Assassin clunkiness

[AeonsLegend]

So I actually never played one and thought I'd give it a go. Seems underwhelming for now, but that's not the bit I dislike about it. The assassin is unreliable and requires a lot of positioning and waiting. When you become invisible you have a recovery time for some reason someone thought was a good idea on an assassin ability. But whatever. You then have to wait for the timer to run out. During this time the enemy realises you are not there anymore and finds a new target if it was targetting you before. You then have to WAIT AGAIN for it to stop moving so you can use your ability otherwise you will MISS. Annoying. How am I supposed to assassinate someone quickly when I have to wait 4-5 seconds? It seems very counter intuitive. Also requires a lot of guile for a measly 100% extra damage and a bit of penetration. something a devoted/monk get for less and quicker and they can instagib a squishy at range instantly when the fight starts.

Am I missing something here or is this class just a gimmick?

[Boeroer]

Your arguments are a bit vague so it's difficult to address them.

What exactly costs Guile? Backstab and Assassinate are passives and thus cost nothing.

Which invisibility has recovery but is expensive? Shadowing Beyond is rather expensive but has no recovery. Smoke Veil is not expensive but has recovery.

Assassin has high PEN from stealth and invisibility, but the even more important part is the +25 Accuracy.

This means Assassin can have very impactful strikes from stealth/invisibility - not only with weapons but more importantly with AoE CC or -damaging attacks. 

All the recovery and positioning issues could be avoided with an arquebus as I remember have told you about. It's not intuitive and weird but the arquebus is the best single target Assassination weapon by far.

If you want to go the single target route it's best to use an Assassin without the party in tow and kill enemies one by one. The party can be parked aside in case of emergency. That way you can solve nearly all encounters. For example the Concelhaut fight is very difficult for an underleveled party but easy for an underleveled lonely Assassin.

Assassin is not the best team player but very effective when acting alone (not necessarily solo game - but scouting ahead and thinning out difficult encounters before the whole party comes in).

You can do fun stuff with an Assassin: like stacking Assassinate and Lion's Sprint for +40 alpha strike accuracy and such things.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

 All the recovery and positioning issues could be avoided with an arquebus as I remember have told you about. It's not intuitive and weird but the arquebus is the best single target Assassination weapon by far.

 

Sorry - that wasn't you but a different poster in one of the threads about assassin down below.

[Elric Galad]

Well, Smoke Veil is still quite expensive for 2 Guiles.

For 2 Guiles, a Trickster can cast Gaze of the Adragan and petrify a group of (Dex Resistant) foes. Or one can just spam 2 Full Attacks for the same price that would provide more DPS.
Shadowing Beyong being even more horribly expensive is not an excuse for Smoke Veil being expensive too.

However, requiring positionning and waiting to assassinate is... well... the usual definition of an assassin.
Killing stuff quickly is the basic of Rogue class, not the speciality of thye subclass, except for the part below.

Single Class Assassin + Vanishing Strike is where the subclass shines though. With High INT, you can basically get 30s of god mode per encounter (50s when using Empower for guile refill). If it is Main Character, be sure to pick Ooblit pet so the unbreakable invisibility from Vanshing Strike lasts longer.

[Manveru123]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Your arguments are a bit vague so it's difficult to address them.

What exactly costs Guile? Backstab and Assassinate are passives and thus cost nothing.

Which invisibility has recovery but is expensive? Shadowing Beyond is rather expensive but has no recovery. Smoke Veil is not expensive but has recovery.

Assassin has high PEN from stealth and invisibility, but the even more important part is the +25 Accuracy.

This means Assassin can have very impactful strikes from stealth/invisibility - not only with weapons but more importantly with AoE CC or -damaging attacks. 

All the recovery and positioning issues could be avoided with an arquebus as I remember have told you about. It's not intuitive and weird but the arquebus is the best single target Assassination weapon by far.

If you want to go the single target route it's best to use an Assassin without the party in tow and kill enemies one by one. The party can be parked aside in case of emergency. That way you can solve nearly all encounters. For example the Concelhaut fight is very difficult for an underleveled party but easy for an underleveled lonely Assassin.

Assassin is not the best team player but very effective when acting alone (not necessarily solo game - but scouting ahead and thinning out difficult encounters before the whole party comes in).

You can do fun stuff with an Assassin: like stacking Assassinate and Lion's Sprint for +40 alpha strike accuracy and such things.

Why not engage the enemies with your party, and approach their backline with an Assassin to start taking them out? My only gripe with this would be having enough Guile to consistently re-hide after a kill and still have some left for an offensive ability on another target.

[Elric Galad]

31 minutes ago, Manveru123 said:

Why not engage the enemies with your party, and approach their backline with an Assassin to start taking them out? My only gripe with this would be having enough Guile to consistently re-hide after a kill and still have some left for an offensive ability on another target.

But why would an assassin be better at this than another Rogue ? You don't need a decoy to approach the backline when you're invisible. And if you're not, then there is no benefit to play an assassin.

[thelee]

17 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

When you become invisible you have a recovery time for some reason someone thought was a good idea on an assassin ability.

yeah, smoke veil is not nearly as good because of this. Its main benefit is that it costs only 2 guile, but if you actually want to do something with that invisibility (instead of just dodging a spell or evading enemies), then Shadowing Beyond, Enduring Shadows, or Vanishing Strike are better (all 3 guile). Shadowing Beyond and Enduring Shadows have no recovery (unlike smoke veil) and last a long time (unlike smoke veil), and vanishing strike is actually a full strike that lets you stay invisible while attacking so even if it doesn't last long you get a lot out of it. You can still get stuff out of smoke veil, but you basically have to be high dex, low armor penalty, and not be in tb-mode (and not hoping to cast a spell).

 

17 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

Also requires a lot of guile for a measly 100% extra damage and a bit of penetration.

yep, this is why in general I find that you're better off multiclassing assassin with a caster - getting a few extra spells with +25 acc/+crit damage/+PEN can be *really* good, especially like an opening alpha strike.

otherwise you have to metagame pretty hard to really get much benefit out of assassin (though can be pretty good - a forum member called a kitted-out single-class assassin's vanishing strike "god mode").

 

even with minimal metagaming, using poisons can be helpful, since poisons benefit from the assassinate bonus. though be warned you need to apply the poison *before* combat or *before* going invisible, since using the poison breaks most forms of invisibility.

Edited March 12, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Assassin/Bloodmage can basically turn invisible unlimited times per encounter (if using some for of healing like Corrosive Siphon or whatever) due to Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure. But even better: this combo can cast CCs with +25 Accuracy and not become visible. Even Wall spells will not break the invisibility. Direct damage spells and attacks will break it. Pure DoTs will not (maybe the DoT corrode upgrade of Smoke Veil might work?).

ABD comes online pretty late though.

 

[AeonsLegend]

So wait, Vanishing strike allows you to get multiple backstabs off during its duration? That's not what I get from the description. That makes it sound like full rogue build is the way to go.

My build was a cipher/rogue so I could use soul annihilation to burst squishies. Builds up very very very slowly.

I didn't try shadowing beyond because of the insane cost. Especially early when you have so little guile you use it once and then use a secondary ability for extra damage during your invisibility and you're down to 1 guile and can't do anything anymore. Makes me think that the extra abilities like blinding strike should be ignored. Becoming invisible when the enemy is targetting you is still anoying when you play melee, and I only play melee. Ever.

I could opt to go for a tactician multiclass build for the brilliant inspiration or wait it out until my Cipher gets it.

Multi with caster sounds cool, but so counter to what I would look for in an "assassin". The only actual assassin in the game is the monk as they can instagib a squishy at the start of the battle before any other character has the chance to do antyhing. There's no point in having a PC with an assassin class if he cannot assassinate anyone.

So far I've not been getting one shots with the assassin. So wasting all that guile to get a big hit off and then having to use another 2-3 guile to get another hit feels bad. Although I'm only level 12 at the moment. Still a monk does more damage in a shorter amount of time.

The scouting ahead part sounds interesting though. I may give that a try. Is it an idea to combine this with a Ghost Heart for instance? Of course I'll miss out on vanishing strike and lose some sneak damage, but I'll get a free party member and some cool options there from the ranger tree. Sounds in vogue with an assassin.

[Boeroer]

8 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

So wait, Vanishing strike allows you to get multiple backstabs off during its duration?

Yes, it grants an invisibility that does not break. The base duration is rather short so you need short recovery and lots of INT and other prolonging effects to make it really shine. A SC Streetfighter with Blunderbusses for example is also very well suited for Vanishing Strikes. He doesn't get Assassinate but will have very short recovery/reload and higher Sneak Attack dmg - which leads to even better results than with an Assassin. But only with Blunderbusses...

Assassins are not about dps (unless you unlock Vanishing Strikes) but sneaky alpha strikes, then retreat. If you can't one- or two-shot enemies you should use Gouging Strike, Shadowing Beyond and retreat for de-aggro'ing and wait.

One-shotting (weaker enemies) reliably usually takes an arquebus. It's very difficult to reliably one-shot enemies on PotD with a melee weapon. With an Assassin/Skaen you can try more strikes from invisibility until your victim's finally dead. Or an Assassin/Bloodmage with Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure. 

By the way a kind of funny "Assassin" is a Wizard/Cipher with Brilliant Departure + Disintegrate or SC Wizard with Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin. Last time I checked (some time ago though) pure DoTs with no initial direct damage didn't break the invisivbility from Brilliant Departure. Also Wall of Draining doesn't break it. You can stay invisible all the time while killing enemies with DoTs.  

 

[thelee]

18 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

I didn't try shadowing beyond because of the insane cost. Especially early when you have so little guile you use it once and then use a secondary ability for extra damage during your invisibility and you're down to 1 guile and can't do anything anymore. Makes me think that the extra abilities like blinding strike should be ignored.

one thing the rogue suffers from is the general expensiveness of all their abilities, moreso than any other martial class methinks (at least a corpse eater can regenerate resources!). if you're going to go for invisibility, i would go so far as to say even 1-guile abilities--however uncommon--should mostly be ignored. in fact, the only non-invis rogue ability that i can think of that makes sense with an assassin+invisibility approach is pernicious cloud, simply because +25 acc/+pen/+crit dmg on that huge of an aoe is a big effect. but even a single-class assassin can dump points into arcana or alchemy and get some big scroll or poison hits. (explosives don't work because they interact very poorly with assassinate; they are multi-part attacks so the first, minor, part of a bomb explosion might get the assassinate bonus, but not the actual part you care about)

 

if it was actually possible to re-sneak in combat (and smoke veil/shadowing beyond/enduring shadows were just easier/better ways to do that), a naive assassin build would be better, but because we can't the assassin definitely needs a bit of careful planning to get the most out of it. it might even be very close to a trap subclass on higher difficulties due to how lame it is just to assassinate+backstab a single enemy with, say, a dagger compared to the subclass's always-on downside.

Edited March 13, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

For a better Backstab implementation try the Community Patch. It turns Backstab into a separate raw dmg chunk that is independent on the weapon you use (no need for great sword to get the most out of it) and it scales with Power Level. 

Just yesterday I thought that it would have been cool if certain light weapons had special effects from stealth/invisibility. Like clubs would have a short stun, daggers and stilettos would have bonus damage and so on. Would also have been cool to have penalties on stealth from wearing fat weapons, swirling capes and rattling armor.

Edited March 14, 2020 by Boeroer