Seems to me a basic multi fighter/thief would make a better assassin. I like the concept of the assassin kit a ton. I've played both the assassin and a fighter/thief through the game more than once. The fighter/thief was more powerful no doubt about it. A fighter/thief can handle any situation all the way through BG2 and ToB with relative ease. I remember doing a solo assassin run through Watcher's Keep and had an extremely difficult time getting through the demon's level. The assassin's main attacks: Poison, Stealth, and Backstab were shut down. He's forced to fight hand to hand. It really sucked. Unfortunately by ToB the game really bottlenecks you into playing certain classes while rendering others obsolete. I don't like that.
Well, for the best assassin build, depends on what you are looking for.
If you are looking for the best backstabs, then the best assassin would be a kensai dualed to thief (at lvl 6 or 7 for BG1 only, lvl9 or 13 for BG2 only. If going trilogy, I'd probably settle for lvl7 dual although a bit gimped, allows you to regain your levels by the end of BG1).
The other fun part of assassins is their poison ability (although nerfed in EE, still quite a nice ability).
For better use of this ability, especially in BG1, two good options are:
- bow : as @ear2earthen pointed out, the poison + arrow of detonation is a great combo (every enemy touched by the area of effect of the detonation gets poisoned)
- darts: great APR, great effects on the special darts (stun or wounding for doubling your chances of poisoning).
Off course, you could also go the throwing dagger route, they have good APR, but there is no magical one in BG1 and have less flexibility than arrows or darts.
Melee weapons have been covered already, Dagger of Venom stacks well with Poison Weapon ability, staves make for better backstabs.
You can off course pick both, in which case I suggest puting the last pip in 2 handed fighting style, to get the 19 crit range and +1 dmg that gets multiplied in backstabs. Not much, but it's there, whereas the 1 handed weapon style would probably be moot if using Kiel's shield.
If I made an assassin, I think I would hesitate between Elf (great DEX, good starting thief skills, +1 thac0 to bows) and Gnome (normal DEX, very good starting thief skills, awesome saving throws).
Halflings and Half-orcs are a bit behind those 2 races IMHO. 17 STR on halflings really hurts the assassin build, not for the damage, but because of the thac0 difference. On the other hand, half-orcs 19 STR makes a difference only until you get the STR tome (which can be a long time depending on your playstyle, and becomes moot in SoD & BG2), and no bonus thief skills hurt the assassin's 15 skill points per level up.
you could easily play bg1 as assasin and dual in bg2 to anothing making it really cool dual without big sacrifice
Problem is, the poison ability scales until lvl13 (arguably, lvl9 is already OK), and the x6 and x7 backstab multipliers only happen at lvl17 and 21 (1,5MXP and 2,4MXP respectively).
Dualing at lvl13 or above would take ages to recover your thief levels, and dualing before is somewhat of a waste of the assassin special traits.
Plus, the assassin has the lowest skill points per level, and as you need to be human to dual, you get also no bonus thieves skill.
Just maxing open locks & disarm traps (95 each) with 19 DEX (with the tome) requires you to be lvl8, and that leaves you with only 25+20 in stealth, and you won't ever use traps (only 10).
That would make for a very bad thief indeed. Off course, you can have another thief in the party to cover the locks/traps, and just focus on stealth and set traps on your assassin, but that would be a very gimped assassin anyway.
when @zur312 posted the poison weapon was much more strong then now, it has been toned down to not overpower the blackguards.
at that time to play an assassin, even without reaching the best multipliers, was a more interesting option then now.
now even reaching lev 17, for a x6 stab, needs more then 1.5 M xp, so dualing into mage, that can use the scribe/erase trick to shorten the down time, 3M xp as mage are needed to complete the dual, not only it is completed very late, in ToB with a full party, but you have to play almost half of bg2 while in down time.
for a rather weak poison weapon and a single point more in stabbing? can be done but why?
with the previous stronger poison weapon and dualing earlier to start from assassin and then chose an other class was much more interesting.
i never felt the old style assassin as over powered. but i feel the modern EE version as way less interesting, both as single class and as starting point for a dual. and i had not liked much the reasons behind it, if you want to implement your cool kit there are ways to do it without making an existing kit of an other class less interesting to play...
when @zur312 posted the poison weapon was much more strong then now, it has been toned down to not overpower the blackguards.
Why didn't they just give a separate Poison weapon skill to blackguards? I am sick of all these nerfs in EE! Everything gets nerfed, nerfed, nerfed and rEbAlAnCeD. Somehow they never buff existing kits that are terrible since their inception (like the Shapeshifter). Why do they feel this overzealous need to rebalance a 20 year old game in such a way, and fix every little thing that has the small potential to be OP?
Was the assassin too powerful? I don't think so.
Why didn't they just give a separate Poison weapon skill to blackguards? I am sick of all these nerfs in EE! Everything gets nerfed, nerfed, nerfed and rEbAlAnCeD.
not everything as sometimes EE introduces something new that somehow balances od mitigates the nerf.
some examples:
The change to Poison Weapon was made for a number of reasons that have been iterated here and elsewhere (Blackguard, dual-classing shenanigans, fixes to the way poison stacking works now versus in the original games, enemy Assassin creatures, take your pick)
of them dual-classing shenanigans are something some players had fun doing, and dual classing is still very powerful, most of the dual class are more powerful then the single class toons.
old enemy assassins had never been a problem in my experience and if EE introduces new ones i feel as wrong to change the way poison works because you want to introduce new enemies (as i don't own SoD and don't play the EE evil npcs i am not aware if it is the case or not).
so remain as reasons the way it stacks, and it could surely be changed without creating much problem, and the shiny new EE paladin kit, that @Dee seems to admit that would have been too OP with the old poison.
but then i agree, why not a second posion effect toned down only for that kit or a kit that has not the poison perk, it is not that poisoning and being paladins (even evil ones) are so related things...
but the new kit somehow balances the nerf.
bard song. utterly nerfed, no more possible to stack the same kind of song (thing that some players abused in the past, but was completely optional and intentional, you don't have to cast many misleads and set them all to sing, is not something a player that is not willing to have fun doing it will ever do) and the aoe of the enhanced one now is ridiculously too small, you can no more hide your singing clone far far away, but is almost impossible to affect all the party if you don't like to pack them all together.
again EE nerfs and balances as there is a SoD item that makes the song linger (but it almost all i know of SoD, please don't spoil me about that game in this section), but the balance is working only for those that own SoD and import a game from there, all the other bard lovers are simply screwed.
wild surges. EE makes impossible to stack chaos shields, thing that in the original is possible, but againn the balancing thing, an item that gives a permanent chaos shield to the wild mage.
i also would have liked that the bug fixing, that Beamdog told many times has only the scope to protect the players that don't want to be affected by some bugs (and imo also some "bugs") are not forced to exploit them, would really be done that way.
i greatly appreciate that Beamdog in a single case, the RC casting high level druid spells, had left the chance open for the players that like the feature, but i would have appreciated if also more "fixed bugs" would had received the same treatment, at least the ones that are clearly intentionally done, like putting 3 PI in a CC, stack 3 improved chaos shields in a trigger, have the bard songs of the same kind stack to make few examples.
while i admit that some other bugs really affected the players not willing to exploit them, but i would say that those are few and the majority of fixes was on completely intentional exploits.
EDIT: it is true that some mods fix some of the nerfs, there is the mod that restores the old poison, but with the problem that if it is used you unnerf the assassin, but you over power the blackguard, and there is a mod that makes the bard song aoe larger.
but if there are mods to fix some EE bug fixing it is probably a clue that there is something wrong in the way the bug fixing has been done.
and with mods the game can be changed in either way, it is possible both to use mods like scs and spell revision that makes the game much harder and to mod weapons that are +6, give 25 str dex and con, 100% MR and add 5 different elemental damages on hit and permanent improves haste.
what can be done with mods has nothing to do with how vanilla is implemented, we must evaluate the vanilla EE changes for what they are, and if there is some mod that mitigates the EE changes it should not change anything on our evaluation.
to tell the opposite is too similar to tell "yep, the EE developers made bad decisions, but we are lucky that there are modders that mitigated their effects".
similar, not identical, as some players can enjoy more the EE way, but the fact that EE did something different from a simple bug fixing, actually changing the mechanics of the game in a way similar to the one some mods do, imho is hard to deny.
and if i am fine to have mods changed well established mechanics of a 20 years old game i am less happy to have those changes in an official vanilla version, and this is one the reasons why i still play the original version side by side with the EE and having to make a choice between them i would probably opt for the old one, that suits much better my way to research on exploits and not conventional tactics, like running parties with 2 or more bards having them sing and attack in the same round.
That hardly helps if you want to play as an assassin...
Recently I started a run with a solo assassin to see how the new poison skill fares. It was a disappointment. If you didn't knew the pre-nerf powers of this skill, you may think it's a neat little skill. Applying the Poison Weapon is obviously better than not doing it. It is a plus, but there's clearly nothing awesome about it. Even after level 13 most often it only adds +6 extra poison damage per round, as the enemies who really matter usually do make that save vs. death...
Halfway trough SoA I've abandoned the run, not because it was too hard, but because it became too tedious. My old assassin run was fueled by the fun supplied by Poison Weapon. It was a reasonably quick way to deal with enemies, but also gave a feeling of power, you almost never experience if you play with a thief. It was awesome to down dragons with a hasted & poisoned burst of the pulse ammo. Sure, it was cheese, but an earned cheese, since it required a proper setup, and collecting certain items throughout the trilogy. (Not to mention that other classes have even easier tools of cheese.) This is no longer possible. The assassin is no longer any fun. Getting another bAlAnCeD fighter-type does not make up for destroying a very unique kit.
My old assassin run was fueled by the fun supplied by Poison Weapon. It was a reasonably quick way to deal with enemies, but also gave a feeling of power, you almost never experience if you play with a thief
on this, and only on this, i disagree with you.
both regular thieves and multi with thief inside or dual F->T can be super powerful.
surely they don't shine against dragons, as you can not stab dragons, unless you use cheap tactics to spam traps before the dragon becomes hostile.
but for most of the dragons it is perfectly possible to set traps and then lure the dragon into them, so a thief is not completely useless vs them.
but if the enemies can be stabbed a thief can clear whole dungeons solo and also when all the party fights he can probably stab at least 3 times in a fight if he uses the 2 rings that grant invisibility once a day, spending some potions or with the help of your mages even more.
and the traps are one of my main tools to fight against the beholders as i never use the shield and are even very useful against mind flyers, both in vanilla where if they spot you they try to reach you and with tactics mod where they teleport while invisible right next your weaker toons that you maybe have left in an other room, stack some traps near them and wait that the flyer teleport and explode.
my experience is mostly about bg2 only as i very rarely play bg and don't own sod, but playing a thief not only can be a great fun, but can be incredibly powerful, he is the one the party can send alone to scout, prepare the ground and often soften the enemies, having their casters waste their true sight as he walks around protected by the cloak, waste their on target spells as he appears at the edge of their sight field and makes a step back and hides before they can complete the cast, so the spell fizzles, having their fighters follow the thief that as soon as he turns a corner uses the split second that the corner hides him to hide in shadow and then stab, before running to an other corner if is needed.
EDIT: with a lasting enough hide in shadows and very good timing it is even possible to use a single corner to perform multiple stabs as long as you wait to be able to hide again before stabbing and you hide very precisely so the enemy stops in a position that allows you to turn the corner and hide again, if you hide too early the enemy can see what is beyond the corner, if you try to hide too late the enemy already spots you so you fail to do it. END OF EDIT:
this does not change in any way my opinion on the potion nerf, and potion is the main reason to use an assassin as the better stab multiplier kicks in too late for every not solo or not very small party, it is just that i disagree about the thieves not being a super powerful class, if used in smart ways, an to be smart and be able to think out of the box is perfectly in character with the thief.
a thief that does almost nothing with his ranged or mlee weapon, stabs only once in a while and whose main tasks are disabling traps, opening containers and make the party rich selling/stealing many times the same costly item is a thief that lacks of imagination and uses only the 20% of his real potential.
both regular thieves and multi with thief inside or dual F->T can be super powerful.
Sure, thieves CAN be powerful, but the regular thief (at least for me) is not fun to play in the solo mode. They can solve every situation, but it's always a rather slow process: setting up traps, hiding in shadows, backstab, retreat, repeat.
Maybe I should continue that run by recruiting the bear, and roleplay as a once powerful assassin who after a tragic accident has lost a large part of his legendary skills, and his new bear buddy is helping him cope with the situation...
Assassin poison is for sure not as powerful as before without the same round same target stacking, true, but it is still a powerful ability in my opinion, especially in BG and SoA.
I would like to see greater saving throw penalties on targets for higher level assassins. This would keep it more relevant longer.
the regular thief (at least for me) is not fun to play in the solo mode. They can solve every situation, but it's always a rather slow process: setting up traps, hiding in shadows, backstab, retreat, repeat.
fun and fast are very different concepts and fun is very subjective.
i have fun with the thieves just for the reasons why you don't have fun playing them, my fun is in making a plan, setting traps, using the terrain features at my advantage using every corner and low light spot to hide and stab, and i don't care if it takes long or not, because i am having fun doing it.
while i find boring to play with characters that don't need much planning or to act smart, poison your weapon, hit and wait that the enemy dies or use a super tank that you can just point and click.
but your way to have fun can be completely different from mine, and it is fine.
also the feeling of power is a very subjective thing, for me every thief has plenty of power because he can be self sufficient in many situations and can deal with many situations in different and creative ways, but if for you the feeling of power is related to have a powerful tool, like the pre nerf poison weapon, that help you win fast it only means that we have different opinions about what power is and when to feel it in a character.
if you play with the help of the bear you are not playing solo any more, so don't fool yourself about it, there in nothing wrong in playing with that lovely animal and if this makes your game play fun do it, no one compel you to go solo.
but the only helpers that are allowed in a proper solo are the familiars if you are a mage and the summons if you can cast or use the wand. the fact that a game feature has been nerfed does not mean that using wilson still make a run with it a solo run.
you don't need to RP a rationalization of the fact that you are running a 2 people party (or better charname and an animal NPC party) to justify that you need more power then the one of the EE assassin to match the perceived level of power that makes fun for you to play
i have fun with the thieves just for the reasons why you don't have fun playing them, my fun is in making a plan, setting traps, using the terrain features at my advantage using every corner and low light spot to hide and stab, and i don't care if it takes long or not, because i am having fun doing it.
I also love doing that, BUT only for the few difficult key battles. My plan always starts with the very last boss. If I can manage beating that everything else is also doable, and I want to get there as fast as possible. This is why I prefer a kit that has a fast way of dealing with the trash-mobs. I lack the patience to micromanage every little encounter.
I've already completed a pure solo run with the assassin a few years ago, so maybe that's the reason I feel a lack of motivation to do that challenge again, especially with a gimped version of the same kit. In the harder battles the poison ability played a minor role if any. Almost all of the final bosses are immune to poison and backstab. Near the end, from a tactical standpoint the assassin becomes like every other generic thief (and even bard). The nerf only made this transition to happen much much earlier.
At this point the assassin is just a basic thief, who does slightly more poison damage. I guess it's time to start a solo run with a wizard slayer.
Comments
If you are looking for the best backstabs, then the best assassin would be a kensai dualed to thief (at lvl 6 or 7 for BG1 only, lvl9 or 13 for BG2 only. If going trilogy, I'd probably settle for lvl7 dual although a bit gimped, allows you to regain your levels by the end of BG1).
See here for a damage comparison of backstabs.
The other fun part of assassins is their poison ability (although nerfed in EE, still quite a nice ability).
For better use of this ability, especially in BG1, two good options are:
- bow : as @ear2earthen pointed out, the poison + arrow of detonation is a great combo (every enemy touched by the area of effect of the detonation gets poisoned)
- darts: great APR, great effects on the special darts (stun or wounding for doubling your chances of poisoning).
Off course, you could also go the throwing dagger route, they have good APR, but there is no magical one in BG1 and have less flexibility than arrows or darts.
Melee weapons have been covered already, Dagger of Venom stacks well with Poison Weapon ability, staves make for better backstabs.
You can off course pick both, in which case I suggest puting the last pip in 2 handed fighting style, to get the 19 crit range and +1 dmg that gets multiplied in backstabs. Not much, but it's there, whereas the 1 handed weapon style would probably be moot if using Kiel's shield.
If I made an assassin, I think I would hesitate between Elf (great DEX, good starting thief skills, +1 thac0 to bows) and Gnome (normal DEX, very good starting thief skills, awesome saving throws).
Halflings and Half-orcs are a bit behind those 2 races IMHO. 17 STR on halflings really hurts the assassin build, not for the damage, but because of the thac0 difference. On the other hand, half-orcs 19 STR makes a difference only until you get the STR tome (which can be a long time depending on your playstyle, and becomes moot in SoD & BG2), and no bonus thief skills hurt the assassin's 15 skill points per level up.
Problem is, the poison ability scales until lvl13 (arguably, lvl9 is already OK), and the x6 and x7 backstab multipliers only happen at lvl17 and 21 (1,5MXP and 2,4MXP respectively).
Dualing at lvl13 or above would take ages to recover your thief levels, and dualing before is somewhat of a waste of the assassin special traits.
Plus, the assassin has the lowest skill points per level, and as you need to be human to dual, you get also no bonus thieves skill.
Just maxing open locks & disarm traps (95 each) with 19 DEX (with the tome) requires you to be lvl8, and that leaves you with only 25+20 in stealth, and you won't ever use traps (only 10).
That would make for a very bad thief indeed. Off course, you can have another thief in the party to cover the locks/traps, and just focus on stealth and set traps on your assassin, but that would be a very gimped assassin anyway.
at that time to play an assassin, even without reaching the best multipliers, was a more interesting option then now.
now even reaching lev 17, for a x6 stab, needs more then 1.5 M xp, so dualing into mage, that can use the scribe/erase trick to shorten the down time, 3M xp as mage are needed to complete the dual, not only it is completed very late, in ToB with a full party, but you have to play almost half of bg2 while in down time.
for a rather weak poison weapon and a single point more in stabbing? can be done but why?
with the previous stronger poison weapon and dualing earlier to start from assassin and then chose an other class was much more interesting.
i never felt the old style assassin as over powered. but i feel the modern EE version as way less interesting, both as single class and as starting point for a dual. and i had not liked much the reasons behind it, if you want to implement your cool kit there are ways to do it without making an existing kit of an other class less interesting to play...
Why didn't they just give a separate Poison weapon skill to blackguards? I am sick of all these nerfs in EE! Everything gets nerfed, nerfed, nerfed and rEbAlAnCeD. Somehow they never buff existing kits that are terrible since their inception (like the Shapeshifter). Why do they feel this overzealous need to rebalance a 20 year old game in such a way, and fix every little thing that has the small potential to be OP?
Was the assassin too powerful? I don't think so.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/903644/#Comment_903644
You can also install a small tweak to bring back the pre-2.0 Poison Weapon skill from here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/48441/original-poison-weapon-ability-for-bg1-ee-and-bg2-ee
some examples:
poison. it is nerfed, and the explanations are of them dual-classing shenanigans are something some players had fun doing, and dual classing is still very powerful, most of the dual class are more powerful then the single class toons.
old enemy assassins had never been a problem in my experience and if EE introduces new ones i feel as wrong to change the way poison works because you want to introduce new enemies (as i don't own SoD and don't play the EE evil npcs i am not aware if it is the case or not).
so remain as reasons the way it stacks, and it could surely be changed without creating much problem, and the shiny new EE paladin kit, that @Dee seems to admit that would have been too OP with the old poison.
but then i agree, why not a second posion effect toned down only for that kit or a kit that has not the poison perk, it is not that poisoning and being paladins (even evil ones) are so related things...
but the new kit somehow balances the nerf.
bard song. utterly nerfed, no more possible to stack the same kind of song (thing that some players abused in the past, but was completely optional and intentional, you don't have to cast many misleads and set them all to sing, is not something a player that is not willing to have fun doing it will ever do) and the aoe of the enhanced one now is ridiculously too small, you can no more hide your singing clone far far away, but is almost impossible to affect all the party if you don't like to pack them all together.
again EE nerfs and balances as there is a SoD item that makes the song linger (but it almost all i know of SoD, please don't spoil me about that game in this section), but the balance is working only for those that own SoD and import a game from there, all the other bard lovers are simply screwed.
wild surges. EE makes impossible to stack chaos shields, thing that in the original is possible, but againn the balancing thing, an item that gives a permanent chaos shield to the wild mage.
i also would have liked that the bug fixing, that Beamdog told many times has only the scope to protect the players that don't want to be affected by some bugs (and imo also some "bugs") are not forced to exploit them, would really be done that way.
i greatly appreciate that Beamdog in a single case, the RC casting high level druid spells, had left the chance open for the players that like the feature, but i would have appreciated if also more "fixed bugs" would had received the same treatment, at least the ones that are clearly intentionally done, like putting 3 PI in a CC, stack 3 improved chaos shields in a trigger, have the bard songs of the same kind stack to make few examples.
while i admit that some other bugs really affected the players not willing to exploit them, but i would say that those are few and the majority of fixes was on completely intentional exploits.
EDIT: it is true that some mods fix some of the nerfs, there is the mod that restores the old poison, but with the problem that if it is used you unnerf the assassin, but you over power the blackguard, and there is a mod that makes the bard song aoe larger.
but if there are mods to fix some EE bug fixing it is probably a clue that there is something wrong in the way the bug fixing has been done.
and with mods the game can be changed in either way, it is possible both to use mods like scs and spell revision that makes the game much harder and to mod weapons that are +6, give 25 str dex and con, 100% MR and add 5 different elemental damages on hit and permanent improves haste.
what can be done with mods has nothing to do with how vanilla is implemented, we must evaluate the vanilla EE changes for what they are, and if there is some mod that mitigates the EE changes it should not change anything on our evaluation.
to tell the opposite is too similar to tell "yep, the EE developers made bad decisions, but we are lucky that there are modders that mitigated their effects".
similar, not identical, as some players can enjoy more the EE way, but the fact that EE did something different from a simple bug fixing, actually changing the mechanics of the game in a way similar to the one some mods do, imho is hard to deny.
and if i am fine to have mods changed well established mechanics of a 20 years old game i am less happy to have those changes in an official vanilla version, and this is one the reasons why i still play the original version side by side with the EE and having to make a choice between them i would probably opt for the old one, that suits much better my way to research on exploits and not conventional tactics, like running parties with 2 or more bards having them sing and attack in the same round.
That hardly helps if you want to play as an assassin...
Recently I started a run with a solo assassin to see how the new poison skill fares. It was a disappointment. If you didn't knew the pre-nerf powers of this skill, you may think it's a neat little skill. Applying the Poison Weapon is obviously better than not doing it. It is a plus, but there's clearly nothing awesome about it. Even after level 13 most often it only adds +6 extra poison damage per round, as the enemies who really matter usually do make that save vs. death...
Halfway trough SoA I've abandoned the run, not because it was too hard, but because it became too tedious. My old assassin run was fueled by the fun supplied by Poison Weapon. It was a reasonably quick way to deal with enemies, but also gave a feeling of power, you almost never experience if you play with a thief. It was awesome to down dragons with a hasted & poisoned burst of the pulse ammo. Sure, it was cheese, but an earned cheese, since it required a proper setup, and collecting certain items throughout the trilogy. (Not to mention that other classes have even easier tools of cheese.) This is no longer possible. The assassin is no longer any fun. Getting another bAlAnCeD fighter-type does not make up for destroying a very unique kit.
both regular thieves and multi with thief inside or dual F->T can be super powerful.
surely they don't shine against dragons, as you can not stab dragons, unless you use cheap tactics to spam traps before the dragon becomes hostile.
but for most of the dragons it is perfectly possible to set traps and then lure the dragon into them, so a thief is not completely useless vs them.
but if the enemies can be stabbed a thief can clear whole dungeons solo and also when all the party fights he can probably stab at least 3 times in a fight if he uses the 2 rings that grant invisibility once a day, spending some potions or with the help of your mages even more.
and the traps are one of my main tools to fight against the beholders as i never use the shield and are even very useful against mind flyers, both in vanilla where if they spot you they try to reach you and with tactics mod where they teleport while invisible right next your weaker toons that you maybe have left in an other room, stack some traps near them and wait that the flyer teleport and explode.
my experience is mostly about bg2 only as i very rarely play bg and don't own sod, but playing a thief not only can be a great fun, but can be incredibly powerful, he is the one the party can send alone to scout, prepare the ground and often soften the enemies, having their casters waste their true sight as he walks around protected by the cloak, waste their on target spells as he appears at the edge of their sight field and makes a step back and hides before they can complete the cast, so the spell fizzles, having their fighters follow the thief that as soon as he turns a corner uses the split second that the corner hides him to hide in shadow and then stab, before running to an other corner if is needed.
EDIT: with a lasting enough hide in shadows and very good timing it is even possible to use a single corner to perform multiple stabs as long as you wait to be able to hide again before stabbing and you hide very precisely so the enemy stops in a position that allows you to turn the corner and hide again, if you hide too early the enemy can see what is beyond the corner, if you try to hide too late the enemy already spots you so you fail to do it. END OF EDIT:
this does not change in any way my opinion on the potion nerf, and potion is the main reason to use an assassin as the better stab multiplier kicks in too late for every not solo or not very small party, it is just that i disagree about the thieves not being a super powerful class, if used in smart ways, an to be smart and be able to think out of the box is perfectly in character with the thief.
a thief that does almost nothing with his ranged or mlee weapon, stabs only once in a while and whose main tasks are disabling traps, opening containers and make the party rich selling/stealing many times the same costly item is a thief that lacks of imagination and uses only the 20% of his real potential.
Sure, thieves CAN be powerful, but the regular thief (at least for me) is not fun to play in the solo mode. They can solve every situation, but it's always a rather slow process: setting up traps, hiding in shadows, backstab, retreat, repeat.
Maybe I should continue that run by recruiting the bear, and roleplay as a once powerful assassin who after a tragic accident has lost a large part of his legendary skills, and his new bear buddy is helping him cope with the situation...
I would like to see greater saving throw penalties on targets for higher level assassins. This would keep it more relevant longer.
i have fun with the thieves just for the reasons why you don't have fun playing them, my fun is in making a plan, setting traps, using the terrain features at my advantage using every corner and low light spot to hide and stab, and i don't care if it takes long or not, because i am having fun doing it.
while i find boring to play with characters that don't need much planning or to act smart, poison your weapon, hit and wait that the enemy dies or use a super tank that you can just point and click.
but your way to have fun can be completely different from mine, and it is fine.
also the feeling of power is a very subjective thing, for me every thief has plenty of power because he can be self sufficient in many situations and can deal with many situations in different and creative ways, but if for you the feeling of power is related to have a powerful tool, like the pre nerf poison weapon, that help you win fast it only means that we have different opinions about what power is and when to feel it in a character.
if you play with the help of the bear you are not playing solo any more, so don't fool yourself about it, there in nothing wrong in playing with that lovely animal and if this makes your game play fun do it, no one compel you to go solo.
but the only helpers that are allowed in a proper solo are the familiars if you are a mage and the summons if you can cast or use the wand. the fact that a game feature has been nerfed does not mean that using wilson still make a run with it a solo run.
you don't need to RP a rationalization of the fact that you are running a 2 people party (or better charname and an animal NPC party) to justify that you need more power then the one of the EE assassin to match the perceived level of power that makes fun for you to play
I also love doing that, BUT only for the few difficult key battles. My plan always starts with the very last boss. If I can manage beating that everything else is also doable, and I want to get there as fast as possible. This is why I prefer a kit that has a fast way of dealing with the trash-mobs. I lack the patience to micromanage every little encounter.
I've already completed a pure solo run with the assassin a few years ago, so maybe that's the reason I feel a lack of motivation to do that challenge again, especially with a gimped version of the same kit. In the harder battles the poison ability played a minor role if any. Almost all of the final bosses are immune to poison and backstab. Near the end, from a tactical standpoint the assassin becomes like every other generic thief (and even bard). The nerf only made this transition to happen much much earlier.
At this point the assassin is just a basic thief, who does slightly more poison damage. I guess it's time to start a solo run with a wizard slayer.