MA Assassin

[Baajikiil]

Mind blast - How much? Considered 10 for the stun

I've played both a shadow assassin with mindblast at 30+, and a Phoenix striker with it at 1 pt + adders. It's primary use for the striker was to break up boss packs so there was time to build a few charges. The convesion % works wonders for this purpose even at just 1 point; just spam it a few times. If a pack is bad enough to need further stunning, I could almost always use the 3rd charge of phoenix to handle that nicely(cold immunes aside).

The shadow assassin used MB all over the place for both the stun and conversion. She stunned and sniped with BF and a high lvl venom while the merc/master dealt with the enemies up close. The high duration allowed her to get the most from her might merc; he would die quickly under any mid sized mob.

I'd say leave at 1 for a MA assassin.

Fade - Hmm Fade or Burst of Speed, quite a delimia since I play HC

This can depend a little on your level of twinking; Fade is very nice, but if you have good enough gear to max resists and % DR without it, why bother? I tend to like fade best because it leaves so many more equipment options open. You seem to be leaning away from using a sheild. Fade is a good option then, because of your lack of DR % and resist from a sheild. Also, if you can find some decent Greater/Runic Talons, you can match the attack rate with BoS without a huge amount of IAS.

A con to using fade though is the points. Fade gives 1% DR per point invested, so to get the most out of it, it needs to be maxed. You can often get BoS up to optimal lvl with just a 1 point, and some +skills.

Warrior or Master - Leaning toward Warrior for the dual Pheonix Striking 

I think it's a preferance thing. Both are pretty much equal at tanking, the master seems (to me) to have higher damage output(DS counts for much of this), but you can control the warrior better. One thing to consider is the size of the games you expect to play in.

In large games, most soloing MA assassins take a fairly decent amount of time to finish off an opponent. My master seems to *always* decide to convert the monster that I have spent the last 20 seconds knocking down to a sliver. By the time he unconverts, he's nearly full again from regen. It can be a huge pain to yourself when soloing, and to party members when in a group. All of my future assassins will be using warriors I think.