Pure Shadow build?

I've been looking at the various Assassin guides, and I've noticed that there are very few pure Shadow builds, focusing on Claw Mastery, Weapon Block, Shadow Warrior/Master. Is this build not effective? Or not effective in Hell? None of the builds seem to mention Shadow hardly at all. I find it quite fun, but I'm not even to NM yet.|||=/ The problem with Claw Mastery and WB focus is that they're both passive. You'd have to have a main claw attack to make it work.

Those options are usually WWsin (pvp), or PS/DClaw sin. Add in venom, and you can get a somewhat effective, but slow killing bowsin workable.

Warrior / Master are both just extra help, but not usually something to build on.



The Shadow skills are primarily 1 point utility skills while the MA / Trap tree are the damage dealing trees.|||Wow. Thanks. Is it unusual that a skill tree is so neglected? I guess the Curse tree is just a utility tree with Necros.

Thanks!|||Basically. It's the same with passive and magic for zons, mastery for barbs, and the auras on a paladin.|||I hope the 10 pts I have dumped into Claw Mastery isn't a waste. I've been cruising pretty fast into Act 2, but who knows? I might hit a wall, if not Duriel. |||not exactly true, you can make a mojomancer (curse based) and a passive zon. i dont know about a pure shadow sin personally though.|||It's possible to work with them, especially since venom is a damaging passive-ish thing, but very difficult.|||You'll need to get a lot of %ED from gear to make this work I guess. Fortitude armour comes into mind, war travellers add some damage, there's a cap with 20%ED on it iirc(though it offers no other benefits, so it's probably not worth it). For claws, again you're looking for high damage, so upped bartucs, fury or chaos claws, some other unique claws...

Basically, it's possible if you've got good gear and high damage weapons. Wouldn't try it without those really. Maybe you should look for an attack from the MA tree to give your assassin an active damage skill... If you want to focus mostly on shadow skills, the different kick skills com into mind, since they don't need (have) synergies to work. Using your boots for damage also means Claw mastery becomes worthless, so you'd be looking at your build, just with dragon talon or dragon tail in stead of Claw mastery.|||you could put some points into DClaw just so you have an attack skill|||Didn't think about this before, but don't expect much from a shadow when you have no MA/traps skills. They cast those at a lvl that depends on your own lvl in these skills, so any attacks from your shadow will be pretty low-damage...