How does one 1v1 an assassin?

[NorthFacedMan]

I want to know how to beat assassins in 1v1 as said in the title. Alright, I would like to hear from someone who has played an assassin and knows the class well. I play a Combat sentinel. I would like to know what ccs to break, what to watch out for, key attacks that require a stun to prevent from being bursted down and what I need to interrupt (if anything). Anything else I need to know please tell me

 

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[RiChess]

Most of a sins DPS is done either before you can react (instantly after stealth) or while they have you CCed/stunned (low slash etc). Aside from that, your best bet is to hit them with a slow, and try to keep them from getting behind you. I find slow>backpedal>run through them when they force speed/catch up to effectively confuse them to the point of 8k maul hits happening a lot less regularly.

 

For you, just be aware of when they're going to CC you and time your abilities, i.e if you're carnage, using gore just a few seconds after they open on you is a great way to watch it expire while you're low slashed.

[sithBracer]

A good one, you probably can't if they get a good opener on you. You are honestly better off force charging away from him or camoing out of the fight. You are actually helping your team more this way by keeping him in combat.

 

If it is a duel it is pretty much impossible since they can sap heal you.

 

Edit-Here are some things you might want to watch out for.

 

After his opener he will maul you, if it bursts for a lot of damage, it is better to get out of the battle at this point (esp if you are node guarding, call your friends immediately after camoing out and stall when he starts capping).

 

Once he uses clairvoyant strike/voltage slash or double strike twice he will probably use project/shock. If it crits ... yeah. Watch his charge procs, if it gets up to 3 and his lightsaber starts to glow he will be able to hit you with a discharge/force penetration, but if it doesn't add up to 3 then that means he probably used recklessness and his next 2 force attacks will crit and he will have a free discharge.

 

Also you need to watch for his infilltration tactics (on my shadow it looks like a proc of a man with a saber surrounded by green), once it appears do not let him get behind you, the maul will hurt-and a good shadow will be trying to get behind you by then (a cc/root would be good at this point). He might low slash you at this point so no idea what to do if you get caught in it. You would have to eat the maul/shadow strike.

 

If his health comes back without him using a medpack he activate battle readiness, which will give him a nice buff for 15 seconds, so a CD would be good here.

 

His hard stun you could break, during the hard stun some sins will use crushing darkness followed by a maul or shock to finish you quickly. If you break it you can interrupt the crushing darkness, other's will try to maul you twice. Break CC and put on your best DC and force them to waste their energy.

 

Can't think of much else.

Edited October 21, 2013 by sithBracer

[PoliteAssasin]

A good one, you probably can't if they get a good opener on you. You are honestly better off force charging away from him or camoing out of the fight. You are actually helping your team more this way by keeping him in combat.

 

If it is a duel it is pretty much impossible since they can sap heal you.

 

Not entirely true. In a duel they will always open on you, and it is still very much possible to beat them. Really just depends on the spec. If you use your CC breaker in a duel with any stealth class that can sap and heal, other than to prevent that from happening, then you deserve to lose. Thats the number 1 thing you need to anticipate when fighting a stealther.

 

@OP - Combat sentinel is basically on somewhat even ground when it comes to fighting deception, given that they're both high burst class with moderate survivability. While combat bursts much harder than deception sins, they have the advantage of on demand burst at the click of a button, whereas we have to rely on RNG. The duel will ultimately come down to that with combat, as well as how you time your defensive cooldowns to counter the sin, pacify and saber ward being the biggest. The only spec that will consistently beat any sin in a duel from our class is watchman, though very few play it to begin with these days.

 

If you're looking to 1v1 the sin in a duel, then go watchman. But be sure you know what you're doing. If you're talking about warzones, then considering the chance of the sin sap healing you is significantly lower due to the amount of players that will be around, you should break on his spike and immediately pop saber ward. This will either delay, or reduce the burst at the beginning of the fight (depending on if he holds, or continues to follow through). Since sins do not have a channeled melee attack, you're either going to pop pacify when you feel he may go in for another CC, such as low slash (most likely once your saber ward is down) or towards the end of the fight to delay an execute if he managed to force you to GBTF. (Although this is high risk as they aren't exclusively melee, so once they realize they missed the execute you'll be dead via a force attack if you haven't finished them off by then.)

 

In a duel its going to be a bit different for combat. I'm not saying its impossible, its certainly been done many times, but due to the ability of the sin to sap and heal to full if you were to break you aren't going to want to pop your CC breaker until you force him to heal. This presents somewhat of an issue for combat as the sin can not only keep you stun locked, but is capable of burning you down within those stuns, while you have no way of healing yourself back up besides a medpac. If you manage to stick a saber ward in between stuns, you'll be in a good position to regain ground.

 

Also keep in mind that the above scenario is just an example of many that could take place. No one player fights the same, there are general similarities, but you will never have a specific response to each and every sin, or other class for that matter. I'm simply giving you this one example so you can make note of how certain defensive abilities can be used to mitigate or delay their burst. In all honesty you should really read up on all sentinel abilities and make note of how you can use them, both offensive and defensive, when fighting other classes, or your own. Once you have that knowledge, you'll be able to adapt on the fly in any duel. I didn't bother to go into detail regarding offense as you should already know how to play combat, which is a fairly easy spec to get down. Hope this helps.

Edited October 21, 2013 by PoliteAssasin

[Brunner_Venda]

Any tips for a tactics VG?

 

There's a lot of 'hope he doesn't get a good opener' in this thread. That's not a good strategy lol!

[PoliteAssasin]

Any tips for a tactics VG?

 

There's a lot of 'hope he doesn't get a good opener' in this thread. That's not a good strategy lol!

 

As a mara/sent? You should be melting them. As I outlined in my post, hoping he doesn't get lucky on backstab crits along with his autocrits is dependent on which spec you're using.

Edited October 21, 2013 by PoliteAssasin

[LordExozone]

Any tips for a tactics VG?

 

There's a lot of 'hope he doesn't get a good opener' in this thread. That's not a good strategy lol!

 

Assassins are pretty hard for VG/PT's. An important aspect is to have enough of a health buffer. If you go all glass cannon with less than 30.000 min/maxed health, his initial burst will set you back so far it will be very hard to recover. While fighting, its key to recognize the force shroud in time to not waste any elemental attacks or especially CC.

Also, don't pop all your defensive cooldowns at once. I see a lot of Powertechs panicking and popping Energy Shield and Hold the Line at the same time. Start with using Energy Shield and try to kite him as well as possible. When Energy Shield runs out, pop hydraulic overrides/hold the line and he will be hard pressed to do much damage to you. Don't backpedal, but also don't turn your back to him while in melee range. Finally, don't use the 3 stack flamethrower unless you don't have hold the line active and are outside of melee range but inside of flamethrower range.

 

The good thing with fighting Sins is, if you loose no shame on you and no glory for him. He is playing the easy-mode dueling class after all. But if you win, you have the right to feel pretty awesome.

[DeadDogBarking]

Luck is part of the game. Each class is dependent on cool downs and or crits or procs. Every class has a high ground and weaknesses.

 

The 1v1 tournament had to have a non-stealth award because they always get the first 3-5 places.

 

Roots, Slows, damage and accuracy reductions are your friends. Sins have good force and melee damage plus a cleanse so they can get everybody. They get 2 chances to hit you hard and they need to be used together to keep the pressure up. As mentioned they will get you out of stealth with a combination of burst and stuns.

 

If you get a chance and have your procs up the first impulse is to hit them hard. They can either stun and burst again or choose to stealth heal and hit again. They will choose and should keep the advantage either way.

 

You want them to loose momentum by chasing you or being put in a bad spot like mezzed, rooted or slowed where they loose their advantage and have to choose the stealth option to escape your hard attack. If you are alone do not try pop them out of stealth if you took good damage. Put as much distance as you can and put your back against a wall and if they removed themselves from combat you should be able to heal. Or try to run to a group that will help you.

 

Their stealth is on a minute plus cooldown - I forget now. So when they pop out you can now try to face them one on one. Every defensive you did not use the first time will come in handy now. If you feel that you can beat the have fun or else just kite like before until one of you drops.

 

Stealthers are either really good or really bad and some are tank dps builds that wil trick you into misjudging their damage and survivability. If they are messing with you by running in circles do all you can to slow or mezz them because that is probably on of their major out of stealth fall back tricks.

 

As a class they get shafted in sustained damage plus longer cooldowns balance their great defensives. In war zones if I am stationary I will find places that I can put my back against the wall and then manipulate the camera angle so I can still pull back on view. I find this is a better defense than waiting until they hit me.

[NathanielStarr]

Here is the tip. Be a Marauder, Juggernaut, Assassin or a really good Pyrotech or the republic equivalent. If you are one of those classes you can beat them, especially if you are smash. If you are an Operative healer run, heal up, disappear and call for help, otherwise just die. Edited October 21, 2013 by NathanielStarr

[Brunner_Venda]

As a mara/sent? You should be melting them. As I outlined in my post, hoping he doesn't get lucky on backstab crits along with his autocrits is dependent on which spec you're using.

 

Sorry, I meant a tactics VG against an assassin.

 

Sents are actually a fun fight with a tactics VG.

[PoliteAssasin]

Here is the tip. Be a Marauder, Juggernaut, Assassin or a really good Pyrotech or the republic equivalent. If you are one of those classes you can beat them, especially if you are smash. If you are an Operative healer run, heal up, disappear and call for help, otherwise just die.

 

Lol please, smash jugg maybe, but smash marauders are horrible at duels. Its annihilation, followed by carnage. Smash is a guaranteed loss in a duel for marauders. I can't believe you're still QQing about smash when other specs do so much more, aka combat and infiltration. Its so easy to jump on the smash hate.

[Xienive]

I can think of one big mistake I see ALL the time, and that is using stun breaker on low slash. I see people do that often and if you do that you are basically asking for death if our other stuns are up. I know it's an obvious thing not to, but still.

 

Watch procs, when you see 3 stacks of force breach, and force potency at the same time you are going to want to shield yourself from it with defensive CD's or whatever you have available. Because if you manage to not take that hit then a big majority of our burst has just disappeared and we don't have a way to get it back unless we waste our cloak.

[sithBracer]

Here is the tip. Be a Marauder, Juggernaut, Assassin or a really good Pyrotech or the republic equivalent. If you are one of those classes you can beat them, especially if you are smash. If you are an Operative healer run, heal up, disappear and call for help, otherwise just die.

 

The republic equivalent is VG. All of the guys you mentioned are not tough for an assassin. Not sure which one is easier but none really have a good chance unless the sin is very unlucky with burst-even then it's 50/50 against a good sin. The only class I have trouble with is snipers. Too many roots and CCs and resolve is BS for anyone other than a jugg tank. But even then the best way to win is to kite the assassin next to your friends. There was one particular sniper I remember I was never able to kill 1 v 1 even once because he kept rooting and kiting me towards his team. If he stayed and tried to fight me I would've finished him (got him down to almost no health after he used his medpacs and grenades even). So that is the best way to beat a sin. Kite him over to your friends and he is finished.

[glocklB]

A good one, you probably can't if they get a good opener on you. You are honestly better off force charging away from him or camoing out of the fight. You are actually helping your team more this way by keeping him in combat.

This is undoubtedly true.

 

If it is a duel it is pretty much impossible since they can sap heal you.

That's why breaking anything but sap is bs. Not breaking hard stun though is punishing as well.

 

His hard stun you could break, during the hard stun some sins will use crushing darkness followed by a maul or shock to finish you quickly. If you break it you can interrupt the crushing darkness, other's will try to maul you twice. Break CC and put on your best DC and force them to waste their energy.

 

Sins won't use crushing darkness during hard stun (at least decent/good ones), the only moment when crushing darkness is of great use - after low slash. I think you confused it with hard stun. Breaking stun may make sense sometimes, while breaking low slash is a really dumb move always but in 1 out of 1000 cases.

[JP_Legatus]

How to beat a sin: Roll a jugg.

I'm still kind of sad Belligerent didn't enter the last dueling tourney so we can finally dispel this myth of sins being the best dueling class.

 

Otherwise equal skill the sin should win. If you still want to try, lots of advice here has been given, but that's the general truth of what I've seen in duels. There aren't too many people out there who really care about dueling so you could probably practice a lot and beat some sins.

Edited October 22, 2013 by JP_Legatus

[glocklB]

How to beat a sin: Roll a jugg

 

Depending on spec of assassin (most here talk about deception obviously) there are more options in fact. Madness sorcs played correctly (with a bit of luck) should have near 100% win rate against deception imo. The only deception chance in real is to burst sorc down right off the bat. I don't say that I don't lose to deception assassins (even in longer fights), but all losses against them are usually easily explained by my own mistakes.

Edited October 22, 2013 by glocklB

[AlrikFassbauer]

Most of a sins DPS is done either before you can react (instantly after stealth) or while they have you CCed/stunned (low slash etc). Aside from that, your best bet is to hit them with a slow, and try to keep them from getting behind you. I find slow>backpedal>run through them when they force speed/catch up to effectively confuse them to the point of 8k maul hits happening a lot less regularly.

 

But - backpedaling is frowned upon the PvP community ! How dare you !!!

 

Apart from that, I read very general bla bla here, and very little practical tips.

Edited October 22, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

[cycao]

Depending on spec of assassin (most here talk about deception obviously) there are more options in fact. Madness sorcs played correctly (with a bit of luck) should have near 100% win rate against deception imo. The only deception chance in real is to burst sorc down right off the bat. I don't say that I don't lose to deception assassins (even in longer fights), but all losses against them are usually easily explained by my own mistakes.

 

Yeah a well played madness can be crazy hard to beat. Stuns, roots/snares and a knockback they just keep you at distance and keep the dot's rolling.

[Brunner_Venda]

But - backpedaling is frowned upon the PvP community ! How dare you !!!

 

Apart from that, I read very general bla bla here, and very little practical tips.

 

Because there aren't any real practical tips. I see a lot of 'hope that they don't, pray this doesn't proc, watch out for double duplicity, hit a DCD when.., kite the sin back to your team etc'

 

Few want to admit it, because they can't wait for their sins to get ahold of the damage buffs they don't need.

[Jimvinny]

Yeah a well played madness can be crazy hard to beat. Stuns, roots/snares and a knockback they just keep you at distance and keep the dot's rolling.

 

Poorly played madness are child's play though. And there are a lot more poorly played ones than well played ones.

[cycao]

Poorly played madness are child's play though. And there are a lot more poorly played ones than well played ones.

 

You can say that with every class/spec. A poorly played assassin wont be able to fight himself out of a wet paper bag.

[Jimvinny]

You can say that with every class/spec. A poorly played assassin wont be able to fight himself out of a wet paper bag.

 

Very true.

 

Reason I mentioned it was that a buddy who is very good at lightning decided he wanted to duel me, but realized it would be tough in cast-happy lightning. He switched to madness, but doesn't know it well. The duel wasn't close.

[sithBracer]

Because there aren't any real practical tips. I see a lot of 'hope that they don't, pray this doesn't proc, watch out for double duplicity, hit a DCD when.., kite the sin back to your team etc'

 

Few want to admit it, because they can't wait for their sins to get ahold of the damage buffs they don't need.

 

1 v 1 sins are very hard to beat if they get the bursts that they need.

 

Most sins will be infiltration/deception others will use the wakajinn spec or the spec that xinika put up (almost the same thing).

 

For infiltration the key to beating them is keeping distance, kiting and wear them down. The best at this would be a sorc.

 

So I'll give a battle scenario. The sorc starts off with a static barrier. The sin opens with his knockdown followed by a maul. The sorc doesn't eat the whole thing thanks to his static barrier and force speeds away. The Sin will probably force speed after and maybe get one shock off. The sorc uses force slow and then uses a knockback and runs away 20m+, places a DoT on him and starts kiting shocking him when he can. The sin is now stuck. He can't do anything but eat the dot and and shock while the sorc continues to kite making sure force slow is on the sin at all times and putting himself in a static barrier and even healing up a bit. There is almost nothing the sin can do at this point because anything he tries the sorc can counter. If he uses force speed the sorc will just use his own force speed, if he tries to cleanse out of the force slow the sorc can match him pace for pace and keep 20m until the next force slow. The only thing the sin can do is try his mezz which the sorc can interrupt or just take and start again at step 1. If the sin tries to LoS the sorc can angle an AoE in there, sin is completely shut down while the sorc shocks and DoTs him. The only thing the sin can do is stealth out, find a place to hide to heal up and try again, so the sorc needs to be vigilant. If the sin decides to stay in stealth until his DC on combat stealth runs out ... well he's a douche, don't duel with him again, if it is a wz then you did your job, go on to attack someone else or continue node guarding until your friend gets there.

 

this is how you beat most sins. Keep them rooted, slowed and out of a 10m distance. If he is using the wakajinn spec he will be using death field, but I rarely meet any who use it.

[JP_Legatus]

1 v 1 sins are very hard to beat if they get the bursts that they need.

 

Most sins will be infiltration/deception others will use the wakajinn spec or the spec that xinika put up (almost the same thing).

 

For infiltration the key to beating them is keeping distance, kiting and wear them down. The best at this would be a sorc.

 

So I'll give a battle scenario. The sorc starts off with a static barrier. The sin opens with his knockdown followed by a maul. The sorc doesn't eat the whole thing thanks to his static barrier and force speeds away. The Sin will probably force speed after and maybe get one shock off. The sorc uses force slow and then uses a knockback and runs away 20m+, places a DoT on him and starts kiting shocking him when he can. The sin is now stuck. He can't do anything but eat the dot and and shock while the sorc continues to kite making sure force slow is on the sin at all times and putting himself in a static barrier and even healing up a bit. There is almost nothing the sin can do at this point because anything he tries the sorc can counter. If he uses force speed the sorc will just use his own force speed, if he tries to cleanse out of the force slow the sorc can match him pace for pace and keep 20m until the next force slow. The only thing the sin can do is try his mezz which the sorc can interrupt or just take and start again at step 1. If the sin tries to LoS the sorc can angle an AoE in there, sin is completely shut down while the sorc shocks and DoTs him. The only thing the sin can do is stealth out, find a place to hide to heal up and try again, so the sorc needs to be vigilant. If the sin decides to stay in stealth until his DC on combat stealth runs out ... well he's a douche, don't duel with him again, if it is a wz then you did your job, go on to attack someone else or continue node guarding until your friend gets there.

 

this is how you beat most sins. Keep them rooted, slowed and out of a 10m distance. If he is using the wakajinn spec he will be using death field, but I rarely meet any who use it.

 

The best dueling specs in my experience are all 36/x/x. You need a root breaker, the pull for kiters, and the armor/self heals.

Deception is better in duels now due to extra recklessness, so sometimes it keeps up.

 

In any case lol @ the guy who is whining about how we don't need buffs. 1v1 isn't warzones.

[AdmiralParmesan]

Every class loses to assassin 1v1 assuming the assassin knows the matchup and is playing an appropriate spec.