If you don't have a lot of plat/feathers you can get away with 99qual gear until you can afford to upgrade to MP. But imho, I'd just farm until I had what I needed to get MP from the start. Also, you don't HAVE to have feather weapons. I think I used crafted weapons until like rr6-7
Edit: Also, what the person said above is great too. You need those Combi pots, shard skin, Abla charge, legion heal and superior heal pot.
ring of zo'arkat heart of legion mp armor with - ablative - dmg add pots - regen - combined - shard skin - insta heal - normal heal
did i missed something ?
good list. you can also have dmg add charge, then you can put it on a low lvl item in your inventory. Weapon maybe some d/q debuff and haste proc. If it procs, switch you weapon with dd proc.
currently the player crafted weapon poccs are really bad compared to the special proccs
and the benefit of using crafted weapons is just that you can build a temp cheaper. Most committed assassin-mains have built a weaponless temp, they have all stats capped without even using any weapon. So they can switch around ROGs and SI-Weapons for the proccs and still have the same stats all the time.
Nightshade template and gear is after personal preference and varies between people, but some things are mandatory like d/q debuff proc etc. You will want to go mainhand free template to be competetive, so you need roughly average 75 Utility rogs. Go blade spec. Giving an example what weapons i use:
- Sword of Sorrow (slowest MH) - for PA. Using 1 of that, just for opener. - Shadowwalker Blade (d/q debuff) - need a few of these to swap poisons until d/q proc goes off. Using 3 myself - Sword of Nuada (3.6 lifetap proc) - have 2 of these, using after i use PA & d/q proc goes off. Usin 2 of those. - 2x 4.2 crafted dotprocs (don't use that often, since swings are rather slow and i cap swings with nuada). Using 2 of those - OH 2.9 Galla lifetap (using 4 myself)
In total I use 12 weapons. All MP ofcourse. If im higher rank and can get more swingspeed, i would buy 4.2 MH Lifetap Rogs and use them instead of Nuada. Some people use haste/DA proc (either on weps or other gear) - i don't, since i wanna use legion heal charge.
- Ablative (Dragon ring is one option - 5 charges and 20k feather, but there is a bracer, thats 10k feather and 10 charges also) - Legion charge (heal) - Combi regen & buff - Shard skin - Insta heal, insta endu
And bare in mind, that Nightshade is very expensive. I have invested probably 100p+ into the template above and its not weaponless (mainhand free). You will a lot of plats & a lot of feathers. And the running cost's are no joke (probably around 150-200g/hour).
Specwise go composite stealth & envenom, 39 blade, 44 CS and rest into CD. At 4L you will have enough CD to get 18 for sidestun.
PA doesnt scale with weaponspeed so you should be using the fastest possible weapon for PA
PA does however incorporate unstyled weapon damage which is dependent upon spd.
Unstyled Cap: 3 * DPS * Spd * (1+((Spd-2)*0.03) Phoenix specific PA Formula: -243 + (CS*18) + UnstyledDmg
DPS Spd Unstyled Cap 16.5 4.3 227 16.5 4.2 221 16.5 3.6 186 16.5 2.9 147
Now whether the damage difference is worth the swing delay for the next attack...
I'm with Sepp on this one. Creeping Death is where you should swap to the slowest possible weapon, because it has an excellent growth rate that DOES scale with speed and will give you a better return. Meanwhile, because if you are Perfing with a fast weapon you should have the shortest possible delay (1.5 seconds) between Perf and Creeping Death, despite using a slow weapon for Creeping Death.
I'm with Sepp on this one. Creeping Death is where you should swap to the slowest possible weapon, because it has an excellent growth rate that DOES scale with speed and will give you a better return. Meanwhile, because if you are Perfing with a fast weapon you should have the shortest possible delay (1.5 seconds) between Perf and Creeping Death, despite using a slow weapon for Creeping Death.
This.
Perfing with a fast Mainhand may lose a bit of white damage, but being able to land that juicy CD stun before your target has the time to process that they just got smacked and counter with instant CC will make or break a lot of fights.
I'll sometimes just loiter around a keep with a shortbow in hand "Look at me! I'm a Ranger, lol" ready to shield slam an assassin that perfs me. If they don't get that stun opener, and have to blow purge as well due to losing the CC race, then they'll either get killed by me or vanish away in shame. The reason I can do this is that a lot of players follow that "slower is better, always" mindset. And because of that initial delay, they lose.
You dont need crafted MPs. Did you ever check the difference in damage? I've tried it with 3.7MH with Garrotte Combo, 39CS Spec: 1 DMG at all(!) difference every swing with rr5 +
Regarding the dmg, dont waste your money for mp weapons.