Crystal Spikers

[Doumanator]

This is a build I was mulling over for a while, because an E/A was what i had originally had planned, but skill recharge was too long so this is what I Have come up with:

5 A/E Crystal Wave, Teniani's Crystals, Deaths Charge, Return, Assasins Promise (E), Armor of Earth, Kinetic Armor or Silver Armour. - 16 Deadly Arts, 12 Earth Magic and 4 (3+1) Shadow Arts.

1 Warder, 1 Monk, and another defense: Monk, Necro Martyr/MM, or Rit

Make a 'Base' With your 3 defensive People, the warder especially, the spikers cast their defense skills (armours), then all cast Assasins Promise on their target. Then they all use Deaths Charge to shadow step (sychronized for spike) to the opponent then cast Crystal Wave and its dupe. Thats 82 X 2 X 5 (820) in 1.5 seconds, no armour deduction, and no magic resistance. After that opponent is dead, your Assasin's Promise will take effect gaining u back full or nearly full energy, and recharging your skills so you can do it again as soon as you hit return to go back to your base, then recast defensive spells(if needed) and then repeat this process on another target. (If needed one of the defense could use Blood Rit for anyone that had Assasins Promise removed.)

I think this could prove to be first a good spike and a seond, ppl can realize that if assasin skills are use properly, they can be very good, just like all other classes.

[B Ephekt]

People have been doing this since the Factions beta. Most people use E/A with Death's Charge and Aura of Displacement as their elite.

[Almas Darksoul]

Err...

Either you use Assassin's promise before you teleport in, thus alerting the enemy to your spike...

Or you use Assassin's promise just after you tele in but before nuking, thus alerting an active monk to your spike and giving the spikee time to run...

Or you use Assassin's promise just after you use Crystal Wave but before Tenai's crystals, thus making the spike unable to kill and alerting the monk in advance...

Or you don't get the recharge from promise.

And Crystal Wave/Tenai's Crystals are PBAoE attacks, meaning they have an extended aftercast of around ~1.5 seconds each. Combined with the cast of assies promise, there will be atleast 3 seconds of time where it will be extremely obvious who the target is. Not to mention that one infuse could easily slide in between the two spike skills - heck, quite a few people could slip a heal other in there with relative ease.

If assassin skills are used properly, they can be extremely effective, as many people have shown. But I think this build needs quite a bit of work before you become one of them.

Edit: Saw the post above. The most successful "teleport-spikes" are usually either Mo/As with death's charge/AoD and Stonesoul Strike/Holy Strike (96 damage per spiker per skill) backed up with a Warder using Gale to ensure the damage, and E/As with death's charge and starburst/flame burst, dealing around 120 damage per spiker per skill. Since starburst is a touch skill not a PBAoE, it does not have the extended aftercast that crystal wave suffers.

The E/A build has a stronger spike and can pressure between spikes, while the Mo/A build has a lot more holding power, especially if run with Death Charge monks using heal elites.

[Doumanator]

thanks for the feedback, i forgot about the aftercast, which is going to prove to be the main flaw. Maybe a necro spell or mark of death could help stop healing of the target, or maybe another spell, ill try to fix this. Suggestion would be appreciated also.