[dea]

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ChaosUndivided wrote:

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deaks wrote:

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ChaosUndivided wrote:

And just an FYI Point Blank shot works exactly like a 4 second Melee stun, the only difference is it uses a bow firing animation and uses an arrow.

99% of assasins carry bows, if you guys want it, it's only rank 2 which means it would cost 5 AA points to get the most basic level, and if your using it just for the stun, then you wouldn't need a higher rank.

 

It may seem "unfair" to some, but in general the AA tree is more heavily slanted towards assasins anyways with a majority of the tree's and abilities melee ranged or melee orientated.

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While severely gimping the Assassin, this may be the only choice for a soloing Assassin. There are far more interesting choices for that same Assassin to choose, but none provide the same level of soloing benefit as the stun.As far as AAs being melee oriented, I see this as a shift in SOE thinking since the proc change to require Rangers to engage in increasingly more melee combat and not rely so heavily on sitting safely at range for optimal damage dealing.

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I don't understand how is taking 4 Ranks in Agility "Severly Gimping" the assasin?

And regardless of what SoE's thinking is concerned with the AA's they are still favouring one play style (Melee) over another (Ranged) in the AA tree.

And keep in mind, rangers have to spend AA points on useless/unwanted (to us anyways) melee abilities to get Usefull Abilities for us, assasins really aren't losing anything or getting anything "useless" by grabbing Pointblank shot, they only gain.

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Your standard Assassin who isn't solo-oriented is most likely going to max out at least one but probably two of the following: Predator, STR 4; Predator, INT 4; Predator, STA 4. Each of those will cost them 20 points out of 49, severely limiting their options to explore other depths. The only thing this Assassin is losing is flexibility of choice; by deciding that the stun from PBShot is a must-have another 5 achievement points are now unavailable in this build. Out of a total 49 available points for acheivement choice, simple high-level planning can already account for at least 45 of those points leaving little room for further customization (again assuming that these depth 4 abilities provide such significant gains that there is little recourse but to concentrate on them, as was the case in Beta and appears to remain true).Most of the depth 2 attacks will be wasted at one time or another (aside from the AGI line) since each one has a weapon requirement (and most dps-oriented Predators will be using a bow). From a DPS perspective, the depth 3 effects also give you no benefit (other than the +health(%) from the Predator, STA 3 for AE survival). I'm not saying that there aren't many achievements in our tree that many will label as useless for one reason or another -- these are not Assassin-only or Ranger-only opinions but plain facts as a DPS class facing weapon restrictions and in light of the defensive concentration for our depth 3 abilities.

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And regardless of what SoE's thinking is concerned with the AA's they are still favouring one play style (Melee) over another (Ranged) in the AA tree.

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Ranger's are a melee class as well, your primary capability is from ranged but there is a not insignificant melee capability as well. Clearly there are some changes to your ranged capability coming downt he pipe that attempt to make up for any dps deficiencies of your class after the proc change, similarly I wouldn't be surprised to see an increasing concentration on the importance of melee engagement in optimizing Ranger damage output.