MA Assassin

[Dethseeker]

Hey all!

Making a Pheonix Strike assassin and can not decide on a few things:

Mind blast - How much? Considered 10 for the stun
Fade - Hmm Fade or Burst of Speed, quite a delimia since I play HC
Warrior or Master - Leaning toward Warrior for the dual Pheonix Striking :D

What do you all think?

Oh yeah! The key elements of the build are:

Pheonix Strike - 20
Fists of Fire - 20
Claws of Thunder - 20
Dragon Claw - 1 to 5
Cloak of Shadows - 1
Bladed Fury - 1

Edited for spelling and bad grammer content...

[Tal]

Mind blast - How much? Considered 10 for the stun

I got by with 5 in Mindblast. Plus to skills helps round it out.

Fade - Hmm Fade or Burst of Speed, quite a delimia since I play HC

Why does it have to be an either/or situation? Be flexible. Put 6 in Burst of Speed and use Fade conditionally.

Warrior or Master - Leaning toward Warrior for the dual Pheonix Striking  :D

Master. Hardier tank and her skills and traps suplement your own attacks.

[bigeyedbug]

Mind Blast. I've nearly always left it at 1 pt. More points are great, but I find 1 pt with +skills is enough to get by.

Fade or BoS. Really depends on what equipment you have available, and whether you're going c/c or c/s. I've played mostly untwinked hc c/c, and have always used BoS through NM then switch to Fade in Hell.

Shadow. Depends on what you want. The Warrior can do useful supplementary area damage with your build, will have better tank behavior, can be even more durable than the Master if you force it to use Fade, can be controlled to some degree, can be used for CoS, and almost never vanishes. The only real negative is that it takes a fair amount babysitting to be effective. The Master is much better in melee, is capable of using skills without you having them active--including the very handy DS, requires no hand-holding to be an effective tank, and is very fun to watch. OTOH, it will often use inappropriate skills, will periodically back out tanking duty to drop traps, disappears fairly often, and can't be prevented from using MB when you're party doesn't want it to. Personally, I favor the Warrior for elemental builds, but the Master's good enough in its own way that it's a matter of preference. I think the determining factor usually is whether one likes or dislikes the idea of puppeteering a minion.

Build. It's very likely you can get by with 1 pt in DC. With some +skills, its AR bonus easily outstrips Phoenix. The physical damage boost isn't that great, and you'll be able to deal with 95% of targets with your elemental skills. For alternate damage, I'd suggest 1 pt in Venom and Death Sentry. 50% phys damage aside, the latter in particular is a "don't leave home without it" for most Assassins. I'd also suggest 1 pt in Dflight. If you can get either of those for free on a useful claw, all the better.

[Dethseeker]

Is 1 point in venom worth it? Just curious because I have never really had more than +5 skills on any one character. Granted this could be boosted with +skills claws on switch. Hmm so say I could get +10, what would a level 11 venom do?

[bigeyedbug]

225-245 damage over 4/10 of a second. Not a lot, but worth a skill point? I'd say yes for most MA builds, as long as they meet two criteria: They have a sizeable amount of +skills, or +shadow skills (very often two +3 Shadow claws on switch); and that they don't need long duration poison for a PMH effect. The other nice thing about it is that your Shadow can receive a nice boost to its damage, particularly in Normal and NM.

[Baajikiil]

Mind blast - How much? Considered 10 for the stun

I've played both a shadow assassin with mindblast at 30+, and a Phoenix striker with it at 1 pt + adders. It's primary use for the striker was to break up boss packs so there was time to build a few charges. The convesion % works wonders for this purpose even at just 1 point; just spam it a few times. If a pack is bad enough to need further stunning, I could almost always use the 3rd charge of phoenix to handle that nicely(cold immunes aside).

The shadow assassin used MB all over the place for both the stun and conversion. She stunned and sniped with BF and a high lvl venom while the merc/master dealt with the enemies up close. The high duration allowed her to get the most from her might merc; he would die quickly under any mid sized mob.

I'd say leave at 1 for a MA assassin.

Fade - Hmm Fade or Burst of Speed, quite a delimia since I play HC

This can depend a little on your level of twinking; Fade is very nice, but if you have good enough gear to max resists and % DR without it, why bother? I tend to like fade best because it leaves so many more equipment options open. You seem to be leaning away from using a sheild. Fade is a good option then, because of your lack of DR % and resist from a sheild. Also, if you can find some decent Greater/Runic Talons, you can match the attack rate with BoS without a huge amount of IAS.

A con to using fade though is the points. Fade gives 1% DR per point invested, so to get the most out of it, it needs to be maxed. You can often get BoS up to optimal lvl with just a 1 point, and some +skills.

Warrior or Master - Leaning toward Warrior for the dual Pheonix Striking 

I think it's a preferance thing. Both are pretty much equal at tanking, the master seems (to me) to have higher damage output(DS counts for much of this), but you can control the warrior better. One thing to consider is the size of the games you expect to play in.

In large games, most soloing MA assassins take a fairly decent amount of time to finish off an opponent. My master seems to *always* decide to convert the monster that I have spent the last 20 seconds knocking down to a sliver. By the time he unconverts, he's nearly full again from regen. It can be a huge pain to yourself when soloing, and to party members when in a group. All of my future assassins will be using warriors I think.

[Dethseeker]

Well I have decided to go with the following:

Shadow Warrior - I like the control factor as well as the idea of dual Pheonix Strikes :D
Venom - 1 point plus adders should do well as another source of damage
Fade and BoS - 1 in both till I decide what to do. Ultimately I will probably go with fade
Mind Blast - 1 should be good. Tested some in SP and 1 was plenty for my purposes
Death Sentry - will probably go for around 5 + adders for the blast radius

Sound like a good plan?

Thanks for the input everyone. Hope this works out well since I have never made it past Nightmare since I stated playing HC...

[bigeyedbug]

Looks fine. I might not put more than 1 pt in DS, but whatever. Just FYI, you can probably wait on fully developing your secondary synergy until early-to-mid Hell, especially if it's the Meteor--although this is much less true if you tend to solo in high playercount games.

Enjoy yourself. To my mind, Phoenix is the funnest attack skill in the game.

[Baajikiil]

To my mind, Phoenix is the funnest attack skill in the game.

Tried a bowler yet? I loved my phoenix striker, but bowling is simply a blast :D

EDIT: Smiley.

[bigeyedbug]

No, although I should. But I'm still holding out for Molten Boulder as an oskill on the 1.11 Unique Wyrmhide boots Lane Rulers. Then I could put them on a martial artist and really give some meaning to the term "Phoenix Strike." What if I changed my statement to "...funnest skill in the game that is effective as a primary attack in Hell."?