Assassin

The Assassin is one of three Hybrid vocations in Dragon's Dogma. Hybrid vocations are exclusive to your main character, the Arisen. It costs 1,500 Discipline Points (DP) to switch to this vocation.

Description
The Assassin is the most versatile vocation in Dragon's Dogma. They can wield daggers or one handed swords, combined with either a short bow or shield. These assets can be changed on the fly, to suit current combative needs. Since the Assassin has access to four weapons, it is only natural that they come equipped with a multitude of skills that pertain to whichever weapon you choose to wield. The Assassin is a unique blend of the Strider and Fighter Vocations that creates the ultimate fighting machine.

Primary Weapon: Sword /Daggers

Secondary Weapon: Shield /Bow

Primary Offensive stat: Strength

Strengths and Role
Weapon Masters: Able to use the sword or daggers, and shield or bow. Use one of 4 weapon combinations to suit your playstyle or needs.

Deadly Toolkit: Wielding paralyzing toxins, fatal poisons, and devastating explosives, Assassins use all the tricks of their trade to cripple or eliminate their enemies.

Defensive Attacks: Some skills like Clairvoyance and Masterful Kill are counter-attacks, and can be used as defensive measures to avoid or reduce damage, as well as a viable means to attack.

Invisibility: The Assassin's Invisibility skill prevents them from taking damage from both Physical and Magick attacks as long as the skill is active, or until stamina runs out. While Invisibility prevents grabbing, Assassins still have access to all of their other abilities while cloaked, which makes it very deadly.

High Mobility: While wielding daggers, they have access to the dodge roll and double jump skills, and still have access to high levels of stamina and climbing power. This makes them able to easily move about the world and battlefield.

Highest Strength Growth: Assassins have the highest Strength growth of all vocations in the game, making them useful for increasing your physical power as you level up.

A Great Contributor: Combined with other Strength Augments, such as Clout, this vocation is a mighty one indeed, even deadly against the Ur-Dragon! (See boss page for more info.)

Weaknesses
Low Defense: The Assassin class has one of the lowest defense ratings in the game (on par with the Strider and Ranger), rendering them very easy to overpower. An Assassin caught unawares can be easily slain by bosses and ranged attackers.

Lowest Magic Stat Growth: Assassins have the lowest gains in magic attack and magic defenses per level (on par with the Fighter and Warrior), while the Assassin was never meant to be a magic build, these stat gains render them vulnerable to magic attack and makes for a poor choice against foes with high physical resistance.

Too Much Versatility:  Being able to wield so many weapons and strategies is a unique and interesting part of playing an Assassin, but while the vocation has access to a multitude of skills, many common combinations that give high DPS or Survivability will severely limit the skill combinations you can use. Gale Harness+Invisibility limits your Arisen to only a single melee damage skill. Also, if you choose to use any of the skills that lock smaller monsters into animations, you've used a slot on a skill that is completely ineffective against bosses and other large monsters.

Skills
Augments: 25,600 DP Core: 10,000 DP Bow Skills: 12,900 DP Dagger Skills: 46,400 DP Shield Skills: 21,800 DP Sword Skills: 36,000 DP

Total: 152,700 DP

Augments
For information on how augments impact stats and how stacking of multiple augments work see the Stats page.

Tips and Tactics

 * The Assassin like the Strider, Ranger, and/or Magick Archer are effective against flying foes, especially against a Wyvern, aggravating Wights, or a Drake due to their heart being easily target; but with the Assassin, they have a greater output of damage when the foe is taken down as compared to its sub-classes but are only hindered through their climbing unless you have the necessary core skills and augments for the Strider and Ranger classes. They are more flexible in battle tactics.
 * If you want a long living Assassin, then it is recommended that you obtain the augments from the Fighter and Warrior class first and decide how to balance out your class with the bow and dagger.
 * Although the Assassin has extremely low defensive capabilities as far as stats are concerned, they are the only class that can use any means necessary to avoid attacks. Be it through Foward Roll, Double Vault, Block, or Reflect, it is very possible to go through a number of battles without ever being hit.
 * In addition to their diversity in weapons and tactics, they have good stamina usage (depending on Augments obtained before hand) due to their light armor once enhanced.
 * Make use of the Assassins defense "moving" abilities such as the Forward Roll and Double Vault core skills, which gives him/her the abilities to dodge "area of effect" foes such as the Chimera, Wyrm, Drake, Wyvern, Cockatrice, the Wight, and so on.
 * Although venturing out at night is more dangerous than during the day, an Assassin can acquire Augments, such as Bloodlust or Sanguinity, that activate at night only, which make the assassin a more formidable vocation. Of course any Vocation can benefit from these Augments, should you choose to change Vocations.
 * A good tactic is to have a magick based augment like Acuity and Attunement (or both if you think there's space) so that when you equip the Heaven's Key daggers you will get the most out of them and won't find yourself at a disadvantage when facing enemies immune to physical based attacks.

Trivia

 * The Burst Strike sword move is identical to the Stinger sword attack performed by Dante in the Devil May Cry games. The director of Dragon's Dogma, Hideaki Itsuno, was also director on Devil May Cry 3 and 4.