Daggers in the dark

I’ve sometimes wondered in the past what it must be like to be an untouchable, treated with disdain, constantly ignored and overlooked.

Now I know.

You see I play an Assassin in Guild Wars.

If you haven’t played Guild Wars Factions, you don’t know what I’m talking about. If you have, you’re probably chuckling because you’re familiar with the stereotype (if not perpetuated it).

One of the two new professions introduced in the second Guild Wars campaign, the Assassin is ostensibly a hit and run specialist. Towards that end, he has combo-based skills to dish out tremendous damage quickly and the ability to teleport.

He also has a remarkable tendency to die.

One could lay the blame on the profession’s armour (which has a base armour level of 70) but I believe the main reason for the high mortality rate among Assasins is the profession’s ability to dish out a lot of damage in a brief period of time.

Most Assassins tend to fixate on the damage they’re causing (or about to cause) and completely overlook the damage they’re taking. Assassins are not alone in this; most Elementalists I’ve seen in PvE PUGs are guilty of this as well. However, the Assassin is in much greater peril as he is a close combat specialist.

So Assassins die.

A lot.

(It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way, of course. The Assassin skillset includes some terrific skills for defence and self-healing but again, players tend to fixate on increasing damage output instead of mitigating damage incurred.)

It’s therefore not surprising players who don’t play Assassins tend to treat the profession with great disdain. As someone noted in a forum, the only other profession to love the Assassin is the Necromancer and that’s only because Assassin corpses are terribly convenient for creating undead minions.

Sin lfg masters

If playing an Assassin and keeping him alive is a challenge, getting an invite from a PUG is a greater one. Assassins are only invited when no other profession is available.

Most of the missions and quests in Factions are playable with NPC henchmen but earning the Master’s Reward for missions is almost impossible without the aid of other players. Earning the Master’s Reward in a mission nets you additional XP and gold but the main reason for getting it is to earn the Protector of Cantha title. I was keen on obtaining the title for my Assassin after obtaining it for my Mesmer but was dismayed by the difficulty I had getting into a PUG.

And once I got in a PUG, I had more problems to overcome. Assassins are all about timing: picking the right time to hit and picking the right time to exit. My ISP, on the other hand, is all about lag-spikes, poor connections and latency.

The two, as you might imagine, do not mix well.

Things got so bad in recent weeks that I was suffering from regular 10-second lag spikes. Frustrated, I gave up conventional melee Assassin builds and went with the Critical Barrager build. I generally dislike popular cookie-cutter builds — the main attraction of the game for me is trying out new skills and tactics in combat — but I felt this was the only way to earn the Protector title given my iffy connection.

I finally managed to earn the title a few days ago. On the face of it, it’s not that impressive — I’ve managed to get Protector titles for my Necro, Ranger and Mesmer — but considering all the difficulties and frustrations I had obtaining it, it ranks as one of my great gaming achievements.