Trying out assassin in single player

What AOE options are there? I went down the shadow discipline tree and put most of my points into claw mastery. It works fine but killing crowds is annoyingly slow.

As for martial arts, how do they work? If i build up to all 3 charges, will only charge 3 take effect or will it be cumulative? How do i see what charge i have built up to?(Since the attack can miss/get blocked). Mana wise dont you have to spam pots if you use martial arts/traps a lot?|||I max Death Sentry on pretty much every assassin I make.

You don't have to get any synergies for it, the reason you max Death Sentry is to get a bigger radius on the Corpse Explosion.

Between you, your merc and Shadow you should be able to get a corpse down, and then Death Sentry will pretty much wipe out the rest of the pack after that.

For mana get a mana leech ring, or look into an Insight runeword. It has Meditation Aura that regens mana at a crazy rate. Make it in a polearm and put it on an Act 2 Mercenary.

Early on though, you'll be hard pressed to find a character that doesn't chug mana pots from levels 1-30ish.|||Does dual claws give any advantage at all? Faster attack speed compared to one?|||there are many advantages, but the main one is claw block.|||Wow so little replies.

So what about the martial arts thing?

What are the advantages of dual claws? Thats what im asking. How is claw block different from using a shield?

What do you use for AOE before you can get death sentry?

Shadow master is better than warrior right? Because i read that shadow warrior actualyl has more defense, etc, which is weird.|||Fireblast can work as an early AOE spell if you're building a trapper or if you don't mind using respec to change skills later. If you're making a trapper, though, most of their skills are AOE. Blade Sentinel is also powerful at lower levels. DTail does AOE damage, although you need to pair it with tiger strike to make it really powerful - but with the right boots and enough speed it can be used by itself as an effective attack till the end of nightmare at least. I've never really messed with the elemental/phoenix strike skills, but they're all AOE to some extent at least.

Shadow master and warrior are different. The master is more of a fire-and-forget minion, the warrior can be manipulated to do what you want. Both are good tanks at higher levels, but the warrior spawns with less in the way of gear.

Claw block can block elemental damage, and is determined by skill level only (shield blocking depends on dex and block%). It also takes a fixed amount of time, and can't be sped up like shield blocking.|||So how do i tell how many charges i am on?

Do i get a IAS increase when dual wielding claws? Or is it the same?|||The number of them and color can tell you how much of which. 1 orb = 1st charge and so on.

IAS when dual wielding is the same. But, IAS only counts for the primary claw.|||What about the color?

So the secondary claw only attacks at base attack speed? Does that include burst of speed's IAS?

For martial arts, whats a good point distribution for the charge up skill and the kick? 50-50?|||Each is color coded.

Tiger strike is white, Cobra Strike is teal, Fists of Fire is red, etc.



Dual claw attacks (like DClaw) do both the same speed. The secondary claw won't add to any IAS, but the base claw's speed is used to average with the primary's to determine what WSM to use.

BoS would add after that, and isn't the same type as regular item IAS.



With MA skills, it's usually no problem to max them. With PS for example, it'd be easy to have that maxed and the synergies as well. Depending on focus (phyiscal or the elemental from the charge), the finisher can be 1-20 points.