Dark or Lightning paths

[victor122]

Hi. I'm new to the Assassin class and wondered, what's the difference in DPS and play style? Which one is better and has a better chance of survivability ?

 

Thanks in advance

[Shadovvv]

First off, what level are you? Until you're level 42, you can't even touch either build because Lightning Rod is a necessity for both.

 

Ultimately, Dark and Light are preferences, both have their ups and downs:

• Dark:
  • Relies heavily on 5x poison stacks, relies on critical hits.
  • Versatile and flexible build dealing damage and party utility out of stealth, and entering stealth for self-sustainability.
  • Has numerous ways of stacking poison, both in and out of stealth.
• Light:
  • Relies heavily on stealth, relies on 5x poison stacks.
  • Purely stealth build, largely benefiting from movement speed, evasion and critical damage bonus from stealth stance.
  • Due to their over-reliance on stealth, they have very few ways of stacking poison, are in a bad position to use party utility, and their damage out of stealth is nearly nonexistent.

Both builds are also completely situational:

• Light is obviously better at soloing stuff without true sight; the reverse is true for Dark.
• Certain bosses can outright cleanse and even make themselves immune to poison; Dark falls short when they don't have 5x poison stacks.
• A lot, and I mean a lot, of bosses can outright remove stealth, and does not allow restealth; Light falls short when they don't have access to stealth.

[SoulsHunter]

If you are new like me, use lightning build. Just don't spec into lightning pierce, using lightning crash with shadow drain is good enough to solo quite a lot of things early in game. Stealth as much as you can. Recently I started experimenting with bombard, spec as much cc as you can. Seems to works very well too when early in game.

[victor122]

Thanks, guys:)... I'll try and find a level up build.  

[TJXX]

To level just max heart stab, shadow drain, and put points into any way you can get into stealth.  Then RMB/f everything, hit X or shadow drain when you need focus.  You can get to 50 without trying.

5 hours ago, victor122 said:

Thanks, guys:)... I'll try and find a level up build.  

 

[PooHie]

I'd recommend you stick to Lightning build until you have HM LMB, RMB and Shadow Slash, because out of stealth you lose 30% crit damage which lightning offers as oppose to Dark build and this is the only way to match in damage.