need an asassin specialist

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need an asassin specialist

Post by Char » Mon Aug 18, 2003 1:53 am

well, most of the skills are done, but the character missing completely yet is the asassin.
this has a reason: i never really played asassins, the martial arts skilltree is one of the hardest to balance, and its still bugged i think.
because of all that, i need someone who really is a specialist for asassins and has several hours of time to re-design the asassin skills with me. anyone?

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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by pmpch » Mon Aug 18, 2003 1:31 pm

You might wanna contact Noir.
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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by Ssergit » Mon Aug 18, 2003 8:21 pm

I second that. Noir is a good choice! :thumb:
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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by noir » Thu Aug 21, 2003 5:57 pm

Thanks for your trust, I'll give it a try. Sorry for the late reply :oops:

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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by noir » Sat Aug 23, 2003 2:41 pm

Ok, here's a few thoughts on assassins.

:arrow: First of all taking a look at LOD damage calculation makes sense, I posted the details here some time ago for 1.09. Talking about 1.10 things makes little sense at the moment.

:arrow: One thing to keep in mind though ist the fact that in 1.09 damage to demons/undead is calculated as additional %ed, while in the 1.10 beta it seems to be multiplied with total damage, but there's no telling what it's going to be like in the final version.

:arrow: Note: Kick damage displayed in the lying status screen is not correct, you have to calculate it yourself or use a calc to get the exact number (you can find a good calc here, it's in German though). It's also important to keep in mind that auras and %ed on equipment does not affect kick damage. In the 1.10 beta boots have kick damage, depending on the type of boots. The boot damage bonus is added to str (Boot-Dmg = Base-Boot-Dmg * (1 + Str * 0.6)). Deadly strike does not work on kick damage. Venom and elemental damage from equipment also do not work on kicks in 1.09 (works in the 1.10 beta). The only way to boost kick damage is either by raising str/dex, increasing the kick finisher or tiger strike, or wearing better boots (1.10 beta only).

:arrow: My impression is that asns can actually benefit from the new skill system, since a lot of skills can be useful with only a couple points invested in them. At least I personally like using a lot of different skills on my sassy builds, usually that requires a lot of +skills to pull off successfully.


Martial Arts skills:
:arrow: Fists of Fire is very useful in the early stages in the game, the splash damage can be used to wipe out monster groups. But the skills becomes obsolete about half way through norm as monsters get more life and the damage increase with higher skill levels is pathetic.
:arrow: Claws of Thunder has the highest damage potential among the elemental chargeups. As with all lightning skills, the minimum damage sucks.

:arrow: Blades of Ice does less damage, but it's excellent for freezing. The radius isn't very large, but freeze duration increases with skill level.

:arrow: Phoenix Strike is clearly the king of the elemental chargeups, and the one that's most commonly used. You can do whatever elemental damage you wish with a little practice (can be hard to time), so it's the skill of choice for killing physical immunes, or even double immunes. It also makes the other 3 elemental chargeups obsolete, since it does comparable or superior elemental damage and you get to chose which element. Usually maxed in melee oriented builds. I don't really know how the other elemental chargeups can be made more useful in the later stages of the game. Giving them more damage alone might not be enough due to their lack of flexibility, and you have neither enough skill points nor enough hotkeys to use all of them.

:arrow: Tiger Strike is the main chargeup for assassin builds focusing on kicks (aka kicksins). It is also important for other builds relying on physical damage, since the damage boost is far greater than that from claw mastery. This skill is usually maxed in melee oriented builds.

:arrow: Cobra Strike is important for leeching back life when engaging a pack of hard-hitting monsters. As mana costs on martial arts skills is rather low usually only the first charge is needed, mana can be covered by equipment (if your physical weapon damage is high enough). In addition, 1 point in this skill is enough, there's not much that can be done about that. Since asns don't have the huge life and defense of the other melee classes, and have a less constant damage output (have to charge up first), that single point can be very important though. You also can't leech directly from kicks w/o cobra strike (you can leech from kicks in the 1.10 beta).

:arrow: Dragon Talon is theoretically nice on high levels for fighting bosses, since on high skill levels your sassy will do a series of (up to 4) kicks in rapid succession. However, the damage bonus from tiger strike only works on the first kick, base kick damage is not that high and does not benefit from claw mastery. Taking into account the limited number of skill points and hotkeys for distribution it's clearly the weakest of the finishing moves and hence almost never used on higher levels.

:arrow: Dragon Claw is the only claw finisher and can do awesome damage (depening on the claws equiped), but only to a single target. Requires 2 claws, so should only be used with a decent weapon block. The downside to this skill is that it does not scale too well with claw mastery since both damage sources simply get added in under 'skill bonus' in the damage calculation. Can be maxed instead of dragon tail for higher direct damage output if you don't mind the loss of crowd control.

:arrow: Dragon Tail is another kick finisher. It deals physical kick damage to a single target and triggers an explosion that deals fire damage and knocks back. Sadly, this skill is a bit bugged. Since explosion damage depends directly on physical damage, you can't use it agains physical immunes. If you kick a physical immune monster, your kick damage is 0, hence your fire damage will also be 0. This also means the fire damage suffers from the global physical resist on hell, and gets reduced further by fire resistance. But if you kick a non-immune monster, physical immunes in the splash radius will take the fire damage. There's 2 other skills in the game that deal elemental or magical damage based on physical damage (vengeance and berserk), and both work perfectly agains physical immunes, so there might be a way to fix this. It might also be a good idea to change the splash damage to half physical/half fire, like CE. Kicksins will max this skill.

:arrow: Dragon Flight is a teleporting kick finisher. It deals a lot of damage to a single monster, but due to the fact that you can only teleport on monsters and that it has a 2 second cast delay it's not really useful in PvM. It is mostly used in PvP, but then a single point is still enough, investing more in this skill is rather pointless.


More later...
Last edited by noir on Sat Aug 23, 2003 3:32 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by noir » Sun Aug 24, 2003 3:26 pm

Shadow Disciplines

:arrow: Claw Mastery increases the damage and attack rating of claw class weapons, just like a barb's weapon masteries. In 1.09 it is affected by the same critical hit bug (meaning you always hit critical), from what I heard this seems to be fixed in the 1.10 beta. Claw Mastery does not stack well with Tiger Strike and Dragon Claw, the bonus is just too insignificant compared to the other 2 skills, so even DC users only spend a couple points here. Kicksins don't even need this skill except as a prerequisite since it does not affect their finisher.

:arrow: Psychic Hammer is decent early on, but the damage increase is pathetic so it's absolutely useless.

:arrow: Burst of Speed is important for martial arts assassins as it increases run/walk speed and attack speed. It is bugged in 1.09 in so far that the attack speed bonus is larger than it should be. In addition, attack speed will already cap at skill lvl 11 with 20 ias for a scissors suwayyah (base speed 0), and at slvl 6 w/o ias for runic talons (base speed -30). Runic talons will also cap at 60 ias w/o BoS. That's why this skill is never maxed. Burst of Speed can't be combined with Fade or Venom.

:arrow: Cloak of Shadows is one of the skills in the game that very likely won't make the party think too highly of you. It causes darkness for everyone within a large radius and reduces enemy defense. Cloak of Shadows can still come in handy at times, especially against ranged attackers as the darkness will cause the monsters to stop attacking, giving you enough time to advance or retreat. Hardly useful in 1.09 LOD due to a general lack of dangerous ranged attackers, but in some mods or the 1.10 beta this can be quite handy. Since additional skill points only increase enemy defense reduction, investing more than a single point is pointless.

:arrow: Weapon Block allows assassins to block with dual claws. Note that the chance to block is a flat number, it's not affected by dexterity in any way. Due to the diminishing returns getting more than 50% block (slvl 10) does not make much sense (only 57% block on slvl 20). If you don't use Dragon Claw, going with shield block and saving a couple skill points is more effective, dual claws just don't provide enough advantages to justify the skill point investment. The only advantage weapon block has is that it always blocks at 2 frames, while a 2 frame shield block would require 50% faster block.

:arrow: Fade increases all resistances (except magic) and reduces curse duration. Unfortunately can't be combined with Burst of Speed, and so is mostly reserved for Trapsins who don't need BoS. You can get the resistance from equipment, and there's only a couple areas in the game where you have to worry about curses.

:arrow: Shadow Warrior is a castable minion that can tank for you and uses the skills you have active on your left and right mouse buttons.

:arrow: Mind Blast is another of those 'dont't use in parties' skills. Unfortunately it's indispensable for a melee asn, as it is her only form of crowd control and she does not have the huge life and defense of the other melee classes. A ma asn who does not mindblast won't live too long in the thick of things. It's not about the chance to convert or the crappy damage, it's stunning the monsters for a couple seconds that is important, so again this is one of the one-point-skills.

:arrow: Venom does not stack with Bos and Fade. Even if it did, it would still be rather useless except for specialized character builds (ranger sassy). After all, there are more important skills to get. Rangers will max this skill, all other sassy builds will avoid it.

:arrow: Shadow Master is an upgraded version of the Shadow Warrior. It has more life and can use any sassy skill, even ones you don't even have. The only downside is that it likes to mindblast monsters, which can annoy your party.

:arrow: Making Burst of Speed/Venom/Fade stackable would be a nice idea. The skills don't seem too overpowered (certainly not as powerful as stacking battle orders/shout/battle command while still having iron skin and natural resist as passives), and making them not stack will make venom absolutely useless. In the 1.10 beta you can combine Venom with either Fade or BoS. BoS and Fade still exclude each other, though.
Last edited by noir on Sun Aug 24, 2003 7:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by pmpch » Sun Aug 24, 2003 9:06 pm

noir";p="124281" wrote:Shadow Warrior is a castable minion that can tank for you....
... about 2 seconds, then it's dead, in 1.10s :mrgreen:
Bedevere: Well, now, uh, Launcelot, Galahad, and I, uh, wait until nightfall, and then leap out of the RABBIT, taking the French, uh, by surprise. Not only by surprise, but totally unarmed!
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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by Char » Sun Aug 24, 2003 10:48 pm

thanks noir, this will be of great help.

btw, if i made venom, BOS and fade passive, i would on the other hand have to make them count as passive for the skillsystem. gonna think about that.

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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by noir » Sun Aug 24, 2003 11:59 pm

pmpch";p="124349" wrote:
noir";p="124281" wrote:Shadow Warrior is a castable minion that can tank for you....
... about 2 seconds, then it's dead, in 1.10s :mrgreen:
Yep, 1-point-minions just don't cut it anymore in 1.10. Same thing goes for valk and golems. In the beta 5-10 points seems to be good, but it's only a beta so hold your horses.
Char";p="124362" wrote: thanks noir, this will be of great help.
No big deal, it was fun. If you want to discuss possible changes I can comment on those if you like.
Char";p="124362" wrote: btw, if i made venom, BOS and fade passive, i would on the other hand have to make them count as passive for the skillsystem. gonna think about that.
Well it's basically just the same as thunderstorm, holy shield or other fire and forget skills. With the only exception that maxing BoS or Fade makes little sense. And the fact that skill duration on the asn skills always seems so short, and you already need to have quick fingers for your chargeups with 3 attacks per second :)
Last edited by noir on Mon Aug 25, 2003 12:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: need an asassin specialist

Post by noir » Mon Aug 25, 2003 10:52 am

Asn skills wouldn't be complete w/o at least a look at the traps, so here we go. I'll do this a little different than the other skill trees, since more general statements can be made about traps.

Traps

:arrow: 'Grenade' skills (Fire Blast/Shock Web) is useless. Crappy damage, laughable radius and one-shot damage (as opposed to the sentries). Seems to be better in the 1.10 beta.

:arrow: Charged Bolt Sentry/Wake of Fire are only useful as prerequisites until you get Lightning Bolt Sentry/Wake of Inferno, the damage is much lower. A single point in either of the sentries can be used to kill the dog in normal difficulty, given a lot of patience.

:arrow: Lightning Bolt Sentry/Wake of Inferno are a Trapsin's main skills. Both shoot several times and do decent damage. Inferno is a bit slow, though.

:arrow: Death Sentry used to be a very useful support skill for any asn build in 1.09. Kill a couple monsters, cast a death sentry and watch the rest blow up. Has probably been nerfed for good in 1.10, I doubt 10-25% corpse life will cut it, even if that is calculated from total monster life in multiplayer games.

:arrow: Blade Sentinel now adds 3/8 weapon damage in the 1.10 beta. In the beta this seems to be total weapon damage (including ed, stat bonus and elemental damage). That means the skill will do decent damage on low lvls, but depends on equipment. The skill is still rather slow though, and it takes some practice to lure monsters in the area of effect.

:arrow: Blade Fury was always a cool ninja style skill now that it also adds weapon damage (3/4) in the 1.10 beta it will be a lot more useful than before. You can even leech, knock back and trigger on strike things with Blade Fury. Unfortunately, neither FC or IAS seems to affect attack speed.

:arrow: Blade Shield now adds 1/4 weapon damage. But it is a lot more useful as a support skill, since it can trigger cast on strike effects. The most annoying thing is that mana cost is too high and duration far too low for a support skill.

:arrow: Something I forgot on Claw Block: still won't work while running in the 1.10 beta, so there's another reason to use C/S.
Last edited by noir on Mon Aug 25, 2003 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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