AA: STR or INT, what is the better choice?

[MagicWand]

I know to some it may be obvious which should be top, being Str.  However, I want to find out who has chosen Int instead of Str.   Is the last Tier of Int worth or better then Str's? 

[Remma]

Personally I'm going down both, I've currently got 8 points in Toxic expertise which gives me an extra 56% chance to crit proc on DoTs, I don't think Intoxication is worth the 8 points in it's current form.I'm also gonna go for perfectionist in the str line, with 15% added damaged refreshing in half the time, plus the extra chance to parry that comes from intercepting blades on the way there it's a solid choiceAfter that I've got 5 points to top up some of the other skills, not sure where to put em yet, precisions of blades (+% to crit melee) prolly isn't worth it at 1.7% a point so I'll prolly take the extra int and maybe a lil more on parry (I tend to tank in a duo quite a bit so it helps)

[Zero]

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Remmagell wrote:Personally I'm going down both, I've currently got 8 points in Toxic expertise which gives me an extra 56% chance to crit proc on DoTs, I don't think Intoxication is worth the 8 points in it's current form.I'm also gonna go for perfectionist in the str line, with 15% added damaged refreshing in half the time, plus the extra chance to parry that comes from intercepting blades on the way there it's a solid choiceAfter that I've got 5 points to top up some of the other skills, not sure where to put em yet, precisions of blades (+% to crit melee) prolly isn't worth it at 1.7% a point so I'll prolly take the extra int and maybe a lil more on parry (I tend to tank in a duo quite a bit so it helps)

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I've gotten Intoxication and I will say it is well worth it.  A guarantee for a 48 sec poison that does really nice damage and a great debuff.  I only have the min in each of my int line so far and I am going down the str line atm just to the point for the melee crit.  To me, the reduction in two ofmy CA's with 15% dmg increase to just those two are not worth the 8 pts.

[MystaSkrat]

INT line - Toxic Expertise to 8 ranks (it's 52% not 56), and STR line - Precision of Blades to 8 ranks and Perfectionist.  I want all the +crit chances I can get, and Intoxication just deals out damage too slowly for my taste.  I'd much rather have a 2 min recast on a skill (Killing Blade) that I can crit for 11,000+ with.

[Graton]

i've gone back and forth on perfectionist vs intoxication a few times but right now i'm thinking perfectionist. if you're in a raiding guild that puts troubadours in the melee dps group, they have an ability called jester cap which hastens recast timers. theoretically using a master lvl jester cap 40% recast haste and perfectionist you could get your decapitate timer to a bit less than 8 minutes and killing blade to about 95 seconds.as for str vs int , for my money right now it makes sense to do both. the stamina line has potential but the ae depth 4 ability being limited to auto attack dmg makes it not so great. if it gave a chance to deal ca dmg to all mobs in an encounter then i might think differently but i'm still not sure.

[Ri]

From a strickly pvp point of view, I've decided to max out both the melee and spell crits and use the remaining points in point blank shot.

[Hadanelith]

Also, Graton, in a raiding guild where things must (occasionally) be mezzed... well...

 

Let's just say you'd get reamed pretty badly for breaking mezz on ANY of the adds in the Mutagenic Outcast encounter.

 

-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Legacy, Kithicor

[cr0wnan]

If you're playing on a pvp server, intoxication is the way to go. Having the chance to proc a poison that blurs your target for 48 secs is [Removed for Content] nasty in pvp.

[Hadanelith]

Intoxication is just plain nice, period. If you're soloing... defensive stance + Neurotoxic Coating + Intoxication = Matrix-style dodging.

If you're raiding, it's a huge debuff and nice DPS increaser. Few battles last over 3 minutes so the chances of getting to use it more than twice are very slim, but considering the debuff lasts 48 seconds that's a relatively nice debuff to add into the mix, helps keep your MT alive.

Solo, grouped, or raiding, the guaranteed first-hit poison proc off this adds nice DPS, especially if (soloing for instance) you do something tricky like pull with Snare (as an Assassin, my MST1 T7 Snare decreases Poison MIT by 2080), shoot arrows til mob is poisoned, use PC4 (another 1470 poison debuff), Freezing Strike, then apply Intoxication...

At this point, the poison from Intoxication will be hitting nearly as hard as Malignant Mark procs. Mind you, only 4 procs opposed to MM's 5, but still... that's nice.

-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Legacy, Kithicor

Message Edited by Hadanelith on 04-01-200611:10 AM

[Kel]

Maybe I misunderstand 'every 6 seconds' with a 48 sec duration, but that should be EIGHT hits, not 4.

[Kaiser Sigma]

If SOE lowers the recast timer on Intoxication to one minute like our Mark line then I'll be the first one to /respec and get it but as it stands now, the recast is too big for my taste. Deathly Blade and Decapitate are more than enough, I want every other CA to be on a one minute or lower recast timer. Our Str final AA is useful only for 2 CAs but the difference shows a lot, you'll love to be able to use DB every 2 minutes, plus the dmg increase is always nice.

[bobbit]

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Kel wrote:Maybe I misunderstand 'every 6 seconds' with a 48 sec duration, but that should be EIGHT hits, not 4.

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actually, it's 9 hits... it hits instantly and every 6 seconds for 48 seconds.

this is a great skill and the one i went with. I figure it's an additional CA that we wouldn't have had otherwise. we still have kb and decop but we can now add intox to the mix and when all three are up, look for some pretty nasty numbers.

For me, casting decap 6 times an hour rather than 4 just isn't worth it. I think the extra 5-10k (or more depending on crit / # times you can get intox off in fight... e.g. precasting) more than makes up for the extra minute you have to wait for kb.

HOWEVER, that being said, i have decided to respec today and fill up poison crit and melee crit and wait till i get the rest of my aa's to get intox. The reason is that I am often using mental breach and my poison crit is useless w/ respect to my dps. So i'm going to offset those occasions w/ some extra melee crits.

 

[Salat]

Hmmm all good advice.  But was wondering, if you went blade and bow lines, does the reduce timers stack on our big attacks? 

[Crychtonn]

The final skill in the Agi (bow) line is a reduction in cast time not a reduction in recovery time like the Str skill.  Since most of assassin skills have cast times of .5 sec a 35% reduction in cast time doesn't do much.  It's good for ranger because their cast times on bow attacks are 1-5 sec long.

 

[blurryfast]

what is the re-use timer on intoxication?

[Skratttt]

After analizing both i see one thing....Perfectionist is more for a raiding assassin, Intoxication is for more of a soloing assassin/pvp assassin...... Using simple #'s to see how much Perfectionist boosts relative dps to CA's Lets say KB does a medium 6k dmg (lol its way higher than that with crits and debuffs it seems )and Decapitate does 10k dmg (just for simplifications sake) In 30 minutes u can use 10 KB @ avg 6000 dmg for 60k total dmg and 2 Decap @ avg 10,000 dmg for 20 k dmg giving u a total of 80k dmg from those 2 arts.... Now comes in Perfectionist to the equation, since it not only improoves recast (arts take 1/3 less time to reuse) but makes it hit for 15% more i think most u guys under appreciate its potential, now the median for KB would be 6900 and the median for Decapitate 11500 dmg In 30 minutes u can use 15 kb @ avg 6900 dmg for 103k total dmg and 3 decap @ avg 11,500 dmg for 34.5k dmg for a total of 137.5k dmg over 30 minNow if your median on those 2 skills is higher ur dps boost will be more than 57.5k dps over 30 min While intoxication has a 2 min reuse we will say its median is its advertised high (cause of crits)round 500 dmg per tick x9 = 4500 dmg every 2 minutes u can use it 15 times in 30 minutes = 67.5k dps over 30 minWhat it boils down to is gaining 37.5 extra dps with Intox or 31.9 extra dps with Perfectionist over an hours spawn RIGHT???? unfortunately thats a wrong conclusion See intoxication takes 48 seconds to do its dmg...most mobs will die prety fast and take 60-70% of its dmg even when used on mob on first atack..while the other 2 arts are instant, and greatly magnified by short duration massive debuffs like dispatch (i allways wait for brig to shout when dispatch is on mob in raids to unload my combo of high dmg arts on named raid mobs)...while Intoxication wont benefit as much due to its long duration, maybe this would be offset by the increased rate at which it crits over mele artsThe good about Intox?? it debuffs nicely but what intrigues me is if the vision blurr lasts for the whole of 48 seconds on PC...that would make it must have for PVP, like a previous poster said it would be plain nasty in pvp

Message Edited by Skratttt on 04-05-200604:19 PM

[Homeskillet]

   This has been a really big issue for me, silly as it may sound the only skill I really see that matters on the STR line is the +chance to melee crit. Intoxication is very useful to me as a very poison oriented assassin (hell I wear a cloth piece or two and used xegonite melodic for a bit for the INT, which does make a difference). Its very nice to pop Intoxication quickly before a big fight or on a mob where I want the [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] debuffed out of him, since I can basically pop Poison Combination and Enmesh immediately upon my first hit at ranged (using Contrived Weapon) and let my poisons do their nasty work on a mob. Sure the recast and casting timer is kinda "meh" for a high paced combat class like us, but it is still more than useful in non PVP playstyle.As for Perfectionist, it just seems very iffy to waste it on seeing as it affects only Killing Blade and Decapitate, and is not that strong of a difference to me. If I am relying on my big hits skills (yes Assassins are quite a bit of burst damage inherantly) for doing sizable and consistant damage....meh. I can put out a steady stream of damage and not have to squeeze a bit more damage out of my two "showing off" backstabs. Sure, you can cast them more per hour, but does it always work that streamlined? Are you going to be using these skills on a raid every second they are up? Not necessarily, you won't necessarily open up immediatly with Killing Blade and Assassinate at the beginning of a fight. Stealth may be broken or a stealthing skill may be down. There are a number of variables that counter the proposed usefulness of this skill.Hell I may go down STR line, but I will likely only go to depth 4 and max both melee and spell crits. If not STR, I will likely go down the WIS line honestly. I tried it out and having stealthing skills coming off faster and being available more quickly is more useful than many would assume. Smoke bomb is also very nice, mind you I am not sure if the out of encounter AoE interrupt would break mezz, and in some raid encounters, that can be bad if mezz is critical in that fight.