Wraith Assassin
Build Concept:
An updated version of the Ghost Sin, where we take the strengths of a WWsin, and then maximize them with 1.14d game mechanics, as the Ghost assassin concept is based on out dated game mechanics.
Try to maximize damage per hit, with the maximum attack speed possible in the game, while still retaining full DR, 55%+ block, 3k+Hit Points, a 9fpa Trap laying speed,
Stunlocking Mindblast cast speed, and a much higher damage output while still using the stun concept of the original ghost build. Depending on how perfect your gear is, these values will climb,
I've just stated the minimums the build works off of. We want to hit the 4 frame breakpoint on BOTH hands, and have each hand hitting over the 4k damage mark, while keeping a ~50% Deadly strike,
and making it so that our opponent cannot change gear to make us innofective. My build will not require perfect items, is very accomplishable without being super rich, and was achieved by me on
multiple ladder seasons. It does not use any prebuff items besides what is on our weapon switch with CTA, and all numbers stated so far are achievable without any JMOD, Faceted, or perfect items.
We will do all of this with maximum resists, the 48%FHR BP, and a minimum of 14k AR @ level 90. The season I finally wrote this build, with no perf items, I have 3600HP with my own non Perf CTA BO,
full DR, Max resists, 9FPA trap lay, 50% DS, 56% Block, and each hand is hitting for almost 4.5k Damage, with no prebuff items equiped. @ level 95, I have 15,100 AR on my Whirlwind. Which is enough
to put the hurt on almost all of the Smiters and Hdins you are going to encounter. This is not including a merc, or auras from an outside source, and no gear swapping, WSM bugging repeatedly, etc, etc.
If you have the bank, or the luck, there is room for improvement. You can easily take each hand over 5k WW dmg, or take your trap damage up several more thousand if you prefer. There is an alt gearing
that is more hybrid styled, with greater mobility as well as a cheap gearset option, that still puts out amazing damage. The most expensive thing you are going to need is a Jah rune, or to buy
an ethereal fools claw if you are lazy. I will also break down the current mechanics of Why our sin is built this way, in the hopes that you get an even better understanding of them then me, and
make more improvements.
We will not rely on physical dmg
We will not rely on lightning dmg
We will not rely on Open Wounds
We will not rely on Poison dmg
The only gear my Sin keeps in stash as swap gear, is a decent Enigma she does not use for PvP, A 3 Socket Nats armor and an assortment of rare claws other then her fools claw, none of which are very valuable.
I do not have a anni on this character at the time of starting the guide, by the time I finished it however, I got her one. It is not required by any means. Without the anni I did not struggle in pvp at all
however with it, I was able to upgrade my gear, and make life much easier for certain matchups.
The mechanics we need to know:
Enhanced Defense:
the way the game calculates enhanced defense isnt quite as straight forward as you might think. After the sum of your equipment, there is your static or global ED modifiers, then on top of that number, it
factors in auras and duration buffs. So if you had 1k defense with your equipment, 100ED from say iron skin, and 100ED shout applied to you,, you end up with 4k defense. When an opponent has -25% target defense
it takes it out of your ED, not out of the actual defense. So 1k+75%+100%, your defense then becomes 3500 for the hit calculations. This is important to know becuase we are making a character that is going
to rely 100% on her ability to hit at a faster rate then any other character in the game. If you have any kind of chance to miss, your damage output is going to drop severely.
Luckily we have and will abuse Cloak of Shadows. For its amazing -60% target defense. My last BvB barb had 38K defense. However after cloak of shadows, he had a whopping 24k Defense. Taking him from needing 15K
AR to land a decent hit against, to being hit often by an opponent with only 12k AR. 12k happens to be right around the mark a single good Ravenfrost, a Fools claw, and some AR SC under your GC's will leave you.
this is one of the important factors in this build that is very often never stated, and why what you think might be a small change, can have devestating effects against certain high defense opponents.
It is crucial that we stay above 12k AR at all times while we are pvping. Personally I set the mark @ 13k AR with a hefty use of Cloak of Shadows, and I have had amazing results.
Damage Reduction:
Damage reduction is our form of resistance to physical damage. It is capped at 50%. I keep my sins over 45% at all times while pvping. As a sin, we get yet another cheat in the form of fade. Every point
invested in the skill Fade gives us 1% more DR while we have fade applied to us. This is why there are 2 gear sets for this build. You can run shako and dungos, shako(ber) and arachs, or dream and dungos.
So far I have been running dream and dungos, this why I am at the 48% FHR breakpoint with minimal charm assistance. I am still in the process of testing what exactly the effects off of slow are with our
insane attack speed, as slow stacks. I however only have 1 cdkey, and no help, so its very slow. What im trying to find out, is that if by the applied stacks of slow we gain anything offensively or defensively.
I havent been able to say for sure if it say reduces my opponents abilitie to hit the last BP on their WW, or if it causes my opponents FHR to be so slow that it is offensively better then the bonuses we get from
a Dream Bone Visage. I cant say for sure that its even better then just using shako and dungos and leaving Fade at lvl1,, so that our lightning sentry is much much more powerful.
Next Delay:
Certain abilities in this game are only allowed to register dmg or effects against any 1 target, once every so many frames.
"NextDelay is a property that activates a hidden "hit timer" that limits how often any attack from that group(i.e. all the skills listed here) can damage a single target. This works similarly to the infamous spell timer, which limits how often any spell in that group can be cast.
The difference is that the hit timer doesn't prevent you from attacking, it just sets everyone's(includes you, your minions/merc, other players(hostile/neutral/allied), and their minions/mercs) chance-to-hit that monster (with a hit timer attack) at zero until the timer runs out.
Here's a list of skills that are affected by NextDelay, and the lengths of them:
25-Frame Delay (1 second)
Shock Web
Blade Sentinel
Twister
Tornado
10-Frame Delay (0.4 seconds)
Volcano (initial eruption)
6-Frame Delay (0.24 seconds)
War Cry
Grim Ward
5-Frame Delay (0.2 seconds)
Fissure
Volcano (small fireball)
4-Frame Delay (0.16 seconds)
Multi Shot
Strafe
Lightning Strike
Chain Lightning
Nova
Frost Nova
Poison Nova
Shock Wave
Fist of Heavens (Holy Bolts)
Wake of Fire
Claws of Thunder (only 2nd and 3rd charge charges have Next Delay. 1st charge does not trigger Next Delay)
Phoenix Strike (only 2nd Chain Lightning and 3rd Chaos Orb charge have Next Delay. 1st charge does not trigger Next Delay)
Dragon Flight
Battle Cry
Battle Command
Battle Orders
So, the moment a certain skill from the list damages a monster, it prevents every other skill on the list from hitting the said monster for the original skill's NextDelay duration
(whether from you or any other character)."
As you can see, several of our abilities are on the list. Including some abilities from items you might think the CTC would be very handy. Because of this, we DO NOT use Wake of Fire traps, EVER.
the biggest mistake I see from other assassins in pvp is droping WoF traps, especially multiple WoF traps, as anything beyond the first one, as you can see, plainly do nothing but limit damage to our
targets from other sources. This is why lots of "Ghost" style assassins have gone to using Enigma as they feel Dragon Flight isnt very useful. When you render your target immune to DF, it isnt very useful...
We dont use enigma, that is for the Hybrid builds. anything with a Lightning Sentry dmg over 5k and WW I consider a Hybrid build, as their trap damage output becomes a vital part of their dmg output.
This build will leave you with a LS of 2k-4k Damage when done. Enough that it cant be ignored or excluded, yet it is "bonus" damage and even required for us to put a target down. The awesome thing about this
is that we share our 5 trap limit with our Shadow. Your shadows traps are just as powerful as yours are. So by keeping 1-2 of these down before we engage, we leave a decent amount of room for our shadow to
drop LS and DS as well, its not needed, but is an awesome bonus when it happens. She will drop all traps, so there is a chance she will put down a WoF or WoI, but it is very rare, and she will only do it
after we engage the target, so she will never cost us our DF damage and hit (sends opponent into HR animation)
Because we teleport for that attack, our shadow will not use DF, as she gets pulled with us. However because we are using a finishing move, this tends to make the Shadow rush to a finisher as well,
causing her to lay down a single or double charge Claw or Talon finisher. This is awesome, and if you use WoF, it will do absolutely nothing to your opponent, because of the timer.
You should also avoid Chance to Cast spells on the list if you can. Again I have zero points into Dragon Flight or martial arts at all, and get it off of my Chaos claw. If you opt not to get thise skill
on your Chaos claw, this build requires that you hard point a single skill point into DF.
Blade Shield:
Next to Cloak of Shadows, this is the probably the most overlooked spell a WW sin has in her arsenal. I have zero points into Blade Shield, can cast it off of my claw. My blade Shield does 1400 damage
to a target within 4 yards of me every 1 second. has a 35% chance to cause Open Wounds, a 10% chance to fast Fireball, and a 100% chance to cause a monster to flee. This skill is absolutely required,
however it is so powerful that if you dont get it on your Chaos claw, I highly recommend dropping 1 hard point into it. It will deal more dmg to our opponent then those points being invested into LS
damage, and its damage is garunteed. The ability to cause OW makes it one of if not the single most damaging PVP ability as far as single hits are concerned that a sin even has. I see a lot of melee
sins opt not to spend the points here, i can almost garuntee you that the decision has cost them overall effectiveness every single time. I was extremely lucky and rolled 100% chance to cause Monster to flee
on my etheral feral claw with fools mod. Now that Ive had it, I would take it again over lots of other desirable mods you can get on your claw, as its shown its usefulness in both PvP and PvM and especially within
Blade Shield.
Attack Rating and Defense:
In this game anytime you attack something it checks your attack rating against your targets defense to calculate your chances of landing a hit on your target. You have heard this a million times.
But based off years of melee pvp, im going to put it into a usable table for you:
3k AR = You will land most hits on targets with up to 5k defense
6k AR = you will land most hits on targets up to 10k defense
9k AR = you will land most hits on targets up to 15k defense
12k AR = you will land most hits on targets up to 20k Defense, targets over 25k defense you will miss consistantly
15k AR = you will land most hits on targets up to 30k Defense, targets over 40k defense you will miss consistently
the jump in accuracy occurs best I can tell from the way the game calculates enhanced defense sources, which starts to have an almost diminishing returns effect when a target is hit with a -defense ability,
which assassins have one of the best abilities to do so with. This is why this build has such a great damage output against the BvB geared barbs, and the Smiters and HDins you will encounter.
Whirlwind:
Whirlwinds attack speed is based off of only 1 weapons IAS, it does not use any other factors, or any IAS off of a weapon. If you are dual wielding, and your weapons have different speeds, IF there is
no enemy within attack range, WW will alternate between which weapon it is using to base its attack speed off of. For this reason, Both of our claws must hit the final breakpoint of WW, which for a claw,
is a weapon speed of -12 on an assassin.
IE you have a warfist equiped. it has a base speed of 10. But your warfist has 20ias ON THE WEAPON ITSELF, this makes your weapon speed -10, you DO NOT meet the requirements for the final breakpoint of ww.
This build relies absolutely on you always hitting the 4 FPA WW breakpoint, if you cant get there with both claws, do not follow this build. You should find a good bramble orientated WWsin build to follow.
Whirlwind does a hit check at 8 frames, 4 frames, and then every frame afterwards that your weapon speed meets the requirements for, this build uses a 4FPA whirlwind, so we will hit check at 8 frames, 4 frames,
and then every 4 frames after that, that our target is within range to attack. At every hit check, WW attempts to hit a target in range with each hand. As we will have close to 15kAR, we will almost always hit
both hands at each hit check. therefore, if you can make sure there is only your opponent in range (not always possible) you will be hitting at a speed of 10+ attacks per second(25 frames) these can still be blocked,
but that is the reason why WW sins put out such absurd damage.
weapon speed of 9 to -11 = 6 FPA WW
weapon speed of -12 or faster = 4 FPA WW
The slower you move while WWing, the more frames your target will be in range to do dmg to, and the longer you will be stuck in WW without control of your character. This balance is up to you.
light armors have no movement penalty, medium armors have 5% penalty, and heavy armors have 10% movement penalties. These are our tools to change our WW movement speed. Personally I recommend that you start
experimenting with this mechanic at the end of your build. Start with an Archon Plate. I found that dropping down from elite armors for medium and heavy armor movements was only truely beneficial if I could
stay in the elite armor class. I currently run my sin with a Superior Diamond Mail Fortitude, and she stashes a Superior Tigulated Mail Enigma for helping friends. I used an Embossed Plate for a long time,
but found the stat investment for the Diamond Mail to be more then worth it.
Venom Damage
Venom is a super short duration potent damage over time buff to your weapons. It makes all sources of poison have a 10 frame duration. Therefore while it is super potent, adding other sources of
poison damage to venom is not recommended, as they will have little to no effect once their duration is reduced to 10 frames(0.4seconds). Venom does get bonuses from %Poison skill damage increasing items,
AT THE TIME THAT VENOM IS CAST. This means you can put on a bramble, (50% PSkill dmg) cast venom, and then take the bramble off to retain the very high damage increase, if you so choose. I do not,
as i dont have time for all that shit. However prebuff venom claws/armor should be noted as an extremely deadly tactic should you so choose.
Now venom has a 10 frame duration, this means that If your venom adds 10,000 dmg, it will do so over 10 frames. So if you are hitting your target every 4 frames, you are only actually using 4000
of your venom damage.
So if you have a venom damage of 1k, with a 4 frame WW, you are only going to gain 400 dmg per hit from venom. This is why we do not wear bramble, against other WWsins you might feel the thorns dmg
quite a bit. I use a Wisp Projector as my offring, and cast my own Spirit of Barbs, seems to do the trick just fine. I also use a 3 Socket Nats armor against other WWsins. 2 5/5 Die Poison Facets
and the third jewel is a rare, -15req/37Def/30ED/9Poison Res. That jewel is over the top and not required. Any -15req jewel will do, and one with ED on it is perfect if you can afford it.