[Shadow Warrior] Experimenting with Assault Stance

[Thorondir]

Instinctive aim isn't in the game and giving up that much toughness is pretty difficult for me to rationalize

One level from instinctive aim. I would think assault spec should be balanced based on all available abilities and not just level 32.

The stat gain vs the toughness loss should be a no brainer. It is a mandatory tactics for anything but a full deftard troll build. Assault spec is what is difficult to rationalize vs the other options.

[Asvaldr]

This whole Full armor or full strength will just not work. Reach a balance.
I am currently sitting at around 700,2.3k strength/armor 5k Hp 225 tough unbuffed. Still messing around with renown but right now: http://waronlinebuilder.org/#renown;400 ... 0000000000 I'd suggest getting some X morale/s items if possible. M2 having it up as much as possible is pretty key as you do not have a heal debuff. For scs distracting rebounds really shouldn't be off your tactic bar.

[Thorondir]

This whole Full armor or full strength will just not work. Reach a balance.
I am currently sitting at around 700,2.3k strength/armor 5k Hp 225 tough unbuffed. Still messing around with renown but right now: http://waronlinebuilder.org/#renown;400 ... 0000000000 I'd suggest getting some X morale/s items if possible. M2 having it up as much as possible is pretty key as you do not have a heal debuff. For scs distracting rebounds really shouldn't be off your tactic bar.

I think you would be better served putting your renown into melee crit strength and weapon skill. It is pointless to build an assault SW for survivability. You are still Rdps and need to move from range to melee to burst on your M2 brutal assault. Then you need to get back out again.

[Foxbeep]

Bumping back into the public eye with the new level cap

Admittedly I haven't gotten to 35 yet, I work two jobs and only get 1-2 hours a night of play time if that.

My new planned build is

http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=sw; ... :;;0:0:0:0:
Assuming 35/40
Extra points in Assault are for extra base damage, remember that "Flanking shot" is actually shadow sting.


Not sure where to go with tactics now. Brutal Assault and No Respite are pretty much necessary and Distracting Rebounds is so useful, but with Instinctive Aim it makes the third tactic choice difficult.

Thoughts?

[peterthepan3]

I'd have opted for the WS/INI buff, surely? (given how laughably bad the SW armor debuff is in assault/skirm spec)

[Foxbeep]

I'd have opted for the WS/INI buff, surely? (given how laughably bad the SW armor debuff is in assault/skirm spec)

My only qualms with picking Wrist Slash is that, with only three tactic slots, we're seriously limited on tactics, most of which are seriously necessary and grim slash does **** damage anyways, it probably pays off more to stack Melee crit with renown and only really close in for VoN + M2 BA combo when your target is all dotted up.

I had the most success playing Assault when 32 was the cap by... get this...

super rarely being in melee range

Which is pretty goofy but it's the only way SWs are even sorta sturdy since armor debuffs are doubled.

[peterthepan3]

LOOOL the armor debuff x2 still applies?! I remember that being a problem on live from day one, and could've swore that Mythic - after several years of being pestered to do so - fixed it? Jebus.
I dunno I just guess the WS can help out a tad. Or, perhaps, use the ballistics tactic so that you can be semi-effective at ranged when you need to be via Skirmish.

[Llanair]

Late to the party but figured i'd share my way of playin' Assault, since Assault spec SW is my fave way to play on WAR and always my main.

I usually keep a strong focus on Weapon Skill, with a secondary focus on Toughness. Strength I don't worry so much about, since i'll typically be doubling it anyway with the BS > Str conversion. I often willingly go into melee, but pick my fights. In my personal experience, an Assault SW's best advantage is high damage with little concern for your opponent's armor value. Sinister assault epitomizes this, popping VoN and then watching that BO's reaction when his armor means nothing at all is forever priceless
Basically, my focus is on surprise and tactics(actual tactics, not mechanical ones) in that I look for troublesome targets or cocky tanks etc who can be easily drawn off into a 1v1 or 1v2, because those are the people that will see your squishyness and think you're easy pray, only to fall victim to high armor penetration. Add that to the high parry you'll gain from all the WS, plus the secondary toughness upgrades if you've done it well and you should be able to put up a reasonable enough defence that you can give almost any class a good run once you're in that crucial short-range for your 15% damage buff.

For those that know the lore behind Shadow Warriors, just play them like how they are portrayed in the story. Use cunning, trickery, ambushes and precision(WS) to rip open your opponent's defences and you won't care how squishy you are, you WILL get regular kills. In particular the trickery/precision combo. You'd be surprised how many people will hold their ground vs a charging SW in assault stance, only to hit flee when you drop the VoN/BA combo-bomb with Sinister Assault on. Especially sword and board tanks whose main strength is their high durability. Take that away from them and there's a fair portion who will panic in one way or another. I myself have been in a few T2 scenarios lately, found tanks blocking doorways in zerg vs zerg fights and all it's taken is me popping that buff and jumping behind them to brutal assault with the full benefits of 100% armor bypass and 9/10 went running back to their healers, even as part of a zerg, because the SW they thought was a non-issue just smashed a 500 basic hit on'em, going up as high as 800-1000 if the 100% morale damage buff is up and that's before we factor in crits.

So, that's my input done, hope someone finds this useful ^_^ see you on the battlefield! o/

[kok]

http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=sw; ... 0:;0:0:0:0:
This is what I run
Wrist Slash approx increase your crt chance on target by 10% from EVERYONE and your dmg by 5~10% (depend on Armor)
while reducing your chance to be crt and debuff target weapon skill.
Sinister Assault only increase your one 5s CD skill dmg by 30%, you may as well get some AP tactic.
(assuming Medium Armor, and your weapon skill remove its armor by 1/3)

Say what you like about Assault, your main dmg will be 2 dots from Skirmisher and Draw Blood . You will be using range skill a lot of time since you can't reach the intended target due to ally blocking, enemy tank blocking, rock blocking, you are snare from all the AOE snare etc etc.
(You can still buff your WS by Grim Slash anyone in font of you)

[bangkokeight]

thought about speccing into assault last week. last time i played that build was prolly 1.34..

the problem as far as i see it is that even up close and personal spiral fetched makes more sense to use than the spammable melee attack (forget the name). This has effectively been the case since the min 5 ft range restriction was removed on bow attacks. That change effectively took away any use for the standard mainstay sword attack.

Even though the spammable sword attack is listed as instant, with a GCD effectively being 1 sec, and a cast time of 1 sec on sfa (gcd starts as soon as you start the cast) there really is no reason to use the melee attack, and as you can get more utility from skirm tree and increase dmg from a sfa by speccing points into skirm the assault spec is pointless imo.

That is not to say the stance is pointless.. a ws build in t4 on live made assault stance very useful in terms of offense (armour pen) and in terms of def (increased armour vs sh) however speccing into the tree as a main tree had pretty limited use.

If , post t4, devs juggle with the build to make it viable.. my suggestion would be to re-implement the 5ft min range on ranged attacks, at least when in assault stance, to balance any buffs the assault tree gets.

Tbh rather than nerfing abilities or base stats the way that the bypass was done (down to 50% from 100%) i would be strongly in favour of increasing the skill required to play it by reintroducing VoN dependencies on the KD, this would have made sw think twice about buffing all their abilities by 25% every 30 secs or so just in case they needed a "oh **** get me outta here" button when a mdps approached.