Killer III vs No Mercy III?

[Archenicorus]

I have 3 AP left to spare in my build and im not sure whether to take 3 ranks of

No Mercy: You deal 10/20/30% additional damage to helpless opponents.
OR
Killer: When you kill a target, you gain a 5% Morale bonus to Doublestrike and Doubleshot for 15 seconds. Weak enemies will not always produce this effect. The Killer buff can stack up to 2/3/4 times. Stacks are reduced one at a time.

Any advice on which would of the two would be better and why? (I have a few options of consistently making enemies helpless, like blind, save for bosses, so it can be taken into account that No Mercy passive can be almost always applying)

[Septimus-Boldrei]

I have 3 AP left to spare in my build and im not sure whether to take 3 ranks of

No Mercy: You deal 10/20/30% additional damage to helpless opponents.
OR
Killer: When you kill a target, you gain a 5% Morale bonus to Doublestrike and Doubleshot for 15 seconds. Weak enemies will not always produce this effect. The Killer buff can stack up to 2/3/4 times. Stacks are reduced one at a time.

Any advice on which would of the two would be better and why? (I have a few options of consistently making enemies helpless, like blind, save for bosses, so it can be taken into account that No Mercy passive can be almost always applying)

Two ways to look at this, efficiency, or peak performance:
Simple maths dependent on your playstyle. If approx. 50% or more of the blows you land are on helpless targets go for No Mercy
OR
Which would help you most in your toughest encounters?

[Thumbed_Servant]

I have 3 AP left to spare in my build and im not sure whether to take 3 ranks of

No Mercy: You deal 10/20/30% additional damage to helpless opponents.
OR
Killer: When you kill a target, you gain a 5% Morale bonus to Doublestrike and Doubleshot for 15 seconds. Weak enemies will not always produce this effect. The Killer buff can stack up to 2/3/4 times. Stacks are reduced one at a time.

Any advice on which would of the two would be better and why? (I have a few options of consistently making enemies helpless, like blind, save for bosses, so it can be taken into account that No Mercy passive can be almost always applying)

How often are you encountering "helpless" opponents?

How often are YOU killilng opponents?

I think it is more likely you are more often putting in the killing blows on opponents than it is you are fighting helpless opponents. If that is the case then I would go with Killer

[DaviMOC]

Depends on uptime. If you play mostly with others I would choose no mercy. As not only you but others can make enemies helpless.
If you play mostly solo I would go killer. Thats exact the oposite of no mercy as other people actually gets in your way to get buffs.


But there is others stuff to consider. Sometimes you dont need more damage on helpless targets as they already die too fast and may be better to try and stack buffs.

You by yourself cant make bosses helpless but some alchemists can while killing 3 adds for buffs may be not possible all the time. Not only that but the time you spend trying to keep buffs up is DPS downtime on the real targets. Are you on a AoE build? It may be easier to keep the buff up while fighting the main target.

No mercy is passive no need maintance and it may be easier for you.

It all depends. Its just Enhancment points cheap to reset best thing you can do its to test both and see what fits better your play experience.

[slarden]

It really depends on what is more important to you.

30% bonus helplessness damage translates into a maximum of 15% extra damage on helpless opponents. My experience has been that helpless opponents in general are not problematic to myself or the group and are quickly dealt with. However, kill count is an important stat to many people and focusing on helpless enemies is a good way to pad the kill count as your damage is over double so it's easy to land the kill and you can kill more opponents by focusing on helpless enemies. The bonus damage increases the chance you will land the killing blow.

On my assassin I tend to focus on the most dangerous enemy whether that is a mob or the boss. I find killer more beneficial for that purpose. If a mob comes and attacks you while you are dealing with a boss and you kill it - it buffs your boss damage. If you are clearing dangerous mobs each kill makes you stronger for the next dangerous mob.

After playing assassin for years my assessment is that killer is flat-out superior and bonus helplessness damage is one of the most over-rated things in the game because kill count is so over-emphasized it drives behavior toward that end vs. maximum utility to the party.

[Soulfurnace]

Raids: Helpless damage, unless it's like.. chrono, which is a quest that allows 12 people. Most raids won't give you enough trash, and unless you're focussing solely on killing skeletons in closet for some reason you won't have enough stacks. And helpless in raids comes from time stop. I know, right? Who knew.
Also, if you do that, you're a bad person. I want to kill them. Begone. The skeletons are all mine.

Non-raids: Depends on how many final blows you get. If there's 6 people in a r10, with one nuker and 3 other dps (and a piker, of course), do you think you'll kill enough to keep it up? If so, killer is better.
If you aren't doing enough dps to genuinely get those stacks, helpless will still win.

Of course, asking anyone if they're doing enough dps to get enough kills to sustain that sort of thing is silly; who says they don't?

I, of course, get enough kills to sustain fatal harrier. Totally.

[Caarb]

Dont forget about timestop.

[Saekee]

Killer is a morale bonus that does not stack with other morale bonuses such as Rapid slash (dagger, Vistani tier 1) quickstrike (staff, TA, tier 2). So if you are using either one, you do not need killer. Ultimately, though, doublestrike is far more valuable in heroics than in epics in that builds usually do not have it too high yet. Only ninjas get it insanely high at level 12.

In epics, especially legendary, a strong group will be making trash helpless and they will want an assassin to drop held mobs as fast as possible, so No Mercy, Crush weakness etc etc. That is your role--trash cleanup--also if you have the Legendary Goldcursed Dagger you will be making stuff helpless anyway so better to drop them fast when you need it most, toe to toe.

So in short, I would do Killer in heroics, No Mercy epics.

[Archenicorus]

Thanks so much for the inputs!

Killer is a morale bonus that does not stack with other morale bonuses such as Rapid slash (dagger, Vistani tier 1) quickstrike (staff, TA, tier 2). So if you are using either one, you do not need killer. Ultimately, though, doublestrike is far more valuable in heroics than in epics in that builds usually do not have it too high yet. Only ninjas get it insanely high at level 12.

In epics, especially legendary, a strong group will be making trash helpless and they will want an assassin to drop held mobs as fast as possible, so No Mercy, Crush weakness etc etc. That is your role--trash cleanup--also if you have the Legendary Goldcursed Dagger you will be making stuff helpless anyway so better to drop them fast when you need it most, toe to toe.

So in short, I would do Killer in heroics, No Mercy epics.

In the context of heroic levelling for, say tempest ranger, should I prioritize getting DWS Killer III, or the Crit multiplier from tempest?