Corruption Assassin

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And this is the build I will use for my next assassin, and perhaps first try out on Callesto in time. This build is designed for PvP play specifically individual battles and open world PvP but has some good PvE capabilities.

PvP based PvE capable

Concerning your Corruption build, I'm playing a Corruption assassin right now. He's level 29 at the moment.
I'm not too sure Spirit of Nightfall (tier 3 feat) is that useful. Soul Fragment really come by easily. I must admit I don't have any ability using them just yet, but still. I believe you get one each time you use a combo, and I'm sure I've had two at once with one of my combos... So a feat to get more doesn't seem that useful to me.
Other than that, this build seems pretty good !

The main reason I feated into that skill in that build is not to obtain more soul fragments, but because I could not move further down the tree without dropping some feat points into something already available.

While offhand strikes means more dps, having to use an ability which gives an extremely short duration offhand bonus is relatively useless, so corrupting strikes should be skipped over IMO.

However, you don't capture soul fragments based on combos performed but rather the amount of damage you inflict. Spirit of Nightfall will only decrease the amount of damage needed, and still give you soul fragments if you disengage but have DoTs applied (such as the poison from slow death strikes). And since most of the combos which use soul fragments use all soul fragments you have, and the more you have the more damage the combo does, you want to make sure you max out your soul fragments as quick as possible everytime you engage an enemy. This feat helps with that.

Of course, it's all preference. My builds don't have to be followed to the dot on every i. Personalization is important and fun. It's about how you prefer to play and what skills you generally prefer. What works for me may not work best for you. The builds I post are only for ideas - of course if you want to follow them through and through, feel free to.

I know it depends on people. It helps to discuss it though !

So you say most abilities that use soul fragments use all of them ? From the description, I thought only Death Whirlwind did that. Do Life Leech, Necrotic Leech and Vampyric Nature use them all ?

Faucon wrote:

I know it depends on people. It helps to discuss it though !

So you say most abilities that use soul fragments use all of them ? From the description, I thought only Death Whirlwind did that. Do Life Leech, Necrotic Leech and Vampyric Nature use them all ?

To be honest I have not yet used any of those skills as my PvP assassin is still on white sands and using my White sands pvp build. But from what I understand, Life Leech uses only 1 fragment, Necrotic Leech is empowered with the more soul fragments you use, and Vampyric Nature uses only 1. Also, the innate ability you get at level 1 (i forget the name) that restores stamina by using soul fragments restores more stamina with the more fragments you have stored. And that is an important skill that makes like as an assassin much more easy, as all rogue classes tend to burn stamina very quickly, especially at later levels when 1 combo can easily drain 1/4 or 1/3 of the stamina bar.

The issues comes though when in dungeons. If your fighting a boss and need to utilize all your buffs/debuffs/healing attacks/high damage attacks in a row for the best dps output and to keep you alive from say an AoE the boss casts, you'll need to pull in the soul fragments as quickly as you can. Or in a PvP fight where you can't seem to hit your target with your finishers do to you both strafing and moving around a whole bunch. You'll never pull in your fragments quick enough to use your best attacks and healing attacks unless you can pull them in that much quicker.

Of course, if you really didnt find yourself having an issue with pulling in soul fragments without spirit of nightfall, those 3 points could be well spent in Dark Weapons or Rapid Striking. Swift Strikes will be your best combos, so the quicker and more often you can use it, the better.

I'll see how it goes as I level up. I'll get back to this when I know more !

Ok, so here is my current build.
People say Corruption is good for PvP. I don't know, maybe it is... I'm not too much into PvP. I find it has pretty good survivability in instances, though, allowing me to off-tank pretty well with a healer. I'm rather behind both Cally's Necro and Psyhkie's demo in total output, although my raw dps is higher... Maybe I spend too much time talking...

Anyway, I find Corruption Necro's can get a pretty decent amount of armor, for an assassin. As far as I've tested it, the Unholy Armor feat increases my damage absorption by 1% for every feat point invested. And I gather that will only grow larger when I get a better equipment, and more points in Toughness. Combined with the two healing abilities, it is pretty efficient. I however regret a lack of damaging combos, other than the general ones... I have very little combos/abilities to choose from.

I believe increasing in level will only provide better survivability, especially when reaching the Prediction Feat, which gives you a permanent 10% evade chance bonus...

Corruption has by far more survivability, that is absolutely right. That makes it a bit more defensive overall, which indeed helps in melee fights in PvP. The ability to heal twice alongside the use of a health pot definitely helps stay alive long enough to do enough damage to Conqs, Guards and other heavier armored classes - which is just about all of them with a sin's meaningless cloth CLOTHES, cloth isn't armor . On top of that, they are higher in bursts of damage than a lotus. Lotus will do higher damage in a long run, but in a short fight Corruption has high enough burst damage to take a chunk of hp off a player in a single combo from behind. Combine it with a stealth attack and there aren't many players good enough to make up for a 50% hp deficit early on.

Damage wise in PvE, Corruption can definitely be good, but that is mostly because of the Assassin's qualities overall. The swift strike combos are awesome, and using grim corruption to set up the rest of your assault whether lotus of corruption is sure to tally high damages. Corruption adds a large healing factor and some high instant damage combos similar to some HoX abilities in their sudden explosion of damage, but Lotus adds two offhand attack rate feats and several DoTs, including a feat for a large increase to the DoT from Slow Death Strikes. Over the long haul, all the DoTs and two hits for every attack almost every attack (offhand works during combos, too!) just brings too much to the long fight to not be at the least near the top everytime in a raid or instance. Most of Cally's damage is White Damage, according to Conan Stats, which means lots of offhand smacks, flesh necrosis use and DoT damage.

I agree Lotus brings more DoT.
However, as far as I can tell, Corruption also has one feat to increase Offhand attack, plus another one that gives an ability to increase offhand. It also has a feat to increase unholy damage on offhand attack. It also has a feat to increase DoT for Slow Death Strike.
I think the main difference would be who those trees are good against. Lotus concentrates on killing mages, while Corruption concentrates on killing armored people (therefore the increased survivability, because you need more time to take them down). That's why Corruption deals some unholy damage too, because it ignores armor.
I would however think DoT would be better against tanks and Bursts against mages, but heh...

I actually forgot about the DoT increase from Corruption to Slow Death Strikes. But the Offhand feats in corruption don't proc at nearly as high a rate as the ones from Lotus, and Lotus' feats for it are natural - no short term buffs to it, but rather just a big increase to the frequency of offhand attacks naturally and forever. On top of that, theres a feat that increases damage done with the closer the enemy gets to death. I could start out hitting for day 300-400 everytime a damage number pops up, and by the end of the fight, be hitting for 600-800.

Also, the natural increase to critical hits on all the best combos a Sin has is a great feat, as I critical about half the time now if not more. To top that off, Opportunistic Strike makes sure my next combo begins with a critical, and if you combine it with both Kidney Shots (about a 15% increase to damage) and Lotus Overdose (about a 25% increase to damage) you tend to pull aggro nearly immediately with the amount of damage you do after a combo or two. Which is why I only use 1 at a time in PvE, hehe.

But yes, the thought is that Lotus is best for caster fighting and Corruption best for melee killing. But I'd have to argue that any build, corruption or lotus, would be useful for killing casters. It's not like Lotus receives a feat that has them do more damage to a mage or something. They just get a couple feats that lower spell damage and reflect some spell damage into a debuff on the caster. But if your playing an assassin, you shouldn't be out in the open getting hit with spells anyway, but rather, behind them catching them before they can start harrassing you with spells. And the reason I ditched those feats to begin with is that if I was in the open, getting blasted by spells and slowed or rooted, those feats didnt help at all, I was still dead before I got to the caster. They may have debuffed the caster some, they may have helped me to live a bit longer, they may have prevented any critical strikes from the spells, but it didn't matter when he could spam his spells on me as I tried to close ground. Pretty useless in my opinion, and the reason I dropped them for good. I only kept the Spell Protection feat because it does lower spell damage in general, and thats good in PvE and PvP.

I must agree with you, actually, now that I think of it.
Lotus is not that great to deal with mages. Corruption however has a whole bunch of stuff to fight specifically armored opponents.

Anyway, I'll come back to Corruption Assassin tips when I get higher level!