Has anyone tested Assassin's Belt?

[Ozymandius]

My question is: Does the Assassin's Belt allow a Havoc or Stalker BH to also access sticky bombs or is it just limited to use with Demolitionist build?

[Anjaeka]

That one I can answer! Yes! You get to use sticky bombs. I love it.

[Ozymandius]

Thank you! Can't wait to try that one.

[Calin Chc]

I am only playing stalker and the belt gives sticky bombs, of course. I have mixed feelings about it. At this moment, I am only farming TL110 for xp and drops. I didn't know better and I crafted 10 Assassin Belts for War Supplies event and I got a lvl76 on the last try. Now, after people posted so much about Molten Belt I feel a bit sorry about my choice.

Assassin Belt works well with the mobs. I also have a bracer(lvl 72 drop) with scatter shot 181%, it's pretty powerful and I use it even though I normally use Lethal Shot. Predictable procedure: apply sticky bombs on a few enemies using explosive shot, then vortex the enemies, shoot the mob with snipe or scatter shot to kill the bomb carriers and cause the bombs to explode...

Once you get to boss, you have to be careful to use explosive shot only until you get to the maximum 5 stacks of sticky bomb, then use the other primary attack(scatter shot in my case) until the bombs explode(15 seconds). If you have 5 stacks of sticky bombs on Kara and keep using explosive shot(even once by mistake), you just reset the timer to 15 seconds again, so you might kill her before the bombs explode and never take advantage of them. Now about the advantage...I can finish TL110 with my xp gear in about 2:45 minutes. When I apply the fifth stack of bombs on Kara she's usually at about half health, so I switch to primary attack. After 15 seconds the bombs explode, but usually the drop in her health is not something to write home about. Unless Kara is almost dead when they explode and actually kill her.

[Ozymandius]

Calin Chc Thank you for your advice on using the sticky bombs on bosses. I think that I was probably experiencing the same thing without noticing why the sticky bombs did not seem to impact bosses very much. Sounds tricky to control since Charm of Qol randomly procs secondary attacks, so you would need to keep Explosive Shot as primary and manually switch over to only using secondary attack (mine is Lethal Shot because my BoM has the Lethal Shot damage increase).

You will definitely want to try Molten Belt at some point. I was lucky enough to have one drop. I have used it on Demolitionist and Havoc BH, and it really cuts down the boss fight times for both of these builds. I am really looking for a belt for Stalker BH build that uses Lethal Shot with Poisoned and Piercing Ammo. I haven't actually tried a Stalker BH using Explosive Shot with Tracer Ammo before, but maybe the Assassin Belt opens up new possibilities.

[Calin Chc]

Actually, if you want to use stalker + explosive shot + tracer ammo then molten belt should be better than assassin's. I mean molten is the one that requires exactly explosive shot + tracer ammo. Am I not right?

[Ozymandius]

Yes, I tried that build, and it seems to be quite good. My Stalker BH finished trials 120 & 121. Trying to decide which passive abilities to use with this build. I kept poisoned ammo and piercing ammo and replaced Pathfinder with the Tracer Ammo, but the damage from piercing ammo seemed very low (at least on stat sheet at end of trials).

[Calin Chc]

Two demolition items have the same effect as the assassin's belt, so I think demolitionist should suffer from the same sticky situation during boss fights. The more I think about it the more I wonder if is an intentional behavior or a bug. The only two choices during boss fights would be:

1. Allow fully stacked sticky bombs to explode from time to time by avoiding explosive shot on 15 seconds intervals.

2. Use explosive shot without restriction and never have sticky bomb explosions on the boss.

Which one would be faster?

Or maybe fix the game to leave the sticky bomb countdown alone after reaching 5 stacks even if explosive shot is still used?

[Ozymandius]

I played around with switching to secondary attacks to allow the sticky bomb explosions on bosses. It did not really feel worth the effort, since the sticky bomb explosions had minimal impact on the bosses. Of course, I was mostly running Trials 110-120; like other gadgets in Eternium, it probably has more impact at earlier trials. At higher levels, it makes more sense to just pound away with Explosive Shot and let the damage counter ramp up on Molten Belt.

[Andrew38]

I got an assassin lvl 70 drop and I crafted a lvl 76 molten belt and made it celestial. Maybe I'm not skilled enough but my time trial for TL106 was better with the assassin belt so I used the rest of glory rewards from the event to buy assassin belt recipe

[Ozymandius]

Thanks for sharing! What build is your BH (Havoc, Stalker, or Demolitionist)?

[Reaucat]

I noticed this too. Upon some testing molten belt only starts being worth it when the boss fight alone lasts MORE than 1.5 minutes, due to the time it takes to stack molten stacks. The reason its godly at TL120+ is because of long fights AND when u die the stavks stay on the boss. So even if u die 10 times and boss is full HP, but u applied 500 stacks... u will eventually 1-shot him.

[LodWig]

I tested the Assassin’s belt in the Training Grounds. Good news, a bomb “explodes” (invisibly) as soon as another one is stuck, there is no need to switch attacks and wait 15s.

Also, I have checked that Tracer Ammo and Fire Damage both enhance the bombs damage (making two separate multiplicative factors).

(Reminder about TA: the 7% per stack is in fact multiplicative, for 5 stacks you'll see 35% but in fact it is 40.25%; for 10 and 15 stacks the damage enhancements are 96.72% and 175.9%.)

The bad news is that the damage done is only 1000% weapon damage, not 2000% as advertised.

Also, each explosion can crit.

Lastly, if you wait for a stack of n bombs to explode (15s after the last bomb is stuck), the damage done is n times the damage of 1 bomb. This n bombs explosion can crit as a whole. (Yes, sticking for example exactly 5 bombs and waiting for the explosion, the total damage done is the damage of 9 bombs.)

I am not able (yet, but I have ideas) to test the "0.5% of the dead target life" part.

EDIT: Sorry, calculation error, the bomb indeed does 2000% Weapon Damage, as advertised.

[Calin Chc]

Did you mean "sticking for example exactly 5 bombs and waiting for the explosion, the total damage done is the damage of 5 bombs"?
Also, again another wrong attribute? 1000% damage instead of 2000%? I still have nightmares about my Juggernaut (400% instead of 1200%, for years already).

[LodWig]

Did you mean "sticking for example exactly 5 bombs and waiting for the explosion, the total damage done is the damage of 5 bombs"?

No, I meant 9 bombs. Because the first 4 bombs will explode when a new one is stuck, then the final 5 bombs stack will explode for 5 bombs damage. Total 9 bombs.

[Calin Chc]

Ah yes, ok. On another note, I just played TL110 with my stalker and assassin's belt about 50 times. For some reason, I'm always faster with pierce + poison + pathfinder than tracer + poison + pathfinder. Even though tracer should help with sticky bombs and explosions.

[Andrew38]

My BH was a Stalker build on which I tried molten belt and assassin belt

[cadberry16]

I haven't done any testing in the training grounds but I used the assassin belt for a bit and it was ok, then I got a molten belt in a drop and the results have been phenomenal. The molten belt reduces the boss fight by at least half it seems. I went from getting by at T100 to T110 fairly easily, xp jewelry and gear still.

[NoSuchReality]

Yea, Molten kicks in at push limit chewing up elites and the Boss.