6 réponses à ce sujet

[xorbitswap]

Hi all, I have been playing the alchemist a fair bit, but most of the guides I have seen talk about her as though she is inferior to the assassin, and either recommend playing her like a gimped assassin or making her gimmicky.

 

I've actually found her quite fun, so this thread is about my build, how I play her, and whether or not I'm misunderstanding how to play the assassin (a chance for me to improve).

 

Please note, I'm only a casual player and have very little experience on the harder difficulties, so rather than a guide, I wanted this to be a discussion.

 

Skills:

 

Elemental mines

Sneak Attack

Dance of Death

Unorthodox (later levels)

Alchemy Mastery (later levels)

Fighting Dirty

Flask of Fire + upgrade

Killer's Alchemy (later levels)

 

Stealth

Ambush

Unforgiving Chain

Disable (later levels)

Knife in the Shadows

Flank Attack + upgrade

Bloodied Prey (later levels)

(optional) Twin Fangs + upgrade

Shadow Strike (optional) + upgrade

I was never here (later levels)

 

I go straight for flank attack and flask of fire, getting the passives later. I either go with upgraded twin fangs and put 1 point into shadow strike to unlock I Was Never Here, or I skip twin fangs entirely and upgrade shadow strike. As far as I can tell, spamming the upgraded shadow strike while under the influence of flask of fire doesn't reduce the cooldown of flask of fire, but shadow strike can still be enormously useful if you have low processing speed or a slow/buggy internet connection or computer - alternating between flank attack and shadow strike means you always get the bonus damage, and don't have to worry about re-positioning to a flanking attack.

 

The fact that there are so many different ways to play the alchemist means that you don't need many of the available skills for each particular build, which means you can invest more in the passives (unorthodox seems like quite a strong passive, relative to the other ones I'm used to).

 

When I play the assassin, my active abilities are stealth, upgraded flank attack, upgraded hidden blades, and upgraded flank attack or shadow strike or deathblow. The cooldown on the assassin burst damage - upgraded hidden blades - is only 4 seconds shorted than the cooldown on the alchemist burst damage - flask of fire, and flask of fire gives you a lot more control. You can either zip around the battlefield one-shotting multiple targets in an AoE style assault, or you can alternate between flank attack and your other attack on a single target.

 

Assassins are known for slipping into the shadows, but I find the alchemist is better at that as well. They both have I Was Never Here, but being able to spam upgraded flank attack means you can enter stealth at any time while flask of fire is up, and you can time it so that you end with a flank attack and become stealthed at the end of your burst attack, whether you kill someone or not.

 

So, does anyone like my build, or have any tips for improving my assassin play?

[Boatzu]

There are a few reasons that make assassins stronger than alchemist at the  picking off targets role and its isolate and hidden blades. isolate basically doubles your damage as long as the enemies aren't super close to eachother and hidden blades is very strong vs bosses. This makes a huge difference on perilous where your main damage skills like shadow strike just dont 1 shot the mobs anymore without a lot of help(even with skill rings its very close).

[Trickshaw]

^ Sums it up.

[xorbitswap]

There are a few reasons that make assassins stronger than alchemist at the  picking off targets role and its isolate and hidden blades. isolate basically doubles your damage as long as the enemies aren't super close to eachother and hidden blades is very strong vs bosses. This makes a huge difference on perilous where your main damage skills like shadow strike just dont 1 shot the mobs anymore without a lot of help(even with skill rings its very close).

 

Cool! Do you know what the range is on the isolate passive?

 

Also, does hidden blades turn out to be that much better? 6 crits at 300% weapon damage vs 600%+ weapon damage from either quick blade or twin fangs spammed as much as possible during the uptime of flask of fire

[Boatzu]

Cool! Do you know what the range is on the isolate passive?

 

Also, does hidden blades turn out to be that much better? 6 crits at 300% weapon damage vs 600%+ weapon damage from either quick blade or twin fangs spammed as much as possible during the uptime of flask of fire

I made a mistake on the name of the passive its called cull the herd. It increases skill damage regardless of the range of enemies, but it seems to have a small range for basic attacks. Here are some screen shots to show how it works a bit.

Here is a basic attack near enemies to show what a normal attack looks like without the passive and at about the range of effect for the skill(disregard the poison proc on the dmg)

http://i.imgur.com/a8UNCNo.png

Here is a basic attack when an enemy is isolated

http://i.imgur.com/ogFbC8s.png

Here is me using twin fangs right next to a few enemy to show that it works regardless of range for skills

http://i.imgur.com/orX3vkJ.png

To the second part of your question :
Dmg comparison for hidden blades vs twin fangs/shadow strike spam
u can get off 4-5 shadow strikes or 3-4 twin fangs during flask of fire. I did some mathcrafting and testing on the numbers with comparable gear on assassin and alchemist. Im doing about 3.5k for a shadow strike, 4.2k for a twinfang thats about 17.5k dmg and 16.8k potential dmg. Hidden blades does about 2.6k x 6 or 15.6k dmg.


Under perfect circumstances you can do just a bit more with alchemist using flask of fire and spamming. Then again, thats perfect circumstances where you are free to beat on the enemy and they dont move or turn for about 6 seconds. Very unlikely you will get many opportunities for that. Hidden blades however is one use and then you can go off and do other attacks. More accurately we could compare burst dmg over 6 seconds and that would very likely go to the assassin by a fair bit.
 

[gay_wardens]

Assassin = Pure Burst DPS

Alchemist = Sustained DPS & Crowd-Control

 

If you try to run the Alchemist in a burst DPS build, she will come up a bit short on damage compared to the Assassin. However, she has a much better sustainability than the Assassin (which is quite the feat), and that sustainability is her strong suit. Her crowd-control is pretty good, and hell, with Ice Flask you can even save your tank in a pinch.

 

Glad someone here has some intelligence.

 

Yep, alchemist is less likely to instantly die when trying to back stab a Revenant, because of her higher health and better defenses.