Assassin Strike question...

...where exactly does this (Assassin Strike), fall in line on a DPS build?

Whether I'm trying to solo an AV or take one down with a team, my plan is the same, as I'm trying to take down the AV as fast as possible.

So, the discussion isn't about soloing AVs (which in game, I'd say a majority of the player base has no intention of doing), but rather the use of Assassin Strike when my stalker is up against one, solo OR teamed.

Now...no matter the toon I'm on, I try to use the attack string that's going to deliver the damage, but if I recall, using AS in the attack string wasn't the best for DPS.

Now, thinking about it, maybe I misread those other threads? Does using my best DPS string, placating, then delivering an AS, back to the DPS string, improve DPS?

Have another thread going on, saying AS deliver the most damage out of any attack. So, I would think it would be an awesome DPS attack (obviously from hide).

here's the answer your not going to like:

Assassin's Strike is useless for sustained DPS.

If you look through the base stats of each stalker primary you'll find that the average Damage Per Activation for the Assassin attacks is around 46.34 @ level 50. Kinetic Melee is the highest performing strike, with a listed base DPA of 52.07 @ Level 50.

By comparison, among the other stalker sets, aside from 3 sets, the very first attack you can get has a higher DPA that the highest Assassin's Strike. Claws Swipe has a DPA of 50.92 @ level 50, Dual Blades Nimble Slash has a DPA of 45.35, and Spines Barb Swipe racks up an impressively low 20.49 DPA at level 50.

In sustained combat, most of the non Assassin Strike powers have way higher DPA's than the Assassin Strike powers.

Even if you work the recharges on a defense based build, such as Super Reflexes, you'll still have to go through the motions of placating an enemy, or getting into a hidden state, before you can launch Assassin's Strike.

You can, in theory, use the Ninjitsu secondary to drive more opportunities to placate opponents with Smoke Flash, and thus achieve a higher number of possible Assassin Strike's during a fight.

Even then, if you are heavily maxed out on recharges with a fully Purpled out Ninjitsu build, maximum number of LoTG procs, and every other recharge buff you can find, your actual combat DPA, will be at minimum, the animation timing of Placate, positioning for AS, the AS itself, recovery, and so on. You will lose a figurative metric ton of DPS repeating this process.

So no, you haven't mis-read the other threads. The special damage for a successful strike is not going to make up for the DPA lost in actually prepping to launch the attack in the first place.

The only set where I'm not SURE if this is true is the Spines Set. That's also because Spines has 3 AOE powers; Spine Burst, Ripper, and Throw Spines; and one of the design concepts is that you give up straight single target damage in return for a larger amount of soft control. Spine's lack of straight Single Target damage may make the strategy of repeated Assassin's Strikes more efficient for sustained fights.

Um. No. AS (in most sets) has a DPA of 46.34 when non-critting. Which is not what we're talking about.

An AS crit, going by the in-game real numbers, deals 389.28 base damage. Treating placate+AS as a single "attack", the DPA on this for most sets will be 389.28 / (3 + 1.5) ~= 86.5, which is higher than most other stalker attacks. NB/BS have a longer AS animation, so the DPA for those sets will be 75.3; KM's is shorter so it will give you 93.4.

Now, AS does not benefit from the stalker's scaling crits (since the AS crit is guaranteed and already figured in), so you have to take that into account when comparing numbers. For example, the NB power Gambler's Cut has a nominal DPA of 69.72, but it crits 10%-31% of the time, so it's actual average DPA will be 76.7 solo or 91.3 with 7 teammates nearby.

AS has a few benefits, though:
* You can use it in place of your lowest-damage attacks in your chain
* When soloing, you gain a little extra survivability from being hidden
* placate -> BU -> AS is the most efficient way to use BU, as you only use 3s of your BU to AS, rather than 4.5
* Dark, Elec, Energy, and Kin criticals deal exotic damage, so the guaranteed crits will mean less of your damage is typically resisted.

My intuition is that using placate+AS will almost always be a dps increase solo or on small teams, the only exceptions being high-performance NB or BS builds. On larger teams, it may be beneficial to skip the AS and just do your normal attack chain for the extra crits. KM will probably always benefit from AS.

That's just from looking at a few numbers though. Experience or detailed modeling may prove me wrong, given the number of variables involved (resistances, damage procs in fast powers, chance to be interrupted, etc).

It's 389.28, or a scale 7.0 attack, for an Assassin's Strike critical; with server ticks (aka Arcanatime) accounted for, and including the time of Placate as part of the activation of AS, you have a total activation time (on average) of 4.884 seconds: 3.168 for AS + 1.716 for Placate.

That's a DPA of scale 1.433 per second, ignoring the chance for a double critical entirely (which at a 10% rate would change it to scale 1.484). Gloom, which is highly used in Brute single target DPS chains due to being their 6th best DPA attack*, has a DPA of 1.333.

For comparison's sake, here are some other numbers (also ignoring criticals, unless Placate is specifically mentioned):

• Energy Transfer is the only attack that has a higher DPA at 1.57/sec, and does not critical.
• Eagle Claw after a Placate - the hardest critical a Stalker gets other than AS - is 1.301/sec. Without the Placate, it's 1.053.
• Even without a critical or Placate, it will vary by set:
  • Assassin's Blades (0.789) is better DPA than all but Sweeping Strike (1.171) and Ablating Strike (1.111) in Dual Blades.
  • Assassin's Shock is better than Havoc Punch (0.769) for Electric Melee.
  • The faster animating Assassin's Strike (0.861) in KM is better than Quick Strike (0.795) and Focused Burst (0.731).

Quote:

Originally Posted by je_saist Assassin's Strike is useless for sustained DPS.

is just plain wrong by someone who obviously doesn't know what they're talking about.

* - Brute top 5: Seismic Smash (2.07), Clobber (2.01), Energy Transfer (1.57), Knockout Blow (1.50), Incinerate (1.35)

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

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Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

It also depends on the secondary you're using. For instance, a DA stalker is not going to waste time trying to AS unhidden, because it will most assuredly be interrupted. Calculate what a waste of resources a Placate+BU + AS is when the AS is interrupted. The game AI is smart enough to know to fire off a DPS attack at you right before it grants your placate, making the Placate to AS pretty much a waste, of time. I do use Placate quite often against tough single targets because of the crit advantage, but for a low defense toon, like DA, trying to use AS in an attack chain is too frustrating to try to make work.

Thanks for the replies

I thought I was seeing it all wrong before, when playing the game...watching the health bars drop when ASed (from hide or from being placated)...but I was remember threads saying AS was poor DPS.

So, it's just poor DPS when using it as a regular attack, instead of when getting the 100% crits!

Whew. Glad I asked I had been using it against AVs on TF thinking something had to be wrong with that thinking.

Basically, stalkers attack chains start with BU-AS-placate(normal chain) then placate->BU->AS(normal chain) unless you can get lucky, and rehide in melee (shadow meld, MoG)

I like how je_saist says it's useless for DPS and then goes into a long rant about DPA when the two aren't the same at all.

As does Shadow meld. which all stalkers have access to.