Section 6: Notes

These aren’t really meant to be read start to finish. Read them if you’re bored, if you’re wondering why I chose a piece of gear, or if you’re wondering something about a specific skill. This is generally pretty boring (what else is new?) so it’s not a “required” part of the guide to read, by any means.

Notes on Skills:

Martial arts:

Elemental charge ups:

If you happen to have one of these on your claws (usually people totally ignore them) you can potentially chainlock with them, especially if you’re using BoS…they can get to 5 fpa, and are essentially the same as dclaw, except that the AR and damage is worse. But since dclaw can’t spawn on claws normally (if you craft one you can get it, but you won’t get any other good mods, trust me, it’s an ilvl thing) feel free to try out a charge up for chainlocking. I haven’t personally tested this but if someone does let me know. Plus you might make the other person fall out of their seat laughing, so that’s a plus.

Note that this only works for fists of fire, blades of ice, and claws of thunder. Tiger strike, cobra strike, and phoenix strike are all much slower (max of 7 fpa).

Dragon flight:

Personally I really hate this skill =/ it takes 24 frames, unaffected by ias or fcr. It’s kinda buggy and has a short range. The only plus side is that it aims itself (like psychic hammer, it won't fire without a target) so you can use it if you want, if it’s on your claws. Never never put hard points into it though.

Shadow Disciplines:

Psychic hammer:

Psychic hammer is pretty similar to mindblast. Here’s the rundown of the differences:

-Psychic hammer costs less mana
-psychic hammer does phys and magic damage (very low damage though) whereas mindblast is pure physical. If you’ve bled a bone nec to 1 life this might matter bone shield doesn’t shield the magic damage.
-psychic hammer is very easy to aim…it won’t fire unless your mouse is somewhere near an enemy, and then it will automatically hit them.
-psychic hammer can only hit 1 enemy at a time while mindblast hits everything in its radius.
-Psychic hammer doesn’t put stun on the enemy (although your shadow does this fairly well with mindblast)

In my opinion, psychic hammer is most useful when:

-You’re trying to catch a defensive caster and having trouble getting a namelock…psychic hammer’s auto-aiming attack can give you a second to get that namelock for mindblast
-you need to knockback an enemy quickly and they’re already stunned…i.e. teleport in front of a bowa or windy running out of your traps and push them back into it without needing to get a namelock.

Burst of speed:

As many people are aware, this skill gives efrw, which is not the same thing as on-gear frw, and is why it allows you to run so quickly. It also gives eias. Both ias and frw have diminishing returns, meaning that the difference between 0 and 50 frw is much greater than between 150 and 200. the equation is efrw = (150 x frw) / (150 + frw). If you look closely, you’ll see that this makes it impossible to get 150 efrw.

With standard gear setup (75% frw, dancers + nigma, with maxblock or claw setup it doesn’t matter) and BoS you get a total of 109% efrw, which is equivalent to nearly 400 frw from gear

Now fade is great for its resist, dr%, and curse duration. Against any smiters, windys, cold sorcs, any pally with FoH, or any other elemental with a decent amount of –enemy resist, (and any bowas, bvcs, ghosts, or melee opponents if you’re using claws instead of shield against them) absolutely you want to use fade. But the massive frw and ias stack mean that, against enemies who can’t break your stacked resists, don’t use phys damage, and don’t proc curses (usually it’s better to use BoS vs bone necs for the ias stack against golem and decrep, plus the frw, despite their ability to use curses) it’s better to use BoS. On my assassin I use BoS vs all melee opponents + bowas bvcs and ghosts (with maxblock setup) plus trappers, bone necs, and some fire sorcs (depending on what gear I’m wearing, and what I think they’re wearing). Also, if you’re at like 50 life you might as well use BoS since your resist and dr% won’t matter. There’s sort of a knee-jerk reaction toward fade for HLD assassins, but really BoS is extremely useful on c/c assassins as well.

Cloak of Shadows:

A few tests I’ve done with this skill have told me this:

-enemies are completely visible in CoS, however the background becomes black outside of your light radius. So it actually makes enemies slightly easier to see, without any distracting background. They’re just floating in blackness. However, in the far corners of the screen they can hide in the shadows (as can you) although it’s a pretty small area that of the screen.
-minions (traps, shadows, and anything else you or your opponent might summon) are completely hidden in the darkness. You can do interesting things with the extra range trick and hidden traps.
-as long as your enemy is on your minimap he will be affected by the darkness until it wears off or he leaves the area. If he’s off your minimap when you cast it, no effect.
-your shadow can still function fine in the shadows, however your enemy's minions won’t if they’re hit by CoS (this is very useful in some cases if you need to nullify their minions, for instance necro’s golem’s slow or necro summoners…in case summoners weren’t already easy enough with mindblast)
-enemy assassins can cast a CoS over yours, and both will take effect. Meaning he can make your shadow useless too. Be sure to cast your own CoS if your enemy does…it can’t hurt anything, it’s already dark so you just nullify his minions and retake the def difference.
-there’s a hidden delay on CoS…it won’t let you recast it until the duration is already over. There's no red color like casting delays, it just won’t let you. So try to get good at figuring out the point where you can recast (it slowly brightens as it wears off).
-you get a larger light radius than your enemy if you cast CoS.

Claw block:

Claw block blocks a LOT of things. But not everything. Here’s all the pvp damage skills it can’t block. (obviously it doesn’t block curses or inner sight or non-damage things like that)

poison clouds (poison explosion or plague/poison java)
mindblast
psychic hammer
shock web
cold explosion from BoI
firestorm
poison creeper
fire golem's aura (it's attacks are blockable)
corpse explosion
holy fire/freeze/shock auras
smite is blockable, but you get stun even if you block it for some reason (this isn't true of other stun attacks like shock wave, stun, warcry, etc).
static field
shiver armor
telekinesis

As you probably notice, most of these skills suck in pvp. However, it's worth noting that it doesn't block mindblast, poison java, psychic hammer, auras, shiver armor, or smite's stun effect.

Fade:

Almost everyone knows this, but I’ll reiterate it anyway…each level of fade gives 1% dr while it’s active. This is true for soft points and hard points, whatever level it’s cast at. yes you can prebuff it, however be aware that this may cause you to be fat.

Venom:

Venom is very overrated. On ghosts, they hit so many times that venom almost never goes to completion. If they have good AR and phys damage, their phys, magic, and OW damage should be about 80% of their damage. So don’t feel like you’re missing out on high venom with maxing mindblast and traps, venom isn’t that great.

Shadow master:

The skills of your shadow are equal to:

1/2 the level you cast your shadow at, rounded down (hard and soft points) + 1/2 the level of that particular skill you have (hard points only), with a minimum of 1.

The arreat summit, by the way, is wrong on this point. I’ve tested this personally.

The higher level of the skill your shadow has, the more it will use it. however it naturally favors some skills (i.e. it will use Dflight tons even with no points into it, and it rarely, RARELY uses charged bolt sentry even though it’s maxed).

Shadow warriors can’t claw block, but masters can.

At level 17, your shadow master will be immune a LOT to various elements. It really pisses off sorcs and is hillarious. although conviction or lower resistance auras can't break it easily most of the time (but not cold mastery, facets, etc)

Here’s the list of the gear they get (courtesy of the arreat summit):

Lvl 17 Rare Amulet
Lvl 13 Rare Ring left
Lvl 11 Rare Suwayyah, War Fist or Scissors Suwayyah in right hand
Lvl 11 Rare Battle Cestus, Runic Talons or Scissor Suwayyah in left hand
Lvl 11 Rare Vambraces or Ogre Gauntlets
Lvl 11 Rare Ring right
Lvl 11 Rare Armor; same type as Assasin
Lvl 11 Rare Helm; same type as Assasin
Lvl 9 Magic Ring right
Lvl 6 Magic Suwayyah, War Fist or Scissors Suwayyah in right hand
Lvl 6 Magic Battle Cestus, Runic Talons or Scissors Suwayyah in left hand
Lvl 6 Magic Bramble Mitts or Vambraces
Lvl 6 Magic Armor; same type as Assasin
Lvl 6 Magic Helm; same type as Assasin
Lvl 5 Superior Bramble Mitts, Vambraces or Ogre Gauntlets
Lvl 1 Superior Suwayyah, War Fist or Scissors Suwayyah in right hand
Lvl 1 Superior Battle Cestus, Runic Talons or Scissors Suwayyah in left hand
Lvl 1 Superior Armor; same type as Assasin
Lvl 1 Superior Helm; same type as Assasin

Shadow master appears (during my tests) to do 1/12 the listed damage of its skills in pvp (you do 1/6) so its traps are absolute garbage in terms of damage.

Lightning sentry:

Lightning sentry IS NOT AFFECTED BY +% LIGHTNING SKILL DAMAGE OR -% ENEMY LIGHTNING RESIST ARE WE CLEAR???

Some stats on lightning sentry, courtesy of Tienje/dumpling (i haven't actually checked them but they sound correct):

Lightning Sentry
Initial Delay – 33 frames
Firing Speed – 30 fpa
NextDelay – None
Shots – 10

Wake of fire:

Some stats on WoF, again courtesy of Tienje/Dumping:

Wake of Fire
Initial Delay – 40 frames
Firing Speed – 17 fpa
NextDelay – 4 frames
Shots – 5

You’ll notice the much faster fpa than LS, this is why it’s useful for stunning. Also, its shots are wider (but shorter).

Blade shield:

Blade shield does rely on AR and seems to follow the same AR as your normal attack, although I can’t tell for sure.

What works with blade shield?
-deadly strike
-elemental damage including venom (1/4 effectiveness)
-life and mana leech
-weapon damage (1/4)
-chance to cast on attack procs (but not “on striking”)

cold damage can chill them but chance to freeze won’t work, nor will OW, crushing blow, etc.

blade shield sets of shiver armor but not chilling armor.

Notes on Equipment Choices:

Griffons (dah dah DUMMMM):

There’s been a looooot of debate on this issue. Honestly, I’m sick of talking about it, but I’ll lay it out one more time. It is 100% true that griffons does not really boost trap damage, or lower enemy resistances. I’ve tested this personally. However, I still consider it superior to valk in most instances for this build because of the +1 skill (obviously you can’t compare it to any other helms since those don’t allow 102 fcr with claws and nigma). Now +1 skill might not look like much compared to 30% ias, 5% fcr, 30% frw, and 30% fhr, but most of the time it’s better, and I’ll explain why:
-5% fcr makes no difference as long as you have a 17+ fcr amulet.
-30% frw is, seriously, miniscule. If you doubt me on this, I suggest you take 2 assassins, one with 75 frw and the other with 105, and run them against each other. It’s almost impossible to tell the difference for the first 30-50 feet or so.
-30% fhr is really just equivalent to life. Since you’ll only be needing 48 fhr on your c/c setup, it basically equals 80 life, which is around 140-150 after bo.
-30% ias is nice, actually. It means you don’t need a 15/15 jewel in your helm, although I would say that a 15 res/mods jewel is probably the best choice anyway. However, the truly nice thing about the 30 ias is that, with the ias boost from chaos, you have enough stacked ias to negate 10% slow from arachs or nos and still get 9 frame trapping. Now, if you’re using switches this isn’t a huge deal, since vs bowas, bvcs, ghosts, and basically every build except smiters that uses any amount of slow, you’ll be using mb setup which will switch helms. But if you don’t like to switch gear, this is a somewhat important consideration. Although you can always use wsm bug to avoid the slow effect and get the same socketing flexibility.
Ok, so that’s what we get from valk: 145 life, slightly more flexibility with amulets, miniscule frw, and more flexibility in socketing options. Now lets look at why we need –need- the +1 allskills. What skills does it give us?
-battle orders
-battle command
-whirlwind
-lightning sentry
-fireblast
-mindblast
-claw block
-venom
-claw mastery
-burst of speed (vs ghosts and hammerdins)
-fade
-shadow master
-CoS (dubiously useful)
-dflight and blade shield, if you get them as a staffmod on your claws
so as you can see, there’s a LOT of useful skills for this build wrapped up in that single mod. Battle orders is equivalent to 65 life or so, depending on your other gear, so that cancels out some of the fhr life down to 80 life after bo, plus of course there’s the added duration for both war cries which I consider to be quite useful especially if you’re wsm bugging. Whirlwind + claw master make a total of +15% ar and +12% ed. The AR is more important than the damage since your AR is so god-awful with this build and you want to have at least a half-decent chance for OW. Of course lightning sentry is one of the bigger advantages, same with fireblast (which gets about a 10% damage boost from that 1 skill!) mindblast gives another 1 damage or so after pvp penalties which can easily add up to 20 damage over the course of the duel…not a lot, but equivalent to essentially a 20 life boost, plus a .2 second stun increase (by the way, it does NOT increase anything for shadow master, who doesn’t benefit from soft skill bonuses to your skills), so that’s nice. Claw block is crucial in my opinion, you get 55% with valk and 56% with griffons. If you are set on valk, I’d put 2 into block in order to get 56%. If you plan on leveling to 99 then that’s ok, but for people who are not insane, it means -1 lightning sentry (but yes, it’s worth it for the extra 1% block) so that’s about 350 lightning sentry and 150 from the synergy, so it gets around 500 extra damage which is around 4% extra damage, whereas 80 life from valk is around 2% more life. So you can see in terms of pure stats, griffons is clearly better.
Now valk’s still got the extra frw and flexibility, which is harder to quantify. If you were to tell me that you felt another 1 foot per minute of runspeed is critically important, there’s not much I can say. Versus the majority of opponents you won’t be running, but in a number of instances it can be quite useful: you lose clawblock while running, but you’re also fairly hard to hit since you can respond faster, and namelocks become significantly less useful. Also, if you’re vs bone necs or hammerdins where you’re using BoS, you’ll be able to desynch. So yes, frw does make a difference. But, I would argue, considering how much frw you already HAVE, and considering diminishing returns on it, I don’t feel the frw boost on valk is really worth considering. Test it if you want to make up your mind by yourself, and feel free to disagree.
Flexibility is also tough. Personally I love my 17 fcr amulet for the res it provides, and I don’t see myself changing it in the foreseeable future. Since vs all but smiter, the characters capable of slowing you are better off dueling with mb switch, where you won’t be using griffs or valk anyway, so I don’t see the ias as being critical except insofar as it gives you more socketing options (also, ofc if they’re using tgods they get no more slow). Now when I look at all the other mods given by griffs, I think the choice is pretty clear. If you test the frw and think it’s a major issue, or you never plan on switching gear and fear arach, or you’re just so rich you can’t stand it and want everyone to see you overpayed like fuck on your helm, then be my guest. But griffs is every bit as viable a helm for trappers as valk is, and better on this build...and believe me, i've got even more math sitting around to back it up.

Shadow dancers:

I’m always surprised when people shun these boots on assassins, how many boots do you know with skill bonuses? There’s only 3 that I can think of (gorefoot, tearhaunch, and marrowalk) and each of those only have a particular skill boost instead of an entire tree. Not to mention the frw, massive dex boost, and more fhr than any other boots. Hell, lots of non-assassins use these boots! For this build though, it’s absolutely critical…it boosts all your important shadow skills, including claw block (which would only be 54% without them, instead of 56%...that’s equivalent to several hundred life) shadow master (gives it its final piece of gear and +1 all skills, in addition to the inherent bonuses it gets to life, def, etc.), claw mastery and venom for a little more ww AR and damage, fade for some more dr and res (equivalent to over a hundred life vs phys opponents), and of course mindblast. The skills are definitely the main reason you NEED these boots. The fhr is a second, that’ll save you quite a bit of life even versus 20% fhr dupeboots (you’ll end up with around 72 more life than with dupeboots), the frw is useful for movement to some extent (note that the difference between griffs + wws and griffs + dancers is bigger than the difference than griffs + dancers and valk + dancers…the frw is substantially more, well, substantial because you only have 45 w/o dancers) and the dex boost makes up for the strength requirements…yes really. If you didn’t have any dex on your boots (i.e. with wraith brands on wscnl, probably the best rare boots in existance) then you’d need to get it on rings. With dancers, you’ve already got enough dex, so you can get strength on rings. So basically the only difference is that you’re looking for +str fcr rings instead of +dex fcr rings. So in the end, wraith brands have res that you don’t need compared to a massively helpful skill boost, more life, and a big boost to your maxblock setup on dancers. I won’t go into OTHER trappers, but for this one, dancers are far and away the best boots.

Chaos:

There’s a lot of advantages to whirlwind, and if you’ve played a hybrid before you’ll probably understand them better. Especially for this build, I’ve got a good focus on open wounds with 50/25% on the two claws, and if you get OW once every 2-3 duels that makes up for the loss of trap damage. The +2 bonus to shadow doesn’t do as much as you’d hope, since it doesn’t hit more % claw block, the fade isn’t needed, you already have 17 master, and +venom, +claw mastery, and the debuff enemy def on CoS don’t mean anything if you don’t have whirlwind, and def buff from CoS doesn’t matter since you’re using w/s vs characters where your defense matters anyway so you wont have the +2 from the extra trap claw. So that pretty much leaves mindblast. Bleh. So as long as you get OW every once in a while, it basically pays for itself.
Besides that, there’s a lot of other good uses for whirwind. Here’s a basic list:
-Additional hits for more stun
-a fast-acting offensive attack for catching defensive casters that traps just can’t provide
-escape stunlock in difficult situations while maintaining block
-whirl-away versus melee opponents makes you much harder to hit
you may find uses of your own for whirlwind, but those are the essential ones.
In my opinion, the fast-action of whirlwind cannot be underestimated, and it’s much of what makes whirlwind better than kicks in my eyes. Whenever you teleport, there are exactly 5 frames before anything happens, 1 frame for the actual teleport action, and 4 frames after the teleport action for the casting animation to finish. Then there’s 7 frames for the initial kick of dtalon, which means you have 11 frames after you teleport on them before you hit. That’s enough for them to teleport away. With whirlwind, there’s a much shorter delay for the initial attack, only 2 frames I believe, for a total of 6 frames, so it’s completely possible to get on top of a caster even if they’re constantly teleporting. You also don’t need to get a namelock to do this, however the downside is that you might accidentally make a long whirl, and you can’t chainlock as easily (it’s possible, but not really desireable to do so). However, kicks do proc hellfire, orb, etc plus the chainlocking and they keep minion stack up while attacking. In the end, I’d say whirlwind is better for getting OW on defensive casters and all the nice movement things, whereas kicks are better for additional stunlock when you already have them in stun. Also, with kicks you basically need a foolsmod claw to have enough chance to hit, so you still don’t get +2 skills (without fools, you’ll probably miss your kicks and get retaliated against), and it’s harder to get good skills on a 2 socket foolsmod with ias (needs ias to be used primary to give its mods to kicks) than a chaos. It’s really preference…I prefer chaos.

Also, I get a lot of people complaining about the low (mine is 2K) AR. admittedly it's pretty bad AR, but keep in mind it's mostly just for OW. Also, I'd point out that fury + chaos trapbased hybrids get about the same AR, in fact I think my old hybrid had slightly less AR than this one (20XX vs 21XX on my spider). So yes, the AR is bad but you just don't need that much anyway, especially if you're using CoS. whirlwind is fairly useless versus high def/high block characters anyway except as movement.

Trap claw:

On a similar note, some people want to use a foolsmod for the secondary claw to make ww better. I’m against it. reason #1, you lose the claw block and shadow master levels you want, your traps will weaken, as will your other shadow skills. Reason #2, your ww damage will still suck, period. In terms of damage, its only real goal is to get OW. While a foolsmod makes this more likely, against casters it should only take a decent whirl or two anyway. If you can get a 2/3 foolsmod GT, then go for it, that would be somewhat better than a plain 2/3/2 in terms of chance to get OW most of the time (but not a lot). If you can get a 2/3/2 foolsmod, that would be the absolute best option, assuming some actually exist. For the vast majority of people, though, a plain ol' 2/3/2 is the best option.

Trangs:

It’s actually a tough choice between gloves. Use mages if you prefer them. Mages give +1 to fireblast and some mana regen (and more def if you double-up them), whereas trangs give a venom boost and cold resist. On hybrids, trangs are much much better, but on this build it’s somewhat iffy. Assuming you’re already switching gear for cold res, the cold res just saves stash space instead of actually making cold sorcs any easier. And the venom damage is so bad that even the massive boost trangs gives (over 50% since it’s applied on top of itself) doesn’t make a big difference. I chose trangs because I like using ww more than fireblast, but if you like fireblast or have any mana issues, mages could be a better idea, just make sure you have enough cold stack in your stash.

20/5 charms:

I don’t recommend 20/17 charms because, quite frankly, this build is designed to work with mana pots. You want enough mana to get the full benefit of the mana potions you’re using, but past that, it doesn’t make much of a difference unless you run out of potions routinely. If you aren’t allowed to use mana potions, or they’re restricted, then you might wanna use mana on your charms, but I wouldn’t use this build in those situations because high-life enemies with tgods will simply take too long to kill, even if most of your traps connect. So, resists are the best option.

Section 7: credits

Thanks to:

Gamblerguy7: donated me loads of fg (over 1500 currently) to help me put the finishing touches on Heretic, much thanks!
Drdemon: baaled me up to those high levels, would have taken ages without ya.
Ixtankerxi: helped get me started on this site with loans and vouches and such, always on my top 6
Yankzfan: 300 fg + support of the guide
xepo: his site, besides his horrible errors and poor logic with the GT vs runic comparison is quite nice and you should check it out.
xsmithenatorx2: helped me get my chaos and provided me with lots of ava duels, all of which mean nothing yet since i haven't released the strategy section
wukillabee, the_rain, trae8, public_enemy, and many others: for devoting so much of their limited time on this earth in fruitless efforts to annoy me.
redtube: the picture at the top
speedlander: for first getting me involved in assassins with his guide.
thatwasshockin, alia, and anyone else who's put up with my dueling: yeah, i swear i'll get that strategy section finished. really. soon. definitely before diablo 3 comes out.
anyone who's actually appreciated my guide: wow, non-assholes in the S&G? what's up with that?
god: for staying the fuck out of my way.
this section: for helping me thank people.
airplanes: for driving me to new heights.
maps: i'd be lost without you.
oxygen: whenever i'm away from you baby, I feel like i'm dying.
water: for being cool.
asparagus: for giving me something to hate.
my mind: i forgot what i was going to thank you for.
cushions: it would be a hard world without you.
sugar: you're so sweet (i apologize for that one)
the number 3: because you can't spell leet without 3.
words: without them, asdfew sdfew fherg.
you: for still reading this far. seriously? nothing better to do? damn. go get a job.

THE. END.

gay

afraid not, you'll have to find someone else.

fuck i thought i finally found someone

'raar' means 'weird' in Dutch.

i like it 9/10 but im afraid of this spider pic =/

This post was edited by OnizukaPM on Jul 13 2008 05:01am

alright guide but elephant >

[QUOTE=Ziecheik,Sun, Jul 13 2008, 04:07am]alright guide but elephant >


roflmao `



This post was edited by WuKiLLaBee on Jul 13 2008 05:09am