Ell's sin guide (still a work in progress)

[Ellori]

Ell’s sin guide

Basics

Assassins unlike any other class rely on soul fragments for their most powerful attacks, miasmas and for CCs. You can see how many fragments you have down by your health bar:

 

There are feats which can restore soul fragments to you these are:

Necrotic empowerment – you gain 4 soul fragments over 16 seconds

Crystalisted lotus extract – you gain 3 soul fragments

Castration – AA combo chance to get up 2 soul fragments (not worth it imo)

There are three different miasmas that are available to use, which can have different affects depending which combo they are used after and all cost one soul fragment. It is also possible to do both combos and then use the miasma to get both affects.

	Face stab	Soul strike	Lotus coated dart
Grim corruption (grim weakness)	Consumes grim weakness dealing damage	Essence detonation (bomb detonates after a few seconds inflicting massive unholy damage)	Consumes grim weakness and silences the target
Slow Death Strike (dread venom)	Consumes dread venom dealing damage	Consumes dread venom and stuns the target	Deadly venom (large poison damage over time)

 

There are a number of different CCs available which mostly need to be feated:

From the darkness – charge and root the enemy costs 1 soul fragment

Opportunistic strike – stun costs 2 soul fragments

Slow Death strike followed by soul strike – stun costs 1 soul fragment

Snap kick – knock back costs 2 soul fragments only if they are available to use

Death’s Gaze – fear costs 2 soul fragments (not worth it imo)

 

AAs 

Since I never do any kind of pvp this is of course based on using only pve AAs

 

Primary	Secondary	Other
Tainted Weapons – removes heal	Soothing venom – minus hate	Empowered face stab
Finely Honed – removes absorb affects	Pit fighter – increase damage with weapons	Improved crimson lotus pollen
Cover of Dusk – probably the most useful perk, reduces your hate and increases tanks hate, I always have it perked.	Frenzied strikes – increase off hand chance	Empowered swift strikes
Decisive strikes	Empowered grim corruption	Vitality – increase your health
Pressing strikes	Empowered slow death strike
	Flanking – increases soldiers health, evade and damage inflicted

 

 

Builds

Start out solo spec

https://goo.gl/NxZ7VW 

This spec is rather simple and you can either use the same kind of rotation as outlined below on raid spec or any other you choose really there are some feats included it in that are really handy when soloing mobs and doing solo instances these are:

Cat’s paw – increases evade chance by 40%

Atrophy – lowers the target’s damage for a short period of time (good for soloing bosses)

Dull pain – reduces damage taken from fire, cold, unholy, poison and electrical sources by 90%.

Accelerated – 45% increased movement speed, good if you are low on health for kiting or running away.

Avatar of death - +30% magical health tap, +15% magical damage modifier, +30% magical Stamina tap, +30% physical health tap, +30% physical stamina tap, +100% weapon damage, snare, root and knock back immunity. It does cost 4 soul fragments to use but can help you to get back up to full health, if you are surrounded by a lot of enemies you can use this then regen some soul fragments and use whirlwind to regain a lot of health. 

Raid spec (or even solo spec)

https://goo.gl/TeJNbr 

this spec has all of the CCs you might need for example at Sheng to use on the runners, my rotation with this spec is usually:

Cover of Dusk > Swift Strikes XI > Grim Corruption > Soul Strike > swift strikes XI > Slow Death Strike > Lotus Coated Dart, and then mostly use swift strikes XI and swift strikes VIII until CoD, GC and SDS are off cool down. With this there are three really good anti aggro tools:

Cover of Dusk – significantly increase the hate generated by allies in defensive stance whilst reducing the hate generated by your attacks and also increasing your evade chance.

Spirit of Nightfall – reduces the assassin’s perceived threat on all nearby foes (5m up to 12 targets)

Crimson Lotus Pollen – reduces the opponents anger towards the assassin by 25%

Yakhmar spec

https://goo.gl/3sBpQZ 

this is the current spec I use at yakhmar although I have had about five different ones, the rotation I use at yak is when the adds pop up:

Grim corruption > Soul Strike > change target > Slow Death Strike > lotus coated dart > change target > Swift Strikes XI > Face stab (if the adds aren’t dead yet). Of course I start the next combo before actually using the miasmas but as a general rule that’s what I do at the first set of adds. When at Yakhmar I mostly use swift strikes XI and swift strikes VIII and when not on cooldown lethargy III.

When the second adds are about to spawn I use path of the enlightened (bought from Jiang Shi faction gives +20 magic damage, +5 natural health regen and +180 combat rating unholy), then Avatar of Death, crystalised lotus extract and then use the same rotation I used on the first set of adds. As soon as you see the adds are about to spawn then it is a good idea to get into a good position near the tanks to make the bomb most affective. Then I just use Avatar of Death whenever it is off of cool down when a set of adds are going to spawn, one good thing is that it also regenerates your stamina which is helpful for they hunger.

Old Honorguard spec 

https://goo.gl/2r7UoD

Basically it is more feated towards protection and less hate, so feated Lotus tainted blood, lotus overload, dull pain (Great to use on eternal winter if you are low on health as you basically take no damage), corrupted body (only time I’ve actually feated and used this but seems to help some more in protection so never really dropping to low health), still debating whether to change and get arcane backlash or not. The biggest problem is deciding where the line is between too much dps and getting aggro and not enough so not getting frozen.

Current Honorguard spec

https://goo.gl/Zrq3dF 

Basically the changes I made was to removed the points from unholy stabs to gain Atrophy and Kidney Shots. The benefit of Atrophy is it reduces the boss's damage output by 30% for 10 seconds with a 60 second CD. So if timed correctly can mean reducing the damage everyone receives from Eternal Winter, so personally from 50% I try and stay near the boss until 50% of the eternal winter cast and then use atrophy and try and then move far enough away of course with it being 30% less damage taken isn't so bad if my circle crosses one or two others. At 35% I use both atrophy and dull pain in order to just continue attacking the boss to help and bring him down faster which so far has worked for me. I do, do the boss with around 10k health (with healer's buff) and 25% protection which seems to work out quite well whilst still maintaining dps as over 1000. 

 

 

Gear/factions

Brittle Blade – for maximum dps before getting T4 gear the issues are that you have low health pool and no minus hate so can easily get aggro.

Hyrkanians – have daggers which are quite nice to use especially if you don’t have t3 or higher ones.

Scholars of Cheng-ho – have a dexterity necklace which is quite similar in stats to the t3 one.

Scarlet circle – have protection gear but it really isn’t needed if you feat the extra protection and not so many fights where as a sin you need it easier to get it from accessories.

Jiang shi – their ring is really nice to have with the high amount of constitution, hit and crit. Also Path of the Enlightened can be nice to get (see above as to what affects it gives).

Basically you can get by with just Brittle Blade, but the other faction gear can also be good to get some gear from although with T3 and T4 gear being so easy to get now you can even bypass it.

[Celesteiana]

Hi and thank you Ell!

Ive been looking for a guide like this and now your POSTING one 

Very good guide and what interest me most is the rotation, i will try the rotations here.

 

Question:

I do grim corruption --> soulstrike --> slow death strike --> facestab --> swiftstrikes til cd is over on the others.

Is that bad, if so why?

I have problem dps'ing with my sin, i can reach 1400-1500 but not more on strawman.

 

555 Area is secure

Celesteiana

[Ellori]

Heya, it isn't bad but you do more damage doing slow death strike followed by lotus coated dart rather than face stab since face stab removes the dot where as the dart increases the dot and does more damage overall especially if you have it feated for dread venom to do more damage.

[Celesteiana]

Ah great i will change this, TY very much 

[Celesteiana]

Hi Ellie!

I got a question for you.

If you do slow death strike followed by lotus coated dart, then a swiftstrike followed by face stab, does the face stab consume the dot created by the lotus coated dart?

 

Qustion 2:

Can face stab and soulstrike be cast in the middle of a lets say a swiftstrike combo whereas the animation is not shown but the damage still sinks in?

 

Hoping for answers

Celesteiana

[Ellori]

If you do slow death strike followed by lotus coated dart, then a swift strike followed by face stab, does the face stab consume the dot created by the lotus coated dart?

No.

 

Can face stab and soul strike be cast in the middle of a lets say a swift strike combo whereas the animation is not shown but the damage still sinks in?

Yes casting miasmas does not interrupt combos and can be used whenever, so for example you can do Grim corruption, start doing Slow death Strike or Swift strikes and then hit soul strike which can speed up your rotation by not leaving extra time to do miasmas but instead applying them during other combos/animations.

[Celesteiana]

ty :)

[Celesteiana]

Yo Ellie!!!

Here is some more question :)

 

1. Armour and spell penetration is that just for pvp or does the bosses have armour and protection that mitigates hits? How does it work in pve?

2. The 5 point fear Precise strikes in the corruption tree, is that a good idea?

3. The perk Master Assassin, is that a good idea in pve or is  that perk for pvp only?

4. For dps purposes, would you feat Baneful Venom or Soul Destruction or Vile Corruption?

 

 

Hoping for answers 

Celesteiana

 

[Ellori]

1. Armour and spell penetration is that just for pvp or does the bosses have armour and protection that mitigates hits? How does it work in pve?

it just means that some of the attacks bypass the enemies defences. 

2. The 5 point fear Precise strikes in the corruption tree, is that a good idea?

I have 5 points in it in all my specs

3. The perk Master Assassin, is that a good idea in pve or is  that perk for pvp only?

Just pvp... Cover of Dusk is your friend for pve

4. For dps purposes, would you feat Baneful Venom or Soul Destruction or Vile Corruption?

For my highest dps spec that I use at Yakhmar I feat Soul Destruction and Vile Corruption. 

[Celesteiana]

Hi again!

 

So the armour penetration applies to pve mobs is that correct understood?

 

If u dont care about cower of dusk, hyphotetically would Master Assissin do more dps due to the tenacity on normal bosses and mobs?

 

Best regards

Celesteiana 

[Ellori]

So the armour penetration applies to pve mobs is that correct understood?

 Works the exact same way as any other class.

If u dont care about cower of dusk, hyphotetically would Master Assissin do more dps due to the tenacity on normal bosses and mobs?

As I stated above master assassin is just for pvp... if you really don't want to use cover of dusk you need to find some other sin to ask as I have it perked everywhere but T5 Yakhmar.

[Celesteiana]

Cool dog :)

 

[CrandarXX]

As this applies to all classes, and for clarification:

 

Armor / Spell penetration works on (all) bosses and mobs. However as far as I understand the AoC forums the "pros" can't agree about how big the effect is, especially after the respective debuffs which lower the boss' armor/prot are on max stack (x5). Nevertheless its clear that it has some effect.

 

Tenacity is only useful in PvP and in T6. On all mobs and bosses from Tortage to all of T5 its completely useless, has no effect at all. And in T6 I would still strongly recommend any Sin to use CoD, which is much more important for the raid then marginal dps gain by Master Assassin.

[Celesteiana]

wise answers

 

 

[Celesteiana]

How effective are Fleshroot and Dark weapon? worth feating?

 

 

 

 

Celeaste