If you wanted to play a sneaky assassin guy (like I often do) in the excellent CRPG, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, you paradoxically never, ever wanted to pick the Assassin prestige class—it was that bad. In the game’s 2.2 update accompanying the release of its Lord of Nothing DLC on November 21, though, Assassins might just get their ticket to the major leagues.
In a campaign where a good 70% or more of the enemies are demons immune to poison, the master poisoner prestige class was kinda screwed. Assassins’ Death Attack ability, with its chance of paralysis, was a bit more promising, but you’d be better off leaving crowd control to a Wizard while your edgy dual daggers guy opted for pure damage. Seriously, there’s a companion in the game who calls himself an assassin, but doesn’t have any levels in the class—developer Owlcat knew Assassins were not ready to rumble.
The first major Assassin-buffing move coming will be Mythic feats to let them ignore poison immunity—pretty much a build essential moving forward, and it’ll help keep things balanced by making Assassins lose out on or delay other powerful Mythic feats. The class’s own poison abilities are getting buffs to their duration, attribute-harming effects, and how hard they are for enemies to resist.
The decent but not great Death Attack will be replaced with an ability called Mark of Death, and it’s reminiscent of the Dragon Age Assassin ability of the same name. Marking a target will debuff them, allowing Asassins to ignore their damage resistance—a huge get in a game where nearly as many dudes have mega-high DR as are immune to poison. Mark of Death also gets special synergies with sneak attacks at higher levels, and opens up enemies to a potentially instant death Assassinate Target ability.
The last really exciting addition is an ability called Alter Ego. Owlcat’s update says this ability “works like Mirror Image,” a spell that makes characters harder to hit. In addition to that, when active, all of the Assassin’s attacks become sneak attack-eligible. All-in-all, Wrath of the Righteous’ worst class looks like it’ll be at least viable moving forward, if not a new top-tier DPS option.
