Ol'school SZ SB

[papaboo]

Hiya fellow SBs,

I just caught myself sitting here in an oh-so nostalgic hour thinking about the old times pre-ToA where the SZ spec 44 sword, 44 LA, 35 stealth, 35 envenom was pretty good.

Watched Paradigm's first video (well, for the 800th time, I guess) and wow, do I miss that swing speed? Boy I do..

Seems to me even though Melee combat speed and quickness is capped, it still swings fairly slow with LGM in mainhand and Malice in left hand. Compared to the "old times" that is.

So I've been wondering:

Will the 44/44/35/35 spec still do any good? Anyone tried it at all since the hardcap mainhand weapon thingie?

Without underrating Malice's Axe, what would the best combination of weapons be to reach the "good ol' swingspeed"? 2 x LGMs? Or will it actually still be "okay" to use a MP high-speed crafted axe in left hand? Or will it gimp the damage in a very serious way?

Just a thought, discuss!

 

[Osri]

Better go 50 la, 35 sword, 35 st, 35 env, 13 cs

And guess someone comes with even better spec

 

[Sigidil]

I tested some recently and I figured out that SZ does do many more dmg then 5spec.. . (only the Fjallin style + follow-up was neat dmg).
I went to 35a / 34sth / 34env / 50la and I was missing PA in some situations
Then I went back to 35sw / 39cs / 39la / 31env / 34sth and the dmg was fairly the same. Then only thing is I have PA back and the hamstring-chain.
And that is what I think unique on a SB, doing CS-styles.
Not good about this spec:
- You have more styles on your Qbar and with the Toa-toys in it, you need like 1456 Qbars
- You need +11 cs in your template aswell, so you need to backup resists abit.

Final: it's all in how you want to play your char, CS or not

 

[Haldar]

Paradigm's video is hasted. All attackes come faster in video than in game.

 

[Zeratuhl]

SZ > wyrdfotm spec. since wyrd spec makes u loose out on LA spec hence ur leftaxe dmg goes down -> less damage. u hit like a girl with CS styles compared to LA styles

 

[Moriatroll]

just copy-pasting from vent last night, but a m8 respecced to old style sz spec after getting adviced from another m8, and he said it was.. well he pooned he said

Thing is that while u wont do vry much more base dmg for speccing high wpn, u will still get alot of WS out of it, decreasing enemy assasins/scouts etc defence and thus doing more dmg. plus many of the base wpn styles are lovely... Havoc in the axe line roxxorboxxor and valeria told me that draw out do hit vry hard aswell.

 

[Zeratuhl]

just copy-pasting from vent last night, but a m8 respecced to old style sz spec after getting adviced from another m8, and he said it was.. well he pooned he said

Thing is that while u wont do vry much more base dmg for speccing high wpn, u will still get alot of WS out of it, decreasing enemy assasins/scouts etc defence and thus doing more dmg. plus many of the base wpn styles are lovely... Havoc in the axe line roxxorboxxor and valeria told me that draw out do hit vry hard aswell.

like 25% right =P u need to listen more

 

[Moriatroll]

dont only listen, i think for meself, shut up nerd

 

[Shadowen]

I ran some test.

38 sw 44 cs 20 la 35 st - roughly my current spec.
vs
38sw 39cs 39la
38sw 50la 0 cs
50sw 50la
39Axe 39 CS 39LA

And the results were suprising. If the FG stun was disallowed from the tests, the 44cs spec would out damage most of the high specced LA damage - with exact same gear - df bought gear on both SB's. - this was ofc duels.

If FG landed the high LA spec would win hands down, if FG was not used, the CS spec would win regularly, just on pure damage output. I did a series of 10-15 duels against each spec.

To be honest I don't believe that you get sufficient returns out of very high LA, sure you do get some high damage caps, but they don't seem to translate into direct damage in duel.

If you find you land FG a lot (stun style), then you will do better with high LA, however I find that even my CS evade chain I rarely get to the 2nd in the chain when in RvR, though I always end up doing the fully chain in PvE.

But your milage my vary.

regards
shadowen.

 

[Runolas]

Although it's been a very long time since I played. SB 5-spec is imho far more superiour than SZ that lack utility. Ok, so you do a little bit more dmg, but you give up a lot of good stuff that imho define the basics of playing an assassin. This ofc spoken from a point of view of a SB that preferes to roam alone. I would never go out alone without the ability to PA/CD (and don't forget Hamstring). However if you play in a constant duo/trio, then at some point I think a SZ still has it's place.

 

[Fenderon]

I like my secret spec works nicely for me.

 

[Twinky]

44 LA for LA styles(or as near as i can get), and 34 CS for the bs2, pa - cd etc.. main hand is 51 effective (35+16). Thats what works for me tbh. I use pa/cd, bs2 on targets that is easy to see as scouts, mins, rangers, and all other none stealthed targets i wanna try my skills on. Else in fights i use LA styles as DF, comeback and FG.

 

[Zeratuhl]

simply put, higher LA spec = higher WS and combined with the use of DrawOut u avoid alot of reactionary styles towards you. So basicly u do more damage since you dont get stunned as often as if u would run around with fotm wyrd spec with crap WS