What AA skills will you get ??

[Aienaa]

Just curious as to which AA skills everyone was planning on getting....   After going over the skill trees, I think the best way to maximize my damage would be the following....

 

 

---1---

40004

40004

40004

80008

80000

 

Total of 49 points spent....  1 point left over

 

What I get from this is....

 

+16 Strength

+28 Inteligence

+16.8 Parry

+13.9% Melee Crit

+74% Spell Crit

 

Rank 4 Blade Opening (257-428 / 386-643)  Sword Only

Rank 4 Poison Combination (101-169 damage, 1470 debuff)  Dagger OnlyRank 4 Neurotoxic Coating - Decrease combat and casting skills of attackers when damaged by 25

Perfectionist - Reduction of cast timers of CA over 2 min by 50% (Ekard said it's actually 33%) and damage increased by 10%

 

I am pretty sure this is the route I will be taking....  Still undecided as to what I am going to put that last point into...

 

 

Gwern - 60 Assassin - Kithicor

 

[Baldev]

can we start more then one line? or are we stuck in one line only?I have put one in the STR line so far with the change to the rings and all.

[Aienaa]

Pretty sure you can start as many lines as you want...  The only restrictions that I know of is that you need 4 points into a skill before you can progress to the next skill in the same tree...

 

Gwern - 60 Assassin - Kithicor

Message Edited by Aienaa on 02-22-200604:23 AM

[Mythor]

i'm not sure if i understood the system quite well, so please correct me if my values are not correct...here we arebase: 1Str: 8,8,4,8,8Agi: 5,8=> 50 points spentwill make+ 32 StrBladed Opening Rank 8: 367-512/551-919+16,8% parry+13.9% critsPerfectionist+20 AgiPoint Blank Shot Rank 8: 509-849

[davian9]

I have a question about point blank shot.

To be honist it sounds almost to good to be true.  If the skill works the way I am reading it, then it sounds realy great.

I would appreciate it if someone with knowledge about the point blank shot ability could answer my questions.

Does it work on heroic mobs (for the full 4 second stun)?

Does it get perried/blocked (basicly avoided) more then other CA's?

 

[dea]

I'm curious why people feel Perfectionist is a good skill in its current state? My opinion is obvious and I'd be interested to see if I'm missing something. Reduction of casting for Assassinate and Assassin's Blade lines seems very weak, even with a 10% damage increase -- on the bright side you'll have a clear advantage when competing for highest melee hit!

[GeminiReap]

those are the stats of perfectionist at rank1.  You can rank it to 8.  thats why.

[dea]

---

GeminiReaper wrote:

those are the stats of perfectionist at rank1.  You can rank it to 8.  thats why.

---

lol, that is a good one.All depth 5 abilities (of which Perfectionist and Intoxication are two) have only a single rank, rank 1. That single rank costs 8 achievement points to purchase.

[Neribus]

As it stands maybe Perfectionist isn't a great finisher.  But lets look at your options:Agi line is ranger so we can skip that unless you really love your ranged skills.Sta line is pretty good, but the finishing ability was completely ripped from a TANK ability Tsunami, a scout doesn't need a tank abilityWis line is cool, but its all for yourself if you have problems with agro, and when grouping you are giving your hate to the tank so you really don't need to deagro.  The PBAOE deagro is pretty good but you are wasting all those AAs on detaunts that you really don't needINT line is probably tied with STR line as the best lines.  But again, why do we need Neurotoxic Coating if we are transfering hate and won't be hit.  The crit spell chance is laughable unless arrow attacks count, then it would be insane 75% chance to crit on our possible 1500 damage arrow back attack. Intoxication is good... really good but its a 5 minute recast and can't be recast during combat.Now Intoxication verus Perfectionist.  Without debuff Intocication will give at MOST 3304 damage  48/6 = 8 procs of the poison 413*8 = 3304.  Once every 5 minutes.  However, with perfectionist Assassin's Blade will refresh every 1.5 minutes, which is at least 2 times in the same time Intoxication will go off, and can be done in the same fight.  Since AB is down I can't check my Deathly Blade damage, but it can do around max 3300 damage.  3300 + 3300*.1 = 3630 damage. 3630*2 = 7260 damage.  So intox with 3304 damage and and Deathly Blade with 7260 damage in the same time frame.On the raids and groups i'm in, its no problem keeping up the tank, so why go for the skill decrease on intox when you can go for the more damage in the raid with the STR line.At least, thats why i like the STR end ability anyway.

Message Edited by Neribus on 02-22-200610:46 PM

[Mythor]

that's what I thought. I don't see real alternatives for the points.

[Neribus]

I take it back, the INT line is a waste of time.  STA line has the chance of doing MUCH more damage.  Here is something to chew onTaking 2 pristine imbued cobalt leafblades. with 2.1 delay.  In a 5 minute time period you will swing 285.7 times. 5 minutes * 60 seconds for 300 seconds. 300/2.1 = 142.8 swings * 2 weapons is 285.7.  so you have 285.7 swings. At all 8 ranks of STA 3.4 Surrounding Attacks: toggleable open-wounds/hurricane effect; 2/4/6/8/10/12/14/16   you have a 16% chance of barraging (frontal aoe)  so 285.7*.16 = 45.7.  So supposedly this buff will proc 45.7 times in  5 minutes. which will barrage your autoattack damage which is between 200 and ~400 damage.  On the low end with ONE mob you'll do an extra 9140 damage. high end on one mob is 18280 damage, NOT including poison procs, imbue procs, other buff procs or Criting.  If you are fighting an encounter of 3 you'll do on the high end 54840 more damage.  The max mob encounter (buff only hits 5 mobs) damage for just ONE proc is 2000 damage and it *should* proc once every 7 hits statically; which is 7/2 = 3.5 *2.1 = 7.35 seconds, just long enough for scraping blow to recharge.  Max mob encounter 5 minute fight it should be an extra 45700 damage to the encounter.  Say if the fight will only last 2 minutes. 2/5 = .4 * 45700 = 18280 damage for a max mob encounter.All of this not including the STA 3.2 extra AOE attack.So STA blows INT out of the water damage wise.soSTR  AGI  STA  WIS  INT  4       0      4       0      0  4       0      4       0      0  4       0      4       0      0  8       0      8       0      0  1(   0      0       0     0for 48 ranksfor all the hardcore raider DPS assassins..... of course you'll pull INSANE agro unless you are in the MT group and transfering hate.Of course this is all done without taking into account the SOE proc method which is by the delay of what ever hits, but it should be basically right.  However if i'm wrong just tell me and i'll look at the numbers again.  Also not accounting for combat art procs.PS. I pick 5 minutes because thats the intox recharge time.

Message Edited by Neribus on 02-23-200604:43 AM

[Aienaa]

Now let's compare the same 2.1 delay leafblades with The Int trees 74% spell proc (which includes poisons and thier ticks)

---

Taking 2 pristine imbued cobalt leafblades. with 2.1 delay.  In a 5 minute time period you will swing 285.7 times. 5 minutes * 60 seconds for 300 seconds. 300/2.1 = 142.8 swings * 2 weapons is 285.7.  so you have 285.7 swings.

---

now instead of a 16% chance to proc, you have a 25% chance to proc poisons...

so 285.7*.25 = 71.425.  So supposedly this buff will proc 71.425 times in  5 minutes. (25.725 times more than the 16% from Sta 3.4 skill)

Now each poison (using T7 DOT poison) has 5 ticks for 349 Damage....  So in the 5 mins you have a potential for 71.425 X 5 = 357.125 ticks of poison at 349 damage...

Now with Int tree spell crit at rank 8, you have a 74% chance to spell crit (357.125 X .74 = 264.2725)  So, your poison will crit 264.2725 times over 5 mins...

so, 357 ticks of poison at 349 damage = 121,801 poison damage...

264 Crit poison hits = let's say crit hits or 200% normal that is 349 x 264 = 92,136 (46,068 if 150% normal damage) additional damage   Also, note, this is not dependant on having "adds" in order to do this damage

 

---

high end on one mob is 18280 damage, NOT including poison procs, imbue procs, other buff procs or Criting.

---

Note, Procs were changed, 1 attack results in 1 chance to proc, so even if it hits up to 5, you would only see 1 proc at best...

 

Reason I chose Perfectionist over Intoxification is because Intox skill can only be used at the very begining of a fight, you looking at high damage (including the 74% chance to crit this skill) from the very start...  This gives you a larger chance to pull agro...  Besides this, you have to actually recast this every 5 mins in order for it to measure up to it's usefullness, while at the same time Perfectionist skill is passive...

Intox may gain you a few hundred damage more (if you remember to use it every 5 mins), but Perfectionist is more reliable....

 

Gwern - 61 Assassin - Kithicor

[khurath]

Mmmh .... interesting.

Maybe, with all this damage increase, the Wis line will not be so bad, after all.

Now I come to think of it, with a little roleplaying, the true assassin (true referring to the meaning of the word, not to the assumed role in EQ2) should apply a deadly poison, and then slip away in the shadows: it seems like Int and Wis lines, isn't it?

I have to think well about it.

Krymaj23 AssassinOasis server

 

[sneakli]

Not having any of these skills yet I can not say for sure, but I would expect they proc the same way everything else procs.

So I believe, no matter how many times you hit in 5 min you still will only proc at best on the % of 100 attempts. 

(5min=300sec     300/3=100) 

That makes any calulation of potential damage that includes more than 100 procs over 5 min abit unrealistic.

I may be way off, but last I heard all procs were still normalized over 3 sec and unless it is a proc imbued in the weapon they only proc on the main hand.

 

I'm sure someone who is alittle more on top of things will clear it all up for us

Thanks and Good hunting

 

[Neribus]

Hmm,  I see what you are getting at with the the spell proc.  Didn't even consider it, could be that it was 4:40 am when I wrote it, but oh well.  I can see were that crit spell proc comes into play. However, another assasin pointed out with Cheap Shot completely broken, taking 4 AGI then getting PB Shot 1 might be something we need to consider as 'sins for the 4 sec stun.As for roleplaying, you can fit any of the spell lines into a roll play character but yes INT and WIS lines do seem to fit the most.sneakily:  It is no longer normalized over 3second delay, thats one of the changes with the KOS expansion.Overall Perfectionist is still the best bet. INT has some ups as does STA and that PB shot.Either way, you've got time to decide, AAs have been slowing down a bit after the 5th one.

[dea]

Keep in mind that you don't *have* to get any of the depth 5 abilities, indeed you get nothing for doing so other than the ability itself. Many may find, for their playstyle that ranking up other abilities (PB Shot for soloers maybe) is a far better use of 8 achievement points.Intoxication isn't all that impressive with only being castable out of combat (I need to deal with that kind of damage initially and/or if I die during the battle). Similarly I'm still unimpressed by Perfectionist when I could be ranking up the depth 2 attacks and/or my depth 1 +stat bonuses.

Message Edited by deaks on 02-23-200610:24 AM

[EtoilePirate]

I'm starting with STR because it's the most immediately useful.  After that, I think I'll be investing some points in the WIS.  The problem is, I like the stat boosts at the start, and I like some of the final-stage skills at the end... but I'm really not fond of most of the in-betweens, in any line.  Bah humbug.

[Nezzr]

---

Neribus wrote:

I take it back, the INT line is a waste of time.  STA line has the chance of doing MUCH more damage.  Here is something to chew onTaking 2 pristine imbued cobalt leafblades. with 2.1 delay.  In a 5 minute time period you will swing 285.7 times. 5 minutes * 60 seconds for 300 seconds. 300/2.1 = 142.8 swings * 2 weapons is 285.7.  so you have 285.7 swings. At all 8 ranks of STA 3.4 Surrounding Attacks: toggleable open-wounds/hurricane effect; 2/4/6/8/10/12/14/16   you have a 16% chance of barraging (frontal aoe)  so 285.7*.16 = 45.7.  So supposedly this buff will proc 45.7 times in  5 minutes. which will barrage your autoattack damage which is between 200 and ~400 damage.  On the low end with ONE mob you'll do an extra 9140 damage. high end on one mob is 18280 damage, NOT including poison procs, imbue procs, other buff procs or Criting.  If you are fighting an encounter of 3 you'll do on the high end 54840 more damage.  The max mob encounter (buff only hits 5 mobs) damage for just ONE proc is 2000 damage and it *should* proc once every 7 hits statically; which is 7/2 = 3.5 *2.1 = 7.35 seconds, just long enough for scraping blow to recharge.  Max mob encounter 5 minute fight it should be an extra 45700 damage to the encounter.  Say if the fight will only last 2 minutes. 2/5 = .4 * 45700 = 18280 damage for a max mob encounter.All of this not including the STA 3.2 extra AOE attack.So STA blows INT out of the water damage wise.soSTR  AGI  STA  WIS  INT  4       0      4       0      0  4       0      4       0      0  4       0      4       0      0  8       0      8       0      0  1(   0      0       0     0for 48 ranksfor all the hardcore raider DPS assassins..... of course you'll pull INSANE agro unless you are in the MT group and transfering hate.Of course this is all done without taking into account the SOE proc method which is by the delay of what ever hits, but it should be basically right.  However if i'm wrong just tell me and i'll look at the numbers again.  Also not accounting for combat art procs.PS. I pick 5 minutes because thats the intox recharge time.

Message Edited by Neribus on 02-23-200604:43 AM

---

Here is something youre missing here though.  The effect only works with the Primary weapon.  Also, it doesnt work if there is only one mob, because it effects surrounding mobs.  PLUS, the thing that is really taking away from it, is that in raids, or just normal grouping, I always try to have a chanter.  This will lead to mezz breaks all over the place.  The amount of time a person raids or groups for that matter without a chanter in the group is low, so you would be spending lots of points on an effect you would have to not use most of the time.

[sneakli]

Hmm, all I found in LU20 notes was...

 Combat arts will no longer be more likely to trigger a proc if you are using a slow delay weapon. These weapons will still retain a slightly greater chance of triggering a proc on auto-attack, but combat arts will no longer proc more or less often based on the delay of a weapon.

Procs will only occur on the first successful attack of a single combat art, not each attack. For example, if a single combat art strikes 5 times, the proc will only have a chance to trigger once during that art rather than 5 times.

 

And from a post by Moorgard: 

 http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=testfeed&message.id=47797#M47797

"You still have a chance to proc with every swing. Proc rates for autoattacks are completely unaffected."

 

So, I'm not sure where that leaves us on the procs.  The notes infer that normal autoattack is the same still and the combat arts are using thier cast times inplace of the weapon delay for the proc calulation.

I of course have not taken the time to analyze logs and all that to prove one way or the other, I just wanted to throw it out there for consideration when ya make your decision.

Good hunting!

 

[Neribus]

What was done before was that you were only supposed to proc once every 3 seconds.  So the rate of proc was actually (proc rate) * [(weapon delay) / 3].  This explains the ranger proc rate because the bow has a 7 sec delay so it was (proc rate) * 2.3333;  so even without multishots they would proc practically every hit.  Now taking what you posted what LU 20 said, and you read the rest of Moor's most you'll notice he says:>You also have a chance to proc with every combat art that lands. The major change is that your chance to proc on an art is no longer affected by weapon delay.

>The other bug we fixed being that the use of slow weapons would give arts a greater chance to proc, which was never our intent.

This means they take out the [(weapon delay)/3] part of the equation <*Just for combat arts*> and you just have a plain /rand 100 chance of procing based off the shown proc rate.  However, this means if you autoattack much of a fight you will do more procs with higher delay weapons still.

As for not being able to proc on your off hand.  In one fight verus the greater slime scavengers in Gates I had a pristine imbued creasant axe in one had and prismatic swiftblade of the scale in the other and I had gleaming strike proc twice and prismatic shard proc twice.  Perhaps if you have the same imbue the procs can't stack but the prismatic and the crafted procs were able to proc stack.  Unless this was changed since Jan 28th, which it could have been.

To get back on topic, deaks you are correct thata) perfectionist is underpowered -- however changing it to after all 1m and above skills would unbalance assassins. Freezing strike (1500 damage), arrow back attacks(1500 for one, 1000 for the other), slaughtersault (1000 per mob) (heh, what a messed up name), gore blade (1000 - 2000) all on 30 second timers would give us(a off the top of my head number) roughly and extra 6000 damage per minute on what we currently do.  However, changing it to include the buffs would be good.  The best obviously would be to add the double attack proc to how it currently is, at around a 30% proc rate a "You have prefected the ability to take advantage of the enemies reaction to the pain you inflict and deal and extra attack"(you flinch you die) style buff to go along with all that extra training you did to reduct casting timers and increased damage. 

Or add so that (this came to me as I was writing something else) you can have it so that as long as you don't completely miss on a attack your combat art will do damage even at a reduced rate.  I was thinking of the bruiser monsters (like the froglocks at the bottom of Sanctorum of the Scaleborn in front of the mirror) that I continually have problems with.  I hit and hit and hit but they keep deflecting and parrying.  A great addition to perfectionist (and add to the fact that its the STRength line) is that even when parried to deflected you overpower your opponents weapon (or skillfully slide your weapon past the defending blade) and still inflict damage, but at the cost of the momentum of the attack (ei you deal 50% less damage). So instead of wasting an assassinate, its turned into a deadly blade or high end finishing blow.

b) that you don't 'have' to get the depth 5 skill.  However, for me any stat I think I need I always can get in armor.  And with the stealth fix to Cheap Shot as it now does do a 6 second stun even though it doesn't say it does.  I've stated some of my reasons above for getting prefectionist, as it stands I use assassinate maybe twice per hour grouping becuase i keep it in reserve for the seriously hard fights (of which assassinate misses or is blocked in some manner) so the recast reduction is great for me as i'll use it more.

I'll go back through my longs and see how often my poison procs becuase you did make a good point about getting the depth 2 abilities.  I'll see if I can get up the energy to calculate recast timers with perfectionist verusus getting the agi and sta depth 2 skills and getting INT up to the spell crit and other variations.

Before I do so, anyone know if assassinate/decapitate can crit? (it is a melee hit) or does that count only for autoattack damage?

Message Edited by Neribus on 02-24-200602:29 AM

[dea]

---

Neribus wrote:

What was done before was that you were only supposed to proc once every 3 seconds.  So the rate of proc was actually (proc rate) * [(weapon delay) / 3].  This explains the ranger proc rate because the bow has a 7 sec delay so it was (proc rate) * 2.3333;  so even without multishots they would proc practically every hit.  Now taking what you posted what LU 20 said, and you read the rest of Moor's most you'll notice he says:>You also have a chance to proc with every combat art that lands. The major change is that your chance to proc on an art is no longer affected by weapon delay.

>The other bug we fixed being that the use of slow weapons would give arts a greater chance to proc, which was never our intent.

This means they take out the [(weapon delay)/3] part of the equation <*Just for combat arts*> and you just have a plain /rand 100 chance of procing based off the shown proc rate.  However, this means if you autoattack much of a fight you will do more procs with higher delay weapons still.

Someone said that CAs now proc at the rate of the casting time. If this is true, the effective weapon delay is now the casting time of your combat art.

As for not being able to proc on your off hand.  In one fight verus the greater slime scavengers in Gates I had a pristine imbued creasant axe in one had and prismatic swiftblade of the scale in the other and I had gleaming strike proc twice and prismatic shard proc twice.  Perhaps if you have the same imbue the procs can't stack but the prismatic and the crafted procs were able to proc stack.  Unless this was changed since Jan 28th, which it could have been.

This is brand new, and imbue procs do not stack as of LU13 or so.

To get back on topic, deaks you are correct thata) perfectionist is underpowered -- however changing it to after all 1m and above skills would unbalance assassins. Freezing strike (1500 damage), arrow back attacks(1500 for one, 1000 for the other), slaughtersault (1000 per mob) (heh, what a messed up name), gore blade (1000 - 2000) all on 30 second timers would give us(a off the top of my head number) roughly and extra 6000 damage per minute on what we currently do.  However, changing it to include the buffs would be good.  The best obviously would be to add the double attack proc to how it currently is, at around a 30% proc rate a "You have prefected the ability to take advantage of the enemies reaction to the pain you inflict and deal and extra attack"(you flinch you die) style buff to go along with all that extra training you did to reduct casting timers and increased damage. 

Or add so that (this came to me as I was writing something else) you can have it so that as long as you don't completely miss on a attack your combat art will do damage even at a reduced rate.  I was thinking of the bruiser monsters (like the froglocks at the bottom of Sanctorum of the Scaleborn in front of the mirror) that I continually have problems with.  I hit and hit and hit but they keep deflecting and parrying.  A great addition to perfectionist (and add to the fact that its the STRength line) is that even when parried to deflected you overpower your opponents weapon (or skillfully slide your weapon past the defending blade) and still inflict damage, but at the cost of the momentum of the attack (ei you deal 50% less damage). So instead of wasting an assassinate, its turned into a deadly blade or high end finishing blow.

b) that you don't 'have' to get the depth 5 skill.  However, for me any stat I think I need I always can get in armor.  And with the stealth fix to Cheap Shot as it now does do a 6 second stun even though it doesn't say it does.  I've stated some of my reasons above for getting prefectionist, as it stands I use assassinate maybe twice per hour grouping becuase i keep it in reserve for the seriously hard fights (of which assassinate misses or is blocked in some manner) so the recast reduction is great for me as i'll use it more.

I don't see any points above that indicate why you would choose perfectionist, only that you feel it is underpowered and have some suggestions about how to make it better.

I'll go back through my longs and see how often my poison procs becuase you did make a good point about getting the depth 2 abilities.  I'll see if I can get up the energy to calculate recast timers with perfectionist verusus getting the agi and sta depth 2 skills and getting INT up to the spell crit and other variations.

Before I do so, anyone know if assassinate/decapitate can crit? (it is a melee hit) or does that count only for autoattack damage?

All CAs can crit and crit as crit(melee).

---

[Neribus]

When I said above I meant my previous posts.Ok, so far we have two basic opinions in this thread, get a depth 5 skill, and don't.  The prefectionist view, which I had advocated and what deaks said to get stats up and get the depth 2 skills.  The desire to get the most DPS out of your character is what is driving us.Options:1) Prefectionist all rank 4s until prefectionist. which is 25 ranks including bounty.Assassinate is now every 450 seconds and lets say 6000 damage per hit.  So with the extra 10% thats 6600 every 450 seconds. 6600/450 = 14.6 dps.  Deathly Blade is now every 90 seconds and does around 2500 damage per hit, 2500 * 1.1 = 2750 / 90 = 30.5 dps.  What it was before was 6000/900 = 6.66 dps and 2500/180 = 13.8 dps. So its 45.1 dps versus 20.46 dps so a change of 24.64 dps.  Then add bladed opening, Rank 4: 257-428/386-643; so 428/45 = 9.5 and 643/45 = 14.2.  To calc the average dps of this skill i'm going to say the fight lasts 3 minutes so you get 3 attacks of so (14.2 + 9.5 + 9.5)/3 = 11 dps.  so 24.64 + 11 = 35.64 dps.2) Ekards way: Rank 2 skills up to 8. (Going just for the big damage ones).  Getting the big 3 depth 2 skills, Bladed Opening, PB Shot and Spinning Spear.  So you get 1.1, 2.1, and 3.1 to rank 4, and getting 1.2, 2.2, and 3.2 to rank 8. Thats 37 ranks including bounty.You get Bladed Opening, Rank 8: 367-512/551-919 every 45 secs; so 512/45 = 11.3 to 919/45 20.4 dps. (20.4 + 11.3 + 11.3)/3 = 14.3 DPSNext is PB Shot, Rank 8: 509-849 every 1 minute; so 849/60 = 14.15 dpsLast is Spinning Spear, Rank 8: 291-485; so 485/60 = 8 dps per mob in the encounter.So 14.3 + 14.15 + 8 =  36.45 dps.  However i'm not counting crits which you get rank 4 of by default by going option 1.  I'll have to think about how to calculate that, any ideas would be helpful.  Also i'm not counting the fact that spinning spear hits multiple targets and much XPing and some raiding is mutliple mob encounters.  However, each option is pretty much even not counting multiple mobs or melee crit, for 12 less ranks if you go option 1.Comments? Suggestions? Thoughts? Errors?Edit:  Note i'm counting average hit for assassinate and deathly blade but max listed hit for the other spells, this might change the numbers

Message Edited by Neribus on 02-24-200603:14 PM

[dea]

I am sorry if I implied otherwise but I never once said that you should level up the depth 2 "attack" achievements by neglecting the depth 4 "defining" achievements.For my current plan, as the acheivements were at the end of beta, I'd like to max my +crit(melee) and +crit(spell) the cost of which is Bounty + STR 4/4/4/8 + INT 4/4/4/8 = 41 points spent. With the remaining 9 achievement points, I suggested ranking up the depth 2 attacks or the depth 1 attribute buffs -- an alternative is to purchase one of the depth 5 abilities or explore another path no further than depth 3 (leaving you with 4 points each at depth 1,2 and a single rank at depth 3 for this new path). There are certainly other ways to spend those remaining 9 points (depth 3 abilities I guess), and certainly STR/INT isn't going to be best for every Assassin.

[Graton]

---

Neribus wrote:

What was done before was that you were only supposed to proc once every 3 seconds.  So the rate of proc was actually (proc rate) * [(weapon delay) / 3].  This explains the ranger proc rate because the bow has a 7 sec delay so it was (proc rate) * 2.3333;  so even without multishots they would proc practically every hit.  Now taking what you posted what LU 20 said, and you read the rest of Moor's most you'll notice he says:>You also have a chance to proc with every combat art that lands. The major change is that your chance to proc on an art is no longer affected by weapon delay.

>The other bug we fixed being that the use of slow weapons would give arts a greater chance to proc, which was never our intent.

This means they take out the [(weapon delay)/3] part of the equation <*Just for combat arts*> and you just have a plain /rand 100 chance of procing based off the shown proc rate.  However, this means if you autoattack much of a fight you will do more procs with higher delay weapons still.

---

no it doesn't mean that actually. proc rates are still normalized to delay so the length of time you are auto attacking will affect your chance to proc during the fight , not the delay. if you auto attack with leafblades for 1 minute or shortswords for one minute you will still on average proc once every 30 seconds. your proc chance per swing with higher delay weapons is still better naturally but not the overall rate when compared to time spent fighting.

---

As for not being able to proc on your off hand.  In one fight verus the greater slime scavengers in Gates I had a pristine imbued creasant axe in one had and prismatic swiftblade of the scale in the other and I had gleaming strike proc twice and prismatic shard proc twice.  Perhaps if you have the same imbue the procs can't stack but the prismatic and the crafted procs were able to proc stack.  Unless this was changed since Jan 28th, which it could have been.

---

the chance to proc on your offhand was always there for melee procs outside of poison. you are correct that you could equip two proccing dual wields and both would proc. you can also stack two dual wield weapons with gleaming strike and more or less double your proc rate, they do stack.

---

To get back on topic, deaks you are correct thata) perfectionist is underpowered -- however changing it to after all 1m and above skills would unbalance assassins. Freezing strike (1500 damage), arrow back attacks(1500 for one, 1000 for the other), slaughtersault (1000 per mob) (heh, what a messed up name), gore blade (1000 - 2000) all on 30 second timers would give us(a off the top of my head number) roughly and extra 6000 damage per minute on what we currently do.  However, changing it to include the buffs would be good.  The best obviously would be to add the double attack proc to how it currently is, at around a 30% proc rate a "You have prefected the ability to take advantage of the enemies reaction to the pain you inflict and deal and extra attack"(you flinch you die) style buff to go along with all that extra training you did to reduct casting timers and increased damage. 

Or add so that (this came to me as I was writing something else) you can have it so that as long as you don't completely miss on a attack your combat art will do damage even at a reduced rate.  I was thinking of the bruiser monsters (like the froglocks at the bottom of Sanctorum of the Scaleborn in front of the mirror) that I continually have problems with.  I hit and hit and hit but they keep deflecting and parrying.  A great addition to perfectionist (and add to the fact that its the STRength line) is that even when parried to deflected you overpower your opponents weapon (or skillfully slide your weapon past the defending blade) and still inflict damage, but at the cost of the momentum of the attack (ei you deal 50% less damage). So instead of wasting an assassinate, its turned into a deadly blade or high end finishing blow.

---

i agree that reduced cast time on honed reflexes and brutal focus would make perfectionist attractive. i also seem to remember ekard or another beta assassin saying that perfectionist actually only reduced casting time by 33% and not 50% so that assassinate was at 10 minutes and deathly blade at 2. this moves it into the realm of pointless for me. i don't know if that was a bug that's been fixed or not, maybe someone can chime in here.

---

 b) that you don't 'have' to get the depth 5 skill.  However, for me any stat I think I need I always can get in armor.  And with the stealth fix to Cheap Shot as it now does do a 6 second stun even though it doesn't say it does.  I've stated some of my reasons above for getting prefectionist, as it stands I use assassinate maybe twice per hour grouping becuase i keep it in reserve for the seriously hard fights (of which assassinate misses or is blocked in some manner) so the recast reduction is great for me as i'll use it more.

I'll go back through my longs and see how often my poison procs becuase you did make a good point about getting the depth 2 abilities.  I'll see if I can get up the energy to calculate recast timers with perfectionist verusus getting the agi and sta depth 2 skills and getting INT up to the spell crit and other variations.

Before I do so, anyone know if assassinate/decapitate can crit? (it is a melee hit) or does that count only for autoattack damage?

Message Edited by Neribus on 02-24-200602:29 AM

---

i can't find the post now but i could swear there was a beta post which indicated that crit chance affected both melee and ca's.

[StaanAcla]

Did I misread the Agi rank 5 ability?  I thought it said 35% reduction to all combat abilities.  I was thinking just maxing agi/int because if you start mixing mixing str/sta/wis/int around, all of those weapons (sword, spear, rapier, dagger respectively (i think) ) need to be in the primary slot to use the rank 2 abilities.  Sounds like to much of a pain the in butt to be switching primary weapons around to me or i'm just lazy or too tired when reading descriptions =). 

[dea]

---

StaanAclaus wrote:

Did I misread the Agi rank 5 ability?  I thought it said 35% reduction to all combat abilities.  I was thinking just maxing agi/int because if you start mixing mixing str/sta/wis/int around, all of those weapons (sword, spear, rapier, dagger respectively (i think) ) need to be in the primary slot to use the rank 2 abilities.  Sounds like to much of a pain the in butt to be switching primary weapons around to me or i'm just lazy or too tired when reading descriptions =). 

---

35% reduction in casting time. Not recast time, so its only really going to be noticable on our Bow and AEs.

[scivias]

Guess I'll go40008    40005    80004    80008    00000    net:+16 Str+56 Int+34 Parry+13.9% melee crit chance1680 Poison Debuff+74% poison and dot crit chanceWish the choice would be as easy on my inquisitor :smileysad:

[StaanAcla]

Thank you Deaks, no more late night reading for me =) 

[blurryfast]

how does the int line poison debuff compare with enmesh?do the 2 stack ?decisions, decisions

[dea]

They appear to stack in beta. It isn't the easiest thing to eyeball while fighting since you cannot look at the poison damage numbers until you have both debuffs in, and you cannot use the INT line debuff until the mob is already poisoned.