Assassin (Class)

## What is the Assassin?

The Assassin is a sneaky and stealthy character that uses a lot of movement, poison and shadow instances. The class as a whole is very good at handling things solo despite being on the squishier side thanks to abilities like Heart Stab, Stealth and Battle Gas. You can be both upfront and bruteforce your enemies or you can sit back and watch as they crumble to nothingness under the effects of your potent poisons. Control is most definitely the name when it comes to the Assassin. The movement abilities allow for precise positioning and the shadow clones act as minions to tank hits for you.

The Assassin is an Agility and Intelligence based class, using either one in combination with Strength to fulfill their main builds.

## Abilities

Dagger Fury

One of the 2 real AoE abilities for Assassin. It's an instant use ability that throws daggers onto nearby foes within it's small vicinity. If multiple enemies, a hero or a boss are hit, then her attackspeed is set to maximum for 3 seconds. This ability makes allows the user to run items with low or even 0 bonus attack speed as this ability would turn it up to 11 either way. The damage is good and the attack speed is ever better. A great ability for any auto attacking builds that aren't maxed out in attack speed.

Wrath of the Shadows

The bread and butter spell for the Shadow Clone build. If you want to summon Shadow Instances to help you in the fight, then this is the ability you need. It will summon up to 5 shadows / cast, with 1 shadow being summoned for every enemy unit nearby. This ability also works with *Combo* to reset the cooldown, allowing you to summoning 10 Shadow Instances in almost an instant. These shadows inherit a portion of your attack damage, depending on the ability stage.

Vampire's Touch

A simple, yet powerful ability, if you can manage to keep it up that is. It's a buff that can stack up to 3 times, with each stack increasing her lifesteal. At maximum stage, this is a rather significant amount and allows the Assassin to sometimes bypass boss mechanics due to the sheer amount of lifesteal she posesses. One example being Islatha with her drowning ability.

Battle Gas

One of the 2 real AoE abilities for Assassin. This ability creates a cloud of poisonous gas which ticks periodically, poisoning the enemies adding to her damage over time. In addition to slowing movement speed of the enemies, this also slows their attack speed. So while they're easier to kite, they're also easier to tank for both you, your shadow instances and your allies.

Poisons the enemy.

Blink Strike

Teleports the Assassin behind the target, instantaneously dealing damage. It's that's simple really.

Combo

Here we have the best spell the Assassin has access to, it grants the Assassin mana and resets the cooldown of the following spells.

* Backstab
* Battle Gas
* Blink Strike
* Dagger Fury
* Heart Stab
* Shuriken
* Wrath of the Shadows

The power of the this ability cannot be overstated, the ability to recast any of your major abilities (except Mirroring & Stealth) allows a skilled player to make many different interesting desicions depending on the situation they're in. Low on health? Double Heart Stab and you're full HP. Many enemies around? Double Battle Gas or Shuriken, both spreading poison or the most powerful Combo target being Wrath of the Shadows, having you spawn 10 Shadow Instances in the blink of an eye.

Heart Stab

Heals you, damages them. What more can you ask for? Oh right, poison. Yea, it does that too. You're healing yourself and damaging the enemy twice.

Poisons the enemy.

Shuriken

Think of it like Warcraft 3's base spell "Chain Lightning", but this one can hit the same target twice and stuns the target for a short duration each time it strikes. Shuriken bounces 3 times after hitting it's primary target the first time.

Poisons the enemy with each strike.

Backstab

A heavy hitting ability with great scaling, 2,5 times your agility at Stage 10 that also benefits from any spelldamage / power you've got on your gear. If used on an enemy from behind, then the enemy becomes stunned.

Mirroring

If Combo wouldn't be ranked as the best ability for Assassin, then this 100% would be instead. You summon a Shadow that you can move around and attack with, but in addition to this you can also swap locations with the Shadow. This can be done multiple times for as long as the Shadow lasts.

Shadow Reflection

Spike Armor, but better. This reflects a % of the damage taken and reflects an even higher % depending on the amount of Shadow Instances you've got out at the time of damage recieved. This bonus is only recieved from the Shadow Instances spawned from *Wrath of the Shadows*.

Stealth

The Assassin turns invisible, spawns a Shadow on her current location and deals bonus damage to the first target struck while still invisible.

The spawned Shadow poisons the enemy.

## Guides

Poison Assassin (SinsBane23)

Shadow Summoner (GreenNinjaDa)

Class Guides