35+15 envenom and 50 envenom is the same
35+15 stealth and 50 stealth is the same, except lvl of safefall.
Safefall 3 is all u need to jump from forts.
Staff is based on 100% dext yes but you cant spec in it like a friar. You would PA with an aweful variance.

Trust Shade advices.

Some more background on stealth spec and poison spec.

STEALTH
How far others can see you is determind by their lvl vs. your stealth skill.

So going over 50 stealth only helps when you want "full stealth" vs. enemies that are higher level than you.
For example, with 50+15 stealth you can approach the dragon Cuuldurach quite closely before you get unstealthed

But vs. lvl50 mobs/players, more than 35+15 is useless.

[I have heard rumors on Uthgard 1.0 that going over 50 composite stealth will bring you a slight advantage in RvR, I think it had to do with how often you stealth detection is polled (how often the server/client/whatever checks if you are seen). Maybe I got it wrong. But to be honest, I think they were just that - rumors.]

POISON
Going higher levels in poison will reduce the variance at which you poison damage ticks.
For example, if you have 35 poison and +15 on gear, then apply Lifebane (lvl50 dot) to your weapon and change your gear afterwards (so your composite poison skill will be 35 again). Then, the poison damage will have variance because your poison skill is lower than the applied poison level.

But going over 50 will have no effect, i.e. it will not increase the tick value or further reduce variance (variance at poisonlvl = poisonskill should be 0).

To the staff question, weapon style damage will be ok if you use CritStrike styles.
But your base damage will be lower, because you have no weapon spec in staff.

Moreover, your weapon skill will be low, which means you will miss more often.
And more importantly, others will evade/parry/block your attacks more often, too!
And finally, you can only apply 1 poison per swing, while when using pierce you can put poison on mainhand and offhand.

Versus monsters, staff could work well, because they have low weapon skill and most mobs cannot block/parry/evade.

Remember also, with staff you only have one weaponslot for spellcraft... NS templates are hard to build even with 2 weaponslots, but you will defenately loose some stats/resists when you only have one.

I have played staff nightshade in the battlegrounds, and at lvl24 it works really well, because the weaponskill difference is not that high.

What you CAN do is to Perf/Backstab with a staff, then switch to pierce weapons. Perf/Backstab cannot be evaded/parried/blocked, so no worries on that. I have tried this on targets which are weak to crush and resistant to pierce, and the PA damage is quite nice.

Staff Shade in Thid was really funny

In PvE staff is ok at lower levels till mid levels. Later I prefer to use faster weapons (staff will miss more often and misses with slow weapons hurt...).

PA with staff and rest of the fight with pierces/blades is possible, but please - only vs. mobs or in lower battlegrounds. PA with a slow weapon means, that there will be a rather big delay till you can use creeping death (especially on a server without bb or buff npc). You don't want your opponent to react and avoid your cd stun.

Lucilius- wrote:I wanted to get some opinions on an odd Nightshade spec I am thinking about.

50 Envenom
35 or 40 Stealth
44 or 39 Pierce
29 Celtic Dual

The general idea behind the spec is to open up with the Ice Storm Side Stun --- > Tempest Bleed Combo from Celtic Dual instead of the PA / CD combo most assassins would use.

I played a NS much like a Ranger for a little while, using no CS and focusing on my DDs to pull and then finishing off in melee using Piercing + CD. It worked really well. Think of yourself as a stealthy BM with ranged cold DDs/DoTs, less armour, less defense, but great evasion. For PvE, it's fantastic because you don't require any setups - you can just DD pull and then melee stuff down without having to wade into the thick of aggressive mobs and hopefully just getting the one you want. And for PvP, knocking an enemy out of stealth with your spells now means you have an advantage - you've taken away their stealth, and they probably don't expect you to be so well specced for general melee.

Yes, CS has the best growth rate for attacks, but there's a few problems with it - the foremost being it requires Stealth. Levelling up, it's hard to find the points to max 1 line, let alone 2+. If you want CS, you need to also level Stealth...and either Piercing or Blades so your WS doesn't suck. That means no CD or Envenom for you for a long, long time.
The other issue is that many of the chains require stealth as a starter. Once you get knocked out of stealth, or if a mob sees you, that line's usefulness drops dramatically.

To each their own, though. I can't deny the beauty of a well-executed PA chain. It's just a bit too much work for me

Aaramis wrote:

Lucilius- wrote:I wanted to get some opinions on an odd Nightshade spec I am thinking about.

50 Envenom
35 or 40 Stealth
44 or 39 Pierce
29 Celtic Dual

The general idea behind the spec is to open up with the Ice Storm Side Stun --- > Tempest Bleed Combo from Celtic Dual instead of the PA / CD combo most assassins would use.

I played a NS much like a Ranger for a little while, using no CS and focusing on my DDs to pull and then finishing off in melee using Piercing + CD. It worked really well. Think of yourself as a stealthy BM with ranged cold DDs/DoTs, less armour, less defense, but great evasion. For PvE, it's fantastic because you don't require any setups - you can just DD pull and then melee stuff down without having to wade into the thick of aggressive mobs and hopefully just getting the one you want. And for PvP, knocking an enemy out of stealth with your spells now means you have an advantage - you've taken away their stealth, and they probably don't expect you to be so well specced for general melee.

Yes, CS has the best growth rate for attacks, but there's a few problems with it - the foremost being it requires Stealth. Levelling up, it's hard to find the points to max 1 line, let alone 2+. If you want CS, you need to also level Stealth...and either Piercing or Blades so your WS doesn't suck. That means no CD or Envenom for you for a long, long time.
The other issue is that many of the chains require stealth as a starter. Once you get knocked out of stealth, or if a mob sees you, that line's usefulness drops dramatically.

To each their own, though. I can't deny the beauty of a well-executed PA chain. It's just a bit too much work for me

Yes - this is exactly what I was doing. Made PvE easy.

Cast DD, Cast DD, Instant DD, Hit (Poison Dot), Style Style.

My concern was more if it was viable at the end game because I don't like the stealthy one shot one kill type play style. I look as stealth as more of a navigating tool and avoiding the zerg - but don't want to rely on it to do my damage. After reading some of these comments, makes me wonder if this would be viable...

35 Envenom (+11 items +4 RR) = 50 Envenom for Lifebane

35 Stealth (+11 items +4RR) = 50 Stealth for Max effectiveness on level 50 players

39 Celtic Dual (+11 items +4RR) = 54 Celtic Dual for great consistency in swinging twice plus Hurricane --> Solar Flare any time chain

50 Piercing (+11 items +4 RR) = 65 Piercing for great Weapon skill and Diamondback --> Dragonspire --> Wyvern's Bite evade style chain

Strategy would be to try and open up with Side Stun. If succeed, follow up with Tempest Bleed and try to get off Copperhead snare side style. Use Str/Con and DoT Poison. If required to put up a fight, have a good non-stealth toolset. Getting knocked out of stealth is not a huge deal.

Eventually have the ability to pop Viper and poison swap as needed.

On paper it sounds good

Not liking the 1 shot playstyle?! wtf man! thats the joy of assassins and imo what seperates the good from not so good is being able to land your openers. But anyway, CS spec isn't handicapped if you don't land your openers, their styles still hit hard, harder than any others afaik.

Also I wouldn't get my hopes up of having side stun, there is already a bug filed in the issue tracker trying to get it taken away from ns/rangers. But if thats the spec you wanna play, go for it, it might be pretty good. I played a 50 DW/Thrust spec on my inf for a while and had a lot of fun back in the day.

If you're talking about pve then yeah wep/cd is the way to go. There is a way to land your pa in pve though, I used to bow pull with my inf and kite the mob til I was able to restealth and then the mob would still chase, bam pa chain.

krycek wrote:Not liking the 1 shot playstyle?! wtf man! thats the joy of assassins and imo what seperates the good from not so good is being able to land your openers. But anyway, CS spec isn't handicapped if you don't land your openers, their styles still hit hard, harder than any others afaik.

Yep, not going to deny the damage output of a nice stealthed PA opener with Viper + Lifebane. It's downright disgusting.

I'd label the no-CS spec as an "alternative" spec. Can it work? Yes. I'd say it's superior for PvE, and it's usefulness in RvR depends on your role. For lone-wolf RvR or cherry-picking lowbies? Definitely spec CS. The faster you kill, the faster you can stealth and get out of dodge.

There's definitely a satisfying feeling to that sort of RvR, don't get me wrong. But so is popping a stealther out of stealth using your DDs, and then watching them get owned with your capped melee weapon skills.

I like crit spec even with autotrain stealth in PvE. Forget about PA and BS, but that evade chain rocks.