Bombay assassin: lotus got a buff

Lotus got a buff - it's what I am singing all the time now :D

Update 1.04 Notes (Preview)?

It seems that Update 1.04 Notes posthas been edited and word "preview" being added. People were already calling the patch down because it turned out that 1.4 is the famous 4.0 patch after all. Seems that update notes are merely a teaser, and far from being the complete thing. I guess that could mean that some more assassin changes are in the works.
Since there is still hope for improvments check the [Feedback]Broken and underpowered Lotus feats and bump it a little so we get dev's attention.

The majority of assassins are hybrid, but buffed lotus will probably result in them being buffed, or in new, great builds.

The Roleplayer - Age of Conan Machinima

The Roleplayer is AOC machinima which is really well done. Since it is an assassin class blog, machinima that is well done is not enough to be in news so I will spoil it for ya - there is an assassin character in there :D.



Apart being funny it shows the sad state the roleplaying is in this game - something I miss very much from my old WoW days.Hope that after server mergers the RP will be back to Hyborian world. Enjoy the movie!

Buff to Lotus tree in patch 1.04

check the Update 1.04 Notes
CLASSES
Assassin
* Curse of the Lotus will now snare victims by 50% for the duration of the fear effect.

Seems like FC finaly starting to notice that there are other specc than hybrid.
You can see what others think about this change here.

Proc and offhand rates by experiment

The main man down the US assassin boards - Chillwhisper - did another fantastic break down of corruption feat proc chances. Very good read.

Here is an interesting find from mentioned post:
"Dark Weapons proc'd 25 times out of 151 chances, or 16.5%." which is very low - makes you think if dark weapons are really worth the points after all.

There have been suggestions, that after the 3.0 patch which made SS our main, and arguably only damage dealer, to spread Dark Weapons points into:

Soul prison 2/2
Rapid striking 3/3
or
Life Leech 3/5

I would advocate for 3 points in life leech for 2 reasons:

1/ SS has 4 sec cooldown as it is and 1 sec cooldown between doing same combo prevents you from buffering two of the same SS into smooth two combos so the benefirs of rapid striking are not that big.

2/ SSVIII has 3 steps so that means you would mean you would get all your health from LL just doing the combo and nothing would go to waste*, or at least - no as much.

*if you have 5/5 in Life Leech it means it will give you 5 heals from 5 hits, if you get healed to FULL on, for example, second hit, the life leech will fade away, making you lose the 3 remaning heals that could be used as you get damaged during the combo itself.

God mode on! (lotus window)

Still playing and enjoying my lotus/general so I though I would share a little story:

It happened in one of the random minigames on the center of the map (that place which every team camps to secure the win ;p). Two teams clashed with each other and I, ignoring guardian and BS on my back, went straight for their POM. I wanted to do a clean, fast kill so I droped OP + KS (opportunistic strike and kidney shots) at once and opened with SS. I got POM down to few HP when she got backed with BS heals and guardian was already on me – needless to say she got full HP in a seconds. Then all of sudden POM started pulsing with meant that Knock Back spell in on the way and both my snap kick and lotus bomb were on cooldown as well as excellent balance – if she knocks me, I die for sure. I have used my lotus overdose buff and did GCIV followed by antrophy. BAM! Never have I seen so many numbers fly around as they literally blocked my view with big, orange crits. Needless to say the POM was cut in half, dieing almost instantly on the spot.

This was what I call “lotus window”, a rare event where lotus assassin have stacked all his buffs into one, unstoppable force.

Offhand:
Def blades (passive) - +10%
Flurry of blows (proc) - +15%
Assassination (proc based on target’s HP) - +15%
Offhand from items – 3,9~ +4%

Damage:
Kidney shots (proc, stacking) - +102 dps when fully stacked
Lotus overdoes (buff) - +40% dmg

Debuff:
Grim corruption (combo) - -5% poison debuff
Corrupted body (proc) - -5% poison debuff
(helps increasing +poison damage from stance)

The trick was that since POM got up to almost full HP the assassination proc was going away, same for kidney shots, which was already on its fifth stack.

So for 5-8 seconds I was doing amazing damage which melted my opponent. Too bad I don’t get that more often as assassin’s lotus buffs have quite the cooldowns :/

Hybrid vs xxx/general rages on

There seems to be rather heated debate on US forums over how viable is the hybrid for group pvp.
Jcp23 did a SOLID POST about hybrid vs xxx/general specc so if you don't want to cut through 2 pages of crap such as "hybrid rules, and you suck" jump straight to his post.
I have to agree that in 1v1 lotus specc HAS NOTHING on Hybrid, and if hybrid sin opens with FTD and uses shard for avatar it is all over but the crying, baby.
Same goes for HOXes, its very very hard for Lotusins to kill them, where Hybrid just jumps in and outheals the poor bastard while using avatar.

I remember that I had to work my ASS off on test server to beat HOX in fair 1v1 as Lotus (did 1-5), but hybrid got me 5-2 score without much sweat.