User:The Gates Assassin/Sin Balance

My Goal

It's painfully difficult to come up with good builds for assassins outside of the meta. In the end, it's so difficulty to get the most important things that sins need that most builds are strictly inferior to mainstream builds like Wastrel's Collapse. My goal isn't to make sins more powerful, it's to make them more diverse.

My other goal is to get rid of the clumsiness of a lot of the assassin skills by weakening their effect and increasing their useability. There seems to be a ton of assassin skills with either a rediculously powerful effect but horrible downsides or horrible downsides for no reason at all.

tl;dr

• Sins are not overpowered, but they lack variety.
• These aren't aimed at making sins more threatening, just more varied.
• Dagger Mastery has too few of viable combos.
• Many skills have ridiculously harsh downsides.
• These updates would make sin skills smaller in effect and faster/easier in use.

Critical Strikes

Black Lotus Strike Increase energy gain to 5..16.

Lotus strike's only condition is that you do a lead attack before it. This requires a hex. Mind as well make it a bit more worth it.

Dark Apostasy - Reduce recharge to 10. Reduce energy cost to 5. Reword to "Your critical hits while wielding daggers remove enchantments. You lose 10..5..4 energy for each enchantment removed in this way.

The ultimate weakness to this skill is the ability to strip it off. Recasting it is costly, even when stacking Critical Strike with Critical Eye. The skill itself is really powerful and really shouldn't be something that ranged weapons should access. I see this as a skill that a sin uses for pressure builds.

Dark Apostasy - (PvE) Reduce recharge to 10. Reduce energy cost to 5. Reword to "Your critical hits while wielding daggers remove enchantments. Whenever you remove an enchantment, that foe takes 10..30 damage."

Deadly Haste - Reduce energy cost to 5. Reduce cast time to 3/4. Reword to "You move 25% faster for 0-9 seconds. This skill is reapplied when you achieve a critical hit."

The current form of this skill is interesting, but with Deadly Paradox available, half range builds will go to that for a hard to remove boost. Instead, this would give sins a viable speed boost and an enchantment for spike build requiring that.

Seeping Wound - Reduce energy cost to 10. Increase casting time to 1. Increase recharge to 15. Reword to "Target foe moves 33% slower and takes 0..12 damage per second while suffering from a condition for 0..9."

Max damage potential of this skill is 12*9 or 108 damage (Instead of 200ish currently). Now both of the effects are conditional and require conditions. At one second, it's much easier to interrupt.

Sharpen Daggers - Reduce cast time to 1/4. Reduce recharge to 10.

This skill doesn't do much anyways. Mind as well make it easier to use and reapply.

Or

Sharpen Daggers - Reword to "For the next 0-10 seconds, you next dagger attack causes crippled for 1..6 seconds."

Now instead of giving conditions we can get pretty easily otherwise, we're opening up new ways to do sin combos.

Sharpen Daggers - (PvE) Reduce cast time to 1/4. Reduce recharge to 10. Reword to "For the next 5..25 seconds, your next 1..7 dual attacks cause a deep wound for 2..9 seconds."

Dagger Mastery

Desperate Strike - Increase recharge to 10. Reword to "If you have less than 60..90% health, you deal +5..20 damage and gain 20..80 health."

Instead of it just being something you can't control for extra damage, it's now a fair healing option in dagger mastery. Possibly move it to shadow arts with this idea.

Or on the idea of the warrior skills

Desperate Strike - Increase recharge to 15. Reword to "Target foe takes +10..30 damage suffers from one of the following conditions: Cripple (10 seconds), Deep Wound (10 seconds) or Bleeding (15 seconds). After this skill is used, you lose 10 energy."

Fox's Promise - Reduce energy cost to 5. Reduce recharge to 15. Reword to "Your next 1-4 dagger attacks are unblockable for the next 1..20 seconds. You lose the blind and cripple condition."

Smaller effect but gives sins all they really need.

Fox's Promise - (PvE) Decrease cast time to 1/4. Reword to "You cannot miss with dagger attacks for 2..20 seconds."

Repeating Strike - Increase recharge to 12. Reword to "Dual Attack. Must follow a dual attack. If this attack hits, you deal +10..30 damage."

This skill encourages play that shouldn't happen. Spam. There is no skill in spam. It's also just not a very good way to pressure someone. Damage isn't usually the best way to pressure someone, it's KDs and hexes and interrupts that really put the pressure on. Instead of being repeating because it repeats itself, it's now repeating because it goes off of another dual attack. Powerful and opens up new combos.

Deadly Arts

Crippling Dagger - Decrease cast time to 1/4. Increase recharge to 8.

1 second cast time on something that requires so much timing is odd and not at all like an assassin.

Expose Defenses - Decrease energy cost to 5. Decrease recharge time to 15. Reword to "If target foe is not standing still or knocked down, they cannot block your attack skills for 1..10 seconds."

If the target runs, they can't block you. If the target stays still, they can't get away from you. It's like a mental snare.

Mark of Death - Decrease energy cost to 5. Reword to "For the next 3..14 seconds, target foe has -10 armor against your dagger attack skills. If this foe dies while effected by this hex, this skill is recharged."

I'll save you the calculations or wiki-ing. -10 armor is the equivalent of taking 120% damage.

Sadist's Signet - Reword to "You are healed for 30..60 for each condition on target foe (Max 160).

The most common amount of conditions from an assassin is 2-3 (bleeding, deep wound and poison). So that's 90 health at 0 input and 160 easily at max.

Scorpion Wire - Reword to "For 4..10 seconds, the next time target foe is knocked down, you shadow step to their location. All of your non-dagger skills are disabled for 10 seconds."

Plenty of teamwork related ideas for this one. Also for those who insist on using that awful skill, lightning surge works great with this.

Shadow Fang - Decrease recharge to 20. Decrease energy cost to 5.Reword to "Shadow step to target foe. After 1..15 seconds, you return to your original location and suffer from a deep wound for 15..9 seconds."

45 seconds on a recharge is insane and extremely inactive. The deep wound being after you leave is really awkward because it still needs to be activated. With this, you can put some into deadly arts to choose how long you stay there for with a slight punishment as you leave. Hilariously, you can poof around and use necro skills to transfer a 15 second deep wound on foes.

Shameful Fear - Decrease energy cost to 5. Decrease casting time to 1/4. Reword to "Target foe is hexed with Shameful Fear for 10 seconds. If target foe is moving, that foe suffers from -1..5 health degeneration. If target foe is not moving, that foe suffers from 1..2 health degeneration."

Works well with Enduring Toxin.

Shroud of Silence - Decrease energy cost to 5. Decrease recharge time to 20. Reword to "Enchantment Spell. "For the next 1..5 seconds, the next 1..2 spells to target you fail and their caster's spells are disabled for 1..5 seconds."

or

Shroud of Silence - Decrease energy cost to 5. Decrease recharge time to 20. Reword to "Hex Spell. "For 1..7 seconds, the next 1..3 spells from allies of that foe targeting this foe are disabled for 1..5 seconds. All of your non-Assassin skills are disabled for 10 seconds."

For the second one, disabling the spells would not effect their success. Just recharge time afterwards.

Signet of Shadows - Reduce recharge to 20. Reword to "If target foe is blind, that foe takes 10..50 damage. If that foe is not blind, that foe is blind for 2..8 seconds."

Way of the Empty Palm - "For 5..20 seconds, whenever you use a dagger attack, you gain 2..4..5 energy and deal +1..8 damage."

Nothing in Dagger Mastery Really costs that much, so mind as well give a bonus for any dagger attack.

Shadow Arts

Blinding Powder - Reword to "All adjacent foes are blind for 1..9 seconds. You have a 50% chance to block attacks for 1..3 seconds."

Monk skill.

Caltrops - Reduce energy cost to 5. Increase recharge time to 15. Reword to "Target foe is crippled for 1..10 seconds. If target foe was moving, all adjacent foes are crippled for 1..10 seconds and take 10..40 damage."

Easier to use and requires more skill.

Mirrored Stance - Decrease recharge time to 10. "Remove one stance from target foe. This skill is replaced by that stance for 1..20 seconds."

You have control over what skill you take. Either take something offensive like frenzy or flurry or defensive like monk skills.

Shadow Form (PvP) - Decrease recharge to 30. Reword to "For 1..15 seconds, you are immune to cripple and hexes and move 25% faster, but you cannot attack or target foes with skills."

Flaggers and relic runners.

Way of the Fox - Decrease recharge to 20. "Your next 2..5 dagger attack skills are unblockable for the next 1..15 seconds. If you strike a knocked down foe, this enchantment ends."

Still thinking about this one. Unblockability isn't really something that should exist without some sort of skill requirement or downside. Trying to think of a way to do the former.

No Attribute

Mark of Instability - Decrease energy cost to 5. Decrease recharge to 15.

This skill is so easy to counter because it HUGELY telegraphs the spike. Mind as well make the downsides not so horrible.

Mark of Instability - (PvE) Decrease energy cost to 5. Reword to "All dual attacks on this foe cause a knockdown. If this foe dies while affected by this hex, this skill recharges instantly.

Signet of Twilight - Decrease casting time to 1. Decrease recharge to 15. Reword to "Touch Signet. Target foe loses one enchantment."

Easier to use.

Spirit Walk - Increase recharge to 10. Reword to "Shadow Step to target."

Less stupid by just removing one word =).