[Goto]

Was playing around with a few ideas earlier, and figured I'd post them to see if anyone else can get some ideas from it. They're not really finished, so feel free to poke holes in them.

Build 1



1. Way of the Lotus
2. Mark of Instability
3. Aura of Displacement [ELITE]
4. Black Lotus Strike (off-hand)
5. Twisting Fangs (dual)
6. Falling Spider (off-hand)
7. Blades of Steel (dual)
8. OPTIONAL, in the case above it's a res

Yeah, the screenshot has #2 and #3 in the wrong order.
You'll pretty much always be enchanted with this build, so a 'while enchanted' dagger would be your best bet. Fortitude or Defense is probably your best bet for the suffix mod, and I'd favour Sundering for the prefix mod. The initial energy requirement is quite high, about 30 before you'll get much in the way of returns from the skills. Assassins have 25 base energy, which poses a bit of a problem as far as cycling through skills quickly goes. For that reason you probably want radiant armour, a rune of attunement, and a vitae. The other runes should be a vigor (best you can afford, as usual), a superior Dagger Mastery and a minor Critical Strikes.

Activate Way of the Lotus a few seconds before you're ready to engage, to give your energy time to recover slightly. Pull off Mark of Instability and Aura of Displacement in quick succession, then go straight into your 4 skill combo. The energy given back by Black Lotus Strike and Way of the Lotus (activated by Twisting Fangs) should give you more than enough to cover the second half of the combo. Most targets should be dead by the end of it, if not you might be able to hang around for the dagger combo to recharge. Keep in mind the build has no survival skills and you've probably stepped beyond the range of your monk, so most of the time you should get your combo in then cancel Aura of Displacement and get yourself out of range. In some situations you might want to swap out Aura of Displacement, and use that and the 8th slot to add some survivability to the build, particularly in PvE where Shadow Stepping isn't always as useful.

You can unload a lot of damage quickly, not to mention a knockdown halfway through, and inflicting bleeding, poison and deep wound. If the skill chain is countered halfway through you could be in some trouble though. Hex removal will either stop you being able to hit with Black Lotus Strike, or stop the knockdown that allows Falling Spider. Enchant removal will shadow step you back out halfway through, unless you decide to use Way of the Lotus after shadow stepping as a cover enchant. If they're not watching out for it though you should be able to take out a target before anyone can react too much, if they don't stop you it should be just about enough to kill a warrior with the one combo.




Build 2



1. Jagged Strike
2. Wild Strike
3. Blinding Powder
4. Critical Strike
5. Malicious Strike
6. Way of Perfection
7. Critical Eye
8. Critical Defenses

This build is intended to be used against other physical characters, particularly warriors and rangers. The weapon shouldn't be too important, probably 15^50 or while enchanted for the inscription, personal preference for the mods. My armour setup was pretty much the same as the last build, but feel free to experiment with runes and insignias a bit.

Fairly obviously the important skill here is Critical Defenses, it's going to allow you to survive many more attacks than normal, as well as denying Warriors their adrenaline and Assassins their ability to combo. It's not as quick a kill as the last build, but it's intended to be more or less sustainable indefinitely as long as you can stay alive. Buff yourself up with Way of Perfection, Critical Eye and Critical Defenses. I had a minor critical strikes rune attached (for a total of 12 crit strikes), so Critical Defenses was lasting 9 seconds. Running through your dagger combo from #1 to #4 in order (with blinding powder included, it has to be used after an off-hand) will cause reasonable damage, it'll reapply Crit Defenses, end any annoying stances your foe is using, inflict bleeding on your target, and blind on any adjacent foes. Now while they're quite cheap and spammable as a combo, it's probably still not enough to keep Critical Defenses up permanently. That's where Malicious Strike comes in. As long as your foe has a condition (which they really should, considering you're continuously applying 2 of them), it'll force a critical strike and reapply Critical Defenses. It's a melee attack rather than part of a combo, so you can use it at any time without messing up anything. Also it almost pays for itself, with the energy you get back from the crit strike.

Obviously blinding powder isn't as fast to recharge as the others, just use it as part of the combo when it's available, otherwise it can be skipped. It's there to alleviate some pressure if you've got several attackers and the 75% block rate can't keep you alive. Depending on the situation you might want to take out Blinding Powder in place of a res, or an elite skill. Just keep in mind that you need a condition to use Malicious Strike, so if you take out Blinding Powder you'll be more susceptible to condition removal as a counter. Way of Perfection is your healing, you should be attacking constantly enough to keep yourself alive. Make sure to keep reapplying Way of Perfection and Critical Eye whenever possible. Energy-management shouldn't be a problem even if you spam your combo as often as possible, Critical Eye and the forced critical hits should help pay for it considerably. If you are finding yourself low you could try a major critical strikes rune (and probably a fort mod on your dagger to cover the health cost), so that you have 13 critical strikes and gain a massive 4 energy for each critical hit (with Eye active).



Umm.. I think that's all. Like I said they're both completely original works, and haven't really been tested yet. I took them both to the combat dummies in the Isle of the Nameless briefly to test energy management and get an idea of damage output, but that's a long way from real combat. Feel free to point out any mistakes I might have made, or if you have any questions or suggestions. Later I'll post the build I usually use in PvE, but it's pretty much a derivative of one that I read ages ago so I don't want to take credit for what was essentially some superficial changes. Assassins can be a pretty cool class if played right, but they're so unforgiving in most circumstances that I think a lot of people don't take the time to find a good build for them.