Assassin Skills Discussion

[Occhidiangela]

As soon as act 3 normal and clvl 19 you can shop wands with as much as 25-60 Fire or 1-120 lightning. They are, of course, 1 handed (i.e. no BS/BF 2h penalty).

*snip* You could get really lucky and have a useful suffix on the wand as well, like "of piercing" or charges of a good necro CC skill).

The key to the alvl (early) of decent elemental damage on wands is that (norm/exc but not elite) they have magic_level = 1.  So the alvl you get is clvl+6 (clvl + 5 for shop ilvl, + 1 more for magic_level).  However, in normal (but not nm/hell) you need to be aware of the shop ilvl caps:

Act 1 : 12
Act 2 : 20
Act 3 : 28
Act 4 : 36
Act 5 : 45

so clvl 19+ in act 3+:
Fiery up to 25-60 fire; clvl 18 req., alvl 25
Static up to 1-120 lightning; clvl 18 req., alvl 25

clvl 28+ in act 4+:
Smoldering up to 50-90 fire; clvl 25 req., alvl 34
Glowing up to 1-180 lightning; clvl 25 req., alvl 34

clvl 40+ in act 5+:
Smoking up to 80-130 fire; clvl 36 req., alvl 46 (yes yes, ilvl 45 cap no prob)
Buzzing up to 1-260 lightning; clvl 36 req., alvl 46 (ditto)

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I think I understand that if my CLVL gets too high, I'm less likely to see these mods on the wands. Funny thing, though, NM Bremm dropped me a wand with 275 poison damage over 6 sec Sunday morning. That will be a handy Hell BF tool to slow down regen rates during many a boss fight. :)

I decided to hold off on the guide since I have not completed a HC Hell Assassin under the synergy system as yet, no twink. Want to make sure I walk the walk before I talk the talk. My SC trapper went for higher Shadow Warrior and has Fire Blast damage below 1000. This makes for slow defeat of lightning immunes. I find rather funny the fact that she has found 4 sets of Sparkling Mail, one of which she still wears in NM act IV, and got the "Luck of the Irish" drop: Clegs Gloves. Weird luck on drops is part of the game.

I don't know if there is anything to this, but it seemed to me that normal weapons (not exceptional and not unique) tend to have the highest mods when I would shop Mala other merchants in Hell Diff. However, the best always seemed to be the rare combos, with three or four elemental mods. Javelins are usable by any class without any adds to stats, which makes for nice Variant tools. Our RBD Elemental Thrower Variant team benifited from such mods last year.

I probably need to review Gambling details if I want to provide advice on gambling for high elemental javelin mods.

Occhi