The A/D Way of the sweeper is a strange build that should be only use in Random Arenas. Allowing a high percent in criticals, you can do, although with a slow rate, very high damages during all the battle.

Attributes and Skills

Assassin / Dervish	Attribute Rank
Critical Strikes	12 + 1 + 3
Scythe Mastery	12

Critical Eye

Way of the Assassin

Critical Defenses

Wearying Strike

Signet of Malice

Malicious Strike

Chilling Victory

Resurrection Signet

• Chilling Victory can be replaced by Victorious Sweep. Less interesting, but always useful.
• Critical defenses is a bet : if you don't manage a critical hit, you will pay your pride, loosing the +37% criticals of your Stance. In order not to loose that, you could use one Enchantment in Earth prayers, or Zealous Renewal (that still works without points in Mysticism). You can also use in Shadows Arts the Shroud of Distress, with a +20% Enchantments Scythe.

Equipment

• A full life armor with the adequate runes : due to your skills, you can't heal yourself.
• A Scythe with +15% bonus while in stance or enchanted is the best choice. For the bonuses, you could take +33% Deep wound or a 20/20 Penetration ; and a +20% Enchantments or a +30 Health.

Usage

First, use Critical Eye followed by Way of the Assassin, and get near to a target. Then, activate Critical Defenses. It is important to NOT use Critical Defenses if you are not close to an ennemy (it doesn't matter if it is a pet or a spirit), because you could lose it if you are blind or something like that.

Then, you can begin the combo : Wearying Strike, immediately followed by Signet of Malice, Malicious Strike (that will land a critical hit if your target has deep wound and so recharge your Critical Defenses), then the Cilling Victory. Use Chilling Victory as often as you can, especially on target with protective spirits : you will still do double damage... And if you have more health thant your target, the +damage of the skill will always strike, even if you are blocked (but not if you are blind).

For more informations on the build and the statistics, see the Notes below.

Counters

Infortunately, the Protective Spirit combined with a Guardian will destroy all of your power. But, a Protective Spirit without blocking spells or stances is sometimes not able to protect your target, and with the help of your teammates you can kill protect monks. Not easy, but not impossible.

Blindness will be a pain for you, and the anti-warrior hexes are not better. Well, you can always do something with Faintheartedness on you (your hit rate per second is so slow won't really change something for you...), but the degeneration will kill you if you are not healed.

As you can not heal yourself, you will greatly suffer from the damage spells.

Variants

You can change the build by puting 8+3+1 or 10+3+1 in criticals and put some points in Earth Prayers or Wind Prayers. I don't know if you can do something better, but it's a possibility.

Notes

• If everything is alright, your critical hits rate should be : 16% (Attribute of Criticals) + 16% (Critical Eye) + 37% (Way of the Assassin)+ 15% (Attribute of Scythe) = 86%.
• A critical hit in Scythe is nearly 90 damages on Armor 60, and 60 on Armor 80.
• This build is perfect to destroy the spirits : You will nearly always land a critical hit and be protected by Critical Defenses from their attacks.
• Really strong against melee attackers.
• This build is really strange to play, as you don't spike with your Assassin and you are not really fast. You can think it is not useful and it is weak, but with the incredible amount of ritualists and melee attackers in RA today, it's a funny build.

[Note of the author : And if someone would be cool and change my pitiful english...]