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.