[Guide] The best specc for PVP

Regardless of how many threads have been made on this topic people will always come for more with sole question in mind: what is the best specc for XXX? (mini/pvp/open world pvp/dueling).

Before we move on lets make two things clear:

in PVE (especially raiding) you can come up with "best specc" through math by crunching the numbers and changing the feats to achieve best possible DPS output. Since Assassin's role in pve is DPS, but having a specc that allows you to out-do any other specc in terms of DPS you have invented yourself a "best specc".

in PVP you simply can't point to the best specc because you will be subjected to so many variables that covering all of your bases is simply not possible. With great DPS you can melt to magic damage and with superb defences you can find yourself at the very bottom of "kill charts". There is no "holy grail" of pvp speccs -its more of a game of making less mistakes than others.

Most common mistake? Thinking that other know of some "uber secret" specc that unlocks true assassindom and makes any player instantly great.

However there are few guideliness that you might consider when putting together your desired pvp specc.

Feats that will gimp you
There are some broken,useless or underpowered feats that can gimp your overall performance. Check the list here.

Do not spread yourself thin
Except for very few feats true pvp performance comes from maxing out the feats that you are investing in. You really won't benefit from 13% weapon damage coming out of 1/5 Lunge - you want whole 70% boost for 5/5. Read more on this here.

Understand the key issues with each of the trees
Lotus and Corruption are not equal. People often post that corruption is not the best choice right now (as of 1.5.7 patch) and I firmly support that claim. Find out more on why Lotus is the better choice for pvp compared to corruption and why corruption ain't what it used to be for pvp.

Rule of thumb
I would not close on this post without giving out the recipe for delicious pvp specc:

max out on anticc + max out on damage buff + get all CC + whatever is left goes into defensive feats

step by step:

#1 max out on anticc - aniCC is the staple of any build. When CCed you can't do anything.

# 2 max out on damage buff - you are in pvp for the kills

# 3 get extra CC (Curse of Lotus)

# 4 dump the rest into defence - both corrupted body and arcane backlash fill up the specc

this is just an example specc that I have used to show you where the points should be spent first, I am in no way claiming it to be "teh one" for pvp

Play around with all the feats, but keep your priorities straight and avoid the bad feats.

[Guide] Broken or useless feats to avoid

With assassin's trees not revamped it is easy to pick feats that will ultimately gimp your survivality or damage output.
Here is a list of "oh-not-so-great" feats that all of you should not touch even with ten feet long assassin pole:

Lotus:
Accelerated - it lowers cooldown of slow death strikes, grim corruption, lethargy and impede life
reason: for 3/3 this feat does horrible job at lowering the cooldowns. It basically gives -1s for each point. It would be somewhat worthy if the feat cost was fixed at 1/1. You can do much worst than taking this feat, but then again - much better stuff lies deeper into the lotus tree.

Light footed: +25% resistance to snare
reason: it is either broken or the tooltip is missleading. You won't resist any snare that comes from melee character or a ranger. There are some unconfirmed rurmors (spreaded by me) that this feat will up you resistance but only to certain CC spells. The tests are inconclusive. Best to avoid.

Sabotage armor: destroys targets directional shielding
reason: slow hitting, very weak combo with long CD. Since directional shields stacking got nerfed in 1.5 series this combo is even more worthless than before. Best to avoid.

Unholy:
Soul prison: allows to capture soul shards at higher rate at the costs of your stamina
reason: not only this is 2/2 feat, but it also has 2m cooldown and costs you precious stamina. In other words: it does exactly same thing as Spirit of Night fall, but it is not passive and drains stamina. There are better feats to dump points into.

Relish in death: you capture soul shard when your team gains fataility buff
reason: this feat has awesome name and I am feeling sorry everytime I am skiping it. One soul shard for one fatality is just not a fair tradeoff.

Unholy soul: gives unholy invulvs.
reason: no one on earth would take this if it wasn't for the fact it is linked to soul strike. Waste of points unless you do nothing, but dueling necro, DT and corruption assassin exclusively and even then its a stretch for 3/3.

Soul strike: converts combo's damage into unholy damage
reason: if you also have burden to bear specced you will be gimping yourself by using Soul Strike because your target's armor rating will be lower than unholy invulvs. rating. (more damage dealt when your combo is not converted into unholy) Performs very poorly if you did not use Grim Corruption first, needs soul shard to be activated and most of all - its linked to unholy soul so you need to waste 3/3 first in order to get it.. Shame since it also has a cool name

Rapid striking: lowers Swift Strikes cooldown
reason: arguably worst-feat-ever! Swift Strikes on its own has very short CD so there is hardly a need for further upgrade.Also diffrent ranks of Swift Strikes doesn't share cooldowns. What does that mean? You can circle use 2 ranks of SS without any down time and save yourself 3 feat points.

Seeds of corruption: debuffs traget for healing, seeds explode when Grim Corruption is used
reason: the freak child of 1.5 era. Everything that could have been wrong with this feat.... is. The debuff it self is somewhat decent but its longevity and proc rate leave much to be desired. This hardly has any aplications in PVE so that leaves it purely for PVP. The damage that comes from the explosion is marginal at best and its only ticked off by GC. In typical pvp scenario assassin will want to open any fight with grim corruption for both the snare and the resistance debuff. That leaves your opponent with 20s (cooldown on grim corruption) of "safe time" when the seeds can't be exploded. As you know 20 s in pvp is an eternity during which all sort of things can happen including you dieing horrible horrible death. Want to save your GC for exploding seeds? Then you will have to face an unbuffed and snare-free opponent. With 3/3 feat cost this is not someting you want in your toolbox.

[Guide] Critical hits on openers

People <3 big critz. We all do. Assassins have 3 ways of increasing their critical hit chances which are:

Dark Inspiration +25% chance to crit on opener - Swift Strikes
Sense Weakness +25% chance to crit on opener - Slow Death Strikes, Grimm Corruption, Lethargy, Impede life,
Opportunistic strike +500% chance to crit on opener - any non-feated combo

So what "opening attack increase critical chance" really means?

Combo critz and critz

First of all lets get two things straight: in combat regular combo critz are shown as orange. You will see all sort of big numers flying by as you go through your combo animation. The regular critz are shown in white. Go jab someone with a dagger - sooner or later a bigger white number with pop up on your opponent's left side. That is a regular crit. As for "opening attack" or "opener" crit it is the same white damage, but it goes of after you pressed your combo button.

Lets say you have grim corruption which is one step combo: if you press your button that grim corruption is bound to AND your target is within your reach the combo step icon with light up in a green color, which means "opening attack hit the target" and "there is no damage penality if you land your grim corruption by pressing the combo step button".
That first combo damage is called "opener". Sometimes the openers will crit with extra damage, but if you want to see a lot of that happening I suggest you get one of the above mentioned feats.

Sense weakness + Dark inspiration

They are basiclly the same feats, but for diffrent trees and diffrent combos. Those are passive, but NOTICABLE crit chance increasing feats. Once you have those you will see your openers getting those critz a lot more often. Dark inspiration is a lot better than sense weakness for one simple reason: it buffs up your Swift Strikes combos and those are used all the time, unlike SDS and GC which both have horrible cooldown. Just rotate diffrent ranks of SS to see those numbers rolling. Sense weakness on the other hand can grant you "crit chain" when combined with Opportunistic strike (more on that later).

pros: great, cheap passive damage increase for your combos
cons: they won't crit if you really need them to ;p

Opportunistic strike

Despite its description (+500% to crit?) it just critz all the time (like 500% should..). Using OS gives you 15s buff that will work on your next opener, so if you miss it you still will have time to benefit from the buff by using another combo.. There is just one trick: it won't work on combos that are gained through feat trees so no critz for Death Whirlwind, Blindside, Anthropy ,Snapkick or sabotage armor.

pros: great, cheap passive damage increase for all combos. Works when you need it.
cons: way too long cooldown (1m), won't work with feated in combos

How to take maximum benefit from high critz chance?

Crit chain

Since your openers have such hight crit chance it won't be uncommon for you to see them criting one after another. If you go Grim Corruption (crit) + Impede Life (crit) + Swift Strikes (crit from OS) you will see that you have quickly builded up a lot of extra damage with fast combos (both GC and impede are one step combos). If you do those while buffed with Lotus overdose you can get quite the burst of damage.

AOE damage

Critz will go off on any nerby opponent that is within your reach. Opening with Impede life, which has nice cone efect, will first apply crit on several opponents and then damage and debuff them with aoe.

AOE debuff

We can all agree that lethargy sucks, no doubts about it. This crap is still one step combo that benefits from sense weakness and applies poor excusse for a debuff (-6% to melee which is marginal at best). Still this is a very fast combo and when confronted with several mobs it will be benefitial for you to damage them with oppener and debuff quickly before going with Swift Strikes

PVE and PVP applications

All three of those feats are valid in both PVE and PVP. Skipping on those in any builds is stripping yourself of bonus, burst damage that might save your hide more than once. They are all 1 feat points and should be squized into your build.

[Guide] Blindside

Blindside is a two step combo that can be feated in for 3 points and further upgraded with Bewilder for 2 points.

Here is the breakdown:

Blindside:

1 point added - after succesful attack you will regenerate 45 stamina every 1 second for 7 seconds
2 points added - you gain +100% "increase to damage or healing"
3 points added - you gain +300% "increase to damage or healing"

Bewilder:

1 point added - your opponent will lose 2% of their stamina for 7 seconds
2 points added - your opponent will lose 5% of their stamina for 7 seconds, you gain +100% "increase to damage or healing"

Cooldown: 1 minute

Increase to damage or healing

Even basic tests will quickly prove to you that adding more points into Blindside will NOT upgrade this combo's damage. Regardless of points added it will hit for +400 and crit for +500.
In some tests 3/3 Blindside hit for less than 1/3 Blindiside. This combo most certain won't be your main damage dealer.

Stamina renew and cost

Stamina gained from Blindside stays the same regardless of points added. With 45 stamina gained over 7 seconds you will get 315 stamina back - thats very very little. Here comes the tricky part: blindside's stamina cost is ONLY 52 making this combo THE CHEAPEST in terms of stamina consumption. For example our grim corruption IV takes whooping 382 stamina to use. Blindside comes very handy (more of an life saver) when you are out of stamina - this combo will regenerate you enough to use Swift Strikes IX or GC and still deal quite decent damage.

Bewilder

Bewilder is a passive upgrade for Blindside that will make your opponent lose -2% or -5% of their current stamina pool. Great tool for "disarming" soldiers or slowing down flag runners. Do not expect this to leave your opponent at your mercy because its slow, doesn't drain all that much and if anything it is more of an gimmick than a valid tactic. Save this for when your opponent if about to run away or...... for when you are getting ready to leg it.

How many points should be added

I can honestly say there are only two valid builds for blindside:
either 1/3 Blindside 0/2 Bewilder or 3/3 Blindside 2/2 Bewilder. If you add just one point to Blindside you are getting your point's worth with stamina renew and low cost, decent combo - adding more points into Blindside won't change a thing unless you are going to invest more into Bewilder.
When going for Bewilder ALWAYS add 2/2 and get that full -5%, -2% is a waste.

Lower right attack

Blindside is the ONLY assassin combo that will use "lower right attack" which means you will have to add another "attack" to your bar and find a good key to bind it to. Takes a while to get used to.

Blindside in PVE

Blindside combo will improve your solo PVE because it will hit hard when mobs stack all shields on the left (which might happen after you hace used your Grim Corruption). Apart from slow death strikes III this is our only combo that will hit on the right side which means that combo's last step is upper right or lower right attack.
Bewilder on another hand is useless in PVE - the mobs never go out of stamina.

For the reasons stated above I recomend adding only 1 point into Blindside in order to get the best deal: stamina renew with low cost combo that hits on the right side. Also please note that this combo's animation is just fucking sweet.

Escape artist + brutality or Lethality for PVE on PVP Server?

12AX7 wrote:

Hi Slith, what do you think about dumping 5-lethality for 3-Escape Artist and 2-Brutality for levelling in a pvp server(Lotus/general)?

PvE side I will find difficult the solo instances with Lotus/General as you wrote in a preceeding post or this is changed after 1.5.3?

Thanks and keep up the good work... best assassin blog I've seen!

Hey 12AX7 (if that is your real name ;p)

Thank you for picking my assassing blog as your source of news - it is hard to compete with all those other assassin blogs, but I try to stay competitive.

As for your question: tough call,

Lethality, even if it is not best choice for assassins, will benefit you in EVERY encounter which will translate into more damage done and that translates into more xp per hour

Brutality will bail your ass out of sticky situations when confronted by several mobs - procing fatality will do AOE damage and give temporary immunity while still being healed with GLE, pots. Read more on brutality here.

You should not get into sticky situations in a first place so my conclusion would be taking lethality, playing smart and not dieing. Brutality also has nasty cooldown and 2/3 doesnt provide as big of a benefit as 3/3.

As for escape artist... I guess it is essential for minigames and such, moreso if you are on pvp server and getting jumped at a lot while leveling.

My conclusion:

If you are going to power level to 80 then take lethality - ignore pvp and grind your xp. You will be getting huge xp from Villas (my personal recomendation, I got my lvl80 in there) and only one boss can root you there...once (Nemedian quest line).

If you are going to mix pve and pvp on your road to 80lvl then escape artist + 2/3 brutality will benefit you in both pvp and pve. Not having escape artist in minigames will make your experience horrible.

As for solo instances - Lotus/general is now a valid specc for solo instances. It is as good as corruption/general if not better. Read up more on that here.

--------
"Readers questions" will now be part of this blog. I will *try*(TM) to anwser interesting questions found in comments, but please DO NOT abuse this and spam questions.

Assassin - welcome back guide

Here is a short guide/information that I have put together so people have easier time adjusting to 1.5 reality. This is in no way a detailed guide, for details go to past patch notes
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6

Combo mechanics
You have to "land" every combo "step" in order to deal 100% damage. If you miss one combo step you will see one of combo's "arrow" light up red. Missing a combo step will apply penality of -5% damage.
Game mechanics
Dubble tapping and using active block no longer gives buff
Dubble tapping backwards puts evade buff on cooldown

Combo steps
Combos got their steps reduced.

Combo changes
- Lots of cooldown changes
- Grim corruption and Slow Death Strikes combo tiers now share cooldowns (example: using GCIII will put also put cooldown on GCII)

Grim corruption
a) it applies snare
b) it applies debuff. Debuff type is dependant on stance in which GC is applied.

Feat changes

Lotus tree
a) Flesh necrosis - adding points will also add damage to corrupted backlash, it is instant now, can be used while moving (upgraded)
b) Blindside - it now deals more damage and drains more stamina from your target (upgraded)
c) Lotus weapon - it now always proc, does more damage (upgraded)
d) Swift ending - it now proc sooner (uprgraded)
e) Lotus overdose - it no longer applies any penality (upgraded)
f) Furry of blows - longer duration (uprgaded)
g) Assassination - bigger bonus (uprgaded)
h) Corrupted body - it adds protection bonus on damage (reworked)
i) Curse of Lotus - limited to 12 targets, no casting time, instant (upgraded)

Corruption tree
a) Unholy Strenght - it adds 5% damage intead of 10% (nerfed)
b) Life leech - it heals more (upgraded)
c) Unholy armor - gives 50% bonus to your armor (changed, nerfed)
d) Death's gaze - it is instant now (upgraded)
e) Avatar of death - duration is 15s now from 20s (nerfed)
f) Seeds of corruption - it applies debuff for HP regeneration, if GC is used the seeds will "explode" and deal instant damage (reworked)
g) Lunge - it now adds 70% weapon damage, 20s cooldown (reworked)
h) Burden to bear - applies armor debuff, more points give higher chance to proc (changed)
i) From the darkness - it stuns, captures soul shard (changed)

General tree
a) Quick recovery - adds stamina regeneration (reworked)
b) Excellent balance - needs only 1 point, 1 m cooldown (changed)
c) Lethality - adds weapon damage, poor choice for assassins (new)
d) Agile mind - it is now clickable, each point added reduces its cooldown from 9 to 3 (reworked)
e) Ambush - it no longer gives damage boost (nerfed)

Combos usefull in PVP and PVE
Swift Strikes are still our bread and butter,
Slow Death Strikes deal a lot of damage,
Grim Corruption mainly debuffs target

How to use combos in typical PVP/PVE encounter
1) Apply debuff (Grim corruption)
2) Apply slow death strikes
3) Use swift strikes

PVE Leveling speccs
Lotus/general
Corruption/general


There haven't been any great changes to assassins. It safe to say that your experience and "feel" of this class will remain mostly unaffected in 1.5.

Found an error? Let me know.

Corruption/general in pvp and pve

I know what are you thinking: "oh god, he is going to praise corruption now, please don't...". Ok, I won't, but I will share few bit of my experiences. So I went with corruption for quite a few minigames and it turns out as "decent". Here is the specc that I have used (I refuse to use up-to-date feat builder just to be an ass). Luckly the games that I have ran were fairly balanced and diverse in classes so I got my chances to try out things (olso did some random gank-jumps in Commons).

Armor and damage mitigation
With unholy armor giving only 50% boost the trade off for Lotus's outstanding magic resistance is not worth it. Yes, I can take more punch, but not THAT much to make up for loss of magic resistance. Nothing really to brag about, it is just there and it help, slightly.

Fun factor
I am not a fan of "unholy" feeling that this specc gives (how can this fit assassin at all?), BUT this build has a lot of CLICKEZ: corrupted strikes, soul strike, lunge all on 20s cooldown. This means that every fight you have something to fireoff and enjoy. I like that. Lotus runs out of things to click pretty darn fast.

Stamina issues
O-M-G, I was runing out of stamina ALL THE TIME. Forget about chasing down enemy, runing away and all that garbage - the pool will go down the toilet faster that unwanted pregnacy on a prom night. With Lotus's blindside its easy to forget that stamina is everything. I kept chasing after caster and after few second he stoped runing and turned to me while I was fesh out of stamina. What now sin-boyo? Consume souls that converts shards into stamina has absurd cooldown, it should be much shorter so you can make some use of it.

Magic resistance
Basicly you take everything up the ass when confronted by a caster. It goes through you like a knife through butter. Like I said: your damage mitigation from unholy armor doesn NOT make up for the shit you have to deal with.

CC
The death's gaze is a fair exchange for a snap kick. You still need shard, but no need to aim. From the darkness lost it's magic, I got frozen during the animation tons of times.

DPS
Corruption has the burst, I will give it that. Even thou Lotus wins with all buffs up, Corruption can do it more often, more easly and in a more reliable way (If you get CCed as Lotus in a buff's peak, you lose a lot of that damage).

PVE
Corruption is better. Plain and simple - you survive longer, heal better and bring shit down easier. In solo instances Lotus has to fight over every inch, Corruption sails smoothly.

Corruption lvl 60-70

Last episode on "Slith's guides" http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::f30efe2fefefefef2ef2e5f3af19

You are the Avatar of Death

Arguably best feat in Age of Conan. This feat is made out of "pure win". It will grant you immunity to all forms of CC (but not to knockback) for 20 s, boosting your damage as well (in 1.5 it is nerfed to 15s). Both PVE and PVP opponents will have to agree that for the next 20s you are THE MAN.

1/1 Avatar of Death

From the darkness they came
Apart from GREAT name, FTD will damage & stun your opponent and grant you one soul fragment. It works in both stealth and out of it. One point wonder.

1/1 From the darkness

General tree aka boring part
In PVE you are now basicly at your best. Whatever you add in general tree will boost your PVP performance rather than PVE, but you still got points - gotta add them

Max out Excellent Balance
You will get shorter cooldown.

5/5 Excellent Balance

Max out Natural Protection
Get that magic resistance in. You will really need it in PVP. Unholy armor will take care of melee.

5/5 Natural Protection

Max out second wind
Our longest cooldown - whole 10 minutes. What it does is regening your stamina very fast. It is your saver in duels, sometimes in PVP and its great when you are chasing down fleeing enemy.

1/1 Second wind

Toughness
Get one point in it so you can open up Agle Mind later on. Small boost, but it will do you more good than Acrobat - 1% evade is worthless.

1/5 Toughness

Corruption lvl 50-60

This is where I left you off http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::f30efe2fefefefef2ef2e2f6af19

Get Death's Gaze
Drop one point into Death's Gaze. Welcome to your first feated CC! You can learn more about this feat here.

1/5 Death's Gaze

Max out Burden to Bear
With this baby feated in you will get a massive DPS boost and FINALLY you will be able to cut through some serious armor. This gets even better in patch 1.5 so this template will stay up to date.
Its a passive stuff so you won't be able to mess around with it, but trust me - its is there for you, working its magic in DPS charts.

3/3 Burden to Bear

Max out Prediction
This is again passive boost, but to your survivality. You will gain massive 10% evade which is well worth 5 points (to compare: stupid acrobat from general tree gives mere 3% evade for 3/3)

5/5 Prediction

Max out Death's Gaze
You won't see much of a diffrence, but you need it in order to open up next tier of your ultimates: avatar and from the darkness

5/5 Death's Gaze

Corruption lvl 40-50

This was our last template: http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::f30efe2fefefefef2ef10af19:

I will honestly say: this is when corruption starts being FUN. It only gets better and better.

First point

Go ahead and drop one point into Death Whirlwind. It will boost your DPS a little and you will have something to burn shards with

1/5 Death Whirlwind

Max out Lunge

This is our first serious damage dealer. Make sure you use it ON THE LAST COMBO STEP. Not before step 2, not on opener, not first step - the moment you will use it is last combo step.
After you have activated it, lunge will buff your combo damage (note: this changes in 1.5 patch, lunge will be simple buff without need for any gimmicks). If the combo is instant (like our good friend - Death Whirlwind) use it before the combo.

5/5 Lunge

Max out Death Whirlwind
Now you can start slowly building up your DW.
Little tips:
- DW will deal less damage to multiple opponents, but it does aoe dmg.
- When using it try to hit the unshielded side for some sweet dmg bonus.
- The more shards you get the better DW's damage will be.
- DW benefits from Lunge

5/5 Death Whirlwind

Both of those feats are very fun to use.

[Guide] Soul Shards

Soul shards (aka Soul fragments) are staple of Corruption specced assassin: they are needed basicly for everything in your tree. I will be calling them SS for the sake of this guide.
Check the window on the left of your health bar: as you go into melee you will notice that white little shards will start to build up - those are SS.

How to get SS?

a/ Stance
SS will be caputured when you are in unholy stance.

Exception: the single exception is using "Soul prison" in poison stance, with that feat active you will have a fair chance of getting SS even without unholy stance on. This has virtualy no applications, its just a "fun" fact.

b/ Melee
You get soulshards from melee attacks.Your every combo and even white hits has a chance of caputing the SS. Usually every combo willl grant you atleast one. Grim Corruption combo is know to be a best way to get more than one SS from single combo. You are not guaranteed to get SS from your attacks,

Exception: "Relish in death" feat will grant you SS if a member of your team performs fatality. You don't have to do anything, you just have to be a member of a group that did fatality.

Exception: Death Whirlwind combo will not only NOT caputure any SS, but it will also consume your SS for damage

Exception: From the Darkness, when succesfuly used, will always award you one SS

c/ Stealth attack
Attacking from stealth will grant you one soulshard.

Spending your SS

a/ SS as requirment for feat usage
Feats that need SS won't work without them. Corrupting strikes, life leeach, Avatar of death etc., when used without any SS avalible, will not work and a there will be a message on the top of your screen informing you that you need to get a SS.

Exception: Death Whirlwind combo will still do damage without SS

b/ Feat/skill usage cost
Almost all feats/skills will use up ONE SS

Exception: Death Whirlwind combo will use up all shards that you have collected

Exception: Consume Souls will will use up all shards that you have collected

Shard managment

a/ SS decay
You SS will disapear after short period of time (couple of seconds). It's best to move for another kill while you have advantage of having few SS already.

b/ Non combat SS usage
The only skill that is non combat and still benefitial is "Consume Souls". When activated it will transform your shards into instant stamina gain. Consume souls is usable in both in and out of combat

c/ Boosting your SS gaining rate
You will notice a HUGE diffrence in SS gaining rate when you have specced in "Spirit of nightfall" feat that is 3/3. This feat is MANDATORY for any corruption or hybird build and there is no valid reason to not get it.
Soul prison feat (2/2) will grant you boost every 2 minutes - it is a solid feat, but often not used in builds other than corruption/general. It's best to get soul prison later on (at least lvl 50) because until then there aren't many things to spend shards on. Do not get Soul prison too early, its a waste of points.

Lotus 60-70lvl

The build:
http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::e2fe2fef2e2fefef2ef2e2f2e6f25ef5ef13:

1/ build up your excellent balance to 5/5
2/ build up your toughness to 5/5 for +3,5% melee ress
Some lotus build focuses on natural protection for 80lvl pvp which is a valid but for PVE leveling - since there is hardly any good gear pre lvl80 - you will need that melee ressesistance from toughness. Also you will hardly face caster mobs as compared to melee and ranged.

with the above mentioned points you should be now with 68 points spent.

3/ Lotus overdose - for that amazing dmg buff and stamina regen
4/ Curse of lotus - aoe fear you will learn to love. Use it before pressing last combo step and then do the combo, otherwise the fear might break on damage(its not really a fear, its a charm spell)

1.5 Assassin data

Last night the 1.5 hit the servers with tons of assassin changes. Without bullshiting you with my blah blah blah lets go down to business:

Item revamp - link to notes

As you can see my PVE crap gear aka not-so-full-midnight set got totaly reworked along with my scorpion daggers. Ofcourse those stats are meaningless to me....right now, because all of us need to set their minds on new rules. Overall it seems like a better, more clear system that is user friendly. Without doubt FC can now crank out new items that will progress your character in a more visible and easy to understand way.

My rating: 5/5 Good change

General tree changes (ala rogue tree)

Without doubt rogue tree changes screwed any hybrid build and screwed it hard.

Quick recovery - adds stamina regen. Its a 5/5 feat and you need it to progress into tier 1 of the treee. More stamina is good.

Excellent balance - 1/1 feat. It gives resistance to knockback as it used to along with instant stamina recovery.

Lethality - 5/5 feat. New tool in the tool box and a big disapoitment. Lethality adds up to 17% more damage based on your weapon damage. No doubt it is a great stuff for barbarians with their huge axes and epeens, but we assassin fight with TOOTHPICKS and a good chunk of our damage comes in fact from our stance that adds +posion +unholy.

My rating: 4/5 Leathality needs to be reworked.

Grim corruption (GC) mechanics:

It is a step into right direction with few flaws.

Lotus stance GC - finaly a debuff for some armor. It benefits you and all of your allies. Vile Posions now shines with +15% dmg and -10% posion debuff from a single GC hit.

Corruption stance GC - clearly a good way to improve Soul Strike or Vile Corruption.

Please note that Grim Corruptions now SHARE cooldown. Thats right, no more GCIV + GCIII snare stack, or GC+Sense Weaknes chain-o-critin'. Take other GCs off your bar because you are married to GCIV now. Don't like this change. I would make GC's debuff NOT STACK and STANCE DEPENDENT (more on that later). If you can't snare running caster with first GC for whatever reason, you are now stuck with nothing to keep him less mobile. Not cool.

How to exploit Burden to bear and Lotus GC? Preload GC in Lotus stance, land it, switch to Unholy and wait for your -25% invuls stack. Needs a fix.

My rating: 2/5 Step into a right direction. Needs A LOT of work.

Lotus/general specc

Here is what I have specced for this test.

Corrupted body - yes, it is good, but why oh why giving us yet another magic debuff when we need guns and armor? I say corrupted body should buff the armor we are wearing so we can HOPE to survive in melee group fight.

Currently for magical protection we have:

• Antrophy
• Arcane Backlash
• Lotus Tainted blood
• Lotus Overload
• Corrupted body
• Natural protection

Thats too much, thank you. I would rather do some damage that dance like a retarded moneky in a orgy of fire, thuner and ice thrown at me. We need more armor to have a chance of survival in a new melee frenzy that is coming with 1.5. We never had problems with casters, this new corrupted body is not needed.

Flesh necrosis - I won't beat a dead horse, the devs have clearly not worked at all on this feat. It still gives crap damage for 3/3 investment. Linking FN to new Corrupted backlash would be smart only and ONLY if FN is fixed.

Arcane backlash/Corrupted backlash - lets get real, for 9 point investment this is not all that great.Basicly it gives some damage from time-to-time that might or might not proc. The very mechanic looks promising thou.

Here is how I would twist it around: corrupted backlash should add a dot, not a single hit. The DOT can be consumed by Flesh Necrosis and would work like full 5x stack of flesh rots (assuming the whole FN will get a buff). This way we would reward fast thinking player who, by watching the Corrupted backlash procing, could get more benefit from it and quickly use FN for more damage. I rather have corrupted backlash giving one good DOT than procing radomly with crap damage. Lotus is already very random damage based, we need more stuff than we can use when needed. Precision is the key.

Curse of lotus - it got caped on 12 targets. I guess that is resonable.

Lotus overdose - it got buffed with crazy weapon damage and +40% magic damage. So? It still has mind blowing cooldown and a potent debuff that we have to suffer through.

Kidney shots - this must be a joke. Lunge, 10s duration with 20s cooldown buff, gives 70% weapon damage while fully stacked KS gives us ...65%? Clearly devs must have made some typo while tweaking this feat. No need to go crazy here, just fix your mistake guys, and add some mechanic that will make KS diffrent from every single other buff while you are at it.

My rating: 2/5 Fc didn't really give much tought to the lotus in first 1.5 build. 1 point for new mechanics, but the rest of changes are bad.

Corruption/general specc
Now that we are done with Lotus - FC's illegitemate son - we can go through Dev's favorite firstborn - CORRUPTION.

Here is what I specced (its a bad specc, but allows for full test)

My general feel of Corruption - god more. I am not even kidding - I have ripped through Villa content like it was nothing. Corruption now has full range of tools for dealing with everything thrown at it.

Lunge - 10s duration, 20s cooldown, 70% weapon buff. How could you ask for more? Right now corruption has corrupting strikes, soul strike and lunge all on small CD with 10s duration and a lot of punch. Say hello to great feats for sudden bursts of damage and new lunge compleates the corruption tree.

Seeds of corruption - not only they debuff heals, but can also add nasty and instant damage. Can't knock back those damn healers? Well you sure as hell can debuff them and explode into whirlwind of spike damage. Stack seeds of corruption-->GC-->Death Whirlwind. Sounds like a lot of smackdown in a very short time. I like it and will proves to be a great tool in group pvp.

Burden to bear - obvious fix to a semi-broken feat. It just WORKS now. Thumbs up.

Life leech - it is too good now. For 236 per hit you can get as much as 1180 HP back from a single combo with 1 shard investment. Thats almost 2 HP pots, instantly. Why would you wait for slow Golden Lotus Extrac ticks when you can have this baby?

Posible solution to life leech - buff up heals to 250 hp per hit and make every hit consume 1 shard. With full 5 shards you can get 1250 HP back, but you have to make a tough decision - get damage from other feats like CS,SS,DWW etc. or heal up. This change would make Soul Prison more viable as shard generation would mean a lot more than now because the only REAL shard hugger as in 1.4 - 1.5 is Death Whirlwind. Please consider this.

Avatar of death - a bit of damage nerf, but considering its buff - it is still a holy grail of assassins

When activating avatar you will get a cool little efect on your hands that will indicate to your opponen that dark powers are at work. Sweet. Oh and with Lunge cd on 20s you would be stupid not to stack Lunge with Avatar. Say hello to 140% weapon damage.

Death's gaze - cool little spell efect added on your target. Nice.

Unholy armor - here is where its at. With 1.4 unholy armor assasin were getting +10% resistance when in unholy stance which was fixed at that ammount. Lotus assassins could get Toughness feat to give them extra +3,5% ress and with a little better gear they could be closer to what Corruption offered while still remaining a lot worst in terms of melee fights survival. With 1.5 changes unholy gets +100% armor bonus. Thats right - the more you have the more you gain.

Lets look at solid numbers:

My PVE crap gear gave me solid 4257 armor which is 10,4% damage mitigation. When I buff my poor lotus with Toughness I get my armor racked up to 5057 with 13,8% mitigation. Not look at unholy: with 100% armor buff I get 8374 armor which translates into 28,7%.

Conclustion: without tougness feat lotus has 2 times less armor than corruption with roughly 10% vs 28%. With even slight item diffrence corruption grows beyond lotus in terms that we can't even imagine (or can we?). Lets keep in mind that corruption already benefits from WHOOPING +10% evade, giving it a 100% bonus and not a fixed ammount of armor will grow into a problem fast. While going though villa not once I was close to dieing with 2,3,4 even 5 mob pulls and I wear blues, think about that epic items.

Suggestion: corruption needs to remain superior to lotus in melee combat, but lets not go nuts. Needs some tweaking.

Other little tweaks:

1. Stance buff moved from left side to up-center.
2. Villa mobs drop 80lvl items again
   
3. There is a new loading screen - some burnign tower, probably Stygian
4. Servers are really unstable with huge lag spikes and out of memory crashes
   

Closing notes:

Corruption is almost done, but Lotus needs all the hugz and love it can get. For big list of Lotus suggestions and issues see my 1.5 Lotus post.

Assassins in sieges

Yesterday I finaly had an opportunity to take part in defending Sanguis Attexo's Battle Keep. Here are few of my observations that I would like to share:

Note: specced as lotus assassin with ambush

Computer can't handle it

Despite of all FC work on AOC performance the game is uber sluggish for me in sieges regardless of settings used. I have bought my computer just for Age of Conan and even if thou it is not best you can get (it is more of a bottom end of duo core speccs) it does handle the game well: 4 GB RAM, 2x 2,60 duo core pentium and Nvidia 8600 GT. In Siege I used "PVP/raid" speccs provided in video configuration and I had FPS of 9-12 when things got messy and 18 FPS "out of action". It was ass.

Assassin's role

In general any other rogue can do our job ten times better. Barbarian can take bigger punishment so they can suicide themself into balista and Rangers give better fire support to the main forces. Assassins die just by looking at zerg. Our stealth mechanic is not unique so we don't have any clear advantage over other rogues while they bring a lot to the table in terms of firepower and survivality.

Curse of lotus and brutality

Without doubt those two feats are KEY for assassins in sieges. I have seen brutality turn the very outcome of a major battle (about 10 vs 10): after initial clash brutality proced 3 fatalities of us - one after another - providing with damage buff that was too much to handle for other side. Curse of lotus is best used to quickly get rid of siege weapon's defenders so rogue group and destroy it unmolested.

In conclusion: we hardly have anything unique to contribiute to both defence and offence. Almost anything we can do someone else can do better. I doubt speccing into hybrid would make any diffrence and would certainly make stealthing less effective.

Should we be able to avoid aoe damage while in stealth for short period of time?

[Guide] Corrupting Strikes

If SS could be called "the bread" of assassin, corrupting strikes is without a doubt "the butter" for that pve/pvp bread.

For the cost of one soul shard you will get 10 seconds of +20% offhand chance with mere 20 second cooldown.

Corrupting strikes vs Vile Corruption
In order to progress down the corruption tree you need to pick: corrupting strikes or Vile corruption. +15% to slow death strikes is nothing to laugh at, BUT +20% offhand affects your every combo and hit so in terms of "global dps" you are getting suprerior buff compared to just an SDS upgrade.

Corrupting strikes and Dread Weapons (corruption/general)
If you don't pick CS you shouldn't even look at Dread Weapons. Since Dread Weapons proc of offhand, those two feats are "dream synergy" and an conscious design by FC developers.

Corruptiong strikes and Deft Blades (hybrid)
Here is where the source of hybrid power really is: it is not tons of heals and dmg buffs, it it infact offhand stacking that gives 20% + 10% = whooping 30% offhand. Let's compare it to the "offhand build" aka Lotus: we have +10% offhand from deft blades, +15% offhand from flurry of blows (goes off randomly) and +15% from assassination (proces off on targets low HP). So at peak of performance, if everything proces off, Lotus gets 45% offhand whole Hybrid can get 30% offhand without any effort and basicly any time you want it. Deft blades and CS are another "dream synergy" that wasn't really foreseen by the Devs and it might get changed in the future by moving Deft Blades a little further down the Lotus tree (it would require TONS of tests so not to screw the Lotus assassin's early leveling experience). Deft blades and corrupting strikes are MUST for hybrid assassins and a perfect marriage between lotus and corruptin trees.

Corrupting strikes and combos
Offhand from CS affects both white hits and combos (see more on offhand)so if you drop it for combo steps you will get more damage from it. Using CS right before the last combo step is also a good move. The only thing you should NOT do is droping CS right in the middle of combo animation: the combo will get "cooked" and as a result you will go into your casting animation while the combo bar will progress for SS's duration.

=
Offhand and brutality
Corrupting strikes give offhand chance and offhand can almost dubble your damage output. In order to proc fatality you need damage that will overkill your opponent (more on brutality). Corrupting strikes might give your brutality/normal fatality that extra dmage edge for that sweet fatality procc.

Keep it handy
Since you will be using CS every fight (at least you should) use easly accesibile key that you can press fast and without any effort.

Offhand proc

I was contacted by Mystique (who’s name may or may not have been inspired by Marvel’s X-Men) to do a post on offhand.

Few facts:
- base offhand proc chance is 10% (naked, without gear)
- for every 5 dex you gain 0.1% chance to do offhand damage
- offhand damage proces from Main Hand Weapon , not your offhand Weapon
- offhand damage can proc even if attack is blocked/parried/evaded
- stance damage (+unholy dmg or poison dmg) is added to offhand attacks

Offhand definition:

Offhand damage is an extra damage that can proc from main hand weapon that is used in both combos and white hits.
Offhand damage will proc only once, but for your viewing pleasure it will be broken down into many pretty numbers to clog your screen and stroke your epeen.
In a nut shell offhand damage gives you chance to dubble your damage output.

source: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=105050 by pants
for all details visit the provided link – it’s the definitive guide on offhand proc.

Lotus 50-60lvl

The build:
http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::e2fe2fef2e2fefef2ef2e2f2de3f27af19:

1/ First drop 2 points into Kidney Shots and Sense weakness. Those two give most “bang for the buck” as for mere 2 points Kidney shots can add up 118 piercing damage and Sense Weaknes will add +25% crit chance to your combo openers (lethargy, GC, poison strike, Impede life).

2/ Next build up Assassination up to 5/5 – it will grant you +15% offhand when target is close to death

3/ Shift ending up to 5/5 will buff your DOTs like lotus weapon and flesh rot

4/ optionally – if you haven’t already – drop 1 point into excellent balance

As you go on you might feel like your HP is going down too fast when fighting mobs – don’t worry, at lvl 70 you will get additional 3,5% res vs all melee damage which will help a lot.

tip: Kidney shots grow stronger as the buff stacks with every hit, when you get 5x fire off OP for a very big crit. Assassins luv critz.

[Guide] Death's gaze

5/5 corruption tree feat
This used to be our fear/stun spell - it would randomly fear your target, or stun him, making him stand still. The problem was: the fear was making your target run around like an idiot and stun proc was low (I am not sure if it was charm or stun).

As of patch 3.0 this all changed. Now days Death's Gaze always fears target and debuffs him with snare, making him easy target.

Here is what you should know about death's gaze:

Get those shards!
It needs one shard. Period! If you want to get DG from the very start (which you should) you can easily get it from either stealth attack or FTD. GC is also a good opener for both snare stacking and shard generation.

Chain CC
Since death's gaze is the only fear spell available to Corruption/general, hybrid assassins it can be used to totally Chain CC all classes wearing light armor or less:

FTD(gain shard)->Death Gaze (Slow death strike)->Snap Kick (SS)

1/ From the Darkness opens the chain for both element of surprise and shard generation.

2/ After fearing your target use Slow Death Strike to deal good amount of damage over time (DOT) to spread you DPS a little.

3/ When your target is DOTed use Snap Kick to get him down and then unload on him your highest SS buffed with Lunge or corrupting strikes.

CC breaking (PVE)
As since patch 3.0 all mobs can break fear/charms when you deal X ammount of damage to them. With that in mind use DG on the last combo step (it will not undo your combo!) and then unload SS rather than fearing and going through all the combo steps because the mob will break free.

Combo/skill breaker
Death’s gaze works wonders as combo breaker. If, for example, barbarian is unloading his cyclone of steel on you, use DG to fear him and avoid massive damage being done to you. Same with POMs knockback, oraz heals.

Death's Gaze as snare
Since this feat has range of about "dubble tap forward" you can chase after your opponent and fear him up as you get close to him.

Snare stacking
Death gaze snare stacks with grim corruption snare so you can:
Grim corruption-> Death gaze

this will get your target from "slowly running away" to "baby crawl" speed.

Closing notes
- Death gaze is a spell - it can be resisted by your target.
- When fear breaks/ends so does the snare.
- If you have shard you can use DG while mounted.

Lotus 40-50 lvl

This level gap is simple:
http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::e2fe2fef2e2fefef2ef2e2f53:

get Lotus weapon and get Flurry of Blows. Save the rest and enjoy!

Flurry of Blows is a proc buff that will get you more offhand - +15% - it’s a solid and passive buff. Proces often.

Lotus weapon gives stackable DOTS like flesh necrosis. Passive damage that will help you with those armored bastards.

Stay alive!

Next gap – lvl 60 – will get you to your best, passive damage feats and baby, the numbers will fly across the screen!

Corruption lvl 30-40

Here is where I left you
http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::f30efe2fefcfefef33:

go ahead and add:

2 point to dark weapons (full feat)-> save points -> 5 points into unholy armor-> 1 point excellent balance -> save the rest

http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx?id=1#::f30efe2fefefefef2ef10af19:

Now we are talking!

With 5 points in unholy armor for the first time you will be able to take a punch in both PVE and PVP. There are no words to describe the +10% resist you will get from UA and the impact in will have on your gaming experience.

You can PVP!

From now on you stand a chance in PVP that is why you are getting one point into Excellent balance. There is also a chance you might already ran into some kind of mob that had knockback.

Do not expect much in PVP.

You are still far from “the zone” and might not be able to take on guardian classes, or healers. This is normal as your heavy hitters buffs/debuffs are further down the corruption tree.

Clear sailing ahead, matey!

You next upgrade will be at lvl 50 when you will get Lunge buff and your AOE attack. From level 40 up to 70 you will be getting great feats every 10 levels...