Greetings. I have been soloing my Kerra Assassin to about 65 right now i think. I really njoy this guy. My Mian was a Bruiser, and also have a Bard at 80, but this I want to develope into my main. So, I actually am taking it slower than usual, putting alot more XP towards AA's. I wish I had done a little bit more early on, I think I have around 95(ish) now. Without reading anything about this class, I went with fighter stats with a concentration on STR and AGI. I now have seen that INT boosts the poison. My INT is low, like around 80 compared to something like 400-500 STR/AGI, though I don't think it's 500. Anyway, you get the picture. So, I would like to ask some questions.... 1. I use Caustic Poison. Is it possible to use 2 different kinds of poison at once? I thought AI saw that it is, but wasn't clear on it. If so, what other kind is good for soloing....not that I don't ever group, but mostly soloing. 2. If I have one vial of poison going, does that coat each blade, I duel weild of course 3. I have been fighting alot in defensive stance, and I put 5 AA's into making that the best I could, as a soloer. It seems the damage is pretty lame. Would it be better to have no stance on? Offensive seems to make me take too much damage over all. 4. Is there a casting order you all like, both for groups and soloing? 5. When grouped, I have a hard time sometimes finding the back of the mob that is targeted, if there are awhole lot of mobs at once. Any hints? Sometimes they are just all around the tank so I am not at the back. 6. For soloing, I am thinking that AGI may be better than INT for survivability, is that right or am I off on that? I am not sure how much better the poison will work if, say, my AGI was 100 and my INT was 300. Would that allow me to kill so much faster my AGI wouldn't be needed as much? 7. If INT is so good, should I go with Bard Armor for my T8 Mastercrafted stuff? OK, thats it for now. Sorry for so long a post and so many questions. Any advise is appriciated. Bloodblades
Though I'm only a brigand on my main, some of your questions are general enough for me to answer. Poisons: You can actively run a Red, Purple, and Blue vial of poison at the same time. Each different color vial puts up a different colored buff. As a Predator class, Caustic is a good idea. (All of the predators I've inspected use it consistently.) In addition, you want to use the level 62 blue stun poison for soloing. (I think it's Stupefying or something like that.) Or for grouping, you'll want to run Ignorant Bliss (hate loss proc) instead as your blue poison. Finally you can pick from a variety of purple debuffing poisons. I personally run the one that lowers defense since my brigand AA augments it. But I think that purple is more of a personal taste choice. Activating a poison basically places a temporary buff on your character. Like a proc buff from a stance, there's a base chance per minute that the poison will fire off (when you swing). You don't have to worry about using multiple vials to coat multiple weapons. Armor: As an Assassin, you WANT to run Melodic armor. AKA the bard set. While this makes you fragile (since it doesn't give +Sta), it'll jack up your Int score and make your poison dps significantly higher. If you're running the Int AA line to increase your poison damage, then you'll see even more of an impact. Basically you're playing a finesse class that's designed to alpha strike something into the ground. Getting hit back shouldn't be much of a worry for you. If you're wearing the Melodic armor (Str/Agi/Int), then wearing the dps jewelry of Str/Agi/Sta is more than sufficient. Just make sure that you're using the +DPS neck adornment and Vampiric Handles on your weapons. Also try to stock up on melee crit jewelry pieces. The Necklace of Shadowy Strikes should be available to you at 67. Mob Targeting: You can tweek your UI settings to do all kinds of things. I have mine set up to make the targeted mob highlight and lightly flash. This helps to pick it out of a crowd. People can make the flashing stronger and even put a gaudy arrow above it's head, but I find those tactics annoying and a bit hard on my eyes. Other than that, it takes practice and time. It can get crazy when a tank runs into a dungeon like OoA and pulls 5-8 mobs in at a time. As mobs die, the tank will be constantly switching targets. Other than making sure that you target through the tank and have the mob highlighted for your own reference, it's up to you to keep constantly moving and sliding around the battle field. To be honest, this is a real learning curve. When I first started, this made me a bit of a nervous wreck as I felt like I couldn't keep up. But with practice and time, I can now adapted without thinking about it. Stances: I don't know Assassins that well, so I don't have a clue. But some Brigands swear that they have to use their defensive stance when soloing. However for my own playing style, I permanently run around in offensive stance (unless I'm intentionally training through a whole zone). If I stun lock and dps down a mob before it can hit me, than having a lowered defense score doesn't matter. Also my offensive stance increases my weapon skill, so it helps to guarantee that my important CA and auto attack swings won't miss. You'll have to look at your own gear and AA selections to help determine which stance is better for you. Are you built defensively to out last an opponent, or offensively to mow through something before it can hurt you?
On stances, its simple. Run in offensive unless you start killing things that rock your world. The higher you go, the less you'll need defensive.
You should be using the "bard" set of armor because STA is more or less completely worthless and INT does help with poison damage a fair amount. I don't know why you would think using no stance would be any better for hit rates than being in defensive... if you have the AAs in the improved defensive stance it has NO penalties so running no stance would be just plain worse in every way. Hoss wrote that "The higher you go, the less you'll need defensive." when the inverse is true and the higher you get the less you'll need offensive (except in groups and raids in which you should always use offensive unless for some reason the tank cannot hold aggro off you). Also keep in mind that the way INT effects poison damage is extremely diminishing at higher amounts. Going from 0 to around 500 INT (at level 80) will drastically increase the amount of damage your poison will do but increasing from 500 to 1000 will do very little. And try not to get too used to the way stats work now because supposedly they might be changing that in the upcoming expansion.
Ok.....2 words Bra-Vo Excellent answers. I thank you all very much. This will help make me a better Assassin. (Now if I can just figure out this UI trick with lighting up the mobs)
