screenshots.

[Tilomere]

nerfed in u57

[Saekee]

Have you experimented with epic assassin’s kiss on the chain attacks? It has an extra multiplier that might make up on the lower damage die

[Tilomere]

Have you experimented with epic assassin’s kiss on the chain attacks? It has an extra multiplier that might make up on the lower damage die

Not at all. The damage is fine on it, and it has assassinate. I just didn't want to spend points to make it sentient, and wanted the CC on kukri as well for tanking.

Updated OP to talk about EDs at 20, and taking draconic for no-fail 1 saves against disintegrate 1 shots. This puts your EDs 20-26 at US/LD/Draconic until you can pick up the Epic Fortitude feat.

Also updated OP to add a trick at end for boss killing speed.

[MalarKan]

Ok in curious... I need a breakdown of your stats lol
Dex96?? Huuuge

[Tilomere]

20 Base
7 Levels
8 Tome
7 Past Lives = 3 Racial + 2 Heroic Completionist +2 Racial Completionist ?
26 Gear = 13 Enhancement + 5 Insight + 3 Quality + 2 Profane + 2 Festive + 1 Exceptional
4 Buffs = 2 Yugo + 2 Guild (Ship)
14 Enhancements = 4 Assassin 4 Acrobat 1 SDK 5 Reaper
10 Sentience

With LD action hero and enhanced bloodrage on kukri your combat stats are a tad higher than pictured.

[VinoeWhines]

...

42212HP in Reaper
2777 out of Reaper
Is this with the Reaper Bug?

where is the 1435HP breakdown from?
Breakdown
PRR?
AC?

Thanks again