A few questions.

[N3xus0n3]

<DIV>Hi there, I'm a level 38 Assassin and loving it, no reason not to, I do pretty good DPS in a group, can solo very well thanks to my bow and can tank a little. I'm just about to upgrade my equipment because I made a little money recently but on trawling through the forums looking for relevant advice I can find very little, so here goes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Armour:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>With armour whats the deal with the colours, I mean the REAL deal? If I equip Orange armour will it give me less bonus than white armour because I need to grow into it, and how does this actually affect me? Do I lose a certain % of the available mitigation due to having to "grow into" the armour? Are they any numbers available to prove this?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>What actually is mitigation? I know it says you will absorb 35% of the damage from an opponent of your level, but how does that change for higher levels? Will I absorb less? Presumably, but how much less? 10%? 5%?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Avoidance, pretty much the same question as mitigation!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Weapons:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Atm I am hooked up with the PGT and an imbued Rapier, giving me slashing and piercing damage, I'm kind of happy with this but I realise my stronger sorta debuffs are more aimed at piercing resistance reductions.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Agility Vs Strength:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As far as I get it Agility refers to accuracy and avoidance, as I solo alot I'm happier with a higher avoidance and its nice to hit things more often so accuracy is good. So I'm figuring stick with the agility bonuses on my equipment and hope to get STR as well, but if not, well no big loss. Then I'm thinking well.. Hang on, if STR refers to how much damage you do then I should go for more STR bonuses, so in the end I figure even the two out, but then I read somewhere that our Conbat Arts are not effected/affected (never could work those two out) by how much STR we have and as I'm usually spamming my arts away with very little time for normal hits then whats the point of having higher STR?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now I'm a bit of a stat addict, in that I used to run all the formulas and thing to work out the best weapons and armour in different games, but in this game there seems to be very little information on most of it. I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction re what our stats actually do, I know that there are a few posts around but I'd kinda like to see some numbers, thats what I'm most at home with.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It sems there are alot of differing opinions on whats better to have high STR or AGI but at the end of the day it can only come down to soloing or not soloing, if you always group with Bob the uber tank then you're not going to need Agility for avoidance because he won't let them hit you, so put it in STR.. Oh but wait..... If Bob the super tank holds agro that well then you'll be all out spamming CA's so whats the point lof having high STR as it doesn't effect them.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Bah.. erm.. help? Please!!!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks for reading my 5 pence worth.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>TTFN</DIV>

[ZaranilShadowfie]

Equipment Con:  For this explanation I am excluding fabled gear and only talking about player made armor under the reasoning that player made gear is better than mob dropped gear. (which is true 90% of the time).  Gear comes in tiers that are based on multiple levels of 10 and last for the next 10 levels.  A piece of gear starts being orange at the begining of a tier and becomes white at the end.  When it is orange, you are not recieving all of the AC of your armor or damage of your weapon, but you get the full amount of the rest of your stats.  Orange is always better than white blue or grey when dealing with armor pieces(stuff on the left of your character) and weapons.  An orange piece of gear is better even at it's first level when comparred with a white piece of gear at it's max potential.  Jewery (stuff on the right side of your character) is a bit different in that it doesn't matter what it cons, it just matters what stats it has.  If a grey piece has better stats than an orange peice, then wear the grey.  You can inspect a piece of gear to see how much of it's AC or damage you are recieving and then how much is it's max.  The conning system is really just a way to quickly look at something and judge it's worth roughly, orange being the best and grey the worst.  Not always true, but with armor and weapons of player made quality, it usually is. What is mitigation:  Mitigation is your ability to absorb damage based on a percent.  If you have 50% mitigation you will absorb 50% of damage you recieve.  Mitigation is determined by your AC divided by your level.  If you are level 37 and have 1600 AC, your mitigation is  43.24%.  This is pretty accurate though not always exact. What is avoidance:  Avoidance is your ability to avoid damage based on a combined percent.  If you avoid an attack you take no damage.  If you have 50% avoidance you will avoid 50% of attacks.  Note that this is statistically speaking, the game has no way to know how long a battle is going to take, how many attacks took place, and then remove half of them.  Avoidance is made up of your BASE, Agility + defense skill.  BLOCK, your protection gained by wearing a sheild.  PARRY, skill that allows you to block attacks.  DEFLECTION, a brawler skill you don't get. Piercing vs. Slashing:  For generally purposes pre end of game, there is no difference and the choice is purely looks and stats.  All player made weapons of any tier have the same damage rating as their peers, so it comes down to weither you like the idea of cutting people or stabbing them, and then choosing a weapon to suit your needs.  Yes, we get piercing debuffs sorta, but if you actually calculate how much a difference they make for your regular melee strikes, there is no point in worrying about that.  At the end of the game you will need to make a choice.  Will you play your assassin and raid, or will you not raid and instead come here to post and cry?  If you choose to raid, you will need to have 2 of each weapon type since raid mobs are usually immune to one or the other.  But for your everyday exp groups, it does not matter.  Agility vs. Strength:  Ah, the true debate!  Well in your question you have stated a few myths, so I will just list what str and agi both do and then list common misconceptions about them.  First I want to say though that how well you hit in combat is based on your attack which can be viewed in your persona.  Attack is hard to calculate on paper, so you'll just have to take your persona's word for it.  Higher attack means you are better. STRENGTH DOES! *  Increase melee damage *  Increase attack rating *  Increase Combat Art damage *  Increase carrying weight STRENGTH DOES NOT! *  Increase your power pool *  Make you hotter *  Make you fly AGILITY DOES! *  Increase scout power pool *  Increase avoidance AGILITY DOES NOT! *  Make you more accurate (yes the game lies, go parse yourself if you don't believe me) *  Increase attack rating *  Increase combat art damage *  Make you breathe fire *  Allow you to dodge bullets like in the matrix   In the interest of creativity and anti-cookiecutterism (yes that is a word), I will not say that one stat is better than the other, I will simply say that they each have advantages.  I personally prefer strength as do most other top end assassins.  AC does not help me do damage on raids, but STR does.  AGI is still important too because more power lets you do more Combat Arts.  I don't look down on other assassins that choose to focus on AGI instead of STR.  Actually that's not true, I look down on all assassins. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> You make the choice, but make sure you look at the facts.  STR does improve CA damage and quite a lot too I might add.  And AGI will not make you auto attack any better (and even if this wasn't true, an assassin spends very little time actually auto attacking). Well that's about it I guess, have fun.   I didn't bother to proof read that and my coffee is still brewing, so if stuff is spelled wrong or things are gramatically incorrect... it's your fault not mine. <div></div>

[N3xus0n3]

Thanks alot, almost exactly what I had in mind. Only thing I really need to know now is how different levels effect mit and avoidance. For example at 38 if I fight a 38 its 61% avoidance but what if I fight a 39?

[ZaranilShadowfie]

<span><blockquote><hr>N3xus0n3 wrote:<div></div>Thanks alot, almost exactly what I had in mind. Only thing I really need to know now is how different levels effect mit and avoidance. For example at 38 if I fight a 38 its 61% avoidance but what if I fight a 39?<hr></blockquote>Ah yes, if a mob is higher level than you your going to mitigate less and avoidless than if it was even con, though I'm not sure exactly how the numbers play out.  But if a mob is red to you, I believe your mit and avoid are very low if not zero.  Also the higher you are compared to a mob the better you will mit and avoid to the point where most grey mobs you cannot even be touched in melee combat.  Same goes for dealing damage, if a mob is a few levels red you will not even land an attack in melee combat, but if grey you will hardly miss.  Weither mobs are ^^ or epic seem to make them attack stronger and have more hp, but not actually mitigate better or hit you more often.  This is just stuff I have noticed, no hard fact.</span><div></div>

[Graton]

it will save you alot of trouble if you use a slasher and a piercer while leveling up; that way you get skill ups and both at all times and you don't ever need to think about making sure both are maxed it will just happen. when you mentioned weapons you never mentioned what you were using as a bow. the only reason i point this out is that it seems many assassins don't use bows outside of kiting or think they combat arts we get for them aren't worth it. this is very much not the case. using your bow skills and in particular having a bow that procs will significantly increase your dps and not just when solo. don't spend too much money on gear until tier 5. lvl'ing in this game even for casual-ish players like me is quite fast. if you lvl only when you have vitality and spend the other time questing (quest xp does not eat up vitality) you can lvl very quickly. i'm not saying don't upgrade as you go but for instance, imbued weapons are pretty expensive at all tiers, you may want to skip buying them in tier 4 and wait 2 lvls and upgrade then. when i was nearing the 40's i wondered if lvls would slow down like they tended to in eq1, they don't. harvest alot in tier 5. harvesting rares is both a good way to make money and a lot of the gear you'll want in the 40's comes from rare harvests - cedar for a bow , superb pelts for augmented armor , ebon for weapons , rubies / rhodium for tier 5's , the rare root for hex dolls , luminous extracts for stat buff rings. the agility / strength was very well covered in the previous post so the only thing i'll add is that you will always have you agility / haste buff which in tier 5 adds 30 some odd points to your agility so if your agility is well above your strength unbuffed you may want to sacrifice agility for strength since even when soloing you can buff agility considerably. <div></div>

[Malachi]

Orange is always better than white blue or grey when dealing with armor pieces(stuff on the left of your character) and weapons.  An orange piece of gear is better even at it's first level when comparred with a white piece of gear at it's max potential. --------------------- This isn't actually the case anymore. The Con color of armor(weapon con still matters) is just a guildline to let you know what pieces are made for around your level.  It has ZERO effect on your character, a gray bp and an orange bp are identical if they have the same stats, so dont automatically trade up to a higher con just because of it being orange..actually look at the stats and if its really better then do so. Even with the old system, where con color mattered a white piece of armor was better than orange, becuase you were using its full potential where as an orange you still had room to grow. <div></div>

[ZaranilShadowfie]

<span><blockquote><hr>Malachi74 wrote:Orange is always better than white blue or grey when dealing with armor pieces(stuff on the left of your character) and weapons.  An orange piece of gear is better even at it's first level when comparred with a white piece of gear at it's max potential. --------------------- This isn't actually the case anymore. The Con color of armor(weapon con still matters) is just a guildline to let you know what pieces are made for around your level.  It has ZERO effect on your character, a gray bp and an orange bp are identical if they have the same stats, so dont automatically trade up to a higher con just because of it being orange..actually look at the stats and if its really better then do so. Even with the old system, where con color mattered a white piece of armor was better than orange, becuase you were using its full potential where as an orange you still had room to grow. <div></div><hr></blockquote>Either you didn't read my post or you didn't comprehend it.  And white armor player made does not have better stats than the next tier, check it out for yourself <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></span><div></div>

[Malachi]

<span>Either you didn't read my post or you didn't comprehend it.  And white armor player made does not have better stats than the next tier, check it out for yourself <img src="../../i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" height="16" width="16"> ----------------- Actually i just skimmed it, my fault  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I completely missed the line where you were talking *only* about player made armor. I'm just used to dispelling the myth about con color effecting viabiliy based on color alone and jumped the gun, my mistake. </span><div></div>

[WhispersEdge]

Agi vs Strength? Stamina is king of all, dead assassins do 0 dps. Leveling up its not so key, but the 50+ raiding world is an entirely different ballgame. I can still push 300dps or so on a lot of things, all while topping close to 4500 hp (which is not including the use of potions, I can crack 5k hp on my own with 0 group members if I use those.) I love running past some lvl 50 tank and having as much or more hp than them, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy~ I dont fear any mobs aoe really or the occasional riposte with that much hp, while I watch other scouts dip into the red or kick over because they cant take the punishment. Survivability is the most key factor to me, since it not only makes my dps much higher since I rarely die to riposte etc from people (including me) overagroing, but also lets healers focus more on saving that guardians rear than worrying about my health.  I find it odd that such an emphasis is made on these forums about maximizing dps/strength to the exlusion of everything else it seems.  I see so many assassins with really  low hp, it just seems counter-intuitive to me to do that much dps, then overagro, then eat dirt. And lets face it, with good gear and a maximized group, evade and surveil arent going to do squat to keep you from overagroing. Well, thats my 2cp. I took all hp and stamina upgrades while leveling up and haven't regretted it at all. Of all the melee stats, stamina is the rarest of all, agi and str come in boatloads (every weapon and bp etc have those). Strength would be secondary, then agi would be tertiary for me since it doesnt give very much power per point compared to stamina, and the dmg gains from str are just far superior (imo) than a little more power. Dying to riposte? Cost...5 gold Dying to multiple aoe's on raids? Cost... 20 gold. Shrugging off a level 55 groupx4's crushing blow and laughing as he futilely tries to kill you? Priceless. <div></div>

[ZaranilShadowfie]

<span><blockquote><hr>WhispersEdge wrote:Agi vs Strength? Stamina is king of all, dead assassins do 0 dps. Leveling up its not so key, but the 50+ raiding world is an entirely different ballgame. I can still push 300dps or so on a lot of things, all while topping close to 4500 hp (which is not including the use of potions, I can crack 5k hp on my own with 0 group members if I use those.) I love running past some lvl 50 tank and having as much or more hp than them, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy~ I dont fear any mobs aoe really or the occasional riposte with that much hp, while I watch other scouts dip into the red or kick over because they cant take the punishment. Survivability is the most key factor to me, since it not only makes my dps much higher since I rarely die to riposte etc from people (including me) overagroing, but also lets healers focus more on saving that guardians rear than worrying about my health.  I find it odd that such an emphasis is made on these forums about maximizing dps/strength to the exlusion of everything else it seems.  I see so many assassins with really  low hp, it just seems counter-intuitive to me to do that much dps, then overagro, then eat dirt. And lets face it, with good gear and a maximized group, evade and surveil arent going to do squat to keep you from overagroing. Well, thats my 2cp. I took all hp and stamina upgrades while leveling up and haven't regretted it at all. Of all the melee stats, stamina is the rarest of all, agi and str come in boatloads (every weapon and bp etc have those). Strength would be secondary, then agi would be tertiary for me since it doesnt give very much power per point compared to stamina, and the dmg gains from str are just far superior (imo) than a little more power. Dying to riposte? Cost...5 gold Dying to multiple aoe's on raids? Cost... 20 gold. Shrugging off a level 55 groupx4's crushing blow and laughing as he futilely tries to kill you? Priceless. <div></div><hr></blockquote>If I could I would take the HP and sta upgrades for training choices.  I took agi and power pool increase and then respeced for str and +power regen.  Since the ability for power regen doesn't say it has to be out of combat regen I figured this would be the way to go, but because this game is made by SoE I decided to test out before I chose the abilities.  it turns out the +5 power regen is actually +1 power regen in combat and +2 power regen out of combat..... what a rip off.   Oh well maybe some day we will get another respec.</span><div></div>

[WhispersEdge]

<span><blockquote><hr>ZaranilShadowfiend wrote:<span><blockquote><hr>WhispersEdge wrote:Agi vs Strength? Stamina is king of all, dead assassins do 0 dps. Leveling up its not so key, but the 50+ raiding world is an entirely different ballgame. I can still push 300dps or so on a lot of things, all while topping close to 4500 hp (which is not including the use of potions, I can crack 5k hp on my own with 0 group members if I use those.) I love running past some lvl 50 tank and having as much or more hp than them, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy~ I dont fear any mobs aoe really or the occasional riposte with that much hp, while I watch other scouts dip into the red or kick over because they cant take the punishment. Survivability is the most key factor to me, since it not only makes my dps much higher since I rarely die to riposte etc from people (including me) overagroing, but also lets healers focus more on saving that guardians rear than worrying about my health.  I find it odd that such an emphasis is made on these forums about maximizing dps/strength to the exlusion of everything else it seems.  I see so many assassins with really  low hp, it just seems counter-intuitive to me to do that much dps, then overagro, then eat dirt. And lets face it, with good gear and a maximized group, evade and surveil arent going to do squat to keep you from overagroing. Well, thats my 2cp. I took all hp and stamina upgrades while leveling up and haven't regretted it at all. Of all the melee stats, stamina is the rarest of all, agi and str come in boatloads (every weapon and bp etc have those). Strength would be secondary, then agi would be tertiary for me since it doesnt give very much power per point compared to stamina, and the dmg gains from str are just far superior (imo) than a little more power. Dying to riposte? Cost...5 gold Dying to multiple aoe's on raids? Cost... 20 gold. Shrugging off a level 55 groupx4's crushing blow and laughing as he futilely tries to kill you? Priceless. <div></div><hr></blockquote>If I could I would take the HP and sta upgrades for training choices.  I took agi and power pool increase and then respeced for str and +power regen.  Since the ability for power regen doesn't say it has to be out of combat regen I figured this would be the way to go, but because this game is made by SoE I decided to test out before I chose the abilities.  it turns out the +5 power regen is actually +1 power regen in combat and +2 power regen out of combat..... what a rip off.   Oh well maybe some day we will get another respec.</span><div></div><hr></blockquote>Don't take this is as law but guildies who were at fanfaire said the devs mentioned they plan on giving another respec after they get finish with the upcoming combat changes. So keep your fingers crossed</span><div></div>

[pczry]

alright!! another respec, something to look forward too <div></div>

[Kven]

<DIV><BR></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> ZaranilShadowfiend wrote:<BR>I look down on all assassins. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Sum....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>    That hurts... and here I thought we were a team...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>    *runs off and cries in the corner*</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>    ... Oh the treachery... <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><BR></DIV>