Duo

1. Screen shot or it didn't happen.
2. He was making his own comparison.
3. YOU'RE the one who obviously hasn't played the right version of ghost. In the Netgame version, one vit is 4 hp and I believe they upped the defense to 3-4. Dex is +1/2 min, +3/4/5 max, not 1~2, you're talking about STR. And even STR can go as high as 3 damage for 1 point.

And are you saying people level 60-90 are the only ones who are right? And where do you keep pulling these random numbers from. Screen shot or it didn't happen.

4. You're kidding me. Mages hit and run a LOT. For your information, until you get dragon strike and your level 69 skill, mages are constantly getting pushed back. With a combo of palm force, fire / ice arrow, and frozen land, that is not enough to keep monsters away from you. Palm force and arrow skills are single target attacks - everything behind the monster you hit will start catching up. The delay between each attack alone is too large for you to be able to keep monsters from gaining ground. Same goes for a a glove assassin. Go watch some videos.

5. There's a humungous difference between a skill that makes you invulnerable to all attacks for over 20 seconds and a skill that hits AoE - everyone hits AoE skills, and what's your obsession with talking about mages? This is a guide for claw assassins not mages.

6. Your build depends on the population? Are you trying to say that you have to do the build that everyone else is doing because it's "politically correct"? Yes, assassins do need defense. All classes need defense. I believe the proper term is called FIND RARE ARMOR, THEN UPGRADE IT.

7. Ok, why don't we do this mathematically. With a 3:1 dex:vit build, you will end up with about 200 more vit points than a pure dex assassin. In the NETGAME version, you gain 4 HP per vit point, thus granting you 800 extra HP AT LEVEL 200. Do you REALLY think 800 HP is going to help you BY THE CAP LEVEL? Low HP is NOT our weakness. Even a pure dex assassin can survive 3-5 hits from a monster of relatively similar level. Unless you can't push a pot button 3 times in one second, you're never going to die. At level 60 you get a passive increase in HP. In NETGAME'S VERSION, Chaos classes gain 4 atk and 2 defense per level, order classes gain 2 atk and 4 defense per level. Defense on equips is much higher in netgame also. Damage on monsters has changed as well. What you know is irrelevent to the USA version.

8. I don't understand this part. You can have a party whenever you feel like it.

9. No, this doesn't make sense. Claw assassins aren't pansies unless you can't play the class. Their HP and defense doesn't make any difference - how many times must we say this? I'm sorry, but if you cannot collect your own monsters as a claw assassin, you should go play a ranged class - you're not good enough for this class.

10. Random opinion.

And for your interest, here is my comparitive calculation of pure DEX vs a 3:1 build. This is based on the malaysian version of ghost, so the damage will be weaker than what we will see in USA. I also left out the stat advantages from going chaos / order, but they are constant so there's no point in adding them.

I highly suggest a pure dex build myself simply due to the damage advantage you gain. Defense in this game is pretty literal, meaning, one point = one damage off (not counting in critical hits). I always do like making formulas so here I go.

I'm going to do this comparison as if you were level 83 since level 83 is the level that you get your second major attack skill in chaos/order. Now doing your 3:1 build and starting with 3 of each stat, that means that at level 83 you should have 252 dex and 86 vit. I'm not sure how exponential damage gain becomes, but at lower levels one dex point gives you about 1 or 2 minimum damage and 3 or 4 maxmimum damage, so let's go the middle ground and use 1.5 minimum damage gain per dex and 3.5 maximium damage gain per dex. So multiply by 252 and you get 378 minimum damage and 882 maximum damage. 378 ~ 882 would be your base damage range. Now, we can't forget claw mastery which gives you a passive 20% boost on your damage, so how we have to multiply the whole deal by 1.2. That gives us 454 ~ 1058. Now of course we have to add in your weapon. Your level 10 weapon has a whimpy 12 attack, but that attack goes up by 17 for your lv 20 weapon, and then 18 for your level 30 weapon, so it seems like the damage gain for each item is one more than the previous, starting from +17. Assuming level 80 weapons exist, your level 80 weapon would be clean for 152 attack, and there's no way in hell we're leaving it clean, so let's make it +30 for 182 attack. 20% that with mastery and it's 218 attack. So now our damage range is at 672 ~ 1276. Now we can't forget that wonderful 86 vit that we have. Well, it's really only +83. I've never touched a point of vit in my life, but I do know for a fact that assassins gain 11-12 hp naturally per level. I'm going to assume you get 1.5 defense and 5 HP for each vit point. STR only gives 2 HP so I guess it's a reasonable estimate. That means you have 125 more defense and 415 more HP than your pure dex counter parts. So far it looks pretty good for you doesn't it? I wouldn't be too sure. At level 83 you're not going to be training on easy monsters. I'd like to estimate taking about 300 to 400 damage from an everyday mob, if you were pure dex that is. With the extra vit you'd be taking 175 to 275, give or take. That isn't a whole lot less of damage. That pretty much makes your extra 415 HP useless - it's gone in 2 hits. Though your HP pot use will be lesser, your MP pot use will be much higher since your skills are much weaker than a pure DEX player. Not to mention that the amount of damage you take can be controlled - you decide when you want to get hit or not. And you can't forget that your level 69 skill makes you invincible during use, much like double slash, so you won't be taking damage very often at all. And last I checked, MP potions cost more than HP potions, and the demands that high level skills have is pretty freaking high if your level 18 skill already costs you close to 50 MP at max level, so if you were thinking about saving money with having vit, that's not really going to happen. To really start seeing the gaps, we need to add in skills and buffs. If you go chaos (you better go chaos), you get a buff that raises attack and lowers defense at a certain percent at oh, level 76. I'm going to assume it's just like the warrior buff, 20% damage increase 20% defense drop. It's probably more since it's such a high level skill, but it's just an estimate. Looking back on our damage range of 672 ~ 1276, let's 20% that as well. That puts us now at 806 ~ 1531. I don't know the percentages for your high level skills, but I know for a fact that dash strike is 330% damage at maximum level. So times that damage range by 3.3 and we get 2660 ~ 5052 damage for your dash strike on an optimal 3 monsters. So in reality, that damage on 3 monsters is a total of 7980 ~ 15156 damage. Pretty good damage, but let's compare to a pure DEX assassin now.

Going pure DEX, you will have 335 DEX at level 83. Using the 1.5 multiplier for minimum damage and 3.5 for maximum, that places us at 503 ~ 1173. 20% multiplier for claw mastery - 604 ~ 1406. Let's put a weapon on now, same attack as before, 218. 822 ~ 1624 now. 20% that with your level 76 buff puts us at 986 ~ 1950. Dash strike, multiply by 3.3. We're now at 3254 ~ 6435. Optimize the damage total on 3 monsters, putting us at 9762 ~ 19305. So, for the same MP use of 48, you're dealing optimally 1782 ~ 4149 MORE damage. With that much more damage, you're sacrificing 125 defense and 415 HP. You take 125 more damage, but you deal about 3000 more. I'm not even adding in critical damage to this calculation, and I'm not even throwing in your high level skills. At level 69 you get a 3 strike skill that deals AoE. All 3 hits will be stronger, and add it to the minimum of 3 monsters you'll be hitting makes the extra damage beyond 6000 at the very least, and about 2000 if you were to hit only one monster.

We also forgot to count in the 20% decrease of defense with the buff. Assassin armor has 13 defense at level 10 and goes up about 13 each level. So your armor should have about 104 defense, clean. Of course, we're not leaving that clean either. Let's make it +60 defense, 164 defense. (Remember, upgrading bonuses are double on armor). So a pure DEX would have 164 defense at level 83 and a 3:1 would have 289 defense at level 83. Drop both of them by 20% and you get 137 vs 241. The defense difference is now only 105, not 125. So in actuality, pure DEX assassins take 100ish more damage to deal 3000 more with just dash strike (1000 more if you were counting only 1 monster).

Now if you want to make a low level comparison, say level 30, we'll be seeing the differences already. Level 30 with 3:1 build, 93 dex, 33 vit. Level 30 with pure dex build, 123 dex, 3 vit. 1.5 x minimum and 3.5 x maximum:: 140 ~ 326 versus 185 ~ 431. Mastery, 20% extra damage. 168 ~ 391 versus 222 ~ 517. Dash strike 3.3 multiplier. 554 ~ 1290 versus 733 ~ 1706. Optimal damage by hitting 3 mobs, 1662 ~ 3870 versus 2199 ~ 5118. The weapon doesn't matter since it's the same for both, I'd just be adding a constant to the forumla that could be removed. The attack of the claw getting amplified by dash strike is the same in both, so it's ignorable. Some thing you should note is that a pure dex assassin without mastery is even slightly better than a 3:1 assassin with mastery at this level. The damage difference output is already at 400 on individuals and about 1200 when optimizing. The defense gain at this point in time is 45 for the 3:1 build assassin. Looks promising, but with 53 defense I take around 70-150 damage from level 30 monsters. With 98 defense from the vit, you'll take about 30 - 90. Not that big of a difference, even if you count in the 150 HP. Once again, consider MP cost vs HP cost. If you kill faster with the same skill you save MP pots, and even HP pots too. The faster you kill, the less chances you give monsters to hit you.

Of course, it's just my opinion with a butt load of facts to back it up. Do 3:1 if you wish, but you should consider one thing. Going from 3:1 to 4:0 is impossible - once the vit is there you can't take it off. Going from 4:0 to 3:1 is very easy - if you find you need the vit, you can add it in amounts you see fit.

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