User:ZStepmother/A/any

This build focusses on the primary assassin attribute Critical Strikes, combined with weapons from other professions (scythe, axe, bow, ...). Critical Strikes provides the energy management, extra damage (in the form of crits) and IAS to support the attack skills of the secondary profession. An inferior, but still decent alternative for people that need a break from Dagger Spam. This build heavily relies on Critical Agility and Way of the Master to perform, and should not be used in areas with lots of enchantment removal.

= Attributes and Skills = Critical hits always deal maximum weapon damage, making them quite deadly combined with other weapons:
 * 12 in respective attribute, 15wEnch, non-customized weapon
 * Hammer: 57 dmg vs 60 armor, 40 dmg vs 80 armor
 * Scythe: 51 dmg vs 60 armor, 36 dmg vs 80 armor
 * Axe and Bow: 45 dmg vs 60 armor, 32 dmg vs 80 armor
 * Spear: 44 dmg vs 60 armor, 31 dmg vs 80 armor

General optional skills
 * - Counters Crippled and Knock Down and provides Special armor, which ignores the bonus armor cap (which you hit due to )
 * - Counter Blind and block, must take in areas which have lots of these
 * - 75% block chance, refreshes on crits
 * - Heals 16 per crit @3 Shadow Mastery
 * - 75% block chance, refreshes on crits
 * - Heals 16 per crit @3 Shadow Mastery
 * - 75% block chance, refreshes on crits
 * - Heals 16 per crit @3 Shadow Mastery

= Equipment =
 * Armor:
 * 5x Nightstalker's Insignias
 * 1x Rune of Superior Vigor
 * 2x Runes of Vitae or Runes of Attunement, up to player preference
 * Weapon:
 * Vampiric Weapon of Fortitude, with Guided by Fate (15wEnch) as inscription (and Shield of Fortitude or of Devotion when running axe/spear)
 * When using bows, one should use a Shortbow, or a Flatbow for stationary targets (moving targets will strafe your attacks)
 * Since this build's performance heavily drops when you don't have enchantments up, it's recommend to use Guided by Fate as you really shouldn't run these builds if you can't keep them up
 * of Fortitude is used over of Defense because of Critical Agility and the way armor calculation works
 * of Enchanting can be used too, if the player prefers it. Without it, you have 20 seconds between fights before Critical Agility drops, and Way of the Master has a low cast time.
 * of Attribute and of slaying improve your damage a tiny bit
 * Zealous Weapon of Fortitude, with Guided by Fate (15wEnch) as inscription
 * In case you somehow get low on energy (when running expensive enchants as dervish, for example)
 * Flatbow (of Enchanting is the most useful here) for pulling (this should be standard PvE equipment anyway)
 * Optional defensive set (sword/axe/spear and shield of Fortitude (or of Devotion for shield)
 * Optional weapon of Enchanting, to cast Way of the Master, but it's not worth the effort since Way of the Master lasts that long anyway

= Counters =
 * General anti-melee
 * Enchantment removal