Armour and Sins

I've seen quite a few threads pop up, and especially those
questioning the viability of a heavy armour build to face up
against blademasters and barbarians.

I'd just like to take a moment to explain how each armour
works in relations to the classes that use it, and what's
really the best for an assassin.

Heavy armour
Is typically used by barbarians and blademasters as they
are the tanks and sub tanks (blademasters) of the game.
Heavy armour allows for the most physical defense whilst
having the least magical defense, and also gives the most
HP bonuses per refine of all the armour types.

Heavy armour is also known to be used sometimes by
venomancers. The difference between heavy armour on a
venomancer and other casters is that venomancers have a
second different form to that of their human caster form
which requires them to have strength and dexterity to make
full use of this second form, fox form, which is melee.

That said, heavy armour is still a viable build for venos whether
it's a hybrid with their caster form (mag, dex and str) or just a
pure melee build.

Heavy armour requires alot of strength and lesser dexterity to wear it.

Light Armour
Light armour is the "in-between" of arcane and heavy armour.
The typical characteristics of light armour is a balance between
it's magical and physical defense but also noticably lower than it's
arcane and heavy counterparts.

It was orginally designed for archers, but now since the expansion,
Sins also wear it. It's not uncommon to see casters in light armour.
They use light armour to gain a higher physical defense whilst also
maintaining some magical defense. Some even keep a set of light
armour and arcane armour to switch between when needed. Light
armour builds also increases their critical strike rate for their magical
attacks.

Light armour requires the same value of strength and dexterity to
wear, but more dexterity and less strength than heavy armour.

Arcane Armour
Is typically used by casters, venomancers, wizards, psychics and clerics.
It allows the greatest magical defense yet the lowest physical defense.
Arcane armour also allows the lowest HP per refine, so casters usually have
to be clever about gaining decent HP pools.

Arcane armour requires a great amount of magic and little strength to wear.


Armour is normally factored into your build since it requires stat points to
use, and every stat point matters when you're trying to build yourself correctly.

Dex:
Increases evasion, accuracy, magic and physical critical strike rate,
and ranged physical and Dagger physical damage. (ranged = archers.)

Mag:
Increases your maximum mana, mana recovery rate, magical attack,
magical defense.

Vit:
Increases your maximum hit points,HP regen, magical and physical defenses.

Str:
Increases your physical attack and physical defense.

As you can tell, dexterity, not strength is our source of physical attack.
Along with it, we also have very high evasion, crit rate and accuracy.

Magic and strength holds no use to us what-so-ever. Mag may increase
your mana pool, but none of your skills require magic to be effective. Essentially
a low mana pool won't worry you so much with pots and charms. We only,
need the Str required of us to wear our light armour and weapons, and no more.

Vit is what will increase your HP pool. Some assassins preffer a little more
survivability, so they add this. HP is honestly the best way to increase your
survival rate, rather then switching out your light armour for something with
more physical defense in my opinion.

HP will give you a better survival rate against all classes, while switching
to say heavy armour will only allow you to survive against blademasters, assassins
and barbarians. A str type build will do nothing for an assassin in this situation.
You will survive, but you'll have even more difficulty trying to kill one than your
would have had in a dex type build.

The same goes for arcane armour, you'll only survive arcane classes. In open
feild PvP, TW, DT ect, people will come after you which you haven't built yourself
to survive against. Assassins aren't really a PvP support, there's not many skills
other than short seals and stuns they can use to assist their squads in killing
someone. Assassins are meant to be high damage dealers with a short life span.

Now, if you're clever enough about, you can survive quite easily with your arsenal
of tricks up your sleeves. You've got a skill which will prevent a killing blow within
2 minutes, a skill that will cloak you from damage and your enemy will lose your
target, a teleport skill, sleeps, stuns, ability to spark frequently (resists) ect.