Rogue Assassination Questions

I am a new HC rogue and need a little advice.

1. When attempting to assassinate, do you hit any keys (such as assassin's strike) before you hit backstab? I am attempting to learn how to maximize an assassinate hit.

2. Does assassinate only work on mobs 1 level below you or lower. If I am L 100 am I unable to assassinate a L 100 npc?

Thanks for the helping me learn the ways of the Rogue.

1. Assassinate has the chance to trigger off of ANY backstab.
2. At level 100, you can trigger assassinate from any backstab on any humanoid mob that is level 99 or lower if you've maxed your Anatomy AA line.

Keep in mind that the real life definition and EQ's definition are NOT the same. Some oozes qualify as humanoid while some mobs that walk on 2 feet aren't. It's silly and frustrating, I know. But, them's the facts.

Stand behind the mob. You get more BS attempts per button press from the rear arc and more assassinations per backstab hit from rear arc as well.

If tanking multiple mobs, bunch them in front of you to maximize BS attempts from Knave's Return Strike. You might need to take a step forward also, most mobs have longer reach than players do.

The higher your crit rate is the more assassinates you will notice.

Forgive my confusion. I was under the impression that you could only expect an "assassination" if you have been hiding / sneaking for a few moments before you backstab an unsuspecting NPC. Am I mixed up here?

Yes. You have a chance to assassinate from any backstab attempt from the rear arc, any throwing attack from the rear arc, or a (reduced) chance from a backstab from the front arc provided you have the appropriate AA's (seized opportunity) and provided the mob is of appropriate level/body type.

What you're thinking of is our "opener", some of the older ones had "assassin" in the name, such as Assassin's Strike that you mentioned earlier. Those discs DO require you to have been hidden for a short time; 3 seconds or so, as I recall. Assassinations are massive backstabs that only happen on humanoid mobs, up to whatever level you have the Anatomy AA's for. This is generally your level -1.

Assassinations can fire from your backstab key, and also from your Incursion line (the name of this changes depending on the level of your rogue. It started with Assault in UF). Ripostes can generate a backstab, which can also assassinate. You'll find the line "Winnowyl ASSASSINATES their target!" when one fires off. Replacing my name with yours of course. This is in the "My Melee Crits" filter, or you can set up an AT for it, if you're curious.

Sort of, but I think it's for the wrong reasons.

The higher your dex is the more chance you have to assassinate (both real and heroic). It just happens that dex also modifies crit, but it isn't the crits causing assassination.

To the Developers. I would just like to say thank you for screwing up the Rogue Class by jacking with their Assassinate Abilities. That was a skill that we developed over a long period of time and many AA spent now it almost never goes off. I have almost 6K in AA and many I spent to develop my damage output. At this point I no longer even want to play my rogue.

I assassinate at a much higher rate when throwing from behind a mob than backstabbing.

Ah yes the exciting era of pre-"nerf" assassination. Where you login, pop lesson and counterattack disc, gather a bunch of out-of-era mobs up then assassinate them, then log off. EXCITING

Now rogues can plow through current content mobs, and bring a lot of DPS to the table with this "nerfed" assassination, it's absolutely DREADFUL.

9k is a lot? On how many mobs are we talking? Touting the current form of assassinate as "useful" makes one question whether you're experimenting with hallucinogenics.

/GU A bandit in 37s, 1808k @48855dps --- Dijitale 1027k @54055dps
/GU A bandit in 49s, 1810k @36934dps --- Dijitale 1272k @50882dps
/GU A hand of Sulfada in 38s, 1800k @47357dps --- Dijitale 842k @31168dps
/GU A bandit in 32s, 1918k @59933dps --- Pipii 1176k @73472dps
/GU A stoneshell pest in 35s, 1749k @49960dps --- Pipii 1099k @61056dps
/GU Garath Sulfada in 134s, 15337k @114452dps --- Pipii 8450k @75447dps --- Dijitale 5510k @46301dps --- Trunxx 1055k @7934dps --- Wiji + pets 321k @2417dps
/GU A brigand in 26s, 1807k @69490dps --- Dijitale 1145k @88095dps
/GU A hand of Sulfada in 25s, 1806k @72248dps --- Pipii 1321k @88077dps
/GU A brigand in 44s, 1829k @41565dps --- Pipii 1050k @43763dps
/GU A tomb raider in 34s, 1807k @53146dps --- Pipii 843k @52694dps
/GU A grave robber in 23s, 1856k @80690dps --- Dijitale 1437k @84544dps
/GU A grave robber in 41s, 1813k @44216dps --- Pipii 865k @57651dps
/GU A hand of Sulfada in 36s, 1975k @54849dps --- Pipii 1034k @44949dps
/GU A tomb raider in 38s, 1799k @47338dps --- Dijitale 1040k @41596dps
/GU A grave robber in 25s, 1800k @71988dps --- Dijitale 1195k @62893dps
/GU A tomb raider in 35s, 1804k @51548dps --- Pipii 833k @46290dps
/GU A tomb raider in 27s, 1865k @69092dps --- Dijitale 1221k @76340dps
/GU A grave robber in 25s, 2060k @82392dps --- Dijitale 1300k @92826dps
/GU A grave robber in 29s, 2065k @71215dps --- Dijitale 1160k @57979dps
/GU A tomb raider in 33s, 1990k @60305dps --- Pipii 904k @43031dps
/GU A tomb raider in 31s, 1815k @58533dps --- Pipii 712k @41866dps --- Dijitale 678k @30829dps
/GU A hand of Sulfada in 26s, 1807k @69485dps --- Dijitale 1023k @51127dps
/GU A grave robber in 37s, 1908k @51563dps --- Dijitale 1035k @38333dps
/GU A grave robber in 34s, 1802k @53001dps --- Dijitale 1094k @47578dps
/GU A grave robber in 22s, 1800k @81803dps --- Dijitale 965k @68906dps
/GU A brigand in 31s, 1820k @58701dps --- Pipii 1005k @45662dps
/GU Garath Sulfada in 121s, 15219k @125778dps --- Pipii 8953k @86919dps --- Dijitale 4159k @39240dps --- Wiji + pets 2095k @17458dps --- Trunxx 12k @133dps

Seems pretty useful to me

No its clearly not Wiji, because Counterattacking and going AFK for 30 minutes is obviously a better plan then actually grouping for XP

Too bad your parse doesn't include any relevant information.

What class are you? We already know your race ;-)

FWIW, I never knew a single rogue who logged out/in on their lesson. It's just tedium beyond belief! Why would you do this? (Same goes for headshot.)

And plow through current content? Lol REALLY? I tried to molo a dark blue in ToR and got owned big time. I need a refund on this plow!

It includes some relevant information. Every single fight there was less dps than a necro could indefinitely sustain, maybe a wiz or mage too. They don't need blue cons and lower. They don't have to only fight humanoids. Seems we need a boost.

Isolating one floor (out of 10+?) of one zone (only one floor of ToR contains blue humanoids mobs) to try to prove rogues assassinate is very useful is not very objective if you consider it will not work against 95% of current content. And even at this floor rogues cannot expect to solo/molo anything with awful proc rate and tanking skill.
When i want to solo xp efficiently and without taking a single point of damage i log my group wizard alt.

I never said it was very useful. It was always a cool and fun gimmick ability to kill weak mobs to me, not a way of life like some people to ~farm AAs~. (beside the fact that rogues need like the least AAs of all classes to be useful). I got extremely tired of information spreading around that new rogues should just go solo zones with counteract/assassinate to get AAs because it's an extremely boring and dumb way to play the game. New people will burn out on that within hours and never want to log in again.

The fact that you can bring a bit more dps to the table in current content in groups is cool to me. It's still a fun gimmick and not a way of life.

All of those characters in those parses were boxed and I'm not an amazing rogue, but to kill stuff decently fast in current content(and even in some raid encounters) is way more useful than soloing some really lame low level zone.

I wasn't really trying to bring in a discussion about class balance. I do agree there are some things that should be tweaked as far as melee vs casters go. But I never saw assassination as a way to go about doing that.

I'm sorry you "got owned big time" in a level 100 zone trying to molo.

I never said anything about soloing current content. Would you rather have the old assassinate back and not be able to use it 100% of the time in current content?

You guys seem really angry about a gimmick ability. You are pushing things like class balance onto me like I'm saying those things don't need to be looked at. I didn't bring those up. All I'm saying is that being able to assassinate 99 humanoids is more useful to me.

Hmm I think we are misunderstanding each other, maybe you guys thought I was asking for assassination nerfs? Maybe you thought I was saying it fixed rogue's subpar dps?(it didn't) That wasn't my intent in the slightest. I'm saying being able to assassinate 99humanoids is useful because it brings our DPS more up to par with casters. We need more things like that, all pure melees do. Rogues should be able to kill things as fast as anyone, but they don't. New Assassinate brought us closer when it procs right, but I agree, it's not enough for the majority of encounters we face.