next class to roll, yo.

Alrighty. I feel highly qualified to answer this, seeing as I have high lvl (90+) assassin and barbarian.

Quick background info: I had a barbarian I played many moons ago. I left it for some time (ie, didn't look at him for 7 months or so) and recently I've re-engaged him, levelled him up some, and slapped on some decent gear. Found that I liked playing barbarian as much as I ever did.

Both classes have a lot of cool things going for them. Lets start with barbarian:

Barbarian:

-you take the hits, you control the mobs: I've always found this to be rather... awesome Maybe its something that depends on your personality, but being able to manipulate where the mobs go and who they hit is pretty cool, imo. And the nifty thing is, you take all these hits, but you still come out alive.
-on the topic of taking hits: you can take a LOT of hits! Crazy high phy def, crazy high hp pool. Skills that can reduce dmg and absorb magic dmg.
-if you get good with a barbarian, having lots of mobs (talking 20+) hitting you has an interesting effect; with a skill called beastial rage (mob hits you, you get 5 chi/8chi if demon for 15seconds/18s sage), you can do something like: sunder (2 sparks), random aoe, armageddon (2 sparks), random aoe, firestorm (spark), random aoe, and then double/triple spark if you care to. No other class can gain chi this fast in a pve setting using skills.
-buffs: higher hp? WIN. Stronger hitting attacks with titans? WIN.
-debuffs: barbs have the strongest reliable (not talking about veno's demon ironwood here folks) physical def debuff (devour, tiger form); debuffs to reduce phy attack, to slow down, to immobilize, to stun, to freeze
-speed: barbs are fast! And tigers get to roll. How sweet is that. And balls of fire on our feet, lol.
-barb specialties: tanking (especially warsong, TT 3-X), pulling catapults in TWs.
-epic spike dmg with armageddon. I've hit some high numbers with my assassin, but this skill tops them all. Massive MASSIVE aoe dmg. And on that note..
-strong in pk: always were (talking end-game) still are. Barbarians are still the toughest opponent for an assasin.
-Cultivaton: demon if you like to pk, sage if you like to pull pve. Pretty simple here. I went demon; demon has no reduced dmg for tiger form, demon sunder (5s of garuanteed crits), demon beastial onslaught (35% more crit for 6s), demon armageddon (extra damage), demon titans buff (5% more crit for a minute). Sage gives more def and hp in tiger, a hp buff that lasts an hour, and titans gives considerably more phy attack than demon version. Think of it as, sage = strong def, more consistent high-hitting attacks; demon = more spike dmg from crits.


Assassin:

-lets start with the obvious, people... stealth. Whether you like to do afk world-quest while in pk mode, or you like to pk, or simply like feeling 'uber-ninja', stealth is where its at.
-second obvious point... damage. Sins do a whole freakin lot of single target damage, right from day 1, and it just keeps getting better. Crits, high attack rate, perma-double then perma-triple sparking, using daggers, which hit pretty decent dmg. And on that note... daggers are just the wickedest-lookin weps ever. Be honest, they are really :P
-while assassins have no direct ways to reduce dmg, they have ever-so-many ways to avoid taking damage. Firstly, evasion; mobs just miss you a whole lot. Secondly, nifty skill effects that can make you take '1' dmg from hits; there is also a skill that lets you avoid the status effect of a skill (ie, take the dmg, but not the additional stun effect/bleed/anything effect).
-bloodpaint: FULL OF WIN. Do high dmg = get lots of hp back. Do realllly high dmg and get a whoooole lot of hp back. Whats not to love about this?
-masters of status effects: immobilize/stun/sleep/seals/slowdowns. And not just % chance stuff... You get a garuanteed 9second immobilize, a garuanteed 3s stun (5 if demon), garuanteed 5s stun (6 if demon) a 5s sleep (garuanteed if demon). Seal that somebody with stun-resist skill in can't avoid. Only debuff you'll miss having is a phy defense debuff. Part of why barbs are still assassins worst foes :P
-2 speed skills = assassins are good at bursts of speed... again a pk benefit.
-assassin specialties: tanking stuff that doesn't 1-2shot you (talking endgame here folks), very good dps on single targets, and pk. Let me say that again, imho, assassins are probably... best...at pk. Let me rephrase that. If you were to take a certain amount of $; could be 50, 100, 200, whatever you want. Make 8 characters, 1 per each class. Level each to end-game and use that $ to get them good gear & skills, etc. I'm gonna bet that, every time, assassin will (I mean, assuming you can play them all equally well) have the best chance to do well in pk PER your time & $ investment.
-cultivation: sage if you like to... uh... hm. Lets say if you want to skill spam, go sage. Personally I know of no sins that end up skill spamming end game... however, if you have a whole freakin lot of $, you could make a 4 attacks per second assasin, sage. That'd be pretty sweet, I admit. For those who want pk on a tighter budget, go demon. Demon has longer stuns, sooo... yeah


Hope that this brief outline of each class' strongest points well help you decide what, in fact, it is you like doing, and which class would be best suited for you.

Cheers,

Azzazin

Michael_dark - Lost City wrote: »

ANY CLASS with highly refined Nirvana WEAPONS hurt. BAD.

Fixed that for you.b:pleased

XylolyX - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Fixed that for you.b:pleased

Well, barbs without them don't really hurt. Most other classes do still hurt. Nirvana axes make demon barbs pretty factor.

MrCIeric - Dreamweaver wrote: »

When i was an archer we couldnt do anything without barbs barbs are needed and hurt when therre arent any out there. thats why i rolled one.

I'm talking PvP.

WaffleChan - Sanctuary wrote: »

after looking it over, isnt sage alot bette rthan demon sin O_o? i mean the skills > demon, and the spark isnt reason enough to build my entire cultivation of f of

They're saying because if you go -interval you don't really use skills hence why they're not important

Waffle, I'm slightly disappointed; did you not read my post? Demon IS better for pk other than the higher damage. Demon stuns are longer. Demon has short term effects like massively increased evasion on demon bloodpaint and demon maze steps, perfect for pk. Demon sleep is 100%; demon knife throw is 100% cancel, more useful in my opinion than shorter cooldowns but less reliability that you get with sage. And what others state is also very true: as a sin, for pve you'll basically spark and normal attack. This is what you'd do as sage OR demon, I'm willing to bet... so why not go demon & do more damage while at it. Demon IS better for pk. /discussion please & ty.

Azzazin


On a further note... it depends what you want to do with pk. IF you want to win against everyone, demon. If you want to win against squishies more easily (they are already easy) then by all means sage skills hit harder generally; but I'd challenge you to take down a barb with sage spark... certainly it'll be much much harder than using a demon spark.

BE cool, and make a mage. b:cuteb:dirty

WaffleChan - Sanctuary wrote: »

sage has its benefits aswell, ranging from HP debuffs, to nice crit buff, better evasions on your evasion skills (the actual evasion stat is useless, higher dodge % is vastly superior), a number of cooldown reductions on useful skills, quite frankly i find sage vastly superior.

not trying to argue about it, but i hardly find a spark worth changing my entire build giving me skills i wont find any use for at all in how i wish to play. im not aiming to be some 5.0 super cashed/geared dude, just want to have fun.

though the one thing i dont get on the shadow escape descript...

why does it say dispells negative effects as the sage descript too.

the sage version actually purifies lol

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary wrote: »

How about a sin with barb's hp? There is at least one sin in Sanctuary that has HP of a barb. >___> He's the scariest sin I've seen in the entire server. He's not 5.0...he doesn't need to be. b:shocked

hmm rlly hope i run into this sin lol