The Assassin Dual Spike

[VILenin]

Here's the deal: me and my brother decided, since we're in the same room, we could probably get some pretty insane coordination going on dual spikes. We tried the standard Frenzy spiker, but we didn't really like the way the spike played out (playing in the new HA). We decided we needed something more versatile, and since the assassin is my favorite class, I came up with the idea of:

---------

The Assassin Dual Spike

Assassin #1
13 Dagger Mastery (11+2), 13 Critical Strikes (10+1+2), 10 Shadow Arts (9+1), rest in Tactics

Flurry
Wild Blow (or Death Blossom)
Golden Phoenix Strike
Twisting Fangs
Moebius Strike
Watch Yourself! (or Fear Me!)
Shroud of Distress
Resurrection Signet


Assassin #2
13 Dagger Mastery (11+2), 13 Critical Strikes (10+1+2), 10 Shadow Arts (9+1), rest in Tactics

Flurry
Golden Phoenix Strike
Horns of the Ox
Moebius Strike
Death Blossom
Watch Yourself! (or Fear Me!)
Shroud of Distress
Resurrection Signet

-----------


The concept is pretty much like the Warrior spike; the first assassin calls the target, goes into Flurry, and hits the target with Wild Blow to break any defensive stance (optional), then unleashes his attack combo (GPS > TF > MS > [DB]). At the same time, the second assassin inflicts a knockdown with his own chain (GPS > HotO > MS > DB). This results in a dual spike that deals equivalent, if not greater, damage to a warrior dual spike and which is much more flexible, being frontloaded and thus less susceptible to being countered. Having a full four-hit chain is nice, since it's still fast (you've already matched dual axe-spike damage in the first two hits) and I've killed targets multiple times with a dual Moebius Strike > Death Blossom even after a save.

Watch Yourself! keeps the assassin from being a squishy target by raising armor to 90 (100 with Nightstalker's), which is more than enough to keep the assassin alive. If you don't feel that this is necessary, you can instead opt to use Fear Me! for energy pressure (it charges incredibly fast with an assassin).

Shroud of Distress has the double benefit of being a long-lasting, fast recharging enchantment that will make you extremely difficult to kill for anyone relying on evadable attacks. Axe spikes outright fail, as they typically end up missing their Executioner's.

Comments are welcome, as are request for clarification; as you can see, I wrote this at midnight after a cram session, which is probably not the best time to be writing about builds.

[Malchiel]

sounds good. And I like shroud of distress too. Pretty useful for GPS and defense.

[killerstick]

I've been curious about dual sin spikes as well. I know you can play off of an allied sin's leads and offhands but I've never tested whether or not using an offhand after your partner's lead causes them to not be able to use an offhand as well. If you've already tried this let me know I might have to go out with more sins and take advantage of the massive spiking power.

[VILenin]

Unfortunately, an assassin can't use another assassin's combo. The lead-offhand-dual sequence is specifically for one character, so you can't have one guy use GPS and then have the next use Twisting Fangs, or something. That's probably a good thing, in retrospect, as it allows both assassins to spike at once.

[Patccmoi]

I like it overall. Good use of Moebius as it acts as a finisher and pretty likely skill recharge since both are spiking so they don't have that much time to heal the guy.

I tried sin dual spike before with a setup that was pretty fun overall. We did:

Palm Strike
Critical Strike
Twisting Fangs
Return
X
X
X
Rez

(rest is what you want. More survivability, utility, interrupt, w/e your team needs).

The idea was to have both sins on split target, and use Return to jump on the same guy at the same time. You alternate caller every spike, and he picks a target pretty near him and goes spike in 3, 2, 1 (other sin return on him), spike and both do Palm Strike + CS/TF (one each). It did pretty high damage overall and could often kill people straight, or required 1 hit after, but the bad part of it was that Palm Strike is a touch skill and so has an 'aftercast', which didn't allow for the combo to come out fast enough for my liking.

Your build settles that though since you use GPS-X-Moebius in Flurry, which is pretty fast spiking overall.

I suggest you try Return sometimes, it's really nice for timing spikes easily as well as extra defense. Your spike would work really well if you could have a smite monk or E/Mo keeping SoHonor on both. This way you would also have a sure enchant for GPS.

Nice build overall, dual assassin spike is something i thought of a bit before but never truly played with a lot, mainly because it's hard to convince people that assassins are good mid-combat.

[killerstick]

Unfortunately, an assassin can't use another assassin's combo. The lead-offhand-dual sequence is specifically for one character, so you can't have one guy use GPS and then have the next use Twisting Fangs, or something. That's probably a good thing, in retrospect, as it allows both assassins to spike at once.

I could have sworn you could but I've never really played around with it. Just a rumor I heard. Glad you had the facts that rumor has always kept me from wanting to play with another sin. I don't want my chain screwed up nor screw up their's if we're both hitting the same target.

[VILenin]

One thing I'd like your opinion on:

Wild Blow or Death Blossom? Wild Blow is great for taking out defensive stances or running stances before the spike, but the damage isn't that great. On the other hand, Death Blossom isn't always usable, but it makes a good finish if the first two hits fail (usually if a boon/prot reacts to a spike with something like RoF, MB > DB is a nice double spike before they can get something more concrete like Guardian off).

[Patccmoi]

One thing I'd like your opinion on:

Wild Blow or Death Blossom? Wild Blow is great for taking out defensive stances or running stances before the spike, but the damage isn't that great. On the other hand, Death Blossom isn't always usable, but it makes a good finish if the first two hits fail (usually if a boon/prot reacts to a spike with something like RoF, MB > DB is a nice double spike before they can get something more concrete like Guardian off).

If you time your spike well, i don't see why you need DB at all. GPS-Horns-Moebius + GPS-Twisting-Moebius is far more than what's needed to kill someone. If the spike fails and 1-2 auto-attack fail, i'm not sure DB will truly change much. If they have time to Guardian your target midspike, something was wrong hehe. If anything, give both Horns and Twisting so they can solo spike (GPS-Horns-Moebius-Twisting is a viable spike) which is invaluable if say one die. Or they can keep someone down with a Horn chain. But i don't really see what DB adds.

Wild Blow is always good to have if you can afford it. Always nice when there's a stupid trapper around or the like.

[VILenin]

Well, this is what usually happens:

1) Spike the target: GPS > Twisting/HotO...

2) Enemy monk uses Reversal of Fortune (or Infuse Health) on spiked target.

3) At the same time, you're finishing with Moebius > DB. The target still has DW on them (1s Mend Condition usually isn't the first choice for a spike save) and the monk's second save is usually sufficiently lackluster to make up for the six 50+ damage hits on the target that they just supposedly saved.

[Patccmoi]

Well, this is what usually happens:

1) Spike the target: GPS > Twisting/HotO...

2) Enemy monk uses Reversal of Fortune (or Infuse Health) on spiked target.

3) At the same time, you're finishing with Moebius > DB. The target still has DW on them (1s Mend Condition usually isn't the first choice for a spike save) and the monk's second save is usually sufficiently lackluster to make up for the six 50+ damage hits on the target that they just supposedly saved.

Well, you'd likely get enough damage with a second wave of Horns-Twisting too. It's not as much as DB, but it also means that even if they removed the DW you'll reapply it again. I'd personally really give both Horns-Twisting if you plan to do this. The ability to solo spike is invaluable too, adds a lot of versatility in the tactics you can use (like if you're against a team that is very good at protting 1 guy, or uses something like Restore Conditions that just saves this kind of spike every time, you can decide to split and each spike a different target, making it hard to save both).