The Kingdom of Lordan is a unique yet mysterious place. You can experience first-hand combat in one of the weirdest in-game settings possible. Despite all such hardships, the game allows you to classify into multiple classes and build paths.
While every game includes Assassins in one way or another, you would be surprised to feel the subtle yet noticeable difference that the mentioned class entails in Dark Souls III.
The Assassin follows a sneaky yet promising playstyle. The main premise is to mix sorcery with hand-to-hand combat. This achieves the perfect balance for dishing out short bursts of damage against an opponent.
However, the class is not limited to simple attacking. You’d be surprised to know how much outplay potential an Assassin usually possesses. Therefore, it is essential to learn the inner workings of an Assassin for an easier gameplay progression.
Effective Assassin Combat
Aiming to achieve maximum efficiency on an Assassin is rather simple. However, you must weave magic damage with your melee attacks for effective DPS. You will be reliant on your agility and movement speed.
Therefore, negating damage is not one of the strengths of this class. Despite having unconventional combat mechanics, an Assassin is still considered one of the easier classes to play.
Make sure to wait for chances to counterattack during combat since the class excels in returning damage rather than taking it. With that said, you still have some flexibility to pursue a tanker path as a bonus damage trade-off.
Assassin Essential Steps
Unlike simplistic classes like the Warrior or the Knight, an Assassin follows more of an advanced route. You could proceed as a sneaky rat or be a disciplined striker – the main pathway is the same.
That said, committing early on with DEX builds is recommended. However, the chosen classes usually have a minimal effect on the overall advent of the game. Therefore you can choose to sub into multiple customizations – Including a possible healing build.
Despite being uncanny, the potency of such paths is nothing to scoff at. It won’t hurt to get as close to the 70% equip load on an Assassin. However, speed is essential to account for while configuring your Assassin character.
The Assassin might not be the best choice against multiple enemies because of the apparent single-target damage. Therefore, you need to specify accordingly.
Furthermore, you can also focus on your sorcery paths to work on a hybrid model. While it might feel needlessly confusing at first, the potential is limitless – especially in the later portions of the game.
That being said, you should try using your backstabs as much as possible. The cornerstone ability of an Assassin lies within its stealth and sneak attacks. Therefore, we recommend you try to take fights on your terms rather than blatantly charging in on any enemy within a visible range.
Moreover, you can equip a certain amount of weight and resistance without hindering the playmaking potential of an Assassin. However, exceeding limits can come with its own repercussions, so it is better to stay below the 70% weight threshold no matter what.
As a whole, the Assassin class is quite nimble and can be a huge asset against certain enemies and bosses. While that does not directly account for better survivability, the best offense is still considered the best defense.
Cheeseburger Assassin Build
Despite the weird name, the build is specifically made for beginners unaware of the ins and outs of playing Assassin. While that premise is rather simple, the build is designed quite carefully to match or exceed the current potential cap of a regular Assassin.
Attributes
The Cheeseburger Assassin build focuses on bumping the attack damage to extremes. Since you would only need a single shot to kill the enemy. Therefore, it is quite easy to abuse it according to the enemy’s detection range.
Simply hit it and move out so the aggro can reset. Similarly, sorcery spells can be used if you invest some points into INT. Your strength stat should be able to carry you around for the greater portion of the game.
As it might be evident, investing wholeheartedly in strength (and intelligence at times) can make your character extremely squishy. You must invest a small chunk in vitality to prevent being this susceptible to death.
Alternatively, you can don a lot of armor to gain resistance against multiple attacks. However, it will slow your movements, making your attack motion dodgeable.
No matter how strong an attack is, it will be all for naught if it doesn’t hit the intended target. Therefore, carefully plan until and unless you achieve a good balance between Strength and Intelligence.
Equipment and Armor
- Silver Eagle Kite Shield
- Hawk Ring
- Hornet Ring
While you don’t need to invest in the armor stat particularly, it is still recommended to dual-wield a shield along with a proper weapon. The reason is quite simple, you won’t have enough Vigor to tank a boss’s attacks like child play, and that’s where the shield comes in.
The Silver Eagle Kite Shield is a good shield to keep due to its low stat requirements. However, you may choose to pick a stronger option if you desire. You will gain an average block of 53% by equipping Silver Eagle Kite Shield.
The Hawk Ring can increase the overall range of your bows and crossbows, thereby making your sniping even deadlier. With that said, you also can zoom in and out while aiming – which can further add to the overall experience.
The Hornet Ring can increase the critical damage by 30%. Since attributes like lethality don’t play a major part in Dark Souls 3, you can expect Critical Hit to be your best bet. The mentioned value of the Hornet Ring can change according to the motion values of certain mechanics. Therefore, your damage might vary.
Spells
While spellcasting is a large part of what makes an Assassin, this build focuses more on the physical damage aspect. Therefore, finding spells that synergize well with it would be hard. You can imbue your weapons with buff-based spells like Sacred Oath or Lightning Blade.
However, these might require your Faith to be a certain standard. Therefore, mixing and matching until you find what’s correct for you is recommended.
As for the stealth-based spells, you can use Chameleon and Hidden Body to evade visual detection. Once again, you need to have your Intelligence up to a certain level to use such spells, so it is better to put the least emphasis on spells for this build.
Dexterity and Strength Assassin Build
This is a textbook build in Dark Souls 3 that has the potential to carry even the toughest battle with the least possible effort. With that said, there are certain requirements you need to remember to make this build work.
Therefore, get ready to deal with an immense amount of damage. As the name suggests, your vitality will remain at a steep low, so you will have to dodge many enemy attacks not to die an instant death.
Attributes
Maintaining a basic ratio of 40 Strength to 40 Dexterity is mandatory for this build to shine truly. Besides that, you can increase your Int or Faith stars, but they will be irrelevant to what’s about to come.
Aside from the Assassin, this build is also viable on Mercenary, Knight, or Warriors. However, that does not make it as flexible as one might prefer. Investing in anything other than Strength and Dexterity makes you lose huge damage.
The raw stat difference might not seem much at first glance. However, you essentially use a lot of bonus damage due to the modifiers attached to your equipment and weapons.
With that said, you can rely on these attributes in the early and late-game scenarios. Therefore, beating bosses or killing enemies, in general, might not seem as tough as it usually is.
Equipment and Armor
- Sun Princess Ring
- Leo Ring
- Chloranthy Ring
Since you are not aiming for a high level of defense or vigor, building some sort of sustain is recommended to counter that weakness. The Sun Princess Ring helps restore Hp at the basic rate of 2 per second.
While this might not seem like much, you are not always in combat. Therefore, even a little sustain can heal you to full HP for your next battle. Furthermore, the ring is fully stackable with items like Ancient Dragon Greatshield to provide an additional 2 HP per second.
As mentioned, this build mainly revolves around counterattacking and landing your crits. Therefore, the Leo ring can be a huge asset as it strengthens the counterattack of thrust-based weapons and lowers the thrust defenses by 30%.
Lastly, you can use the Chloranthy Ring to complete your build. The wide array of moments can deplete stamina rather quickly, so a gradual increase in stamina recovery is extremely important.
Spells
This build is highly reliant on spells to dish out damage. Since Faith works best with only a few attributes and equipment, it is better to rank up your spells instead. With that said, here are the spells that utilize this build exceptionally well:
- Darkmoon Blade: The Darkmoon Blade is a miracle-type spell that buffs your weapon to deal bonus elemental damage. While the damage output is fairly decent, the requirements of using it are not. Therefore, you must invest a bit in Faith to make this work.
- Lifehunt Scythe: Similar to the Lightning Blade, the Sacred Oath is also used to boost attack damage. However, it can be considered a multi-purpose buff due to its group effect. An overall multiplicative increase of 10% is a great deal, especially when you’re getting a 10.0 absorption.
With that said, the duration of this buff is 60 seconds. Therefore, make sure to benefit while it lasts. - Way of White Corona: This miracle-based spell makes the player throw a boomerang that will return to the player. The damage numbers scale accordingly with a spell buff on a 0.85 multiplier.
The spell is rather situational. However, it does a good job of mitigating your little to no area of effect damage and can help you fight better against multiple enemies. The damage dealt is completely physical, so it will be easy to use. - Lightning Arrow: Since the build focuses more on single-shot damage, incorporating elemental magic won’t be a bad idea. While the FP requirements for this spell are relatively high, it can offer great damage bonuses.
Needless to say, this build will not focus much on the spells since they work based on Stamina and Faith. While these are not the stats you want to invest heavily into, some can yield pretty nicely. Furthermore, the Lightning Arrow complements this build rather well. Therefore, consider investing in it if you have stat points to spare.
The Best Overall Options for Assassin Builds
An Assassin is a simple yet constrained class. Therefore, you are not presented with that many upgrade paths in the first place. The given ones are not bad and might even top the best present in certain other classes.
With that said, you should aim to specialize in raw physical damage, or you can choose to follow a hybrid model. Consequently, building like a mage in the said class is also possible. However, the mentioned builds are proven to work better in that scenario.
Innovation is never bad, and creating a better-suited build for yourself is possible. Therefore, don’t hesitate to experiment until you reach a good balance between suitability and practicality. We recommend you try going for Dexterity and Strength-based builds since they usually work best for the Assassin class.
You won’t have to worry much about these classes since they’re most needed for the early game portions. However, getting maximum efficiency is always welcome if it improves your survival rates by 0.001%.
Wrap Up
All in all, the Assassin is generally suited for battle-hardened veterans instead of newbies. However, that does not mean newbies can’t play it no matter what. That said, you would need to perform some build optimization to get the most out of the Assassin class.
Alternatively, you can try exploring more about the class through various playthroughs, given that you plan to main it in the PvP. Backstabbing and Counter-attacking are the main strengths of this class. Therefore, make sure to utilize them as much as possible.