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Thread: [Guide] Soul Shards

  1. #1

    Default [Guide] Soul Shards

    for links and images go to http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2015/...ul-shards.html

    =======================================
    Since my pre 1.5 soul shard guide is out of date I have decided to re-do it and talk a bit about basics of soul shard management.

    Soul Shards are located near your health bar and you can have no more than 5 of them at any given time. The Soul Fragment system has been changed as part of the Assassin changes in patch 1.6 and Assassins will regenerate Soul Fragments at a rate of 1 every 8 seconds.


    Every skill that uses soul shards in any way have information about in it's description.

    There are 3 different mechanics related to soul shards management and those are:
    spenders
    consumers
    generators
    Spenders are those skills that won't work at all without required amount of soul shards available. Miasmas (face stab, lotus dart, soul strike) need as little as 1 shard, but CCs need 2, Lotus Pollen as much as 3 and Avatar/Lotus Overdose a whooping 4. Most of assassins skills are spenders so if you find yourself out of shards your options might be very limited even if none of your skills are on cool down.

    Consumers are those skills that will only use up soul shards if those are present. Snap Kick for example will consume shard if you have one, but there are no benefits to using kick with a shard. On the other hand Death Whirlwind/grave blossom will use all soul shards that you have, but the more they can consume the harder those combos will hit.

    Lastly there are generators. Crystallized Lotus Extract will grant you instant 3 soul shards while Necrotic Empowerment will give you 4, but over the period of 16 seconds. Castration perk (gained via Alternative Advancement) will grant you 2 soul shards on successful combo hit. Lastly soul corruption will speed up your passive soul shard generation, but in it's current form it is not worth any investment.

    Q&A:

    Are there any benefit to spending/not spending your soul shards?
    None. Soul shards don't provide any bonuses on their own. Think of then as currency that you use to "pay" to be able to use your stuff like CC. Anything close to soul shard related bonus are damage buffs to DWW/GB based on the amount of shards.

    Why do assassins "pay" with soul shards for things that other classes have for free? (Fear/Stun).
    Back in 1.6 CC worked differently: those were instant and you could effectively "stun lock" your target by chaining CCs together. Soul Shards were a system designed to limit assassins power.

    How many generators do I need?
    My stance on generators is that you need both Crystallized Lotus Extract and Necrotic Empowerment to be effective in PVE and PVP

    Should I spend my soul shards or conserve them?
    It is very situational but my rule of thumb is spend, spend, spend and use Crystallized Lotus Extract and Necrotic Empowerment whenever the cool down has ended.
    Last edited by Slith; 5th January 2015 at 14:28.
    Retired

  2. #2

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    for those that are interested here is how the old system worked http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2009/...ul-shards.html
    Last edited by Slith; 1st January 2015 at 22:43.
    Retired

  3. #3

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    Sticky-Suggestion
    Typing on mobile
    Excuse mspellings and strange auto erections
    --------------------------------------------------
    (current) Mains: Slackjoint (tos), Daraiios(sin) , Quorrin (DT)

    Yes the new store still blows

  4. #4

    Default

    It's already a sticky
    Short cuts make long delays.

  5. #5

    Default

    Hmm, i need to max castration right to get 2 shards always? I never maxed it because i never got "profit" by using that combo. RNG ability if not maxed right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Naberu
    "Is she blood-related? If not, j-j-jam it in! If so, meh...j-j-jam it in anyways!"

  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jin-chan View Post
    Hmm, i need to max castration right to get 2 shards always? I never maxed it because i never got "profit" by using that combo. RNG ability if not maxed right?
    Yes. Castration is most time consuming AA to train (as far as I remember, its very long).

    Good news is both castration and sins of flesh are excellent combos with just 1/5 investments because their damage doesn't scale with amount of AA points.

    Only max out castration if there is really nothing left in AA tree that will add flat passive power/surviviality
    Retired

  7. #7

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    Castration isn't nessecary is pvp or pve. In pvp its a very long combo, and you never run out of shards there anyways. In pve its a waste of dps, since most damage comes from gc, sds and swift strikes combos. Also, never use sins of flesh in pve!
    Boyscout bearshaman

  8. #8

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    both sins of flesh and castration are for solo pve. In PVP you should run master assassin and in PVE cover of the dusk.
    Retired

  9. #9

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    Hm, but what about DoD+smth? As a player of different archtypes i know that tanks aare only guys who have any profit from critigation things and its not a good idea to run for tanks by sin My opinion is that Master Assassin is good only for bad geared sin who havent yet DoD 5/5.

  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jerohn View Post
    Hm, but what about DoD+smth? As a player of different archtypes i know that tanks aare only guys who have any profit from critigation things and its not a good idea to run for tanks by sin My opinion is that Master Assassin is good only for bad geared sin who havent yet DoD 5/5.
    Master Assassin gives you 50% tenacity, if you have T2 pvp gear you can get that tenacity to 113% which means that none of your cirts can be mitigated.

    So in order to take full advantage of Master Assassin you have to be actually very well geared. Dance of Death doesn't scale enough to the massive amount of +hit rating that post patch 1.6 gear has.

    In other words: Assassin doesn't have enough passive evade and well geared opponents have too much hit rating in order for DOD debuff to have a noticable impact. Fully buffed Master Assassin works 100% of the time, always giving you that harder hitting crits (considering that some of them might get mitigated otherwise). And avoiding tanks is not a valid tactics when half your opponents team are tanks (which is not uncommon).
    Retired

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