Guide:Assassin

The Assassin is a very niche class. While the Assassin is a melee class, they have far less armor (70 total) compared to their melee brethren the Warriors and far fewer protective spells than the  Dervish. What an Assassin can do is attempt to spike a single target fast enough to score a kill. The Assassin has 4 pips of energy regeneration and 25 energy.

Primary Weapon
The Assassin's Primary weapons are the Daggers. They are two handed weapons linked to the Dagger Mastery Attribute and deal 7-17 slashing or piercing damage maximum. They are melee weapons whose main advantage over other weapons is the chance of a Double Strike and the use of skill combinations. Although the attack interval of daggers is the same as that of an axe or sword, the net number of attacks is greater due to the chance of a Double Strike.

Critical Strikes
The Assassin's primary attribute is what makes it so different from every other class.
 * "The chance for critical hits increases 1% for each attribute point spent in Critical Strikes. For each critical hit, the Assassin receives 1 energy at rank 3 and above, 2 energy at rank 8 and above, and 3 energy at rank 13 and above."

This means that every time you make a critical hit (which will be often with higher ranks), you gain energy. If only being used as Energy Management, don't increase it above either rank 8 or 13 since it's a waste of attribute points.

Dagger Mastery

 * "The damage and effectiveness of Dagger strikes, dagger-based skills, and the chance to inflict a critical hit increases with rank in Dagger Mastery. Also, there's a 2% chance per rank in Dagger Mastery that attacks from your daggers will double strike."

The daggers are the Assassin's weapon of choice. With double strikes, your chance to score a critical hit increases as well. Daggers as a weapon have the lowest base damage but highest rate of attack which means they can stack well with "on attack" damage bonuses and can execute a spike very rapidly.

Deadly Arts

 * "No Inherent effect. Many assassins skills, especially those related to harming enemies, become more effective with higher Deadly Arts."

The Deadly Arts line encompasses almost every Assassin hex and every ranged attack that pure Assassins have access to. Deadly Arts has snares such as Siphon Speed and Shadow Prison. Also, Deadly Arts has skills that make your opponent weaker to your attacks such as Siphon Strength or Expose Defenses.

Shadow Arts

 * "No inherent effect. Many Assassin skills, especially those related to defense and moving as a shadow, become more effective with higher Shadow Arts."

Whereas Deadly Arts focuses on making enemies weaker, Shadow Arts focuses on making you stronger. Shadow Arts contains the Assassin's only self-heals: Shadow Refuge and Feigned Neutrality. It also contains self-augmentive skills that make it miss less often or make more double strikes.

PvP

 * Coward Pressure uses attack skills with short activation times to put pressure on opposing monks.
 * The Assacaster is popular in random arenas as an easy way to deal damage that cannot easily be protected against.
 * Way of the Assassin is another build that utilises low-activation skills, but also combines them with attack buffs to increase damage dealt.

PvE

 * Shadow Form Tanks are often used in speedclears, like FoW Manly Spike.
 * The Critical Scythe Assassin is a PvE build which uses a scythe combined with a high Critical Strikes level to deal large amounts of damage to balled-up foes.
 * The Dagger Spammer uses a fast-recharging attack chain to spam Death Blossom, striking multiple adjacent foes for large amounts of damage.
 * Assassin's Promise Spiker for quick kills for players too lazy to use Dagger Spammer.