Basic Assassin Guide

Hey guys so I finally decided to put up this guide for anyone looking for information on assassins. Hopefuly it'll cut down on all the threads about builds, race, and sins in general. If anyone has anything to add please feel free to post below and I'll add as neccessary to the guide. Remember that this isn't MY guide its a guide for all sins and players wondering about sins in general. I'll base this guide off of what deathbunny did for the bards, thats a great guide. Format credits go to them for setting up a good example for other guides to follow. Kudos. See bard guide [URL="http://fw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=71861"]HERE[/URL].

Disclaimer I'm not the best sin or nor do I claim to be. This guide is exactly that a guide. It provides the basic information about the sin class, how to play it and advice on what you should do as the class. Remember you are free to your opinion and are free to take or leave what I post in this thread.

INTRODUCTION


The general concept of this class in Forsaken world is do deal high single target damage. The class uses light armor and dual daggers. It is a Melee DPS (Damage per second) class. The assassin class has no AoE (area of effect) skills that attack more than one target with the exception of Soul Force skills which are aviable for all classes. The intent of the assassin is to quickly dispatch the opponent dealing more damage to them than they do to you in a short amount of time.

The assassin class can be played as both Humans and Kindred. The difference of the classes are minimal regarding talents in the trees. However, the main difference in the two are as follows:

Vampiric Kiss: Drains life from the target equal to 15% of your max health. Also siliences the target for 3.0 seconds.

Pray: Restores 25% of max Mana instantly. Remonves and grants you immunity to Stun, Ensnare, Silience, Sleep and Disarm effects for 4.0 seconds.
(thx Velocity for telling me what Pray does exactly xD)

as well as the racial buffs

Blessing of Kindred: Increases Dark and Fire mastery by 15 and increases max hp by 1%.

Blessing of Humans: Increses all masteries by 5 and increases max hp by 1%.


Orb System

Assassins utilize the unique Orb system to help increase damage output.


A: AGONY ORBS- Agony orbs are gained by using the skill Thrust of Pain and Lurking Sting. You may also apply talents into your skills to allow for Assassinate to generate Agony orbs as well. Agony Orbs increase your basic attack power and add to the damage output of your Finisher Skills.

B: BLAST ORBS- Blast orbs are gained by using the skills Throat Seal and Gouge. You may also apply talents to your skills to allow for Assassinate to generate Blast orbs as well. Blast Orbs increase your critical damage % output and also add damage output to your Finisher Skills.

TALENT TREES


Talent trees are accessable at level 20 and beyond. As you gain levels you will be able to apply 1 point per level into the tree of your choice to further enhance the skills and capabilities of your assassin.

There are three trees to choose from as the assassin class.

Venom: The venom class utilizes the increased damage output from agony orbs. With lowered cool down times on Thrust of Pain you are able to quickly generate Blast orbs to increase your damage. You also may learn the skill Lurking Sting at level 30 which generates a agony orb as well. Its passive skills include the ability to increase your dark mastery and basic attack power. A venom assassin has the capabilities to cause DoT (Damage over time) with its talents as well as lower the opponents defense to further increase their damage to the opponent. Higher level venom assassins may implant a seed of agony upon their opponent that causes % current hp damage with each attack that the opponent conducts.

Edge: An Edge assassin specializes in stuns and critical damage generated from blast orbs. Utilizing the effects of bullseye, an edge assassin can stun a target up to 3 seconds with a critical hit from Gouge and Throat Seal. With increased skills into talents you may extend the silence effect from Dark Nightmare from 5 seconds up to 7 seconds. Its passve skills include the abilities to increase accuracy and critical damage output. Higher level Edge assassins may lower their opponents evasion while decreasing their maximum hp with multiple strikes.

Dark: Dark assassins are also known throughout Forsaken World as Shadow assassins. They get this name from the increased evasion from talents such as Swift Evasion and Shapeless. The first being a buff that drastically increases your evasion and movement speed while the other is a passive skill that increases your basic evasion. Shadow assassins specialize in stealth and evasion, making their opponent miss them while they dish out a rapid frenzy of skills. Applying talents into this tree allows for the possibility to proc Rapid shadow. A buff that allows for you to use certain skills without a cool down penalty on those skills. This class also has the ability to apply a mana drain to their skills allowing for you to drain the opponents mana and apply 50% of the amount drained as additonal damage. Higher level Dark assassins have the capability to increase their accuracy, evasion and movement speeds while stealthed. They also recieve a passive skill that increases their critical hit rate as well.

Common Skills

These skills are common to all assassins regardless of their class or build. The effects such as base damage % and bonus damage will increase as your skill level increases these are just some pictures to explain what the skills do and how they effect the opponents. These skills do not go in any particiluar order only from what I was able to screenshot first.

REMINDER: % DMG, BONUS DAMAGE, SKILL EFFECTS, MANA COST, COOL DOWN, SKILL LEVEL ALL DEPEND ON THE CURRENT SKILL LEVEL AND BUILD OF THE ASSASSIN WHAT YOU SEE IS FROM MY BUILD AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN OR BELIEVED TO BE THE STANDARD OR DEFAULT!!!!

(If other sins with other talents will post their SS of their skills such as lurking sting, Swift Evasion etc etc so that I can apply it here to add to the skill list it would be much appreciated.)

PLAYSTYLE

As previously stated, Assassins are single target burst DPS. Your job is simply to kill the target swiftly and effectively. While there are variations in playing the main intent of the assassin remains the same.

Sin in Stealth

Solo Play

As a sin you will be able to handle almost anything alone with the exception of instances and world bosses your level. Once you get to a higher level you will be able to run through lower instances alone without the assistance of anyone as long as you have effective pots. While you are able to play alone its not a bad idea to have your pet along side you to keep you buffed up with skills that increase your attack, mastery, evasion, crit rate or crit damage. Ensure that you are mindful of your pet and that they don't attract unneccessary mobs to you. If you are intending on killing other players with PK or PvP your pet may be an unneccessary hassle giving away your position while you are in stealth attempting to suprise the target.

In PvP you will not have any trouble taking on any players one on one at higher levels. As a lower level sin you will have problems as you don't have access to all of your talents just quite yet. Stick with it though and you'll see that they are well worth playing. Remember that a good sin not only can dish out a high amount of damage but is smart enough to know when to stealth and kite the opponent while their defensive skills run out before laying another onslaught of attacks. The most effective sins can gather orbs while in stealth and then suprise the opponent with redhand (a state achieved when wrath is activated and max orbs are collected) dealing massive damage, often 1 or 2 shotting opponents before they're aware that you are even there.

Party Play

Be prepared to steal agro from other players. All builds will produce enough damage to take agro from other players if you are not careful. If you do take agro from the tank on a boss or mob that you can't handle simply stop attacking for a moment and allow for them to regain agro. If you are attempting to take agro from someone, (say for instance a mob is on your priest in party) you can simply stealth (increasing crit rate/dmg) and then attack the mob with your most powerful attack. Chances are then that you will be able to pull that mob off them and effectively kill it to help the party. In parties you will be single target DPS, you cannot buff anyone else and you cannot attack multiple mobs at once. You're intent should be to determine where you will be most helpful. If its attacking the boss to kill it quickly or to pick up add ons from that get onto the squishies thats for you to determine while in the heat of battle.

Sins get great debuffs from Nightmare Termination and Dark Nightmare. Effects that lower defense, attack, attack speed, movement speed, Physical and dark resistance, and crit dodge rate % allowing everyone in the party to deal a much higher damage output. Remember that while in party to maintain a balace on keeping your orbs for damage and using them on your Finishers to debuff the opponents.

What should my build be???

Heres a few builds for you guys to use if you get confused about what to aim for. I've tested all these builds in both pve, pvp, arena, and GvG. Due to the inability to random pk I haven't been able to test these builds at end game level with my server on Lionheart but most basic principles apply.

Venom
[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t1a25b13b23b34c14c23d23d32e13e23f32g22g34h12h21h32j12j23"]Pure Venom Build[/URL]

How it works:

PvE: For this build, its by far the best for PvE. Really easy to build up your agony orbs by doing this combo, Thrust of Pain, Lurking Sting, Thrust of Pain, Pitch, Thrust of Pain, Nightmare Termination/Dark Nightmare. This will build up all your agony orbs and make it max damage for your finisher skill. I prefer to use Nightmare termination because of the Damage over time. As you level up your Nightmare Termination skill, the DoT will increase in damge as well. If your orbs were not consumed with Nightmare Termination then use Pitch again and then do Dark nightmare and continue to use the normal combination of skills for maximum damage output. Talents on Dark Nightmare will reduce the defense and dark resistance of the target so that your lurking sting, top, and pitch will increase in damage. Try to only use pitch on 3 or 4 orbs to get the increased base damage as well as the 1 second silence. Implant Seed's of Agony into the target so that when they attack you they will coninutally lose HP per attack.

PvP: It's a bit tricky to get this tree to work correctly in pvp. You'll want to use Secret Art - Blast while in stealth so that you gain your 2 agony orbs, this way you can open up with lurking Sting then Pitch. This will get your strongest Single dark attack off as well as the 1 second silence from Pitch. Then use ToP and then allow you to use one of your finishers on full agony orbs. If you still have you're orbs up then you can immediately use your other finisher with full agony orb effects. From here its just you're basic Assassin pvp tactic of getting their life low and timing the swift evasion/sleep/red hand combo where you use swift evasion, sleep them with hypnosis blade and then pop gale of wind to increase your movement speed to gather all the orbs quickly to try to get your wrath up to red so that you can come back and attack your opponent and kill them quickly.


Edge
[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t2a25b13b34c14c23c32d33e12e23e33f23f32g13g23h12h21h32j13"]Pure Edge Build[/URL]

How it works:

PvE: In pve you'll have to be careful as your crits will pull agro from the best tanks. Sometimes you'll have to be mindful and when you pull agro stop attacking for a moment so that the tank can get agro back with taunt or an aoe etc etc. Gouge and Throat Seal work beautifully here and its best to save up your agony orbs to use your finisher skills so that you get max effect. However, you can spam your finishers with 4 blast orbs so that you get the pain state on your target which decreases their crit dodge by 5%, this allows for the entire party to affectively increase their overall crit rate on the target. Most mobs that you kill for quest can be dealt with quicky by simply using Gouge, TS, Assassinate. Be ready to spend alot of MP with this build in PvP and buy lots and lots of MP pots.

PvP: Some consider this the crown jewel of the sin trees for pvp. With maxed bullseye you can stun a target up to 3 seconds and ensare your opponent for 3 seconds. With full blast orbs and using Dark Nightmare you can keep an opponent silenced for 7 seconds. This is what you should aim for with this tree in pvp. Stealth, (you'll get a 40+ crit rate % from broken shadow strike), Secret Art - Blast for 2 blast orbs, then wait for the target if they have a shield up, if not then you can open up with Gouge. Gouge has a +11% crit rate off of the first hit and a +13% off of the second hit. So out of stealth you should have a +51% crit rate base without factoring your own crit rate and the opponents dodge rate. Now after you use gouge were going to assume that the target was stunned. At this point you have 3 blast orbs, if target is not a dark vampire or a healing class then go ahead and use TS for the 4th orb and then pop off Dark Nightmare for the 7 second silence. If it is a dark vamp or healing class you want to silence them asap out of stealth so use DN at this time before they can get their shield up or before they can cast their dark bonds on you. From here you can conintue to use your skills such as Assassinate, TS, ToP, Gouge, when their silence is almost up then you can use swift evasion/hypnoblade/redhand, once you've got your orbs head back and Gouge them before they wake up from sleep for a huge amount of damage from wrath + the 51% base crit rate x your base crit dmg (avg 277%) should be around 9kish possible of 13k+ if you got 9+ refined wpn.


Dark
[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t3a15a25b13b23c23c34d23d34e21e33f21g21g34h11h22i23j22j33"]Pure Dark Build[/URL]

How it works:

PvE: As far as pure damage the Dark tree is definetely lacking in strength. However it makes up for it with rapid shadow that resets the cool downs of your ToP, TS, and finishers. The talents put into this tree help optimize the ability to acitvate Rapid shadow as well as the majo boost when you have a speed increase to both your accracy and evasion. You'll notice that most of the time in pve with this build you'll only be pushing a few buttons to use assassinate, ToP, TS, and one of your two finishers depending on what effect you want. Nothing hard about it and don't expect to do castitrophic damage if you spec full dark.

PvP: Now this is where this tree really shines. With increased talents and using swift evasion in stealth its possible to have almost 600 evasion if properly buffed. The cool down times of swift evasion will allow you to use it every 4 mins vs every 5 and the points added into shadow protection allows activation every 2 minutes instead of every 3. While you gain a speed boost you will also increase your accracy and evasion. With no buffs, I was sitting at around 400 acc and 258 evasion on this pure dark build. With this build its best to stealth and get your distance and open up with deadly chaser from far away for the stun effect. Then you will still have the boost from Focused manuever for increased acc and evasion and you can unleash your skills quickly while under the benifit of the boost. Now when that boost runs out you can pop swift evasion drastically increasing your evasion by 210 for 16 seconds and reducing incoming dmg by 20%. The key to success with this build is not in the raw or crit damage but the fact that you will get off alot of hits to knock out orbs. This is when you use shadow protection and sleep the opponent, use gale of wind to increase your attacks, get all the orbs to get red hand then attack your opponent. WIth the boost in evas and acc on red hand youll be dealing about 4-6k hits non crit on your opponent and theyll die while they miss on you over and over. I can't express how important it is to get redhand with this build.

Hybrid

In the past hybrids have been slandered cause of the inability to get the higher lvl talents in the tree. While this is true there are some trees which do not benifit as much from teh higher level talents. However with a properly build hybrid tree you can be extremely effective if properly played. I'm going to post a few hybrids here so that you guys can take a peek at them and see if one is right for you. As far as the style of play just combine what was previously stated with the talents that have been selected from the trees.

[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t1a15b13b34c12c23d23t2a25b11b34c14c23d33e12e23f23g13"]High Raw Damage Venom and Edge Hybrid[/URL]

[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t1a25b13b23b34c14c32d32e13e23t3a15a25c21c34d23d34"]Possible PvPvE build Venom and Dark Hybrid[/URL]

[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t2a25b11b34c14c23d33e12e23f23f32g13t3a15a25c21c34d23"]Better PvP Hybrid[/URL]

[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t1a15b11b34c12c23d23t2a25b13b34c14c23e22t3a15b13b23c21"]PvPvE Tri-Hybrid[/URL]

[URL="http://fw.perfectworld.com/talentcalc?cls=assassin&r=kin&b=t1a25b23t2a25b11b34c14c23d32e12e23f23f32g13t3a15a25c21"]PvP Hybrid with DoT[/URL]

Remember these are just some ideas for builds feel free to change them as neccessary to adapt to your play style.


Pets

Pets come in all shapes and sizes. The pet that you use isn't really all that important really with the fact that you can add any skills to any pet and get their talent levels to 10 for HP, Attack and for Def. The choice that you have to make is what skills to get to compliment your build for your sin. If you stack Atk then try to get brute force and Invigorate, if you like to hit your target and have them miss you then get Percision and Deflection. If you want your masteries up then get Ocean Barrier that will raise your Phys and Dark mastery.

if you are broke have no gold and cant afford a pet then go to CV and catch some. Try for the Whirlwind since it comes with a passive Deflection skill slightly raising your evasion. The snow puppets that you can get as a prize from ANC give you Brute Force. Bears give you Invigorate as well as EctoFruit.

It's all a choice of what you want them to look like and what you want their skills to be. Remember that higher level pets have higher base stats so try to upgrade your pet along with your levels.

When using your pet in stealth try to set it on Stay so that it won't be following you everywhere. You can then sneak up on your opponent from the opposite side and then send your pet in. As your opponent targets your pet you can then suprise attack them from behind and they will take a moment to realize that you are attacking and have to tab target over to you before they can start attacking. if you are not able to do then then I strongly suggest that you keep your pet recalled and only summon it out if you are going to use it for buffs.

About buffs, don't worry too much about getting great buffs on a pet. if the only thing that you are using it for is buffs, then grab 3 or 4 green pets and teach them each a buff skill. Summon, buff, recall, stow, summon, repeat til you get fully buffed. I've found that if you have more than 3 or 4 then your buffs will just about run out before you can do anything so try to keep the number of pets to a minimum.

New Patch Notes and Comments on full builds

So, it seems that with the new rise in level cap to 80 everyones asking the questions what should I do, go full build or stay hybrid. For those of you already using pure talent tree builds ie Full venom or full dark its pretty easy. As for the others that went with my hybrid builds picking up the Stun with gouge in edge and then swift evasion from dark tree, the choice is a bit more difficult.

Let me start by saying this:

Pros of Pure builds:
-You can full utilize the strength of your tree and dedicate all the points into that tree to get almost all talents.
-You can get lvl 75 skills
-You don't have to worry about changing up masteries
-Single offhand for mastery
-Full builds with lvl 75 skills force you to use that mastery type of finisher ie Venom requres DN and edge will require NT.

Cons of Pure builds:
-Major Dot from NT for venom may consume orbs so trying to get Mutilation off with DN will be secondary if you want the DoT. if you want to try to activate Mutilation with DN then you may miss out on the orbs for NT DoT.
-at most only 50% chance to proc the passive skill needed in order to even activate the 75 skills.
-Once you use the skills for venom and edge then the buff is gone and you have to repeat. It doesnt matter that theres no cool down on the skill because you need at least 8 seconds for the Finisher to get back up even if you get orbs up before then.
-Shadow Bite Requires you to be in stealth, that being said it grants you the most oppertunities off the bat to get the skill off as its always 100% able to use after you've been in stealth for 2 seconds. However, no stealth = no skill.
-many of the 50+ talents will help with skills that you have to unseal. If you cant get a hold of those skills or you haven't unsealed them yet then those talents do nothing for you.


So with those things in mind you can make the choices for yourselves. What will I do?? its a secret

But let me say this.. IF they ever make it so that theres a button to push to get out of combat mode I'll go full Dark in a heart beat... xD

CONCLUSION

I hope that this sheds a bit of light onto the abilities of the assassin. Remember that this is simply a guide and any input is welcomed. This is only the tip of the iceberg regarding assassins and their capabilities. The rest is for you to figure out and hopefully you enjoyed reading about sins.