Defense for assassins is an unusual experience: she lacks the defensive measures of other melee classes like dodging and DR boosting skills. What she does get is a great bag of offensive options like stunning, conversion, and blindness, which is more or less what she'll be using as defense.
Defense Rating is a so-so thing for the melee assassin: she'll find herself in melee combat a lot, so a high DR helps, but she has no skills to increase her DR, so eventually, she's going to hit her limit even with the heaviest armor. In addition, no matter how high, DR can't provide the assassin with 100% protection (not including blocking) and a monster always has some chance to hit, ranging from 5 to 95%.
In my opinion, DR is the secondary line of defense for the melee assassin. It's far more dependable and less stressful to depend on blocking, either from a shield or Weapon Block, as well as leeching, FHR, damage reduction, Cloak of Shadows, Mind Blast, traps, and of course, moving around a lot.
If you're using a trapper, DR becomes even less important.
Faster hit recovery comes into play when a target (monster or player) is struck by a successful attack that causes any type of damage greater than 1/12 of the target's maximum life. When this happens, the target (in this instance, your character) goes into a "hit stun" animation. When your character is stunned, it can't make any other kind of movement during the recovery phase. You can be stunned again while stunned and stunned repeatedly by a mob of monsters. This is known as "stun lock," which is where FHR comes in.
Generally, melee assassins need every frame they can get — when going up against a group of ten blood lords, even a split-second lost on the starting block can mean the difference between moving on to your next victims and the sudden pressing need for a town portal. Assassins don't get high DR or tons of life, so they're going to get hit, and occasionally, they're going to feel it. Sure, assassins will almost always have blocking, but that's their only line of defense; after that, you want to make sure you can recover from any hit as quickly as possible. FHR will save your ass; use it and get as much as you possibly can.
The assassin's recovery rate after hit stun is six frames without FHR equipment; assassins benefit immediately and significantly from FHR: to reach a five frame hit stun, she'll need just 20%. At 63% FHR, reaching four frames is a bit harder and the all-time low — a three frame hit recovery — requires 200% FHR.
Items that give FHR will help your character escape by reducing the number of frames of animation that make up the hit recovery phase. In the expansion, all armor can have 10% FHR, but only body armor and belts have 17 or 24% FHR. Rare jewels of truth give 7% FHR and the Shael rune gives 20% FHR when used in helms and armor. Small, large and grand charms of balance give 5, 8 and 12% FHR, respectively.
The assassin can get blocking either from a shield or from the Weapon Block skill.
Damage Reduction is different from Defense Rating: while DR reduces the chance of being struck, it does not reduce damage. Damage Reduction is the exact opposite: it reduce physical damage, but does not reduce the chance of being struck. If you're going to play a melee character who will consistently take damage from other meleers, then you'll probably want this. For the assassin, who has little in the way of defense rating, you'll definitely want this.
Damage reduction items of importance to the assassin are restricted to uniques, runes, rune words, Natalya's Odium (35%), and the Fade skill (1% damage reduction per skill level). Items that use physical resist include Rockfleece field plate armor (10%), Rockstopper sallet (10%), String of Ears demonhide sash (10-15%), Shaftstop mesh armor (30%), Vampire Gaze grim helm (15-20%), Harlequin's Crest shako (10%), Verdungo's Hearty Cord mithril coil (10-15%), Stormshield Monarch (30%), and the Ber rune when used in armor (7%). Note that few physical resist items offer elemental resistance.
Damage reduction reduces physical damage by its listed percentage, but is capped at 50%: for example, a assassin wearing a perfect Vampire Gaze, Shaftstop, and String of Ears (a total of 65%) has an effective 50% physical resist, meaning that if a physical attack causes 100 damage, damage reduction reduces that by 50%, resulting in 50 damage. Again, this is important to melee fighters, but for trappers, whose defense comes from avoidance, damage reduction isn't as much of a priority.
Optimally, an assassin should have her resistances at around 75%, but if this isn't possible, try to keep resists maintained above 40-60%. Remedial attributes like Thawing/Warmth, Absorption and Reduce Poison Length by 25~75% are invaluable to the assassin. There is a -40% penalty to all resistances in NM. This penalty is -100% in Hell difficulty level.
Resists on all weapons top out at 11-20%; amulets, rings, armor, boots and circlets can have up to 31-40% in any one resist. Rare rings can have 12-15% prismatic resists, while rare circlets and amulets can have 16-20% and magical circlet and amulets get up to 21-30% prismatic resists. For LOD, small charms can have 3-11% to any one resist as a prefix; large charms, 4-15% and grand charms can have up to 7-30% resist. Small shimmering charms can have 3-5% to all resists, large shimmering charms can have 3-8% and grand charms can have 3-15% to all resists. Rare jewels can have 15-30% to any one resist and/or 5-10% to all resists as prefixes. A magical scintillating jewel can have 11-15% to all resists. The Um rune gives 15% to all resistances; all runes work the same when used in helms or armor.
Fire is the most used elemental attack in the game. Protect against it. You absolutely must have fire resist maxed in A4, as almost every monster worthy of respect will use fire, and if you're going to attack it up close, the chances are fairly good that you'll have to endure a barrage of fire-based attacks to get to them first. When in an area with a lot of fire walls, it also helps to have equipment that reduces magic damage. Useful runes for armor are Ral (fire resist 30%) and Vex (+5% maximum fire resist).
Lightning is the second most common elemental attack in the game, as well as the outright deadliest because lightning almost always hits multiple times, sending a poorly-protected character into stunlock. The worst monsters in the game all have some form of lightning attack; this includes Diablo, Bartuc the Bloody, Mephisto and the Council of Zakurum. Useful runes for armor are Ort (lightning resist 30%) and Lo (+5% maximum lightning resist).
Cold resistance modifies cold damage as well as freeze and chill time. Cold is a major threat to the meleer; the damage is inconsequential, but its chill can suddenly slow down your character. This is especially dangerous in the last legs of Hell, where rogue archers will continuously pelt you with Ice Arrows to slow your assassin down, making her easy pickings for every other monster. Because every aspect of the assassin depends on speed, you do not ever want this to happen. Cold resistance will lower damage and chill duration, but amulets, rings, circlets, gloves or boots of Thawing/Warmth ("Half Freeze Duration") cut the duration you can be frozen/chilled via cold attacks in half. This bonus does not stack; your chill time is always cut in half, regardless of how many of these items you are wearing. The best solution is to find items with the "Cannot be Frozen" property; any item with that property does just that: the freeze and chill times are set to 0. Neither "Cannot Be Frozen" or Thawing will not help against slows target or a Holy Freeze aura. Useful runes for armor are Thul (cold resist 30%), Ohm (+5% maximum cold resist) and Cham (cannot be frozen).
Poison won't stack, stun or kill your character, but it will counteract the regenerative effects of potions and potentially drop your character to one point of life. Poison will kill your hireling and if Baal hits you with it in the Worldstone Chamber, it will kill you as well. Poison has two parts: how much damage is done per second and how long that duration lasts. In addition to poison resistance, you must find items that reduce poison length; poison reduction also suffers a -40% penalty in NM and -100% in Hell, meaning that to get 75% poison reduction in Hell, a character must wear 175% poison reduction. Other than having decent poison resistance and reduction, solutions to poison include quaffing an antidote (which instantly cures poison) or shooting everything in sight in an effort to regain life. Useful runes for armor are Tal (poison resist 30%) and Gul (+5% maximum poison resist).
Hardcore assassins should always strive to have maximum resistances when they can.
Absorb heals the player — which is equivalent to resistance. If you have 5% absorb fire, 5% of the fire that would hurt heals you instead — roughly equivalent to 10% resistance. It is not bound by the resistance cap. Items that offer lightning absorption are Thundergod's Vigor war belt, Blackhorn's Face death mask, and the Wisp Projector ring. Items that offer fire absorption are The Rising Sun amulet, Dwarf Star ring, and Hellmouth war gauntlets. Items that offer cold absorption are Snowclash battle belt and Raven Frost ring.
last updated: Thursday, July 01, 2004 — version 0.10
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