Greatsword Assassin Build

Greatsword Assassin Build

Hey everyone! Today we will be covering Redlaf's Greatsword Assassin Build. This is a light armor build where you will be rolling around, dealing high DPS, and killing enemy healers, bows, and mages with ease! If that sounds interesting, keep reading.

Additionally, be sure to check out the build video if that helps! And if you enjoy this build check out twitch.tv/redlaf for more gameplay like this or to ask questions!

Cliquez pour activer la vidéo YT

The Basics

What is this build good at?: High DPS backline diving. You excel when going after squishy enemies and taking care of them. With the mobility of greataxe and greatsword, paired with light rolls, you can easily chase down enemies or escape if needed.

What is this build bad at?: This is a squishy build so you are susceptible to dying if you get crowd controlled. Due to this, the build has a bit of a high skill floor to be able to excel at. Additionally, you are not AOE damage focused so you don't want to be fighting in clumps while PvPing.

Attributes

You have two main options with this build for attributes:

150 Strength, 150 Dexterity, 215 Consitution
300 Strength, 50 Dexterity, 150 Consitution (Can also drop Dexterity here to do 310 Strength and 200 Constitution)

The first option is what I personally run and find to be strongest. The Greatsword scales 50/50 with Strength and Dexterity (both are 0.8 scaling compared to a weapon typically scaling with 0.9 for one attribute and 0.65 with the other attribute.) So having both Strength and Dexterity will maximize the damage on the Greatsword.

Additionally, with 150 strength that will give us additional melee damage and slashing damage which is huge. And the 150 dexterity gives us a critical hit chance increase as well as reducing our roll cost by 10. That is especially important because when we have the hearty perk on our ring we are at 110 stamina and with 150 dexterity we can roll twice and have 30 stamina left over for our greatsword heavy attacks.

For the other attribute option, the main reason you would go this is if you want your greataxe to deal damage. So instead of using greataxe as just utility for the abilities, you would have 300 strength to hit with the greataxe as well. You do lose damage with your greatsword by doing this option.

Gear

Armor:

1. Resilient

You will want 5 resilient on your armor, so every single piece needs to have this. When you dive into the backline you will often have enemies focus you. These are typically high DPS players as well with mages and bow/dexterity players. Those players will critical hit you a lot, so having 5 resilient will make it so that you are not bursted so easily and you can fight them.

2. Shirking Fortification

For secondary perks on your armor, you will want to get at least 4 stacks of shirking fortification. If you can get 5 stacks then that would be great, but otherwise you'll want to get 4 stacks. A lot of light armor players like Shirking Energy, which is fair, but with light armor changes and how squishy you are, I believe it is worth it to manage your stamina better and instead take less damage. With four stacks you get 15.6% damage absorption just by dodging through an attack.

3. Options: Refreshing, Relentless Freedom, Critical Retribution and/or Insatiable Gravity Well

For the final perks on your armor, you would be looking at getting Refreshing or Critical Retribution on most of the gear. Refreshing is nice to get your cooldowns up quicker, meaning you get more damage and more capability on staying on top of a fleeing enemy or fleeing yourself. Especially with stance changes in the greatsword, having shorter cooldowns is very important. Critical Retribution is also a great option for higher damage, especially since you are going to be hit by crits a lot when fighting other DPS players.

There are then the two weapon perks you want to get. Insatiable Gravity Well will help with survivability and additional burst damage. You can get this on your armor or on your greataxe since you use that weapon for utility and not damage. Relentless Freedom is also important as it provides a lot of damage (110% weapon damage on the first hit and 120% weapon damage on the second hit). So having increased critical chance on that ability helps with your damage. Lastly, having a way to escape soft crowd control is also nice.

Jewelry

Amulet

Health
Slashing Protection or Thrust Protection
Refreshing Evasion or Refreshing

Weapons:

Greatsword

Legendary Starter Until You Roll BIS: Sonic Sword. Provides you relentless freedom and two good perks
Vicious, Thwarting Strikes, or Trenchant Strikes
Abyssal Attunement
Keenly Empowered, Keenly Jagged, Keen Speed, and Refreshing Move

Greataxe

Insatiable Gravity Well - if you don't have it on your armor you can put it here
Refreshing Move
Vicious

Heartrune

Brutal Heartrune of Grasping Vines - This is helpful with locking down opponents and weakening/rending them so it's easier to kill them
Brutal Heartrune of Detonate - You take this one to be a bit more glass cannon but it gives you nice movement speed and a good burst of damage to help you secure kills. It is a bit riskier to take in light armor.