Does my Char suck?

[PwnyExpress]

Alright, I'm playing a Spikersin, Which is my own idea for an assassin.
Great CC, also great for fighting bosses. At lvl 68, She does 35K+ over 10 Seconds with Timestrike.

But...
I'm having a really hard time in Terror. I have about 3k life, and 4k armor....Can someone shed some light on this?

[oneillz808]

perfect being must be maxed.
i also recommend to put points into premeditation a bit also, and NOT blink. lowering spell timers for everything is great, rather than having one skill with a lot of seconds to stun.

blink has to be used almost every chance you get.
use hades gate to knockback monsters. you only need ONE corpse. it doesnt consume the corpse.

is your gear good. try to equip runewords and uniques as rares tend to be unreliable and shaky. rare amulets are fine!

also i have played that build. it needs good leeching, basically its a melee char, but weaker in terms of survival.

get shadowform from the shadowhymn unique shield or mal gul ohm runeword.

get boneclasp! the hit causes monster to flee is helpful! although because you are a melee char, it might seem annoying. you need the breathing space!

last but not least, LEVEL UP! this is not clod! this is median!
get to level seventy five at least before going into terror.

[enkephalin07]

3k is a fair amount of life, more than either of my assassins had going into Terror. But the 4k defense is way under recommended, even worse if facing creatures over your level, you're probably getting hit 70% of the time, not counting Perfect Being. I thnk 11k is recommended, but I've handled it with 7k.

As for level, that will vary from build and with practice; I had a level 80 Vipersniper enter Terror to face a seriously stiffer difficulty, but the Bladewitch steamrolled it at level 41-75 with less life, less defense, and no shield.

[quigonjinn]

Defense is not that important for an assassin; I've made it to level 118 with melee assassin no problem with only about 3K def. max Perfect Being, get 75% CTB and some faster block and you should be OK. (and no you don't have to have ageslayers Oath - any shield works fine.)

Also assassin is not a tank character, even though you are melee you want to think in terms of hit and run tactics.

[enkephalin07]

Also assassin is not a tank character, even though you are melee you want to think in terms of hit and run tactics.

I thought that too, but the Bladewitch has turned out to be surprisingly good at tanking up until about Act IV of Destruction, then I've had to use more evasion strategies. I expect that to change after I spend the 1k attrib.

In comparison, the Vipersniper was all about hit and run, carried a shield, only did the 400/600 ac, and she couldn't seem to take a hit without dying. On the other hand, the Bladewitch is having a hell of a time with Cathedral of Vanity, hadn't passed it yet, but Vipersniper breezed through it, as drugged up as I am on painkillers with a broken hand.

You really can't overemphasize the effectiveness of Perfect Being for survival in any Assassin build, though.

[DemonTheSecond]

3k is a fair amount of life, more than either of my assassins had going into Terror. But the 4k defense is way under recommended, even worse if facing creatures over your level, you're probably getting hit 70% of the time, not counting Perfect Being. I thnk 11k is recommended, but I've handled it with 7k.

As for level, that will vary from build and with practice; I had a level 80 Vipersniper enter Terror to face a seriously stiffer difficulty, but the Bladewitch steamrolled it at level 41-75 with less life, less defense, and no shield.

Lawl....defense is nothing for an assassin, my Black Lotus Sin aka, UQ Sin. My OWN build. tyvm. yep. has 14k defense.....zzz? Ya...only 14k Defense, she probably had 2k-4k defense in terror. And she easily went through terror + destruction. Lawl defense on sin is important? No. Unless your not using a shield + Perfect Being(But why would you do that now eh?)

Plz...if you dont know what your talking about, dont talk about it. Kthx.

[enkephalin07]

It's nice that you've developed a build too, but I think the log posted on my build plan pretty clearly indicates I may have some experience to know what I'm talking about. Thank you, very much. As for what I'm talking about, that was Laz's own recommendation for defense in Terror, though I can't always be sure when he's speaking tongue-in-cheek.

And my experience is that you can have a more survivable char without a shield, less defense, by relying on damage soaking and some leeching. With a shield, you need more defense to save your hash from block-lock situations, which was always the big killer in the uberlevels. Max avoid doesn't stand for much for very long when you're frozen in place while everyone gets repeated hits.

[oneillz808]

for your spikersin -
you have to rely heavily on ctc effects. banish, vindicate, hit causes monster to flee, slow, freeze, anything that does negativity to the enemy.

buffs and ctc buffs are less important - bloodlust, mark of the wild

an exception is shadowform.

[Brother Laz]

Assassins are the one melee class that doesn't need that much defense, provided you abuse Blink (and max PB). Stunned enemies don't hit you.

[PwnyExpress]

Thank you all for your info, Very appriciated! ^_^

Assassins are the one melee class that doesn't need that much defense, provided you abuse Blink (and max PB). Stunned enemies don't hit you.

Now, as others have said, I have refrained from adding more than 1 skill point into Blink, and PB/Premed are both as high as I can get them at level 68. The problem is, I have good killing power, but I don't think my gear is all that great...My best items are probably Ravencage[3], Atom Splitter[3], and The Wailing Wall[3].

Other than that, Its mostly random rares I came across during Hatred.

[enkephalin07]

That doesn't look bad at all -- Atom Splitter is a hard hitter that'll proc like crazy at tier 6. You should be collecting crafting points and runes so you can tier everything up to at least 5 by the end of Terror, tier 6 as soon as you can get the runes.

[oneillz808]

a better claw would be the jewelword [ass claws] anarchy.

get the runeword helm emperor. hel ith eth, its cheap and highly ov---... scratch that, its cheap and powerful.

for boots, get the runeword lionpaw. the celerity is GREAT!

also, do you have a merc.
id recommend ranger, shapeshifter, or necrolyte.

since you have blink, they are always with you when you teleport.

[PwnyExpress]

That doesn't look bad at all -- Atom Splitter is a hard hitter that'll proc like crazy at tier 6. You should be collecting crafting points and runes so you can tier everything up to at least 5 by the end of Terror, tier 6 as soon as you can get the runes.

Two steps ahead of you, my friend! I have -way- too many runes, and with all my crafting gear on, 600+ (I love Decay RW, two claw ones, 200cp right there ^_^).

a better claw would be the jewelword [ass claws] anarchy.

get the runeword helm emperor. hel ith eth, its cheap and highly ov---... scratch that, its cheap and powerful.

for boots, get the runeword lionpaw. the celerity is GREAT!

also, do you have a merc.
id recommend ranger, shapeshifter, or necrolyte.

since you have blink, they are always with you when you teleport.

I made Anarchy once, but I didnt want to use it, because it dropped my damage about 10k. But, is that just lower psn dmg, an Ill do more phys damage?
For boots, I have Pinto RW, nice run speed! The Fire Rune is pretty cool.
Shapeshifter Mercs kick ass, but i was gonna try ranger.

And my Helm is Ravencage, And I love it because of the +skills and other cool mods.

[quigonjinn]

Ravencage rocks. I am completing my crucify/timestrike Assassin using Atom Splitter, Ravencage, and The Gauntlet shield.

I would definitely have at least tier 5 on all of your equipment. I generally wait until 600 attribute completion for tier 6, (if you are doing the attribute challenge, you will be getting about +70 to all attributes from your charm upgrade, book of Akarat (do it twice and keep one of the books) and Horazon's focus. If you are not doing it, you can still get +40-50 attributes from those two ubers, which are easy to complete) so I only spend up to equip T5, keeping this in mind.

If you don't have Crushing Blow, I found the Epicenter jewelword nice, but you do need fast run/walk (at least 30%), so only switch if you can get R/W somewhere else. Since you can attack really fast as Assassin, CB is great. (for me, I needed it to deal with fire immunes, since I only use Way of the Phoenix and Spider and opted for Seismic Field for Uberskilll), so I can timestrike fire immunes to within an inch of their life with the CB and let the poison finish them.

And I would check out "Twister" (Lo-Ort) for belt -- it has stun attack which is very helpful.

[PwnyExpress]

Gah. I wish I had enough runes/money to get all of my gear to T5...But, Good news! I'm up to level 74 now, and I thought out a good idea. I made the "Judge" Runeword, and using that + Crucify + QoB + Hades Gate, I've been successful at not taking very much damage, mostly because no monster can get very close to me! Alas, It takes a while to clear a group of monsters, but Its better than dying every few minutes.

But, Otherwise, If you want to know my gear, or just wanna play with me on TC/IP, Just let me know. I got a Hamachi server up 24/7, and I would Deeply Appriciate any help I could get.

I'm gonna try out the stuff you guys have suggested, and see if I can finally get my Sin into tip-top shape for her Spiker name. Thank you, all! [/u]

[Luke_White]

Good news! I'm up to level 74 now, and I thought out a good idea. I made the "Judge" Runeword, and using that + Crucify + QoB + Hades Gate,

Wow PwnyExpress this "spiker" is sounding frightingly like a Judgesin... lol . (Which is a guide I highly endorse )

What is your ideal end-game weapon anyways?[/quote]

[gbr_oNi]

If you don't have Crushing Blow, I found the Epicenter jewelword nice, but you do need fast run/walk (at least 30%), so only switch if you can get R/W somewhere else.

one abbreviation and one word: FR/W jewels

[PwnyExpress]

If you don't have Crushing Blow, I found the Epicenter jewelword nice, but you do need fast run/walk (at least 30%), so only switch if you can get R/W somewhere else.

one abbreviation and one word: FR/W jewels

Ah, I was lucky enough to solo level challenge 1, and got all 3 of the sunstones. ^_^
So, i have that FR/W, So I am looking for a new pair of booties!