A few musings on crowd control skills/equipment

[Crystalion]

MB allows use of a shield.

I have used MB against Ancients in Hell Diff, and was glad I had it. :)   

8.  Blade Shield is more expensive, and if you use a L 5 weapon, No Shield!!! That hurts resists and blocking, which are other issues for avoiding stun and hence the crowd's closure with you.

10.  Blade Fury: I hear rumor that it works with Knockback if that affix is on the selected weapon? 

Does it also stack with venom?

v1.10 beta has one second duration increase per skill point in Cloak of Shadows beyond the 8 sec. of v1.09.

Knockback works with blade fury [as does leech].

I have to say that, at 3/4 weapon damage, BF is so good [no AR needed] that I often switch to an etherial magic maul to cast it [new v1.10 beta assassin, no twinks; currently level 28 in act5 norm]. If the game hadn't been made so much harder in Hell diff then I'd claim BF should use str/dex damage like the finishing kicks as using a slow hard hitting 2h weapon just to toss shuriken seems a bit cheesy.

Certainly, with Venom being 0.4 second poison, fanning out the shuriken in spam mode probly means you could simultaneously keep two or three mobs strongly poisoned instead of regenning. Of course CoS buys you the time, non-boss/champ, to safely stand there and watch them melt.

I ran into an extra fast nasty boss in close quarters and made use of Blade Sentry, casting them in front of me almost randomly as I continually played keep away, and I also made good use of the skill in tunnel and corridor fighting, so I think all the blade skills may now qualify as one point wonders.

Still, my concern is that by act5 Hell mobs have so much HP that only high damage [read: thousands/sec.] characters will avoid "slow" play. The only Assassin skill that scales to that level seems to be Death Sentry [and some encounters don't offer corpses].

Thanks for mentioning Mind Blast works on the Ancients, as I'm about to face them and would have presumed them to be immune.

In v1.10 it looks like they've made the Shadow Warrior and Master more equal in stats, so being able to control the actions of the Warrior could ["could"] be more valuable now than a Master depending on whether you like the obligation and privilege of monkey-see-monkey-do play.

A range 3 javalin class weapon can be used with a shield if you want a weapon switch for spell casting mode amenable to blade shield flee/knockback defense. [not tested in v1.10, going by v1.09]. Further, Blade Shield is cheap, not expensive, from a mana/sec. perspective. Now that Blade Fury leeches and shops sell mana, the overall cost should be managable. Since my [new] Assassin is only level 28 I don't yet know if BS itself leeches, which would be a hoot. I'm guessing that in v1.10, like Blade Sentry, it will not add special effects, like knockback and leech, but only damages [poison, cold, etc.]. In which case using it for flee/knockback would be moot. I'll know in a hour or so after this post. :)