notes on v1.10 (beta) Assassin Blade skills

[Crystalion]

rely on dense monster packing with CoS control, then I imagine pumping Blade Sentry to have more in the air at once makes some sense for a specialty build

I am now of the opinion that a specialty build with pumped (pts + +skills) blade sentry shows promise because of a factor I forgot to think about...

Blade Sentry uses 3/8 of the "weapon damage" (~= your normal attack phys/elem/poison with str/dex, mastery(?) adders) ***at the time of casting***.

(tech note: testing for enchant, venom, and all damage enhancing auras would be appropriate, because some of them might be set when the blade sentry trap is set and others could conceivably be consulted at time of hit)

That is, with high duration (slvl20 = 13.1 seconds) this trap can be set off of a weapon switch (e.g. to some big/slow 2h weapon with tons of damage and adders) and will repeatedly deal damage as if it were the mini-me version of this weapon without you being occupied/rooted/otherwise in danger (or even without a shield, as you've weapon switched back).

Since Blade Fury doesn't need skill point pumping and also carries effects/procs I can't quite give Blade Sentry, in light of this new perspective, an "uber" rating, but I certainly feel comfortable calling it "near-uber" given v1.10s rare drop/gamble ==> base upgrade cycle virtually guaranteeing "high" level characters access to massive damage output weapons.

I've not really paid attention myself (since I don't use CoS much == overkill for my style of play) but over at the amazon basin I think I read that, other than duration bump with skill points, the other improvement in v1.10 beta for CoS is that attacking a CoS cursed monster doesn't lift its curse. I don't remember v1.09 CoS with ranged attacks, since I was always a melee-sin at that time, but certainly in v1.10 beta when I CoS a monster and then pump blade fury into it it just stands there and takes it. This, of course, is a huge boon for Blade Sentry and all traps (not "waking" the CoSed somnolent monsters).

Indeed my particular flavor of bootysin build maxes out all its needed skills at 55 or so (I'm 48 now) so I had been thinking about what I'd want to dump surplus points into later. I'm not high enough level yet to post my build/comments but I will in a week or two. But I will certainly give maxing Blade Sentry a try and report back.