U53 Completionist's Guide to Assassin

[Carpone]

The complete write up is available in Google Docs because it is too long for the forum software to handle. Gear, enhancements, epic destinies, frequently asked questions, and a breakdown of all important stats are included.

I hope you find it helpful.

[Arkat]

nt

[Synthetic]

I'm sure I'll be referencing this a lot as I'm running an assassin currently.

Your comment about assassinate is puzzling it really doesn't have anything to do with the party it's something you do on your own time, but to each their own. It's also useful in specific situations. Do you have any suggestions on what to give up if someone is interested in getting it?

Isn't it clearly better to have the 41d6 of additional damage from the SD strike? Let someone else get the 10% bonus. Getting the law damage is fine, but leaving a huge chunk of damage on the floor seems strange for a raid build.

If you insist on getting the 10% damage bonus wouldn't it be better to do that via the smite bonus in T5. The CC is good but the build is a group build someone else can CC.

Having the increased SWF speed and damage is great for the chain attack. It would be useful to see how much AOE vs Single target you're giving up.

Thank you,

Synth

[jskinner937]

Carpone,

Thanks for your build shares. I am sure many have said before, but there is so much reasoning given behind your choices and it helps people decide really what's important for them when making build decisions aside from the mainstream. Tweaking a build to your playsyles is so much more fun than just simply copying ones build. So I appreciate these posts and plea to keep them coming.

[mixomatozis]

Hey Ying. Why Shadar Kai over Halfling?

[jskinner937]

Hey Ying. Why Shadar Kai over Halfling?

Greater chains is pretty stellar AOE crowd control.

[Carpone]

Apologies for any enhancement confusion. In my haste to post the build, I inadvertently grabbed old screenshots. The guide has the correct screenshots now.

Hey Ying. Why Shadar Kai over Halfling?

Shadow Jaunt, Displacement, Chains and Greater Chains. The loss of 1 SA dice from Halfling is worth it. The Shadar-kai revamp in U50 completely revitalized this race.

upgraded Dull dugger isn't better as main weapon?

Not for trash. The Goldcursed dagger is amazing CC when coupled with chains and greater chains.

fascinating that a top player of assassin is not assassinating or bothering with stealth. Says a lot about the game.

I did the Assassinate thing for quite a while. While thematic, I always found that type of gameplay to be tedious. Even in pugs, many players don't want to wait around for someone else to do sneaky stuff. They want to be part of the action, not watch it. The game as a whole has moved away from stealthing through a quest. Players occasionally get tossed a bone, and there are some cool R10 stealthy rogue solo completions I have much respect for. But it's not my preferred playstyle.

[Alled78]

The complete write up is available in Google Docs because it is too long for the forum software to handle. Gear, enhancements, epic destinies, frequently asked questions, and a breakdown of all important stats are included.

I hope you find it helpful.

upgraded Dull dugger isn't better as main weapon?

[Arkat]

Greater chains is pretty stellar AOE crowd control.

From what I can see, Ying's build doesn't use Greater Spiked Chain Attack.

upgraded Dull dugger isn't better as main weapon?

Definitely not.

[Artos_Fabril]

From what I can see, Ying's build doesn't use Greater Spiked Chain Attack.

Narrative says "drop 1 point from No Step Missed and one from Assassin light armor Mastery for greater chains" (page 5, between the snips of the enhancements trees.

Which brings up a separate point: The guide calculates 3 ranks of assassin light armor training for MDB/Dodge cap, which is pictured in the enhancements, but as described would only be 2 points.

[Arkat]

Narrative says "drop 1 point from No Step Missed and one from Assassin light armor Mastery for greater chains" (page 5, between the snips of the enhancements trees.

I was looking at the screenshot of the enhancement trees and no points were put in Greater Chain Attack.


EDIT: Ah, it says "Note: Old screenshot. Take Greater Spiked Chain Attack. Drop 1 level of Light Armor Mastery and 1 level of No Step Missed." Sorry, I missed that.

[Arkat]

The complete write up is available in Google Docs because it is too long for the forum software to handle. Gear, enhancements, epic destinies, frequently asked questions, and a breakdown of all important stats are included.

I hope you find it helpful.

Why the Bound Elemental Ring of Acid?

[MalarKan]

Have you teste Fury of the wild instead, with Hsrbinger of Chaos fest and the knockdown from Adrenalin Hits? It works on reapers, its a verry narrow Form of 1 mob cc

[darkriderz]

Have you teste Fury of the wild instead, with Hsrbinger of Chaos fest and the knockdown from Adrenalin Hits? It works on reapers, its a verry narrow Form of 1 mob cc

Divine crusader is a crazy strong tree. Cower can hit despair reapers, and it is aoe, not single target

[Carpone]

Have you teste Fury of the wild instead, with Hsrbinger of Chaos fest and the knockdown from Adrenalin Hits? It works on reapers, its a verry narrow Form of 1 mob cc

Fury is great for THF, not so much for daggers. I absolutely loved Fury on my Aasimar w/ Baz. I ran that build for 5 lives, and would play it again.

Between chain, greater chain and Cower I can keep a group of mobs locked down for 10 seconds assuming they're all off cooldown.

If you ever push skulls in a raid like KT or VoD with waves of mobs that must be killed, Divine Crusader is a much better option than Fury. That's the kind of scenario I build for, since that's what I and my guild like to do.

[Zhyano]

Just wondering, have you done the math regarding VKF capstone? You could go 18 rogue, 1 monk, 1 fvs. Something like 41 vkf, 35 as, 3 war, 17 sdk. Can grab core1 henshin when tebaxi comes out.

That would net you 10MP, 5% attack speed, vkf core5 and monk stances for either wind + jidz tetka + razorclaw stance or sun for crit. Youd lose 5 SA dice and mrr cap though.

I ran that a few lives back and it rocked, but want your professional opinion on it

[Carpone]

I don't have the time nor inclination to calculate or test every available iteration of a build. I'll cut and paste what I posted in the calculator output I've shared so far:

Q: I like what I see, and I want to help. How can I do that?

A: I need builds to run through the calculator. I have a set of reference builds (see the Build Link column in the Config tab). However, I don't have the time to come up with optimized builds for every attack style and add new features to the calculator. Creating an optimized build is by far the most laborious part of this process.

Long term my goal is to automatically parse a Maetrim build file and spit out the DPS numbers. But that's a much larger project. For now, if you have a fully optimized and complete build for the following archetypes that is up to date with the latest update, then please send me the Maetrim build file via Discord:

Wolf
Non-wolf THF
SWF
Staff
TWF
Unarmed
Vile Chemist thrower
Eldritch Knight (Wizard and Sorc variants)
Vanguard (Paladin and Fighter variants)

Builds must include max reaper points, max past lives, and all tomes granting action points. Push the limits. Go nuts with double set bonuses on a Gem of Many Facets, and use a perfected artifact. But I'm also looking for builds that are solid without unobtainium gear sets.

I will convert the Maetrim files manually into a config file I can process with the Master at Arms calculator. Please do not send me nuker builds yet. Once I implement melee support, then I will solicit nuker builds to start modeling.

Unless it's tied to a specific class requirement (wolf, Vile Chemist, EK, Vanguard), I do not care about the class split. I'm interested in what does optimized damage against red/purple named mobs for each weapon/combat style.

Any calcs would be without factoring in the random Vistani Fortune buff, since there's no meaningful way to model that. 75% of the time the buff is terrible.

[Ulfo]

Why the Bound Elemental Ring of Acid?

Stackable DoT, of course.

[Arkat]

Stackable DoT, of course.

Ahhh...forgot about the DoT.