Stigmas are abilities that are usable when you equip stigma stones in the stigma slots available on your character. You can equip 1 at level 10, and up to 8 at level 50. Your character is not ‘complete’ without a good set of stigma stones.

A basic set of stigma stones are sold at your class trainer, but the more advanced ones are random drops from mobs, that usually sold at the trade broker. Unless your lucky enough to acquire all your required stigmas from mobs, you may end up paying a hefty price for some of the rare stigma drops. It is therefore useful to have knowledge of the best stigmas to aim for your build. Three of the top ones are.

Ambush

This stigma teleports you behind your target, dealing medium damage, but also stuns them for 3 seconds. Stuns are the bread and butter of assassins, and is a great opening move in pve and pvp. However, you need to understand that the stun part of this attack is a magical attack. So opponents with high magical resists will cancel out the effect. Also, with a 40 second cooldown you will not be able to use it twice.

Aethertwisting

Resists two magical attacks for 8 seconds, with a 1 minute cooldown. Although at first this seems a mediocre stigma to have, it is actually quite a powerful pvp skill. Not only will you be able to resist magical attacks and crowd control spells from casters (root, stun, etc), but many melee attacks are also magical based, such as the Ankle Snare stigma skill of gladiators.

Flurry

This stimga increases your attack speed by 20% for 30 seconds, and has a 2 minute cooldown. This is great for generating burst damage, which is makes it a great skill to have in pvp and pve as it increases your damage immensely. However, a more important advantage is that you will be able to carve your runes a lot quicker. This means that you will be able to kick off some stuns earlier in the encounter. Stuns helps Assassins win battles, so get this stigma as soon as possible.

There are other stigma skills worth using, but they are more dependent on your playstyle, solo ganking or grouped based pvp. Others are more effective against casters, or melee opponents such as blinding burst. These however are the stigmas you should acquire after the base 3 stigmas mentioned.