Potential Teambuild: The Assassin Dual Spike

[VILenin]

Flourish Assassin: A/W x 2
Hex Spammer: N/Me
Lightning Thumper: R/W
Blindbot: E/Mo
Prot/Boon Monk: Mo/Me
Blessed Light Monk: Mo/Me
Healing Spirit Spammer: Rt/Mo

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Flourish Assassin: A/W
15 Dagger Mastery (11+2+1), 14 Critical Strikes (11+2), 4 Shadow Arts (3+1)
15^50, 15% in stance, or +5e Zealous Daggers of Fortitude

Black Lotus Strike
Twisting Fangs
Golden Phoenix Strike
Blades of Steel
Flourish (E)
Shadow of Haste
Dash
Resurrection Signet

NOTES: The assassin uses the skills in order, BLS > TF > GPS > BoS > Flourish. Shadow of Haste is basically a constant speed boost that mitigates kiting, and Dash can be used at any time to return the Assassin to a safer place.

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Hex Spammer: N/Me
10 Soul Reaping (9+1), 11 Curses (10+1), 12 Blood Magic (10+1+1), 7 Illusion Magic
20/20 HCT/HCR Soul Reaping Staff, +5e/+30h

Soul Bind (E)
Parasitic Bond
Life Siphon
Images of Remose
Malaise
Sympathetic Visage
Ancestor's Visage
Resurrection Signet

NOTES: The idea is just to spam hexes all over the place. The Visages are there in the event that the opponent attempts to charge for an adrenal spike; just slap down Visage and the warriors have to start over from scratch.

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Lightning Thumper: R/W
13 Expertise (10+3), 9 Wilderness Survival (8+1), 12 Hammer Mastery
15^50 or 15% in Stance Furious Hammer of Fortitude

Troll Unguent
Lightning Reflexes
Whirling Defense
Apply Poison
Irresistable Blow
Devastating Hammer (E)
On Your Knees!
Resurrection Signet

NOTES: This is pure pressure. The Thumper, using Lightning Reflexes as an IAS/defensive stance, should pressure key targets simply by spamming Irresistable Blow (it works great against a Prot/Boon's typical Guardian) and Devastating Hammer, and using On Your Knees! to maintain Lightning Reflexes and Whirling Defense constantly.

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Blindbot: E/Mo
16 Energy Storage (12+4), 11 Air Magic (10+1), 8 Healing Prayers
+5e weapon, 20/20 Air HCT/HSR Focus

Healing Breeze
Heal Party
Windborne Speed
Blinding Flash
Enervating Charge
Air Attunement
Ether Prodigy (E)
Resurrection Signet

NOTES: Flag runner and utility elementalist. Use Blinding Flash and Enervating Charge to either shut down attackers or give monks plenty of conditions to waste their energy on. Windborne Speed is also great for buffing the Lightning Thumper on occasion.

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Healing Spirit Spammer: Rt/Mo
13 Spawning Power, 13 Restoration Magic, 8 Healing Prayers

Vigorous Spirit
Soothing Memories
Vengeful Weapon
Weapon of Warding
Recuperation
Attuned was Songkai (E)
Boon of Creation
Resurrection Signet

NOTES: The purpose of the Healing Spirit Spammer is twofold: first is to cast Vigorous Spirit on the assassins, giving them the enchantment needed for Golden Phoenix Strike. Second is to provide moderate, cheap heals to ward against pressure damage and help the monks conserve their energy somewhat.

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The Prot/Boon builds and Blessed Light builds are not shown, because, frankly, everyone knows what they are already. I've illustrated the basic individual strategies, so I'll talk about the team strategy here. I always had the idea that a Flourish assassin using BLS > TF > GPS > BoS could massively outclass a warrior spiker's damage, but I had one problem; my typical Flourish build requires a hex or some other conditional chain for the spike to work. Using Siphon Speed works fine for RA/TA, but in GvG, Siphon Speed would be too obvious, like screaming, "I'm going to spike you!"

To fix that problem, I decided that since the hexed target would obviously be the target of the spike, let's throw in a few decoys by making them all hexed targets. Hence, the N/Me hex spammer can spam stuff like Parasitic Bond, Images of Remorse, Life Siphon, and Soul Bind, with the object of 1) hexing everyone in the enemy team, too much for the monks to remove, and 2) causing some incidental mass degen in the process. Similarly, the thumper works as a pressure attacker, KD'ing key targets and overall putting a drain on the monks' energy.

In the meantime, both Flourish assassins can either coordinate on one target or, better yet, go after separate targets. A Flourish assassin can spike both better and more often than a warrior, and it's much harder to heal two simultaneous spikes than one. With the pressure from the thumper and the hexes on top of the high-speed spiking, the other team should drop pretty fast.

Critique?

[deathy]

nice concept, but just so much defence on the thumper, go with a traditional thumper(with apply if you want) for the extra pressure

Hex spammer needs some e-management

e/mo need extinguish, take out air attunement, as it gets canceled by prodigy anyway, switch out enervating charge for orb, charge is nice cover, but a cover doesnt do much when the other team has draw conditions...(ie the monks won't be removing these conditions, an ele or mesmer will)

[Patccmoi]

From my experience, you don't have enough pressure in your build for the Flourish Assassins to work. 1 'Lightning Thumper' is far from high pressure on his own. Your Necro with 0 EManagement won't spam all that much hexes. Just Life Siphon leaves you dry fast enough. Flourish Sins really work well in a high pressure environment, where their team is always under pressure and their monk are always busy saving someone. Then they can't really save your spikes. But without Horns, you're not even disabling your target, and nothing else is seriously pressuring at all, so 2 decent monks should easily catch more or less every spike, and you're left with a bunch of softies (let's say your Lightning Thumper isn't truly a softie if they don't have Wild Blow, but the rest are, with no wards, aegis, etc.). So i think you would have a pretty hard time actually killing things in an 8v8 situation if the other team has experienced healers. Especially with no IAS or damage boost, it takes around 7-8 seconds to actually kill someone. That's years for a monk to throw a heal (and since you're DW is in the start of your combo, they have like 5s to throw a Mend Condition and save the kill easily)

But this isn't even the main problem. The main problem is a far too big synergy between your characters. Now, synergy is a good thing, it might not be the good word. Let's say dependance. Your Assassins, on their own are 100% useless. They have no hex, no enchants, and their offhands require them. This means if your hexer (ONLY hexer) dies, they can't BLS (no energy to keep going at all). If you're in a split, what do you do? Hexer has to be on one side or the other... and your assassin on the other side can't kill. This mean you can't do ANYTHING against splits. You won't manage to kill someone splitting really. Unless you send your thumper alone and try to keep your 2 assassin with no other pressure in fights, but even in TA it's hard to kill with 2 Flourish sins and no real other pressure, in GvG it would fail.

You should make your Flourish Sins a little more independant on others, and add pressure in your build. You have huge defense that doesn't support your offense much. You basically have 3 monks, but no draw condition or extinguish to counter dust traps or blinding flash efficiently. No support hex removal to keep your assassins going, no damage buffs, etc. I think your offense will find itself shutdowned way too easily and unable to score kills if the other team has a solid backline, uses Aegis, wards, etc. With no one really chasing them around, they can easily stick in their wards. You have nothing to pressure them outta there, and you absolutely can't kill someone in a ward with a Flourish Assassin.

[garidanthefighter]

Speaking from experience, your flag runner is, in general, off. My suggestion would be take out enervating, rez, and air attunement, and bring extinguish, lightning orb, and either gale or lightning strike, their choice. You might also want to take out breeze for gale/strike, whichever you dont already have in bar, but I know breeze has saved me as a flagger a buttload more times than having another damage skill. It's your own choice though. Attributes are pretty off too. You'd *hopefully* have a pve ele as flag runner, and then atts would look like...14/(if desired-->)15/16 air (12+1+1/2/3), 10 healing, 9/10 e storage (8+1/+1). Now, all those multiple attribute levels are achieved through hat swaps, the 14 air is achieved with an air hat with minor air magic, 16 is achieved through air hat with sup air magic, the 10 e storage achieved through e storage hat with minor e storage (used almost exclusively when heal party spamming), etc. If you cannot have a pve flag runner, then just have them use an air hat with either minor or sup air; that is their choice if they think they can survive with less hp. My 2 cents...

[Aire]

Healing Breeze
Heal Party
Windborne Speed
Blinding Flash
Enervating Charge
Air Attunement
Ether Prodigy (E)
Resurrection Signet

Air Attunement gets stripped by Prodigy, so thats a waste of a slot. Drop that for Extinguish. Drop your Rez Signet for a Lorb, or if you really need the Rez, drop Enervating for Lorb - you always need the damage.


Soul Bind (E)
Parasitic Bond
Life Siphon
Images of Remose
Malaise
Sympathetic Visage
Ancestor's Visage
Resurrection Signet

Soul Bind is awful... Take an energy elite, you'll need it. Secondly, go either Mes/Mo with Illusion/Mantra of Persistence + hardrez or Nec/XX with Curses + energy skills. Doing both makes the character very weak. I'd totally rebuild that character with....

Offering of Blood
Reckless Haste
Price of Failure
Shadow of Fear
Parasitic Bond
Life Siphon
Malaise
Rez Signet

Some nice AoE Hexes, bit of damage and the spammable Life Siphon/Malaise combo. If you really want damage from those hexes, go Illusion (As a general rule of thumb, illusion hexes = damage, curse hexes = denial.)

Troll Unguent
Lightning Reflexes
Whirling Defense
Apply Poison
Irresistable Blow
Devastating Hammer (E)
On Your Knees!
Resurrection Signet

No need for that self heal - go pure pressure

Hammer Bash
Frenzy
Charge
Crushing Blow
Mighty Blow
Healing Signet
Rush
Rez Signet

Its really a Ra/Wa with mainly warrior skills + Ranger armour. You could take TF + Backbreaker - but you'll have trouble catching players, even with snares...

Vigorous Spirit
Soothing Memories
Vengeful Weapon
Weapon of Warding
Recuperation
Attuned was Songkai (E)
Boon of Creation
Resurrection Signet

Could work - more heals IMO. It doesn't need Boon of Creation, since you have one skill that triggers it, and that costs half as much anyway. Take Mend Body and Soul or something

I'll have a deeper look when I get home :cloud9: