Hi Vaultheads.

I've only played casters for the last 7 years. It's been good and easy. Now I've got an urge to play a rogue assassin dps and want to know how non-tards are building them to be beasts and not suck. I tested it out on lam and it was balls.

I went standard twf melee feats, max dex. Pain/suffering, part of the family set, other standard stuff like collective sight and what not. Enhancements were focused in assassin tree, harper for KTA, TA for some more dodge and Vistani.

Filigrees were prowess + melee power stacking. I know having a swap for prowess would be better.

My time on a boss kobold was 30 seconds or so. I've seen people saying they have times half that, if not better. I know those times involve throwing as many buffs/debuffs as you can get but even without that I would expect much better than 30s.

So basically I'm a dps moron, help me. How to assassin?

Pain and suffering already do two awesome debuffs. You COULD get a LGS ooze or something. But, actually, for that test twisting grim fate/bound from fate singer would help. 12% debuff I think.

Also you kinda mentioned, but melee power. You should be like 125 min BEFORE prowess.

Chop

i2049 wrote on Oct 30^th, 2020 at 8:28pm:

largely negligible on prowess. you trade seconds of 50 mp to swap out prowess which has 15 mp on it anyway.

as for kobold tests, top times are used a measure of burst potential. you want to start with max mp stacked up, so stay in stealth to build up stacks.

swap to dust offhand, use assassin mark then rapid attack first before other attacks. swap back to suffering.

use an int filigree swap before starting dps.

if you want to see what you do in raids against very debuffed targets then twist in grim/bound from fatesinger. if you want to see in game set up then use what you would in game. I also like to check what auto attack times i get without boosting or rotations. Also just rotation without boosting.

makar wrote on Nov 1^st, 2020 at 4:58pm:


Person asked a question and provided their data. They are trying to improve and learn. Maybe you could have given some pointers about your setup and time without the rhetoric.

SpaceGoat wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2020 at 10:07am:


That's fair I was being kinda an asshole/bitch, sorry. Here's some tips for the OP (I'm not going to focus on kobold times, though the below should help there too):

• Run in shadowdancer (pick up executioners strike, max dodge/dex bonus, assassinate, consume, shadow form, meld, capstone boost)
• Make sure you have scion of ethereal plane
• Get lgs debuffers and while you are at it make sure to have an affirmation weapon (affirmation, dust, ash)
• Make lgs dr bypasses (at least 2x of good, chaos, evil, and at least 1x of lawful) clickies (these dont take a lot of ingredients - 4x larges a piece iirc)
• Make heroic greensteel displace clickies 5x at least preferably 8-10x
• Flow is also nice to have as a swap
• Slot a deconstructor in your strahd dagger
• Have different filigree setups for your sentient weapons to maximize dps while maintaining some important debuffs
• On enhancements either go TA as a strong secondary or vistani - vistani is more kobold target practice dps while TA is going to be stronger (for most players) in an actual live environment when pushing difficulty - make sure to take KTA in harper to 7 or 8 depending on how anal you are about keeping it up
• Have swaps for things - cha/insight cha swap for bluffing, int/insight int swap for traps + activating KTA (remember trances like KTA use your current stats at activation)
• Save your boosts for bosses / doom reapers -> for trash focus on instakilling 2 targets with assassinate then another 1 with executioners, and dpsing down the deathblocked champions -> if you have consume be mindful of how you stand and position as well as your stealth (it will come undone initially but you can reactivate), don't waste ticks
• When you are fighting bosses and minibosses / doom reapers -> make sure to activate your capstone boost -> attack speed boost -> rapid slash -> then rest of combo (keep in mind you want to keep poison on as well as assassin's trick)
• Debuffs/affirmation should be quick - preferably you debuff first before swapping to main weapons and activating boosts
• Threat reduction + deception items (actual ones that give the bluff effect) + shiv are golden for keeping your sneak attacks up. Sneak attack is such a large percentage of dps that if you aren't sneak attacking, you might as well just roll a paladin or other thfer
• Shadowdancer capstone boost increases the range that you can hit things at (makes hitting gish in PN easier for instance or kited mobs), use this. You want to stand at max range from a doom / boss as possible.
• Save your dodge clickies for when your tank dies or when you somehow get aggro. Meld + improved uncanny dodge + spooky hat from revels should give you enough time to tank a doom or for a boss for a tank to at least reget aggro. If you waste these on just any hold panic then you are throwing away one of your best defensive tools.
• You don't need to max assassinate targets to hit are 90, 110, or 140 - there isn't much benefit in going for high fort mob no fail, better to optimize damage around maintaining 110 or 90 DCs and just restricting target range to either low fort mobs (90) or everyone except high fort mobs (110).
• You want high amounts of fort bypass (at least 100+). Again, if you aren't getting sneak attack, you are worthless to your party (imo).
• Measure the foe should be pegged at either 1 or 2 points, and always maxed stacks. I prefer 1 point as I'm super anal about making sure to never let the stacks fall except in super rare circumstances. You can click / unclick sneak to maintain just get in a habit of counting to 9 and doing it while moving around. If you aren't entering every combat with max stacks, you are losing a stupid amount of melee power and shouldn't bother playing an assassin imo.

The main thing to keep in mind when playing an assassin and trying to optimize one, is what you are there for in terms of party utility? High single target dps, trash clearing (consume has no fail saves, executioners strike, assassinate), stealth, bluff pulls, traps, debuffs (its one of the few twf builds that can justify it and twf builds are the best debuffers), etc. If you aren't fulfilling these functions well enough, you might as well be another thf dps build that all do roughly the same things.

makar wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2020 at 12:55pm:


Good on ya.