- Feb 3, 2011
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Jocular's Whirlwind/Trap Assassin Hybrid Guide
Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Build
2.a. Stat Points
2.b. Skill Points
2.c. Skills - Discussion
3. Equipment
4. Mercenary
5. Tactics & Tips
6. Hotkeys
7. Breakpoints
8. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Hi guys. After nearly a decade on here, I've decided to give back to the forums and try writing my first guide. I've had the character, 'Yerp', for nearly 6(?) years now. She started as a Phoenix Striker back in the day, but for the past 3 or so she has been a Whirlwind Assassin full time. I've spent a lot of time figuring out (what I believe to be) optimal gear for a WW/Trap PVM build. Before I begin, I do have to say that though the build can handle any location in the game, you won't be able to do much above /p3 in my opinion. Except for probably The Pits, and Ancient Tunnels. Not necessarily because you'll die, but because it'll be too slow.
Other WW/Trap guides that I've read have focused entirely on physical damage, or utilized Venom, or placed greater emphasis on Trap damage. In my opinion this build is different in that it relies just as much on Traps, as it does on Whirlwind.
Finally, while I realize a lot of information in the guide is old hat to most of us still on the SPF, I have tried to write it for the layman.
Anyways, here we go. I'm basing the structure off of Nightfish's wonderful Berserker Guide.
Some shorthand:
Faster Cast Rate: FCR
Faster Run Walk: FRW
Increased Attack Speed: IAS
Frame per attack/action: fpa
Skill level: slvl
Lightning Sentry: LS
Death Sentry: DS
Cloak of Shadows: CoS
Mind Blast: MB
Whirlwind: WW
2. The Build
Stat and skill allocation.
2.a. Stats
Strength: Enough to equip weapon and armor
Dexterity: Enough to equip weapons
Vitality: The rest
Energy: Base
2.b. Skill Points
20 Claw Mastery
20 Lightning Sentry
20 Death Sentry
20 Charged Bolt Sentry
3-6 Fire Blast
1+ Shock Web <<<<<<<<(put points here last)
1 Cloak of Shadows
1 Mind Blast
1 Fade
1 Weapon Block
1 Dragon Flight (if you lack Enigma)
1 in pre-requisite skills
Like most hybrid builds, it is finished at lvl 99
The more skill points the merrier. I would say level 85 is minimum for it to perform well. Yerp feels very solid at level 91.2.c. Skills - Discussion
Claw Mastery: Not much to say here. Since 'Chaos' only gives +1 Whirlwind, you need all the Attack Rating and Enhanced Damage you can scrounge up. The included critical strike isn't anything to sneeze at either. 20 points.
Lightning Sentry: You will be using this in every encounter, save against Lightning Immune monsters. They shoot 10 times and then collapse. Along with DS and WW, one of your main damage dealers. 20 points.
Death Sentry: This is the real killer of the build. Probably of most assassin builds, honestly. The point of LS/WW is to get some monsters to drop, and then rely on DS to mop everything else up via Corpse Explosion. It's lightning damage is negligible, except against Fallen I guess. At level 30 its corpse explosion radius is surprisingly large. Corpse Explosion deals 50% fire/50% physical damage. 20 points.
Charged Bolt Sentry: A synergy for LS. 20 points
Fire Blast: A synergy for DS that increases the number of shots fired by 1 for every 3 points placed into Fire Blast. I recommend 3-6 points.
Shock Web: A place to pour any extra skill points you have after everything else has been allocated. It's another synergy for LS. 1+ points.
Cloak of Shadows: The best crowd control skill in the game. It blinds enemies, reduces their defense and increases yours. You will be using this every encounter if you can to help bolster your Attack Rating, as well as for simple survivability. Since you can't cast it until its last use has expired, you don't want to put any points into it you don't need to. 1 point.
Mind Blast: Another highly useful crowd control skill. It stuns, or converts monsters. With optimal gear you will have enough +skills to only require 1 hard point invested. I would shoot for a 3 second stun at minimum, which is slvl 6. Since you will be WW'ing straight into packs of monsters, MB is sometimes vital to keep monsters stunned, or distracted by converted monsters. 1+ point.
Fade: Fade is far more useful than Burst of Speed. Finding resistances is difficult on this build as it is, and Fade's hidden physical damage reduction % is quite helpful while whirling through enemies. 1%/slvl. Also, the less FRW you have the more damage you will deal per second while WW'ing. This is because WW attacks at regular intervals during the length of its duration depending on your IAS breakpoint. Therefore the longer amount of time spent next to monsters whirling, the more damage you will be doing. With +skills, shoot for at least slvl 6. 1 point.
Weapon Block: Since movement during WW still counts as your character attacking, rather than running/walking, you are still able to block. It is, however, extremely annoying when you are trying to cast LS/DS/CoS/MB...Still, it's too good to miss. 1 point.
Dragon Flight: In my opinion the build shines with Enigma, but if you don't have it then Dragon Flight will do in a pinch. It's a 1 second cast time, and teleports you to the targeted monster. You will find Weapon Block to be incredibly annoying when trying the use Dragon Flight. 1 point.
3. Equipment:
There isn't much room here for alteration, and the impressiveness (or lack thereof) your rings/amulet/charms will decide how much you can play around with equipment.
Also, it can't be avoided, Trap breakpoints and WW breakpoints need to be quickly addressed before getting into it. From a better writer than I:
The previous table was for 9fpa, this next one is for 10fpa.
AWSM | IAS %
0 | 77
-5 | 65
-10 | 54
-15 | 44
-20 | 35
-25 | 27
-30 | 20
0 | 77
-5 | 65
-10 | 54
-15 | 44
-20 | 35
-25 | 27
-30 | 20
So. As you can see you'll have to decide which trap breakpoint to shoot for and then cater your equipment properly. However, the only things that will change in accordance to 9fpa or 10fpa will be the Helm socket, and what claws you use. Everything else can't affect your IAS and/or will stay the same. On to the gear!
Helm: Guillame's Face. For obvious reasons. Your WW relies heavily on crushing blow to kill enemies, and G'Face is the one for the job. 15% deadly strike is great as well. If you need some extra IAS to hit a certain breakpoint, this is the only place in your equipment with the flexibility to do that with a 15%IAS jewel. If you don't need any IAS, you probably will be best served by an Um rune.
Claws: 'Chaos'+Bartucs/Jade Talon/Rare Claw. Only you can decide which is best. My current set up is 'Chaos' Runic Talons w/ +3LS/+3MB, paired with a Jade Talon that is shael'd to hit the last WW breakpoint. Probably the optimal combo for 9fpa trap laying would be a 'Chaos' Wrist Sword paired with Upped Bartucs (eth Bartucs if possible, obviously). That would require 63 IAS, supplied by: gloves(20%), 'Chaos' (35%), helm (15%). For 10fpa, I'd recommend 'Chaos' Suwayyah paired with Jade Talon. It requires the same IAS set up.
If you want to have room in your helm for something other than a 15%IAS jewel, for 10fpa trap laying you could either choose 'Chaos' Suwayyah + Bartucs, or 'Chaos' Feral Claws + Jade Talon. For 9fpa you could go with 'Chaos' Feral Claws + Bartucs.
The above recommendations for 'best' claw setup ignores rare claws because of their inherent variability.
Body: Enigma. If you want to have a lot of fun with this build, it's the only choice. I ran around with Chains of Honor for the longest time, and it works great in terms of dps, and helps you get enough resists. But you just really need Teleport. Otherwise it's just a bit too slow paced, considering you can't use BoS.
Gloves: Laying of Hands. Like with most physical builds, LoH is too good to pass up. 350% ED to demons, there's nothing that compares. 20% and some much needed 50% fire resists means that there is no substitute.
Belt: Arachnid Mesh. In order to hit the 42% FCR breakpoint, you have to use Arach. Sure, if you have a +12%FCR amulet you could use a crafted caster belt instead if you lack Arach. But I would imagine that most people who have Chaos+Enigma plus all these other items likely also has an Arach available.
Boots: Gore Rider. Again, no replacing this for the same reasons that G'Face is required.
Amulet: Best choice? A +2sin/+15%fcr crafted caster amulet with other mods like life/mana/resists. If you have 12%FCR or more on your amulet it will allow you to swap out one of your FCR rings while still hitting the 42% FCR breakpoint. I use a +2sin/10%FCR crafted amulet, I'm still hunting for a sweet +2/20.
Rings: Two FCR rings with plenty of mana/resists/life leech/mana leech. If you don't need two FCR rings, it's hard to go wrong with a SOJ or Bul Kathos, or some crazy rare with life/mana/leech/str/dex/resists/etc. All depends on what you need.
Charms: I use a combination of Attack Rating GCs, Trap GCs, Gheeds, Attack Rating SCs, +Mana SCs, and a few Fine small charms. At level 90 I have around 5k Attack Rating, which is just okay. CoS is pretty much necessary in some areas.
Weapon Switch: CTA+ Spirit/Lidless. Depending on how much FCR you have, you may need to use Spirit on swap to hit the 65% FCR breakpoint. It's handy to have a better FCR breakpoint on swap for teleporting far distances. Spirit is better if you don't mind losing out on some vitality; the extra mana is nice.
4. Mercenary
Act 2 Might Merc, geared with Reapers, Kira's, and Guardian Angel. Since your WW slvl is so low, you need all the enhanced damage you can get, so Might aura is a no brainer. I have to admit this is one of the areas of the guide where I cannot offer much advice. I don't have an Infinity so I haven't been able to test out how much an improvement that would be. I have no doubt Infinity would be better than Reapers, as it increases your damage from all 3 sources. Your chance to hit with WW would be at or near 95%, and LS/DS would be far stronger. I wouldn't be surprised if you could increase to /p5. But, I don't doubt you'd have to use MB more often to keep monsters off your back; decrep is quite nice for crowd control.
5. Tactics and Tips
The way I play is like this. I tele around until I find a pack, try to round them up into a ball if I can, drop CoS, MB if I need to, lay down 4 LS and 1 DS, and then WW until they start dropping. Once they start dying I WW out of the pack and drop more DS until everything is dead. Rinse and repeat. The nice thing about having WW and traps is that you don't need Insight, or a bunch of mana pots to keep your mana up. I get by fine just having 15% mana steal on Jade Talon. Before I swapped some charms around I only had ~370 mana after BO and constantly ran out of mana for teleporting/traps. Once I got ~550 things were much smoother. I'm now up to 650 and it's even better, though at a certain point you hit diminishing returns.
I haven't really noticed anywhere that's difficult to deal with at /p3, except for Black Souls in WSK. CS is sometimes annoying with all the mana burn monsters. All in all a moderately strong character that can take care of anything, but she won't win any races. I find it incredibly satisfying to round up a big pack in CS/Pits/AT and watch everything melt with DS, and I guess that's good enough for me. The amount of "return" in terms of damage that you get from the gear and leveling required is far less than other builds. But, I find hybrids fun, especially Caster/Melee types! And WW/Trap really gets that itch nicely.
6. Hotkeys:
I'm pretty simple the way I use hotkeys, I don't doubt they could be improved. Mine are set up as:
LMB:
Whirlwind
RMB:
Z: Lightning Sentry
X: Cloak of Shadows
C: Mind Blast
V: Death Sentry
B: Teleport
S: Fade
D: Battle Command
F: Battle Orders
G: Burst of Speed
7. Breakpoints
The nitty gritty of it all. Okay, the breakpoints I shot for are as follows:
FHR: 48%/5fpa. Really easy to get considering G'Face has 30%, and both Bartucs and Jade Talon both have another 30% If you really wanted to you could try for 86%/4fpa, but it isn't necessary.
IAS: For sake of completion I will include the above IAS tables again.
The previous table was for 9fpa, this next one is for 10fpa trap laying.
AWSM | IAS %
0 | 77
-5 | 65
-10 | 54
-15 | 44
-20 | 35
-25 | 27
-30 | 20
FCR: I tried the 27%FCR/13fpa for a bit, but it's just way too slow. While teleporting/CoS/MB you're likely to get hit by some projectile, or some sort of attack and block it with Weapon Block, canceling your cast. 42%FCR/12fpa is the minimum amount tolerable, if it was possible at all to get 65%FCR/11fpa and still deal good WW damage I would recommend it, but it can't be done. Even with a 20%FCR amulet, two FCR rings, and Arach you're only at 60%. LoH is too good, and same for G'Face and Enigma, so there's no room in your equipment.0 | 77
-5 | 65
-10 | 54
-15 | 44
-20 | 35
-25 | 27
-30 | 20
Any way you slice it, if you try to substitute your gloves or helm for FCR you will lose a significant amount of WW damage, and at that point you might as well swap to being a Trapper.
8. Conclusion
Annnnnnd, that's it! Hope you enjoyed it. I know it's not the easiest guide to follow since the equipment can't really be changed around. But for those who have Chaos, Enigma (and Infinity for some real fun), and want to try out a new build, I really recommend it. Or perhaps it'll inspire you to make a variation of this build! I usually go from Act I to Act V when I play her, from Pits>AT>Trav>Meph>CS>Shenk/Eldritch>WSK/Baal. /p3 all the way through, easy and fast enough to be enjoyable, hard enough in CS/WSK for a little thrill.
At level 90, Yerp's stats (including BO/BC/Might) are as follows:
WW dmg: 996-1914/874-1228
LS dmg: 1-5k
DS dmg: 1-1.8k
Life: 2.56k
Mana: 650
Attack Rating: 4.5k (ouch, even lower than I remembered)
Defense: 1.8k
If I were to change anything on my equipment, it would for a +3LS/+3MB Wrist Sword instead of my +3LS/+3MB Runic Talons for more WW damage. Then I would swap Jade Talon out for upped Bartucs since they do similar damage, and still hit 9fpa trap laying. But I guess it's nice to have Chaos in the fastest claw base so that if I do ever find some crazy rare eth/rep/cruel/fools claw I could likely use it and still hit at least the 10fpa trap speed no matter what, and possibly even 9fpa.
Thanks for reading, and please respond with any and all constructive criticism
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