Assassin

Assassin is one of the twelve classes in Elder Tale and one of the three Weapon Attack classes.

It has one localized version, the Hunter on the Oceania server.

Overview
Assassins are weapon masters with a wide variety of damage skills, and specialize in felling enemies by unleashing massive burst damage. Of the twelve classes, the Assassin skill Assassinate can deal the highest instantaneous physical damage. Their modus operandi is delivering a quick, clean, high-damage strike to take down enemies in a flash.

On top of lightweight daggers, one-handed swords, and certain two-handed weapons, Assassins can also wield ranged weapons like throwing daggers and bows. It's no surprise that, with such a wide range of weapons at their disposal, Assassin builds have a great deal of variation.

However, Assassins have few defensive skills and can only equip lightweight armor such as leather or cloth. Because they have no skills that can reduce damage taken, Assassins can easily be taken down if an enemy's attack lands. Assassins instead focus on evading attacks and melding into the shadows. Movement skills like Gust Step and Trick Step put distance from the enemy, while "hiding" skills like Peek-a-Boo and Hide Walk allow them to avoid enemy detection. This has lent to a general impression that Assassin is a very "active" class.

Typical party tactics use a Warrior class, such as a Guardian or Samurai, to distract the enemy while the Assassin sneaks behind and unleashes an ambush with Stealth Blade or Deadly Dance. They can also inflict debuffs with skills like Paralyzing Blow or Venom Strike, or clear out lower-level mobs with Sweeper.

Sample Builds
There are three main builds: Shadow Blade (sneak attacks and burst damage), Sniper (long-ranged attacks), and Sword Dancer (dual-wielders with steady damage).

Shadow Blade
The orthodox Assassin build that focuses on sneak attack and burst damage. There are two main variations of this build: the first uses lightweight one-handed weapons to strike vital spots, while the second uses large two-handed weapons to strike mortal blows. Because the large amount of damage easily attracts Hate, it is important to use movement skills and hate mitigation skills. This build leans more towards solo players, giving the nickname "Solo Assassin" and "Lonely Assassin."

Akatsuki and Eltendiska use this build.

Sniper
Specializes in long-ranged attacks using longbows or crossbows. Along with barrages from Rapid Shot or Spark Shot, enemies are frozen in place by debuffing skills like Paralyzing Blow. While it's easy to inflict high damage with a Sniper build, this also puts Snipers at risk of disrupting the front lines and drawing Hate away from the tanks. Contrary to its appearance, this is a build that requires a lot of Hate micromanagement. For solo players, inflicting status effects on enemies and making full use of movement skills is necessary.

William Massachusetts is a raid sniper, while Hien is of the solo variety. Woodstock W is a crossbow-type sniper.

Sword Dancer
A dual-wielding build focusing on more steady damage. Unlike the Shadow Blade build that builds combos from hidden bodies and sneak attacks, Sword Dancers focus on a continuous rush of attacks. While its damage output isn’t inferior to Shadow Blades’, skill cooldowns can be a concern. As a result, those using the Sword Dancer build increase damage efficiency with weapon effects.

Leonardo is a classic version of this build. Kazuhiko is technically also a Sword Dancer build, but he specializes in using a single two-handed katana focusing on the Fencer Style skill.

Known Skills
For a general overview of how skills work in Elder Tale, see Skills.