Rift Assassin Strategy Guide

Assassin Soul's Skills, Specs, Macros and Builds in Rift

Assassins are the masters of stealth in Rift. This soul can sneak up behind opponents and deliver one of several opening abilities that deal massive damage or incapacitate the target. They're focused on quick burst damage to take out targets before they can react. They can easily deal some of the highest DPS in the game. This guide will give tips to playing an Assassin in Rift and using their skills and talents effectively.

Stealth
Rogues gain stealth from the Assassin soul with only four points invested. With some further development, they can move faster while sneaking and are much more difficult to detect. They get the ability to incapactitate a target to keep it out of combat, which is one of the most effective forms of crowd control in Rift. They can of course deal big damage with the Assassinate ability, but also open a fight with a nasty bleed or by stunning the target.

Bleeds
Assassins cause bleeds in four ways, and their targets can have multiple bleeding effects going at once. This has a dramatic effect on the Rogue's DPS and lets them optimize damage in long fights. A bleed like Impale that takes twenty seconds to deal its full damage will deal much more than a direct attack. While it's active, you can then switch to a direct attack finisher like Final Blow for even more punishment. Impale is but one of the ways a Rogue can make targets bleed. Since this is such a highlight of the soul, here's a rundown on the various means of making 'em bleed and turning it into a gusher.

• Puncture (6th point Talent - Skill) Ignores armore and starts a bleed over ten seconds.
• Serrated Blades (6th Point Talent - Passive Causes a bleed whenever your rogue crits, stacking up to 3x.
• Murderous Intent (6th Point Talent - Passive Increases physical damage 4% and Bleed effects are physical.
• Expose Weakness (10 Points Spent in Soul - Skill) increases bleed damage along with other attacks while enemy is affected.
• Physical Trauma (26th Point Talent - Passive Increases the damage of all three of your bleed skills by 40%.
• Jagged Strike (26 Points in Soul - Stealth Skill) This is the most damaging finisher, because of the 10 second bleed.
• Impale (32 Points in Soul - Finishing Skill) Delivers some direct damage and a 20-second bleed. With Physical Trauma Final Blows will deal 40% more damage while this bleed is active.

Assassin Skills and Special Abilities

Savage Strike - Points Required: 0
Ability Info: Your Assassin's basic combo builder. This skill gets +10% critical chance from the improved savage strike 0-point talent. It will additionally do 15% more damage from behind if you take the Double Cross talent. This is very handy when in a dungeon and a tank has your target's attention. It's also not so bad when you begin a fight by stunlocking your target a few seconds with Paralyzing Strike, followed by Foul Play.

Virulent Poison - Points Required: 0
Ability Info: This poison does the most damage of the assassin weapon coatings. Since you can only use two, Lethal Poison and Leeching poison are more likely to be used when solo. This one is a good choice if leeching health isn't that helpful to you, ie. behind a tank.

Final Blow - Points Required: 2
Ability Info: Like Savage Strike, Final Blow can do 15% more damage from behind with Double Cross. It also receives this bonus from one of the earliest Assassin talents. This is the finisher you'll use for quick fights, or when a tough target is already affected by your Impale finisher. In fact, with the Physical Trauma Asn talent, you'll get 40% more damage out of Final Blow if you have previously used Impale.

Assassinate (Stealth) - Points Required: 4
Ability Info: This is the basic damage dealing stealth opener. You'll use it a lot early in your career, but later will probably lean toward Jagged or Paralyzing Strike. Still, this can do an incredible amount of damage and can be used to take a massive chunk of life off a weaker target.

Stealth - Points Required: 4
Ability Info: Walk about undetected. Without Silent Footsteps, this is pretty slow and you are likely to be spotted if you walk in front of an enemy. With the talent, Stealth becomes something you will use very often. Hidden Veil and Elusiveness should go on your stealth bar to situationally prevent detection. Set up your stealth bar to have only your openers, stealth-related skills, expose weakness, and any movement related abilities. You won't need anything else until you've snuck up and started combat.

Incapacitate (Stealth) - Points Required: 6
Ability Info: Incapacitates a target for 45 seconds. Wow veterans will remember this as the Rogue's sap ability. Any damage caused will break the effect. In tough dungeons, Rogues can incapacitate a target like a caster so the party can finish it last. This can be helpful in PVP as well. You can keep a target locked in this state for quite some time by recasting.

Lethal Poison - Points Required: 8
Ability Info: This poison does less damage than Virulent, but carries a big perk. It places a debuff on the enemy for 15 seconds that increases critical hit chance from all players in your raid. Nasty, nasty. This one is even great solo.

Elusiveness (Stealth) - Points Required: 10
Ability Info: This ability can be activated to make the rogue near undetectable. Use this if you have to go into a really clustered area with enemies or PVP targets. You will not use it often except perhaps in dungeons.

Expose Weakness - Points Required: 10
Ability Info: Use this often! It makes the rogue's next twenty attacks (and bleeds) deal extra damage. I like to use it just before attacking out of stealth, and during long fights to improve damage. It has a 20 second cooldown, and you will blow through the charges long before that time limit is up. I don't recommend sticking this in your macros because it can slow you down at times. Since it's a ranged ability, you can use it on the approach to your target without breaking stealth.

Malicious Strike - Points Required: 12
Ability Info: Deals decent damage and cripples an opponent to 30% movement speed for 8 seconds. Useful in PVP and certain situations inside dungeons.

Leeching Poison - Points Required: 14
Ability Info: This poison deals damage and returns it as life to your Rogue. Good deal, but I only use this when soloing or playing PVP. In dungeons, Lethal + Virulent is the best combination.

Paralyzing Strike (Stealth) - Points Required: 16
Ability Info: Deals damage out of stealth and paralyzes the target for 4 seconds. This can be used to set up a stun lock. With foul play, you could have up to 8 seconds to hammer your target's back. For most targets, that's enough time to kill outright or significantly tip the scales in your favor.

Poison Malice - Points Required: 18
Ability Info: A 2-minute cooldown ability that doubles the rogue's poison damage (very helpful with leeching poison). It also gives a small thorns effect for enemies hitting your Assassin in melee combat. It's a great ability for dealing burst damage on a target. I loved using this with the Bladedancer soul's Dancing Steel ability.

Baneful Touch - Points Required: 20
Ability Info: A 1-hour buff that gives you 20% more poison damage. Great when combined with talents that increase poison effectiveness and rate.

Cut and Run - Points Required: 20
Ability Info: Lets you escape from movement-impairing abilities. This is definitely worthy of your bar. If you're using Infiltrator for Break Free, put this along with that ability in a Macro so you'll always have one available.

Jagged Strike (Stealth) - Points Required: 26
Ability Info: An instant bleed attack out of stealth that deals heavy damage over ten seconds and awards two combo points. This is heavily boosted by the Physical Trauma talent. It's the finisher of choice for targets with a lot of life, as they will be alive long enough to see the full damage dealth. Otherwise, use Assassinate or Paralyzing Strike.

Impale - Points Required: 32
Ability Info: This powerful finisher will leave your target bleeding. With Physical Trauma, it will cause your next Final Blow to do 40% more damage. This will do wonders for your DPS over long fights.

Debilitating Poison - Points Required: 38
Ability Info: Drains an enemy's energy or mana. It's really not great, but can be helpful against other Rogues and Warriors in PVP. It can also help you beat down a sturdy cleric that is constantly healing himself.

Hidden Veil (Stealth) - Points Required: 40
Ability Info: This stealth ability prevents damage from breaking your stealth for a time. Use it when you must go through AoEs in order to reach your target.

Poison Gas - Points Required: 44
Ability Info: This confuses all nearby enemies for six seconds. It's a great ability to use when you're assassinating a target. Break out of stealth with an opener, use Poison Gas, then focus on your target while his friends stand around for a time. You can even finish your target then use slip away to return to stealth.

Serpent Strike - Points Required: 51
Ability Info: The Assassin's 51-point reward is a good one. It can trigger after a critical, which for an Assassin is often. It should go into your main macro at the top of the list so you can use it at any time it's available. It only gives one combo point, but isn't affected by the global cooldown so can be used instantly. It also gets a hefty 100% bonus attack power applied to its damage.

Assassin Soul Talents - Where to Spend Your Points

0-Point Soul Talents

Improved Savage Strike
Soul Talent Description:: If Assassin is going to be the main soul of your build, this decision to take this is obvious. +10% critical strike chance is a huge bonus.

Improved Final Blow
Soul Talent Description:: Like above, this is a no-brainer if you are going to use Assassin's attacks as your combo builders. It gives up to +15% damage to the skill.

Ruthlessness
Soul Talent Description:: Boosts critical chance by up to 5% for any types of attacks your rogue uses. It even helps Marksmen, so this is a popular talent to take for boosting other souls' damage.

5-Point Soul Talents

Cloak and Dagger
Soul Talent Description:: If you go heavy into the Assassin tree, you will do a lot of sneaking around and this will come in handy big-time. It makes your rogue deal 15% more and take 15% less damage for 10 seconds after using Assassinate, Paralyzing or Jagged Strike. Stun the enemy, get some soul bonuses for attacking from behind and you are dishing serious pain.

Murderous Intent
Soul Talent Description:: At maximum it increases all physical damage by 4%. That's not a lot, but it will affect most every Rogue soul and in the case of the Assassin increases the damage of everything but poison.

Puncture
Soul Talent Description:: This is a great ability and should go into your main attack macro near the top. It deals instant damage, ignoring armor, then puts a bleed on your opponent for 10 seconds. What is more, it gives two combo points and is usable every 10 seconds. This skill benefits from Double Cross and Physical Trauma.

Serrated Blades
Soul Talent Description:: Gives a 33% chance per point that your melee crits will apply a bleed equal to your weapon damage, up to 100%. It can stack up to three times. Since Assassins crit a lot, your opponents will always be impacted by this once it's going. New stacks will refresh the duration. A great way to boost DPS.

10-Point Soul Talents

Silent Footsteps
Soul Talent Description:: This talent is vital if you want to take Assassin seriously. It lets you move at normal speed while stealthed, and reduces the chance of being detected by 30%.

Blinding Powder
Soul Talent Description:: This will confuse a target for 10 seconds. Any damage removes the effect, and it has a 1 minute cooldown. This is actually very useful. You could pull off something like this vs a group of three: Incapacitate one target, use Expose Weakness and Paralyzing Strike on another, then immediately blind a third. Kill target one, then the blinded enemy, and finally your incapacitated target. It'll also get enemies off your behind in PVP which you know is going to be helpful. Often.

Cruel Vengeance
Soul Talent Description:: Crits increase your damage by 10% for 10 seconds. This basically gives your Rogue a permanent 10% damage boost once they get started. A killer talent.

15-Point Soul Talents

Poison Potency
Soul Talent Description:: This increases poison damage by 15%, which isn't very huge. It's one of those you can forget about unless you are also going with Poison Mastery and really want the 51-point Serpent Strike.

Backstab
Soul Talent Description:: Get this ability and put it in your main attack macro. Try to attack from behind as often as possible. For a rogue in a dungeon, that's a cinch. This will greatly increase your damage output along with Advanced Flanking.

Double Cross
Soul Talent Description:: This gives a +15% damage bonus when attacking from behind to the Savage Strike, Puncture, and Final Blow skills. Awesome for dungeon runners and PVPers.

Magnify Pain
Soul Talent Description:: This boosts your Rogue's critical hit damage and healing bonus by 20%, a huge boost to a class that is critting frequently. As for the healing, Enduring Brew can crit and will heal for more with this talent. It doesn't come in handy much more often for a Rogue. Perhaps if you had a 49 bard 17 assassin build you'd see the healing bonus kick in more often. I'm not sure why someone would do that, though.

20-Point Soul Talents

Poison Mastery
Soul Talent Description:: This makes poison-coated weapons get more bonus from attack power (75%) which will indeed boost damage a good deal on its own. Additionally, it makes poisons 20% more likely to go off when striking an enemy. That's great for any of the poisons at your disposal.

Foul Play
Soul Talent Description:: Stuns an opponent for four seconds. Great for interrupting casters and keeping enemies stunned after a Paralyzing Strike from stealth. This is a great ability, a must-have.

Improved Stealth
Soul Talent Description:: Stealth will last until cancelled. For one point and the fact that it's required for Slip Away, it's great.

Subterfuge
Soul Talent Description:: This boosts the damage of all three of your Rogue's stealth attacks by up to 20% and can guarantee they give an additional combo point. That'd be 3. Since your next move would likely be a Puncture, you could use an Impale finisher almost instantly and quickly move up to a Final Blow.

25-Point Soul Talents

Enduring Brew
Soul Talent Description:: Heals the rogue for a good amount. I've seen crits for about 1400. It's not amazing, but it can save your life for a lone point. Since this is based on attack power, the healing will get stronger the better your gear. The 60 second cooldown is quite reasonable.

Advanced Flanking
Soul Talent Description:: This gives backstab up to 6% more chance to crit, but that's small potatoes. More importantly, it gives a flat +50% on top of your usual crit rate for Assasinate, Jagged and Paralyzing Strikes.

Physical Trauma
Soul Talent Description:: This boosts damage for Puncture, Jagged Strike, and Impale by 20% per point. It also sets up a bonus for Impale. After using it, your next Final Blow will deal 40% more damage as well. This is a huge bonus as all of the affected abilities are used often.

30-Point Soul Talents

Slip Away
Soul Talent Description:: This super ability will trigger stealth and remove any movement-impairing effects. It also prevents stealth from being broken for 3 seconds, giving you just enough time to trigger Hidden Veil when in a hot zone. This can allow you to stealth attack someone, stun them, and repeat the process when they break out. It will often save your life in PVP but its best use is offensive. It's invaluable to be able to enter stealth during combat.