I notice some other builds and wondering has anyone ever tried combining these build?
Dragon kick/enough for 6 kicks
Blade Shield/10 is enough
Shuriken/I only put 10
Dragon Flight/Just enough to pack a quick kick
Burst of Speed/10
Majority of this build is gear related.
Storm Shield
Last Wish
Raven Frost
Dwarfstar
Guiliam Helm
Dracul's gloves
I forgot what amulet, will edit.
With all these items, I had 95 percent crushing blow.
So the initial dragon flight followed by dragon kick helps finishing off monsters pretty quick.
I read that the blade shield adds to the crushing blow. So thats kicks and blades at the same time.
For range attack, I use the blades fury, even tho it doesn't damage as much, I rely heavily on the crushing blows to knock em down.
What really helps is the life tap on strike from my weapon and gloves.
Each attack I do gives a chance to perform life tap.
I'm still researching more. But because I notice that most of the bonus from a SIN is received from weapons, including the heavy damage, I figure why not try both kicks and use the blade shield at same time.
I'm only a month into the game. Very new but I'm having fun using my assassin. Is there anything you guys think I should do to change this build?|||Quote:
I notice some other builds and wondering has anyone ever tried combining these build?
Yes they have, or at least I have to some extent. More below.
Couple of things... Firstly, unless you're going to be using Blade Fury (shuriken) as your main attack skill (which seems unlikely as you're hitting slvl 30 dtalon for six kicks), putting points in it is a waste. All you get from putting points in it is a little more base damage. Most of the damage for this will be from weapon damage, so focus on that instead (Last Wish is an ideal weapon actually). Max it or don't, depending on if you're going to use it all the time or not. Blade shield is similar in that its a waste to put more than one point in it, +skills will put it up to a high enough level to last for a while. All wasting more points will do is increase its casting cost and make it 5s longer/level, which isn't that much in the long run. These skills are called One Point Wonders for a reason.
Dflight is another one of these skills. More points doesn't make it go any faster, it has a 1s total cast time (or somewhere near there) and a huge after delay. As for the BOS, have you checked your ias tables/calculator and made sure you have the right level with all the rest of your gear? Or as an alternative, have you considered using Fade to cover the seeming hole in your resistances? The absorb (sorb) from your rings is nice, but better with maxed res's.
*edit* actually, last wish has a ctc fade on being struck, so put 1pt in bos, 1pt in fade, and move onto venom.
Next; Boots. What are they? Dancers, Rare myrmidon greaves or upped gores? Boots are a kickers lifeline. They *MUST* be myrmidon greaves for physical damage as kickers really don't deal any. If they're dancers, then that's fine, if rares, then it depends on their stats, if they're gores, ditch the Guliarmes unless you NEED the extra 15% Deadly Strike. On that note, CB sucks with BF (shuriken) as its nerfed for ranged attacks, and you really don't need more than 50~60% with dtalon as you'll pump out huge #'s of hits/second, which chews through regular monsters with ease, though not so much in larger games.
Blade Shield; One point wonder for sure. Hit checks 1/s for 1/4 weapon damage + elemental, and OW. Does not proc/activate CB anymore. It got removed for several reasons, most obviously being that with venom activated and a high % CB, you could literally jump into the center of a huge pile of enemies and watch them fall to death around you.
Dragon Flight; Really only used to "cross" a group of enemies to target a caster or to jump into the middle of a pack. Its long cast time and aftercast delay make it one of those skills PvM assassins typically can't do without, but of no real use. One point wonder.
Last Wish + Dracs; one or the other. You really dont need ctc lifetap from two places, and you can do a lot more useful things with that glove slot, namely Trang Oul's Claws or nice IAS/CB gloves, or my favourite; 2ma (save more skill points)/20ias/dex/mana steal gloves. If you're in a position where you NEED life tap to pop with that high of a chance, you should probably be mind blasting, using cloak of shadows, and trying to dflight to a lone monster on the outside of the pack (or just plain old running away).
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I'm still researching more. But because I notice that most of the bonus from a SIN is received from weapons, including the heavy damage, I figure why not try both kicks and use the blade shield at same time.
Not quite sure what you mean by this, but from my understanding, Last Wish/most assassin weapons will add plenty of damage to BS and to some extent kicks. What drives most people away from blade shield is its 5 point cost if you're not using any other traps (and 4pt cost if you're using lightning traps).
Gear; Quote:
Storm Shield - Since you're probably running the fade that procs from Last Wish, you don't really need this for PvM, so I would recommend a
Spirit Monarch for the +skills, fcr and fhr.
Last Wish - I have no idea how you got your hands on this after only playing for a month, so I'm going to assume (incorrectly or correctly) that you bought it. Easily the best and most versatile piece of gear you will probably get your hands on for melee classes. Hopefully its in a PB (phase blade).
Raven Frost - I love these.
Dwarfstar - Your ring choices are great for fighting anything with elemental attacks, though I'd recommend finding a source of Lightning Absorb to round out your gear, to the point of swapping this for a wisp. Black Soul's, which you'll meet in worldstone, are most character's absolute worst enemy, destroying people with max light res (75) like it was nothing. 15-20% light sorb makes them your best friends. usually.
Guliarmes Helm - Drop this and get your hands on an
Andariel's Visage (andys + highlords + ias gloves means that you have enough ias to hit the maximum kick speed with your last with PB),
Shako, or a
nice sin circ unless you need/want the extra 15% DS (works wonders for blade fury) as that final bit of extra CB really doesn't matter in PvM unless you're looking to move to Uber Tristram.
Dracul's gloves - You really don't need two sources of ctc Life Tap. Swap for
IAS gloves (extra points for fire res and mana steal, combine with andys and highlords, however you only need 20%ias to hit the 8/3/3 break rather than 50% to get to the 7/3/3 break point, so pick where you get that 20% from if you dont want to move up to maximum attack speed.) or
Trangs gloves for FCR as well as a huge boost to poison damage.
Highlords - I recomend this if you want to use Blade fury for its large added %DS, which doubles the damage dealt. The bonus IAS and +skills are a lot more useful for Dtalon or other traps.
Shadow Dancers - by far the best boots available for assassins.
Armour - I'll leave this to you. Some of my favourites include
Fort, Upped GA, Leviathans, Bramble and
Enigma.
Belt - Your choice here varies as well. Some prefer the DR/Life from
Verdungo's, while
Nostafaru's is another choice for some more IAS (10%), while
Arachs is by far the most common.
Thundergod's is a good place to get that last bit of absorb I mentioned earlier, as well as some max Light res and str/vit. There are also a lot of good rare belts out there. Take a look.
-your original gear is underlined, my addons or suggestions in bold.
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I'm only a month into the game. Very new but I'm having fun using my assassin. Is there anything you guys think I should do to change this build?
Other than the above, which will mostly change how the character toughs out various situations, the main place where you need work is with your skills. Think of them as a form or model on which to base your character. If you skills suck, your character suffers.
Skills Quote:
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Dragon kick/enough for 6 kicks
Blade Shield/10 is enough
Shuriken/I only put 10
Dragon Flight/Just enough to pack a quick kick
Burst of Speed/10
Dtalon at slvl 30 gives six kicks, so you need at least +10 MA/all skills in your gear/skiller GC's. Shouldn't be too hard with a torch and some of the above gear. If you get more than +10 you can put less points in Dtalon (get just 30 pts with all your gear on).
Blade Shield/1 is enough. +skills should boost its duration long enough that it will last for a minute or two. Just recast it whenever you notice its gone.
Shuriken/1 is enough unless you want to go for a full BF build.
Dragon Flight/1 should be all you need for "a quick kick"
BOS/1 - fade will proc from Last Wish rather often, and in my opinion is a better "aura" with 1%pdr/level, res, and reduced curse duration (hilarious).
Skills you seem to have forgotten;
Venom/at least one. At slvl 30 or so, with trangs claws on, you can easily top 1.2k poison damage/0.4s. Thats a ton of damage on Dtalon, BF and BS. This is also the typical MA sin's answer to Phys Immunes.
Shadow Master/1 -Another one point wonder. She'll follow you around, using mind blast, a variety of charge skills, or just taking packs of monsters.
Mind Blast/2 -Actually a 2pt wonder, this skill is probably your best friend against large groups of monsters that will threaten to drive you under, by oddly enough, making you new friends! At least for a while. The extra point is very useful in that it makes the Shadow Master use it a lot more.
Death Sentry/1 -I call this one "Necro in a box". Placed away from the monsters/bodies, this encourages them to explode corpses more often for some reason, will detonate corpses in a similar manner to a Necromancer's Corpse Explosion with devastating results. Very useful for clearing rooms and is well worth any points you put in it.
To summarize; a kicker/bf/bs hybrid will be most effective using high base level kicks, and one point in bf/bs and increasing their skill level with various gear.|||Sounds good. Thanks for the advice. I'll respec my sin once I have a token.
I got last wish from a friend of mine. He's been playing the game for awhile and had a few geared out character. he was the one that introduce me to the game.
Once I get all the gear I need, I'll totally try this out. Thanks for the quick responce and list of items I need to help with my character!|||I did the following recommendations;
Helm: I didn't have an Andy's Visage, I have to wait for my buddy to get off work to hook me up with one. So I put on a Kira's that he gave me. That really help with my resist.
Boots: I switch it out to the shadow Dancers. (WOW my kicks are beastly)
Gloves: I had two extra trang O's. So I put that on.
Rings: I'm still using the other two cuz I don't have a wisp and I doubt my buddy have it. However, going up against the Black Souls if many I use that mind blast and singles I'm dflight and dkicking them to death with life tap. So I get buy on occasions.
Armor: I'm using the Arkaine Valor Balrog Skin. (A lot of my friends are recommending Fortitude. So I'm just searching for the runes for now)
Shield: I'm still using the stormshield until my other buddy comes online. He might let me borrow his Spirit Shield until I find me a 40s Monarch. I have the runes for it.
Belt: Tgods (I forgot to put it earlier)
Amulet: I forgot to put that I had a highlord amulet equiped.
Skills;
Mind blast=2
Dkick=Max
Bfury=1
Bshield=1
Shadow Master= I got trigger happy but I didnt' max it out. Just made sure it had a good amount to be a meat shield.
I should have had the skills up because I got mix up with Venom and Death Sentry, so I max out DS instead of Venom.
But so far, I'm really happy with the results. My resist has improve with the kira's. My kicks are a lot stronger with the shadow dancers. Mind blast really help me out in tough situations and I'm still life tapping as usual regardless of having dracs. Appreciate the advice Arikados!
I'm pretty much just looking for skill charms now for my SIN.|||If you have tgods, that covers your light sorb, so you dont need a wisp, which means that you're pretty much immune to any elemental damage but poison (with maxed res's). For a spirit shield, you can take any old regular monarch and socket it with the reward from Lazaruk's quest for four sockets.
Glad I could help.|||Quote:
Dtalon at slvl 30 gives six kicks, so you need at least +10 MA/all skills in your gear/skiller GC's. Shouldn't be too hard with a torch and some of the above gear. If you get more than +10 you can put less points in Dtalon (get just 30 pts with all your gear on).
You don't need a level 30 DTalon since you don't want 6 kicks. The only time you'll use them are vs act bosses. Vs other monsters, you'll be kicking the air way too much.
3-4 kicks is fine.
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I'm still researching more. But because I notice that most of the bonus from a SIN is received from weapons, including the heavy damage, I figure why not try both kicks and use the blade shield at same time.
Actually, most of her damage is from her boots, not weapon. The weapon adds some mods that are useful (IAS, CB, etc), but its damage is irrelevant to kick damage.
As a one point skill, anything will work for blade fury, especially since CB will do the damage for you.
Only when you focus on blade fury will the weapon begin to matter, and that uses a claw rather than LW.
Blade Shield doesn't get strong enough to focus on it, but you can make BF work.
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Blade Shield; One point wonder for sure. Hit checks 1/s for 1/4 weapon damage + elemental, and OW.
Blade Shield does not trigger OW.
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Storm Shield - Since you're probably running the fade that procs from Last Wish, you don't really need this for PvM, so I would recommend a Spirit Monarch for the +skills, fcr and fhr.
If he's only using LW's fade, he has only 11 DR%. You don't need + skills, FCR or FHR, but you do need DR% and higher block.
SS is fine.
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Last Wish - I have no idea how you got your hands on this after only playing for a month, so I'm going to assume (incorrectly or correctly) that you bought it. Easily the best and most versatile piece of gear you will probably get your hands on for melee classes. Hopefully its in a PB (phase blade).
It's definitely not the best, but he got it for free with not much else, so it'd be okay.
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Guliarmes Helm - Drop this and get your hands on an Andariel's Visage (andys + highlords + ias gloves means that you have enough ias to hit the maximum kick speed with your last with PB), Shako, or a nice sin circ unless you need/want the extra 15% DS (works wonders for blade fury) as that final bit of extra CB really doesn't matter in PvM unless you're looking to move to Uber Tristram.
You don't need all that gear.
Only 20% IAS (from the Highlords I also recommend) gets you to 8/3, which is fine for kicks.
If he's doing ranged CB, he'll be needing the Guillaume's.
Similarly, you can keep the Drac's. Trang won't add enough since you have very little venom. With rare gloves, you don't need the IAS or skill.
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Venom/at least one. At slvl 30 or so, with trangs claws on, you can easily top 1.2k poison damage/0.4s. Thats a ton of damage on Dtalon, BF and BS. This is also the typical MA sin's answer to Phys Immunes.
But, not enough in pvm. Most of the PI's that you have to worry about are also Poison Immune.
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Death Sentry/1 -I call this one "Necro in a box". Placed away from the monsters/bodies, this encourages them to explode corpses more often for some reason, will detonate corpses in a similar manner to a Necromancer's Corpse Explosion with devastating results. Very useful for clearing rooms and is well worth any points you put in it.
I would recommend maxing it for the added range. This is the PI killer more so than venom.|||Quote:
3-4 kicks is fine.
I keep forgetting this for some reason... Probably because most of my kickers end up going to UT to spend most of their time.
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As a one point skill, anything will work for blade fury, especially since CB will do the damage for you.
I wouldn't have thought that CB would have been particularly effective because of the ranged CB penalties. I'll have to try it on my kicker.
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Only when you focus on blade fury will the weapon begin to matter, and that uses a claw rather than LW.
Which claws would you use? The UT/BF guide stickied suggests using LW for BF because of ITD, Might, and huge amounts of CB (as well as other things).
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Blade Shield does not trigger OW.
I thought it triggered OW but not DS... I'll have to find that guide in the compodium about what BS triggers again.
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If he's only using LW's fade, he has only 11 DR%. You don't need + skills, FCR or FHR, but you do need DR% and higher block.
SS is fine.
Yeah, in hindsight I have to agree... Stormshield would definitely work better with low level fade.
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It's definitely not the best, but he got it for free with not much else, so it'd be okay.
Sorry, it should probably read "one of the best and most versatile swords" to be a little more accurate. If I had one of these I have a half dozen characters I could use it on in a heartbeat, so its one of those items which I can always find use for.
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Only 20% IAS (from the Highlords I also recommend) gets you to 8/3, which is fine for kicks.
If he's doing ranged CB, he'll be needing the Guillaume's.
My line of thought was that if he was using BOS to hit maximum attack speed, that he'd want the option to go for maximum attack speed while he was using fade. I still think using the Guliarmes to jump from 60-75%CB to 95% is a waste of the helm slot though, as that last 30% CB would really only take the number of shuriken to take eight 1/8 chunks off of their life from ~10 or 12 to ~9, which in my mind really doesn't make much of a difference.
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Similarly, you can keep the Drac's. Trang won't add enough since you have very little venom. With rare gloves, you don't need the IAS or skill.
But the reason we use dracs is already covered by Last Wish, and OW is less important in PvM than in PvP, unless you're trying to keep a boss from regenerating health. Agreed on trangs in this case, slvl 10 venom only gains 50 poison damage from trangs. Imo, if you're going to use rare gloves, at least get the +2MA to save you some skill points from Dtalon to use elsewhere, and most of those gloves that are for sale will likely have IAS. So while its not *needed*, It frees up some options with skill points, and allows you to swap out the Highlords for something else and not lose the base IAS to hit 8/3. Non-MA/IAS rare/crafted gloves should probably have stats, res, mana steal, and if you're lucky you might be able to get your hands on a set of CB gloves.
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Most of the PI's that you have to worry about are also Poison Immune.
Thats certainly true as most PI's tend to be undead and therefore poison resistant if not poison immune as well, but I cant recall ever running into packs of phys/poison immune monsters on a regular basis while MFing, running or doing UT. My usual answer to poison immunes though is a wand with Lower Res charges on swap, which usually drops their resistances enough that you can deal some damage, or even better, and my personal favourite; a wand with decrep charges or a Reapers Toll to remove the physical part of their resistance.
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I would recommend maxing it for the added range. This is the PI killer more so than venom.
I find DS too hard to control to kill individual PI's effectively, a high level LS does that better, but if they're mixed together with something non-physical immune, I do find that DS clears a room rather effectively once you get the first body down.|||So far, Things are looking good. I'm not dying as much. Going up against any single boss like diablo or baal, I'm able to withstand them with the help of my shadow master and merc.
Going up against large groups, I lay out death sentry and shooting mind blast, then unloading shurikens while my merc and shadow master take them out. As the group dies down to like 3 to 4, I'll Dflight and Dkick. If it gets too crowdy I'll dtail.
Btw, I equip my merc with the Guilium, insight and duriels armor. (I got the insight from a friend that stop playing D2).
I've been told to eventually put an Infinity, so I'm just waiting till I get the runes for it. But for now is that good enough for the Merc?|||You seem to be killing well enough, so it's good
|||Why did they have to go and ruin the Blender assassin? That build was so much fun.
, clears with relative ease. I'm planning max DS (more explosions 
with different variations). this time i want to stick with bartucs with a max/ed jewel in it. (chaos rw was in my mind but decided on bartucs this ladder)
? i dont have any good source for it except poison. for switch i decided to use 2 venom prebuff claw (also need it for burstofspeed) so switch is not open either.
and my AR is pretty low to hit bosses about 70% chance.
|||Rare gloves are better than 3/20, so his gloves now are fine.|||thanks for the replies everyone, you've all been helpful