Assassin's Charge - Is It Worth It?

I still have some meriting to be done with THF, so let me ask you.

Is it worth meriting Assassin's Charge? Cause I fail in seeing the benefit from it, since I already have 5/5 Triple Attack and it proccs fairly often.

I'm thinking in going all the way 5/5 Feint and Ambush.

And what about the first merit group?
5/5 TA or
2/5 TA and 2/5 SA?


Thanks in advance.

You have the right idea. It's nice for the one really high spike damage that you can screenshot and post on this site, but it's really not going to do much, or basically anything, overall.

There is no right way to merit A.charge/Ambush/A.steal, it's just up to your personal preference. Out of the three, A.steal is the only one that can be noticeably beneficial here and there(solo'ing, stealing berserk/boost, etc). A.charge for epeen purposes here and there, and Ambush does little to nothing.

Personally, I did 1/5 A.charge and 4/5 A.steal. 5/5 Feint, of course.

And I did 5/5 SA for my group1. 5/5 Triple Attack.

Really? O_o'

5/5 Aura Steal, 5/5 Feint.

Up to you, personally. 5/5 Feint is absolutely required, unless you do 0 end game as THF.

5/5, it provides 15acc when you're behind the mob.

That means half the time, it does nothing. The other half of the time, you're ripping your hair out because the other DDs keep turning the mob. Anything where the mob will be kept stationary for a long period of time, you're not going to be melee'ing anyways. It's not worth the hassle just to gain 7.5% hit rate.

How does Aura Steal affect your ability to steal beastcoins?

I have always worried that my farming would be gimped if I merited Aura Steal.

And you can argue that 5/5 Feint is worthless also, because it's used for zergs and no zergs would last long enough to warrant a second Feint being used.

It's just flatout wrong to say Ambush is only up half the time. It's not up for Trick Attack but that has 100% ACC anyway. Other than that, you're always behind the mob, so it's up about 99.5% of the time, give or take.

Kirin. Precharge Feint, hit it, 30-60 seconds after Feint wears, feint again.
Useful if you do JoL with drks.
Spamming for longer events such as Dynamis north lands


I'm not quite sure how to respond to this. Maybe you should play THF more.

Oh, and even with Aura steal, the item is prioritized over the buff. Pretty annoying when farming chestplates when you intend to dispel their def up move.

It's not about how often you play it. It's about how well you play it. And apparently you don't play it too well if you spend half your time meleeing from the front. Not even SAMs do that, apart from WSs.

It's a habit after playing on Thf to attack mobs from behind.
Hell even on Whm I found myself curing from behind. x.x

LOL that sentence is just wrong.

/dirtymind

Well if you play it more, you'd realize that you can't realistically be behind the mob 99.5% of the time. If you're tp burning something(dynamis mobs or whatnot), you'll constantly have to chase after the mob's back. Come on now, every THF who's a dedicated THF knows now annoying it is to get SAWS off in that kind of situation. Actually being behind the mob most of the time is nigh impossible and exponentially worst to achieve. If you're fighting something that's to be held by a PLD(HNM, etc), they won't let you melee anyways for TP reasons.

Like I said, play THF more. Things don't always work out the way they do on paper.

Oh and I wasn't just randomly throwing that out there. I was backing up Ent's comment about Thf's being behind a mob 99.5% of the time.

Actually Ihina, I do see your point. The only end game event I use THF is ocasionally Limbus, and the minute I get behind the mob the SAMs already killed it.

So you have a valid point imo. :)

Well when I played, the Pld in LS(s) knew how to hold hate well so the mob wasn't twisting and turn every 5 seconds, making it easy for a Thf to stay behind.

Unfortunately, we low man Limbus and the LS leader has a thing for Samurais. Like yday I was RDM on a party with 4 SAMs and me RDM. The other party was DRK SAMx3 THF and another RDM. So ya.

If it's a mob where TP feed isn't a concern, there shouldn't be a PLD there to begin with, you should just zerg it down. What kind of mobs are you talking about?

I never did HNMs or Limbus so I can't talk about that.
If a mob dies super fast, I feel a Thf's damage would be useless anyway. TH onry?

Well the problem with that is that if the mobs die super fast, than everyone's damage output per mob will be relatively low; not just the THF's.

With that said, you can still put out your fair share of damage, even if it's a bit lower than your traditional DD.

It's situational but I am behind the mob alot more than 1/2 the time when not soloing/tanking.

I've never had a situation where feint really shined (read high enough evasion mobs where people normally wont be equiped to have capped accuracy) where the mob lasted long enough to be worth putting more merits in lowering recast.

However feint has a fairly noticable effect on steal rate...

Assassins charge while mostly an epeen tool isn't necessarily bad. Remember if used properly SA and TA gives 100% acc to double/triple attack procs. So be nice to end a skill chain or something. Aura steal is nice sometimes for dispelling things. Full merits if you fight things where you like there buffs. Like fighting crabs and getting +100% def or scorps and getting +50% att lol.

I have to say, I could never see myself meritting Ambush, even if I played THF more than any of my other jobs (which I most certainly don't). I get frustrated enough just trying to land Sneak Attack without mobs moving if I'm in a PT of any sort or doing Campaign. Same problem with landing a WS to the front of the mob on SAM for Overwhelm (though that I actually meritted and will always try to make sure and land; big difference between 15 accuracy and +19% WS damage :P). I can only imagine trying to actually stay behind it for any reasonable period of time just meleeing. >.>

Anyway, back to the original topic... I put 1 merit in Assassin's Charge. To be perfectly honest, I regret it. Those 3 merit points would've been much better spent on something else. I honestly see very little (if any) difference in my WS damage with it, even when fighting EP-DCs, so I tend to just use it to force a triple attack when TPing.

But really, I use my THF for absolutely 0 endgame. I am always SAM or WHM for that stuff. My THF is solely for TH, really... I even prefer soloing on SAM over THF, since SAM/DNC + soboro tends to work way better for me (and can silence things via Gekko; lack of Silence is THF's biggest weakness, solo-wise, in my opinion). ....Not to mention I always seem to have better luck with non-trash drops on SAM than on THF anyway. -.-

EDIT: Missed the part in the OP about Group 1. Triple Attack 5/5 is a given, of course. I'll be honest and say that if I ever have the merits to waste on finishing Group 1 on THF, I'll be meritting Flee recast 5/5. :P

5/5 Feint if you spend any time in endgame events or use your THF for anything linkshell-related. Its benefits everyone greatly.

I would put at least 1 in Aura Steal and Assassin's Charge, the rest are up to you.

Aura Steal because its fun to steal mega-buffs from certain mob families (Boost from JoL yus?), and it will ONLY PROC if you miss stealing an Item. so for steal its "Item random" > "Buff Steal Random" > Miss. This is basic THF knowledge if you have the job trait.

Assassin's Charge for well, even though it is an E-peen JA, its always nice to have an E-peen JA, I don't think any job ability that can significantly increase your WS damage with 100% Proc can be considered bad. It certainly shines much more on tougher mobs than it does on say weaker mobs in the DC~EP area.

Ambush is... Well, 20+(200,000 Exp) merits for a 15acc boost that quite frankly has absurd requirements considering how often mobs your average Linkshell THF fight live and while alive spin like a car driven by Michael J Fox, And for your non-LS Thf's? I can't imagine you standing behind a mob that much when you're soloing.

On top of that any respectably geared THF shouldn't have Acc problems with Mar.pizza+1 or sushi and 15 Acc isn't going to suddenly make meat a reliable food.

Cat 1, 5/5 Triple and I'll probably do 5/5 SA since my SA build is stronger than my TA Build atm.

All in all it depends on how you play THF! Theres no right/wrong way with THF Cat 2 thanks to their general all around "Situational"-ness.

One thing about this, testing was done that showed when you DA/TA on a SA/TA WS, the extra hits are not guaranateed to land unlike if you do plain SA/TA. So that also takes away a little of the benefit of it.

Feint is good for salvage bosses, run in hit it and run back out and bolt it, since your not doing much during boss anyways.

Feint is not used just for Zergs. Feint is useful as *** fully meritted, simply because that -EVA the mob gets is amazing, meaning when its up, DDs don't have to worry about over-do'ing it on ACC.

I consider it one of the most vital abilities in this game, but thats just me.

Aura Steal because you're almost always solo'ing on THF (or at least I am), and being able to steal effects from mobs is a huge plus. I know when I use to farm Sahagins back in the day for scrolls, it'd be nice to have 'Haste' up or something similar, like 'Minuet', when I didn't have an NPC up.

HONESTLY, its all about how you play the job, and what YOU want out of it. No matter what we tell you here, ultimately its your choice.

I used to be an Ambush advocate. This person is absolutely right,I have went from 3 ambush to 4 aura steal to 4 *** charge, with variances in between. Reasoning:

(1)For awhile I felt that ambush was the best damage increase, which is what I was after. And at the time, I was probably right.
(2)I did 4 aura steal so I could steal JoL's boost effect more often, to produce e-peen SS's for several K dmg.
(3)I switched to *** charge a couple of weeks ago because the things that I do, the way I do them now, ambush is not very useful, and *** Charge may be a bigger increase. Regardless, that's not actually what's more important. What is important is,

Assassin's Charge is not only about Damage over Time.
By utility, I mean that it allows you to plant a lot of hate (on yourself or on another). While this isn't something that matters in merit parties, it is something that matters in other places. I.E. if you are tanking something, or helping someone tank in a low man fight (because TA doesn't really matter on HNM).

In addition to that, it is more useful for fights that you want to end quickly. For example, say you are doing Bhaflau Remnants floor 4 and your group isn't very good, or you're only doing it 4-man or 5-man after dc'ing in. The ability to do a lot more damage can mean a lot if you're not sure you can kill the thing in 1 minute. Similarly, anything else you wanna zerg or take down fast. If you're fighting Dahak's in nyzul for example, a Kasha to AC+Shark Bite will help to take that down quicker.



Ambush is useful, but IMO it's a lot more useful in meripos that are making 20k/hr than the 30-35k/hr ones I've been having recently. Recently, ***just dies too fast and I don't have time to get behind the mob. Otherwise, I do HNM where people get butthurt if I'm behind the mob (flail), or I do nyzul or salvage where the accuracy doesn't matter. Or I'm tanking something and can't get behind. Etc etc.

I mostly only farm tree with my thf and I love my 5/5 Feint and AC. Aura Steal and Ambush obviously are useless in that situation.

Times that I do use my thf for something 'normal' I see Aura Steal being pretty useless there too.. It's neat but mostly, compared to less time for my Feint or AC, I don't see it being that helpful. Sure I can steal their att boost or w/e to help me but Feint helps everyone and AC gives me a WS boost when SA or TA is not available. w/e I want to steal is usually dispel fast anyway.

Often I'll SA/WS or TA/WS then be able to TP up to 100 before SA/TA is ready- so it's nice to be able to use AC and get off a higher DMG ws instead of wait for those ability.

Ambush is just no. You shouldn't need that extra acc.

Assasing charge is fun because increase the damage (as a mini SA) but no my favorite, and I like triple attack rate

Feint is a must have (4+/5) if you go to salvage as thf, help a lot because sometimes your friends no have all equip dex/accuracy, also in other events as nyzul, zerg, NM's

Aura Steal work good for me with Spikes (ice spike) mob, as Skeletons or Soulflayers, normaly all need wait Dispel from mage for start (Full Attack!) but you can save seconds/minutes
and paralyna's

I like ambush, Fire bomblet (6acc) 1m, pcc (10 acc) 1.6m, Ambush (15acc) "free" and no need slot? sure!
ik, is hard looking for stay behind the mob but is possible, in campaing is(Imposible to gauge)
maybe no is good for solo (if you no know/can solo-sneak attack) but is a nice merit