The Aion Experience

Ok fellow Assassins, I have a question! For the first time the other night I got to group and head into Black Claw Village. The bonus to grouping is always (mostly) standing behind the mobs which of course allows for many attempts to use Surprise Attack. Not quite sure how it’s a “surprise” given I’ve been there for 30 seconds already, but maybe it’s more a “SURPRISE, that hurt more didn’t it” factor…

While it’s great for the extra opportunities to use it, I was surprised at how often it didn’t appear to land. Which brings me to my question:

How small is the area in which I need to be to land the actual backstab?

I ask this because at times I seemed to be just a smidge off center and my SA would land for a measly 50 or 70 damage. Other times I’d swear I was lined up with the mobs spine and still, nothing more than 100 or so.

Of course there is the problem that mobs seem to move around so much that there were times that it wasn’t facing the way I thought it was (general confusion and hard to see the actual face of the mob), or it might move right as I hit SA, and of course the automatic assumption of lag on my part. But still, I seemed to only land 1 in 10 good Surprise Attacks.

Is the window really small? Are there any other Assassins out there who have trouble locating the back of the mob in group/cluster situations? It could be because I like my view scrolled out a bit, but I’m not that far zoomed…

So, in my attempt to educate myself on the Assassin class, a necessity given I have never played anything close before in my life, I come across my first lingo hurdle… the “follow-up”. It’s got something to do with our abilities as so far I’ve only seen it used when discussing optimal attack rotations, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out. Examples are:

I tested out dev+follow-up and compared it to just follow-up using SA

And

Around level 14-15 SA would crit in the 900-1,100 range with just follow-up. Using devo+follow-up I’d hit anywhere between 1,200-1,400 range.

I understand Dev = Devotion, and SA = Surprise Attack, but what exactly is the “follow-up” portion of that sentence? I’ve read all my skills and see nothing named similar, so can only assume it’s lingo I am yet to learn.

Can anyone enlighten me?

— Added info October 13 —

From chatting to @Tygir about this particular topic, we came to the conclusion that “follow-up” was nothing more interesting that the next attack that happens – be it auto, or ability. But now, I’m not so sure. Reading the Assassin Skill Rotation – PvE (Solo) thread, I noticed the following:

You should only use Follow-Up Strike with Swift Edge, Surprise Attack, and Whirlwind Slash. The other skills won’t gain nearly as much from it. I’ve done 800-1000 damage Swift Edge crits with Follow-Up quite often, against lvl 26/27 mobs.

That leads me to believe there is an actual ability out there they are discussing? Searching the Aion Armory however, I can find no such skill. Looking through the Scout Master’s Training Manuals, there is definately no “Follow-Up Strike” ability. So what do they mean by it here?

Killer’s Eye is one of the new Assassin abilities I received at level 10, and I have to admit, the tooltip confuses me. The one shown at AionArmory is incorrect, the in-game version says:

For 10 sec, boosts the effect of Physical Attack Skill used right after the skill by 50%, and increases your Accuracy by 500.

I get that it boosts your attack skill, which I assume means your base damage you do? And I get that it boosts your Accuracy which is great. But what does it mean by “boosts the effect of Physical Attack Skill used right after the skill” ?

Does that mean it activates the 50% boost after you press the Killer’s Eye ability? Or does that mean it only boosts it by 50% to any step 2 chain abilities? I realise it’s probably very obvious to most… but if anyone could explain it to me, that would be great.

Also, since we’re on the topic of this ability, do you (”you” being all Assassins) use it before you engage? Or at a certain point in the fight?

So far I’ve been using the following opening rotation:  Hide > Surprise Attack > Killer’s Eye > Swift Edge… etc… I found if I activated it prior to engaging, the buff was half gone before I began actually attacking.