New to EQ2 and have some questions about Assassins.

[Clg]

Hey what's up :p  Just had some quick questions about the class.  Little background info so you know where I'm coming from.  All the MMOs I've played (UO, Shadowbane, AC, WoW, LineageII, etc..) I've always played and enjoyed melee based DPS.  Now I've never played EQ2 or even EQ1 so I'm completely new to this game.  While I've been downloading all the patches I've been browsing the forums and Assassin seems like my deal.  *BUT* Swashbuckler seems interesting too. Like I said before most of my characters have been out right melee high DPS classes.  How hard or easy the class is to level is not really a concern because I have enough whiskey to keep me entertained while grinding.  As far as DPS goes how is Assassin DPS and how does it compare to Swashbuckler (For both PvP and PvE).  I've seen people mention T1 and T2 DPS classes which I suppose means Tier. One more question I see a lot of people mentioning "parasing".  What exactly is that? Thanks in advance.

[HellRaiserXX]

<p>Just a quick rundown of the differences.  Assassins have many large dmg stealth attacks, we do a [Removed for Content] load of dmg in a very short amount of time and can also maintain considerable dmg in the long run.  Assassins use a weapon in each hand, while swashies usually go with just a one-hand weapon. When both classes are well played they are pretty even.  Swashys have a definate advantage in the soloing department because their abilities do not have as many restrictions and they have good AE abilities for fighting grps.  Assassins require a great deal of positioning, generally behind, and most of their damage comes out of stealth which when fighting 1-on-1 is harder to pull off. Both use poisons.</p><p>It really depends on your play preference, both do very high melee DPS just in different ways.  Swashbucklers have a lot of debuffs attached to their combat abilities which is often more desireable to just the pure DPS of an assassin.  More utility we call it.</p><p>Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT) catalogues each encounter and calculates a whole bunch of different things.  Mainly its used to parse DPS of each class in the raid as well as learn information about the encounter since it will track AEs and damage types of the encounter.  If you want to really learn your class it is highly suggested you learn how to use a parser (ACT), it will give you a lot of information about where your dmg is coming from.</p>