New Assassin needs advice...

onlyhisbabydoll · July 2010

Hi, sorry if any of these questions are stupid or have really obvious answers. I have read the two main guides, but there is so much information there and they refer to things I can't find explainations of.

Could someone break down some questions for me? I think I'm just starting to figure out how to play as a proper assassin now, in my 5x lvls. But from what I've read, that isn't all that unusual as the real skills start to come in.

For a long time I think I was relying too much on my skills, but until I got a better weapon I had to...now I'm reading alot about stun/immobilize/etc and then regular attack until it is dead.

Could someone break down which skills are good for what in which situations? lol.

Is there anything that will actually stop the target from attacking for a period of time? Or is slowing it down with Rib Strike the best option in PvE?

Also, I'm having a problem with drawing aggro from tanks and high levels. I'm drawing it from good tanks 10 levels higher than myself and other classes almost 30 levels higher. I can do it with my bow. Am I doing something wrong?

Does anyone have any other advice? Mistakes you made, suggestions, maybe what my attributes should be around at this level...any advice you have to give would be appreciated.

I've got some other questions about squads, but I'd like to know how to fight better solo first!

Astrohawke - Lost City · July 2010

Assassins don't actually have that many stuns and the ones we have can't be used often enough to be useful in PvE. One requires 2 sparks and the other has a 3 minute cooldown.

In general, most sins start at the skill spam stage of using slipstream strike and puncture wound. By the time you get to 59 and get your double spark, you should be making use of inner harmony and rising dragon strike to spark as much as possible. If done right, I could pretty much consistently double spark before every mob. Rib strike can be used if the mob is mainly physical. Tackling slash is used if the mob is mainly ranged and likes to run away.

By the time I hit 70, I didn't bother with any of those skills. I just put on bloodpaint and auto attacked everything. The only exception was if it's a mob with increased life/defense/attack or there were 2-3 mobs together, I would spark to kill them quickly.

It's natural to steal aggro from anyone within 10 levels. You can prevent this by doing a few things. First is to wait until the boss is at 50 or 75% before starting to attack. Second is to attack and stop every so often to reduce your damage output. Third is to auto attack with chill of the deep on. Fourth is to just spam skills. Never spark during the fight. IF you're stealing aggro from someone 30 levels above you and you're using a bow, then they are really fail and they're definitely doing something wrong.

Typhyse - Sanctuary · July 2010

Astrohawke - Lost City wrote: »

Assassins don't actually have that many stuns and the ones we have can't be used often enough to be useful in PvE. One requires 2 sparks and the other has a 3 minute cooldown.

In general, most sins start at the skill spam stage of using slipstream strike and puncture wound. By the time you get to 59 and get your double spark, you should be making use of inner harmony and rising dragon strike to spark as much as possible. If done right, I could pretty much consistently double spark before every mob. Rib strike can be used if the mob is mainly physical. Tackling slash is used if the mob is mainly ranged and likes to run away.

By the time I hit 70, I didn't bother with any of those skills. I just put on bloodpaint and auto attacked everything. The only exception was if it's a mob with increased life/defense/attack or there were 2-3 mobs together, I would spark to kill them quickly.

It's natural to steal aggro from anyone within 10 levels. You can prevent this by doing a few things. First is to wait until the boss is at 50 or 75% before starting to attack. Second is to attack and stop every so often to reduce your damage output. Third is to auto attack with chill of the deep on. Fourth is to just spam skills. Never spark during the fight. IF you're stealing aggro from someone 30 levels above you and you're using a bow, then they are really fail and they're definitely doing something wrong.

One more thing you can do is remove all gear with +dex bonuses

SickPigeon - Raging Tide · August 2010

Tackling Slash is actually really useful and the CD isn't too long. Use it on a melee mob and run inside the mob. You can hit it for 6-9 seconds (depending on what lvl your TS is) without taking any damage if you do this properly. It'll spend the entire time trying to reposition itself to hit you. It's basically a stun w/o using any sparks and builds chi in the process.
For ranged mobs and caster mobs, you can shadow walk up to them and then hit them. They tend to be surprised or something so they don't run away, instead hitting you right where they are. You can also just use tackling slash to pin them down.

Ribstrike is also extremely beneficial. It reduces the target's attack speed by about 50% at max I believe. Sins, especially interval sins, can use bloodpaint then don't even need to spark to kill a mob that rarely hits them. You'll be regaining more HP than you're losing if you do this properly as well. If you have daggers like the 56 gold daggers that have a chance of holy, you'll hardly ever need to use a pot. This means with each hit you'll get 2% of the damage turned into HP and you'll also have a chance to remove all debuffs and gain 5% of your total HP each hit.

PvE wise, these are really the only 3 skills you'll need for 5x and 6x. Stuns and sparks are just extra.

And despite what people say, investing some points into Vit won't do much harm. If you know what you're doing, you can have good HP and still hit insanely high. I'm lvl 61 and right now, just half my gear is boosting my Vit by 30. I'd say that's pretty good for a lowbie.
If you're stealing aggro, simply use COTD to reduce your attack rate a bit. This should make sure you do damage but don't do too much to draw aggro. And as for the players 30 levels higher, they probably just suck. I only know 1 5x barb who can hold my aggro sparked and only a couple 6x barbs. In our defense, most barbs at 5x and 6x tend to be kinda fail (I dun have enough hands to count the number of times a barb's tried making me or actually made me tank and I ended up doing a better job than them).

LeiMai - Raging Tide · August 2010

I do have the gold 56 daggers

Thankfully! Although I haven't noticed it helping my HP much. And I did put points into vit, too poor not to! My gear right now (at 58) gives me +12vit overall. So I've got a total of 38 in vit.

Do you have any suggestions for tanking as a sin? I was in a BH earlier and our barb a) was a low level b) didn't have enough aggro skills and c) bailed on one of the bosses. I would have drawn aggro anyways, so I tried to tank and would have been successful if the cleric healed me instead of trying to attack. I've heard sins can tank, but is there anything in particular I'd need to know? We have lower HP but can we do it because we can slow the attack rate and evade more hits than other classes?

COTD, I just started using it and it did help. I didn't draw aggro at all when I wasn't trying to.

I use Tackling Slash on ranged mobs alot, and Rib Strike on melee, should I try Tackling Slash on melee mobs more?

Is it worth leveling blood paint?

Vassaga - Heavens Tear · August 2010

Do you have any suggestions for tanking as a sin? I was in a BH earlier and our barb a) was a low level b) didn't have enough aggro skills and c) bailed on one of the bosses. I would have drawn aggro anyways, so I tried to tank and would have been successful if the cleric healed me instead of trying to attack. I've heard sins can tank, but is there anything in particular I'd need to know? We have lower HP but can we do it because we can slow the attack rate and evade more hits than other classes?

Meh. We can tank, but it's not our job to do that.. In BHs, my primary role is to stun/immobilize mobs that are heading towards squishies during bad pull and to DD. So far I managed to tank Fushma, Rankar (this was VERY painful), and then bosses in fb59.. Maxed rib strike is helping me a lot on this

I also put focused mind on, but I'm not sure does it make any difference?

COTD, I just started using it and it did help. I didn't draw aggro at all when I wasn't trying to.

Only time I had it on is when there were 3 sins in squad, so we agreed to put it on to avoid stealing aggro... I dislike this skill... It's annoying. I'd rather take off my rings then use it at this point.

Is it worth leveling blood paint?

I leveled it a bit because of longer duration. That's only benefit of leveling it, if not Sage BP.

SickPigeon - Raging Tide · August 2010

LeiMai - Raging Tide wrote: »

I do have the gold 56 daggers Thankfully! Although I haven't noticed it helping my HP much. And I did put points into vit, too poor not to! My gear right now (at 58) gives me +12vit overall. So I've got a total of 38 in vit.

Do you have any suggestions for tanking as a sin? I was in a BH earlier and our barb a) was a low level b) didn't have enough aggro skills and c) bailed on one of the bosses. I would have drawn aggro anyways, so I tried to tank and would have been successful if the cleric healed me instead of trying to attack. I've heard sins can tank, but is there anything in particular I'd need to know? We have lower HP but can we do it because we can slow the attack rate and evade more hits than other classes?

COTD, I just started using it and it did help. I didn't draw aggro at all when I wasn't trying to.

I use Tackling Slash on ranged mobs alot, and Rib Strike on melee, should I try Tackling Slash on melee mobs more?

Is it worth leveling blood paint?

For tanking as a sin, it's pretty easy. We already draw aggro easily with just normal attacks so skills are mostly just for debuffing. Use tackling slash a lot to make sure that even if the cleric steals aggro, the mob can't run to it (this also builds about half a bar of chi). Get ribstrike to at least level 6 to slow attack speed by 40% (if you're hit less, you take less damage). If you get to about 50% or 3/4ths of your hp, spark. Chances are if the enemy is ribstriked, you'll leach more HP than you're losing in huge amounts with just normal attacks.
And despite what people say, it doesn't hurt to have 30-50 Vit. My Vit is 50 (80 with gear). The only difference is you'll have about 1.5%-2% less crit chance than a pure dex sin. You'll still hit really hard.

As for tackling slash; it helps on melee mobs. It does good damage, immobilizes the mob so they can't run to casters or clerics who might steal aggro from the tank, and if you step inside the mob you basically get a stun. The stun trick only works on melee mobs but it'll build chi and tackling slash only has a 15 second CD compared to shadow teleport's stun. It also doesn't cost any sparks unlike HH.
For Bloodpaint, it's not worth leveling until you hit sage or demon. For sage, the drain goes from 2% to 3% (seems small but HUGE difference). For demon, it gives a large evasion boost while you use it. Both are really good. As for now, just keep it at level 1. It's a 17 minute buff at lvl 1 and you can only increase duration by about 1 minute each level until you get it to sage or demon. The only real purpose of boosting it at early levels would be if you have spirit to spare and are too lazy to use a buff every 17 minutes.

New Assassin needs advice...

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