Review - Maia as a Gunhawk/Assassin Scout

[crdvis16]

Note: I had the community patch and balance polish mod installed (in case that affects some of the interactions of abilities).

 

I modded Maia's subclass options for this build.  I had high hopes for how this would play out, especially because Assassin fits Maia in an RP sense.  The idea was to use the Assassin attack from stealth bonuses with Maia's proficiency with guns, specifically Arquebuses with their high weapon damage.  She could open the fight from stealth with a high damage Ranger or Rogue shot and then make use of Smoke Veil to re-stealth for the next big shot.  The Assassin bonuses from stealth attacks are significant- 4 pen, 25 accuracy, and increased crit damage so I assumed this would be a big boost to damage.

The first big problem I had was that queueing up Smoke Veil after a Rogue or Ranger ability (Crippling Strike, Wounding Shot, etc) would cause Smoke Veil to expire before Maia could finish reloading and shoot from stealth.  So in order to use Smoke Veil I would have to watch Maia's reload animation like a hawk and then pause right as she raised her rifle in order to cast Smoke Veil and shoot from stealth.  This can be kind of a pain and require a lot of attention that diverts you from controlling your other 4 party members.

However, there's a bigger issue with this strategy.  After doing some simulations via spreadsheet, it turns out that using Smoke Veil during combat to trigger Assassin's stealth bonuses will not always increase your damage output!  There's an opportunity cost to casting Smoke Veil- you use up Rogue resources and it comes with a 3s recovery after the cast that slows you down.  These costs often will outweigh the benefits of 4 pen, 25 accuracy, and bonus crit damage.  Instead of bothering with Smoke Veil you can just attack with, say, Crippling Strike which has its own +2 penetration as well as 25% damage increase.  You'll attack more frequently and oftentimes end up doing more damage overall not bothering with Smoke Veil.

If my modeling/simulation is to be believed, the only times using Smoke Veil to get the Assassin buffs is worth it is:

1) when the +25 accuracy is the difference between hardly ever being able to hit a high deflection target and at least occasionally grazing.  This would be if the target's deflection is like 50 points higher than your accuracy.  In fact, I think that if the target's deflection is 70 points higher than your accuracy you will never hit, in which case the +25 accuracy from Assassinate would be an infinite percentage increase in damage!

2) when the +4 penetration from Assassinate is just enough to alleviate some under penetration whereas the +2 penetration from an ability like Crippling Strike would still have under penetration.  Under penetration is such a strong debuff to your damage that alleviating it is really important.

Overall, I'd probably not recommend this build.  Using Smoke Veil with a long reload weapon is a pain in the butt when you can't queue it up and doing so is only in your favor if the target has really high deflection or armor.  At least with a melee Assassin, Smoke Veil would be adding some survivability to help you not get targeted as you kill the enemy's backlines but with Maia my survivability is in being at long distance so Smoke Veil isn't really needed for that.  You still get an opening volley from stealth for free most of the time but I'm not sure that one shot at the beginning is enough to justify the Assassin multiclass for Maia.

[NotDumbEnough]

Multiclassed Assassins are mostly only good for landing critical spells. That +25 accuracy is nice if you're trying to land a critical Disintegrate or Detonate for example. Much less useful for weapon attacks unless you're a single class Assassin.

[crdvis16]

Yeah, which I think is sad because it would be fun if it was more viable for a ranged Assassin like this build or a melee Assassin.  If Smoke Veil had a much smaller (or 0) recovery it would help a lot.  You would still burn through your guile really fast but your damage would be high.  If it also kept you stealthed for much longer (like 7s or so) then it could be queued up and not expire before a reload happened, too.

I've heard Assassin can be really strong in caster multiclasses but I haven't tried it myself.  Maybe a debuffer if casting the debuffs doesn't break stealth? 

[thelee]

yeah, for a non-caster assassin mc, i perhaps the stealth bonus is good at the start of a fight and then only if you incidentally get invisibility later (e.g. you were using smoke veil or shadowing beyond to flee from an enemy anyway, or you have the slippers). i think there are cases where you really want an attack to land where you'd do this deliberately, but we're talking about spending tons of resources (namely i'm thinking pernicious cloud + assassin bonus for the +25 acc, but that is essentially just like the MC spellcaster situation).

edit: something i hadn't thought of, i wonder if assassin + hand mortars would be OK. still very resource expensive, but you could spread all sorts of rogue-y effects at +25 ACC and huge PEN.

 

52 minutes ago, crdvis16 said:

I've heard Assassin can be really strong in caster multiclasses but I haven't tried it myself.  Maybe a debuffer if casting the debuffs doesn't break stealth? 

+25 acc is great on its own for debuffs, and for offensive casts, the bonus PEN can be extremely relevant for casters (who in general will have more AR headaches and fewer options than martials).

the unique wizard spell arkemyr's brilliant departure, or whatever it's called, doesn't dispel invisibility so long as you don't do a damage roll, so you can endlessly debuff (even with DoTs!) with +25 acc.

Edited November 17, 2021 by thelee

[crdvis16]

Wow, Brilliant Departure combined with lots of debuff/CC with an Assass/Wiz multiclass could be pretty fun then.  It's totally not what you'd expect to be the main use of the Assassin subclass but so it goes.

[NotDumbEnough]

Not sure if it interacts correctly, but pumping Arcana and using scrolls might also be useful. In particular Gaze of the Adragan and Pillar of Holy Fire might be quite good. Scroll of Tornado is relatively easy to craft, and suffers less from not benefiting from intellect as it already has a huge area.

Edited November 17, 2021 by NotDumbEnough

[crdvis16]

Also, I didn't get Slippers of the Assassin this playthrough.  I vaguely remembered there being an item that would stealth on kill and wanted it for Maia but for some reason I remembered it being a cloak and couldn't figure out where to find it.

I see the stealth is 5s after a kill- I imagine Maia's reload speed might be juuust fast enough to get a shot off stealthed using it.  That alone could have made her Assassin multiclass more worth it in fights where her pen or accuracy were already sufficient. 

[Haplok]

Shadowing Beyond has no Recovery AFAIR. But its even more expensive, of course...

[Haplok]

On 11/17/2021 at 10:44 PM, crdvis16 said:

Wow, Brilliant Departure combined with lots of debuff/CC with an Assass/Wiz multiclass could be pretty fun then.  It's totally not what you'd expect to be the main use of the Assassin subclass but so it goes.

Well, nuking with Assassination bonus is pretty damn effective too.

And borderline broken in Turn Based mode, when you're untargettable - untouchable most of the time AND have plenty of time to set up optimal situations/positions.

Plus ray-type spells are "compressed" in Turn Based mode into ~3 large damage ticks and become great Assassination tools - and with good positioning may even not break Stealth on 1st tick (particularly Ninagauth's Death Ray, which with a little Fort debuffing, goes trough golems and other high AR enemies, like trough hot butter).

Spoiler

With a Spellblade nuker, Engoliero de Espirs is fun vs enemy mobs:

 

Edited November 19, 2021 by Haplok

[Boeroer]

11 hours ago, crdvis16 said:

Wow, Brilliant Departure combined with lots of debuff/CC with an Assass/Wiz multiclass could be pretty fun then.  It's totally not what you'd expect to be the main use of the Assassin subclass but so it goes.

Assassin/Bloodmage with Arkemy's Brilliant Departure and Helm of the White Void is pretty bonkers, yes. You can reduce the defenses of most enemies to dust and put all sorts of hard CC on them with stellar accuracy and without even being seen. You can even go into an encounter alone to "prepare" the enemies for when the cavalry (rest of the party) walzes in.