Assassin Stickies Input Thread

[Thyiad]

Wow.

Nice work max!

[onderduiker]

Silent Shadow's guide is nice, but Ilkori's is a bit more informative and up to date.

What affects kicks?
Physical kick damage is calculated from Strength, Dexterity, Skill Bonuses (kicks and Pally Auras), Boot Damage, and %ED from equipment, only. This is not including mods such as elemental damage. Weapon physical damage is completely useless, meaning you want to choose weapons for other mods. Here are the other properties that do work with kicks:

• Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, Slow Target
• Magic, Elemental, and Poison Damage (not displayed on the character screen)
• Knockback (Dragon Talon and Tail have their own knockback, only works for Dragon Flight)
• Life/Mana steal and Life/Mana after kills
• %Chance to Cast on Attack/Strike
• +% Damage (except from weapon)
• +AR (except on your weapon)

Weapon + Attack Rating of any kind (Based on Character Level, Undead or Demons) does apply to Dragon Talon, Dragon Tail and Dragon Flight, it's just not displayed by the character screen.

Faster Block Rate

             Block Rate Frames                    
             5     4     3     2     1
Assassin     0    13    32    86   600

Faster Block Rate has no effect on Weapon Block speed.

Faster Block Rate does affect Weapon Block, although the only applicable item is Guardian Angel Unique Templar Coat (30 FBR, which increases block rate from 5 to 4 frames). Confirmed by frame-by-frame video analysis.

Next Delay
NextDelay is a property that activates a hidden "hit timer" that limits how often any attack from that group can damage a single target. This works similarly to the infamous spell timer, which limits how often any spell in that group can be cast. The difference is that the hit timer doesn't prevent you from attacking, it just sets everyone's chance-to-hit that monster (with a hit timer attack) at zero until the timer runs out.

Assassin skillsaffected by NextDelay

25-Frame Delay (1 second)
Shock Web
Blade Sentinel

4-Frame Delay (0.16 seconds)
Wake of Fire
Claws of Thunder
Phoenix Strike
Dragon Flight

When a missile flagged with Next Delay collides with a target, it prevents any other missile flagged with Next Delay from colliding with that target for the length of that missile's delay. Wake of Fire's 4 frame next delay prevents any of its other missiles from colliding with a target more than once every 5 frames, so it can never apply its displayed damage more than five times per second. Dragon Flight has no Next Delay: 4 frame Next Delay is applied by both the nova and bolts of Claws of Thunder, and the lightning and freezing bolts of Phoenix Strike.

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

Lightning Sentry fires bolts every 31 frames (as does Charged Bolt Sentry). Death Sentry fires bolts every 31-32 frames. Confirmed by making the bolts apply poison length, and frame-by-frame video analysis.

* Half this damage applies if using a two handed weapon, regardless of what the LCS says. So for blade sentinel damage with a two handed weapon is 3/16. Not that this is important in a claw guide.

The character screen does not show the 50% penalty to weapon attack damage when using a two-handed weapon with Blade Sentinel or Blade Fury, but it definitely applies in both cases.

(Someone from the SPF Matted a character with BS and claimed that BS gave 3/8 damage even with a 2h weapon. I can't remember who and havent seen any accurate test that has confirmed this)

I suspect this was a combination of trusting the character screen and not knowing that Blade Sentinel (and Blade Fury) skill damage is applied before +% Damage, not after +% Damage as the character screen would have us believe. I don't remember whether Ceramic Weasel tested this after his Blade Fury Analysis, but I'd already done so.

[...]

* Half this damage applies if using a two handed weapon, regardless of what the LCS says, i.e 1/8 in this case.
*** All blade skills have a fixed speed, regardless of IAS on weapons or gear.

Blade Shield does not actually penalise you when using a two-handed weapon. However, unlike Blade Sentinel and Blade Fury, its skill damage is also reduced (to 1/4 like weapon attack damage, although the character screen doesn't display this) and added before +% Damage, as displayed by the character screen.

Blade Shield applies damage upon casting and once a second thereafter, so its attack rate can be improved by continuously casting it.

It's also worth adding that +% Skill Damage applies to Blade Shield damage, but not Blade Fury (or Blade Sentinel).

Claw Mastery

Claw Mastery's +% Attack Rating doesn't apply to Blade Fury.

WB blocks elemental attacks in addition to (normally) unblockable attacks, such as Smite. Here's a list of elemental attacks we've verified to be Blockable or Unblockable with WB. Note that all of the below are Unblockable with normal Shields. Elemental skills denoted with a "?" are unconfirmed.

Class-based elemental skill list (some monster still use the below skills. e.g.. Inferno for Fetish Shaman)

Phoenix Strike/Chain/Lightning/Sentry - Blockable
Wake of/Inferno - Blockable
Skeleton Mage Missiles - Blockable
Teeth - Blockable
Bone Spear - Blockable
Bone Spirit - Blockable
Poison Nova - Blockable
Smite - Blockable
Fist of the Heavens - Blockable
Firebolt/Hydra - Blockable
Fireball - Blockable
Blaze - Unblockable
Firewall - Unblockable
Phoenix Strike/Meteor - Blockable (Meteor impact itself is blocked, not residual flames)
Claws of Thunder/Nova - Blockable
Phoenix Strike/Ice Bolt/Frozen Orb - Blockable (Ice Bolts are blocked with Frozen Orb, not the Orb itself)
Blizzard - Blockable
Molten Boulder - Unblockable
Artic Blast - Blockable
Fissure - Unblockable
Hurricane - Blockable
Shock Web - ?
War Cry - ?
Wake of Fire - ?
Holy Freeze/Shock/Fire Radius Effect - ?
Frozen/Shiver Armor - ?
Volcano - ?

Monster-based elemental skill list

Tainted Lightning Ball - Blockable (no 'tink' sound)
Sand Maggot/Frog Demon/Tentacle Beast Poison Missile - Blockable
Greater Mummy Unholy Bolt - Blockable
Oblivion Knight Missiles - Blockable
Fanatic Enslaved Explosion – Blockable

Demon Imp Fire Missile - Blockable
Succubi Blood Star - Blockable
Baal Hoarfrost - Blockable (once one successful block is achieved, you will no longer take damage or be knocked back by the same Hoarfrost)
Finger Mage Homing Missile - ?
Diablo Red Lightning(Lightning portion) - ?

Weapon Block does apply to the highlighted above (confirmed by increasing the value to 100%). Like Avoid (and Evade), Weapon Block applies to missiles, which include those which apply fire damage per second: however, fire damage is applied every frame, often by multiple missiles. Many others on that list thought unable to be blocked also have multiple opportunities to collide with and thus damage a target:

• Frozen Orb's... er... orb doesn't apply its cold damage and length, it simply generates the bolts which do. However, it generates up to 30 bolts before expiring and 16 bolts released in a nova upon expiry (up to 12 of which can hit a size 2 target like a player if it expires directly over).
• Molten Boulder collides with a target every frame in contact.
• Each Fissure opens 14 size 3 cracks which normally only collide with their last target, but when two targets are over the same crack it collides with them in alternate frames (12.5 times per second on average).

It's far easier just to list what Weapon Block does not block:

• Holy Fire radial damage
• Holy Freeze radial damage
• Holy Shock radial damage
• Shiver Armour cold damage
• Attacker Takes (Lightning) Damage
• Returned damage from Thorns, Iron Maiden, Iron Golem and Spirit of Barbs
• Nihlathak Corpse Explosion
• Corpse Explosion
• Death Sentry corpse explosion
• Monsters using Charge (Claw Vipers and Reanimated Horde)
• Psychic Hammer
• Mind Blast
• Telekinesis (?)
• Paladin Smite (?)

Has it been confirmed that a Paladin using Smite can be blocked? It requires a hit-check and can be blocked when used by monsters, and the same applies to a Grizzly's Bear Smite skill.

Cloak of Shadows
1) The enemy vision radius of the monster while blinded is 1, but if a monster to be doing something (e.g.. chasing you) when you cast CoS, he will continue to do so (until you interrupt him, with a Psychic Hammer, for example), then remain stationary when the action is finished.

Blinding a monster reduces its awareness range to its melee range, which varies.

5) The blinding effect of CoS does not work on Bosses, Champions, Super uniques (including Act Bosses), Minions of Destruction, and Oblivion Knights. The -%defense on CoS works on all monsters except Act Bosses.

Suicide Minions and Putrid Defilers aren't blinded either, and neither are static hostile units like Gargoyle Traps and Tentacle Beasts (although -% Defence will still apply). -% Defence applies to all monsters except bosses, which includes Act bosses in all incarnations and the following as well:

• Blood Raven
• Griswold
• Radament
• The Summoner
• Izual
• Putrid Defiler
• Nihlathak
• Uber Izual

7) CoS's defense bonus is treated differently from any other defense modifier (except RibCracker's defense bonus, which is additive with CoS's bonus). Hence, it is multiplicative, not additive, with other defensive modifiers, such as Defiance and Shout.

Cloak of Shadows +% Defence and that of non-armor items like Ribcracker Unique Quarterstaff is added to +% Defence from skills: the same applies to item_armor_percent from all the other sources listed later. It's been assumed that, because item_armor_percent is applied instead of skill_armor_percent, the two stats are applied separately, but testing has confirmed that this is not the case: for once, the character screen is actually accurate.

Both the Shadow Master and Shadow Warrior come with inbuilt resistances. However, up till the level 17, the Shadow Master gains elemental resistance at a greater rate. Beyond that, SWarriors spawn with greater elemental resistance than SMs at the same level. Shadows gain elemental resistance at these rates:
Shadow Warrior: 4 * Slvl <capped at 75% for skill-based elemental bonus>
Shadow Master: 0.75((110*lvl) / (lvl+6)) + 5 <no cap>

While Shadow Warrior gains +min(4*slvl,75) All Resistances, as of 1.13 Shadow Master gains min(5+[85*[(110*slvl)/(slvl+6)]/100],90) All Resistances (the diminishing returns formula reaches its ceiling at level 60). Since a player has more control over what a Shadow Warrior uses, it's easier to make her cast Fade, which can easily result in her becoming Immune to Fire, Lightning, Cold and Poison.

The SM has a life regen of 50 hp/sec, whereas the SWarrior has a life regen of 75 hp/sec.

Warrior has Damage Regen 3, Master has 2: this means Warrior can regenerate 75/4096 (~1.83%) of her maximum life per second, while Master can regenerate 50/4096 (~1.22%) of her maximum life per second. However, note that damage regeneration doesn't apply in frames in which as little as 1 bit (1/256 point) damage is applied, so neither will regenerate while standing in fire (applying fire damage per frame) unless they're Immune to Fire.

However, to gain the synergy bonuses of a certain skill, it must choose to use that skill (for example, a Shadow would need to use Fists of Fire before getting Fists of Fire's synergy bonuses on PS's Meteor. The same principle works with Lightning Traps, for example).

Sentries summoned by Warrior use Assassin's base skill level for synergy bonuses, not Warrior's skill level (and Blade Sentinel uses Assassin's weapon attack damage, not Warrior's). I've yet to confirm whether the same applies to Master.

Mind Blast
Against Champions, random uniques and superuniques(i.e. Council Members), both stun and (physical) damage still works, but stun chance is reduced to 10-20%(length remains the same). Against Act Bosses, only the damage works. Also, all uniques cannot be knocked back by MB.

Stun length has 10% chance of being applied to Champion, Unique and Super Unique monsters, with no further penalties (so length is the same). Monsters without a knockback mode cannot be knocked back, but while this applies to some Super Unique and boss monsters (like Griswold, Izual, Nihlathak and the Ancients) it certainly does not apply to all (like Blood Raven, the Smith, the Summoner and Hephasto the Armorer).

Q: Can I pre-buff my Venom with +% Poison Skill Damage mods like the ones found on Trang-Oul's Claws and the 'Bramble' runeword? Will the bonuses dissapear right after I take them off?
A: The bonuses will remain. However, the +% bonuses would only apply once(it would only apply twice if you casted Venom and struck the enemy while the +% damage was still on).

+% Poison Skill Damage is applied when Venom is cast, and again when its poison damage is applied by a melee attack. The character screen also applies +% PSD to ranged attack damage, but this does not actually happen.

There has been some debate as to what modifiers work from the secondary claw hit.

Every modifier except Increased Attack Speed applies to attacks made with the secondary claw. See this post for what should be a complete list of secondary claw modifiers which apply to attacks made with the primary claw (or vice versa).

Q: Is there any way to get rid of the 50% damage penalty on the 'Chaos' runeword's WhirlWind?
A: You can try to look for +all skills items for your gear (note that +all assassin skills won't work). You'll need at least 7 +all skills on equipment to get 'Chaos'' slvl 1 Whirlwind out of the negative damage range, though.

This may already be known, but to clarify: Whirlwind applies ((8*slvl)-58)% Damage, which is added to % Damage from all other sources, so the difference between level 1 Whirlwind (-50%) and level 8 Whirlwind (+6%) is just +56% damage: with 120 Strength (+90%), 120 Dexterity (+90%), level 20 Claw Mastery (+111%) and level 17 Might (+200%) this is between +441% and +497% Damage, or 5.41 and 5.97 times weapon damage (that's only ~10% more).



While this compilation is impressive, it's also cumbersome: for the sake of ease of navigation (at the very least) it might be better to add all this information to your Wiki's individual skill pages.

[maxicek]

Many thanks for the update onderduiker. So far I have only really started dumping the (often old / incorrect) information from the old FAQ into a new post. Next step is to correct it, so thanks for your contributions. When that is done, Thy / me / someone else can start with the formatting properly. It needs splitting into multiple posts etc, at the moment it is easier for me to paste into one post from Wordpad.

Thy requested information - who am i to disobey

[Thyiad]

Many thanks to onderduiker and max for that hard work. It is much appreciated.

[onderduiker]

So far I have only really started dumping the (often old / incorrect) information from the old FAQ into a new post. Next step is to correct it, so thanks for your contributions.

Ah, I see.

I'd just like to draw attention to a question raised in my previous post:

Has it been confirmed that a Paladin using Smite can be blocked? It requires a hit-check and can be blocked when used by monsters, and the same applies to a Grizzly's Bear Smite skill.

So, given that Smite and Charge hit-check properties seem to be reversed when used by monsters (Charge always hits and cannot be blocked), and Weapon Block cannot block monster Charge (it always applies damage), has this actually been confirmed for Paladin Smite, or simply assumed based on monster Smite?

UPDATE Mind Blast and Psychic Hammer can to added to the list of things to which Weapon Block does not apply (most likely Telekinesis as well).

[stephan]

Ah, I see.
So, given that Smite and Charge hit-check properties seem to be reversed when used by monsters (Charge always hits and cannot be blocked), and Weapon Block cannot block monster Charge (it always applies damage), has this actually been confirmed for Paladin Smite, or simply assumed based on monster Smite?

I've just done a short test, and it seems weapon block only cancels out the knockback effect of Paladin Smite, but not the damage. I'll put up a video later, cause it's weird.

EDIT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DXHyaV4dwA

It's a little weird. Some blocks divert all damage, some blocks still result in damage. It seems that when damage does come through crushing blow is applied though.

I guess I need to retry with 0 and 100% crushing blow, but it's late so if someone wants to go first...

[stephan]

Ok some more testing then.

First video has a Paladin with no Crushing Blow and Assassin with a level 10 Weapon Block (50%).

There were 20 attacks in total, of which 4 triggered the block animation/sound, which were also the attacks that did no damage.

Second video has a Paladin with 100% Crushing Blow (Rixot's Keen, Guillaume's Face, Rattlecage, Goblin Toes) and an Assassin with again level 10 Weapon Block.

There were 20 attacks in total, of which 6 triggered the block animation/sound, but all attacks did damage.

In total there were 40 attacks of which 10 triggered the blocking animation (25%) which is only half the expected value.

[onderduiker]

Thanks for taking the time to test this, record it and upload videos. Assuming Smite is always applying >= 1 damage with each attack after being reduced to 17% against players (which, based on the magnitude of some of the damage, should be the case), I don't know what to make of it.

Although the Weapon Block animation doesn't always display in the field when the Assassin is being attacked multiple times in quick succession, in controlled conditions like these it should do so.

[Thyiad]

Actually max, if you want to repost your posts, I'll just Sticky that as teh FAQ. It's better than what I did.

[onderduiker]

Something I overlooked:

Blade Shield
Blade Shield's range is locked at 6 (or 4 yards).

Blade Shield has melee range 1-3 against size 1-3 targets, regardless of the weapon equipped.

4 yard radius is based on the assumption that the entry in the Param4 field of Skills.txt actually gets used (or still gets used, if it applied in an earlier patch), but it's clear that it isn't when tested (4 yard radius more or less corresponds to melee range 6).

More generally, it shouldn't be assumed that anything in the .txt files actually gets referenced by the code (and thus applied in game). The suggestion that Blade Shield suffers a further 50% penalty when equipping a two-handed weapon is based on blade shield attachment and blade shield missile being flagged in the Half2HSrc field of Missiles.txt: however, neither of these missiles actually applies Blade Shield's damage so the penalty doesn't apply (confirmed by testing, of course).