The Experimentor
31-03-2006, 09:40
The Assassin's greatest strength is his greatest weakness.
As a profession or character class, the Assassin was designed mainly as a foil or alternative to the fighting style of the Warrior. Where the Warrior is steady but slow damage and solid damage absorption, the Assassin is spiking damage at the expense of defense.
This spiking takes the form of real damage spiking by extra damage from chained attack skills plus condition dealing to augment the damage or finish off the target. This is all very carefully balanced: an Assassin's spikes must have properly sequenced attack skills, or else the chain fails; most of his attack skills have long recharge times; his armor may be Ranger-level and he may have the Energy recharge of a mage, but he's not at all hard to kill; his daggers do very little damage by themselves, compensated only by their innate ability to double attack and his Critical Strikes attribute.
The question is: how wise is it to specialize in what the Assassin does best when it's a big gamble in itself?
If you manage to pull of your spike and all its moves, well then good for you. With a properly chosen skill bar, chances are your opponent won't be able to stop you and/or survive. But should the very first lead attack be stopped (miss, evaded, blocked, etc.), anything else that follows, if used, fails as well. If you hold back (perhaps the smart play), you certainly save your other skills but give time to your opponent, until the lead attack recharges fully. Stopping any of the later attack skills is not as bad, but even stopping the finishing dual attack of most attack sequences, even long ones, often is enough to give the target a good chance for survival. Either way, you're stuck with your basic attack and doing little damage, somewhat vulnerable. After all, for the Assassin offense is definitely the best defense, and you're at your safest when you're the one swinging.
Interestingly, the Assassin skill line does provide skills for the opposite style of play, buffing up your basic attacks instead. Critical Eye, Locusts' Fury, Dark Apostasy, Siphon Strength, Way of Perfection and Way of the Fox, for example, can turn an Assassin into a shredding machine. You essentially give your Assassin a more Warrior-like style of play, small, steady damage rather than fast and sudden spiking, but more suited for the long haul of most fights.
But with an 8-slot skill bar, you're forced to make hard-and-fast choices as to what to bring along. A spike sequence needs at least 3 slots, and a shredder build demands around the same. We also have to include self-heal and defensive skills, plus the almost mandatory Resurrection Signet (unless you intend to go solo). It's going to be tight.
So: do you specialize in spiking or being a food processor? Or if you mix it up, how will the lack of focus on one particular fighting style affect your performance as an Assassin?
We also have to look at the Assassin's other Attributes, notably the tricky Deadly Arts and the defensive and logistic Shadow Arts. As the Assassin only has one class of items, daggers, he's naturally forced to focus on Dagger Mastery unless playing Assassin only as a secondary profession or going for an unusual build. Critical Strikes, being one of the more useful primary attributes in the game and directly supporting the Assassin's Dagger Mastery and energy management, is a natural second for heavy stat investment- most likely, it's this that's going to be cut out in favor of including Deadly and Shadow Arts in conventional builds. But no doubt the more creative among us are going to figure out how to make Deadly Arts really deadly and Shadow Arts really useful.
So, how do you look at this all? A dangerous, powerful but fragile spike? Rapid-fire stabing and slashing? Mix it up at the expense of specialization? Or are you going for some karate and ninja tricks? Or- is there an option we haven't seen yet?
As a profession or character class, the Assassin was designed mainly as a foil or alternative to the fighting style of the Warrior. Where the Warrior is steady but slow damage and solid damage absorption, the Assassin is spiking damage at the expense of defense.
This spiking takes the form of real damage spiking by extra damage from chained attack skills plus condition dealing to augment the damage or finish off the target. This is all very carefully balanced: an Assassin's spikes must have properly sequenced attack skills, or else the chain fails; most of his attack skills have long recharge times; his armor may be Ranger-level and he may have the Energy recharge of a mage, but he's not at all hard to kill; his daggers do very little damage by themselves, compensated only by their innate ability to double attack and his Critical Strikes attribute.
The question is: how wise is it to specialize in what the Assassin does best when it's a big gamble in itself?
If you manage to pull of your spike and all its moves, well then good for you. With a properly chosen skill bar, chances are your opponent won't be able to stop you and/or survive. But should the very first lead attack be stopped (miss, evaded, blocked, etc.), anything else that follows, if used, fails as well. If you hold back (perhaps the smart play), you certainly save your other skills but give time to your opponent, until the lead attack recharges fully. Stopping any of the later attack skills is not as bad, but even stopping the finishing dual attack of most attack sequences, even long ones, often is enough to give the target a good chance for survival. Either way, you're stuck with your basic attack and doing little damage, somewhat vulnerable. After all, for the Assassin offense is definitely the best defense, and you're at your safest when you're the one swinging.
Interestingly, the Assassin skill line does provide skills for the opposite style of play, buffing up your basic attacks instead. Critical Eye, Locusts' Fury, Dark Apostasy, Siphon Strength, Way of Perfection and Way of the Fox, for example, can turn an Assassin into a shredding machine. You essentially give your Assassin a more Warrior-like style of play, small, steady damage rather than fast and sudden spiking, but more suited for the long haul of most fights.
But with an 8-slot skill bar, you're forced to make hard-and-fast choices as to what to bring along. A spike sequence needs at least 3 slots, and a shredder build demands around the same. We also have to include self-heal and defensive skills, plus the almost mandatory Resurrection Signet (unless you intend to go solo). It's going to be tight.
So: do you specialize in spiking or being a food processor? Or if you mix it up, how will the lack of focus on one particular fighting style affect your performance as an Assassin?
We also have to look at the Assassin's other Attributes, notably the tricky Deadly Arts and the defensive and logistic Shadow Arts. As the Assassin only has one class of items, daggers, he's naturally forced to focus on Dagger Mastery unless playing Assassin only as a secondary profession or going for an unusual build. Critical Strikes, being one of the more useful primary attributes in the game and directly supporting the Assassin's Dagger Mastery and energy management, is a natural second for heavy stat investment- most likely, it's this that's going to be cut out in favor of including Deadly and Shadow Arts in conventional builds. But no doubt the more creative among us are going to figure out how to make Deadly Arts really deadly and Shadow Arts really useful.
So, how do you look at this all? A dangerous, powerful but fragile spike? Rapid-fire stabing and slashing? Mix it up at the expense of specialization? Or are you going for some karate and ninja tricks? Or- is there an option we haven't seen yet?