Hey all,
While doing my TS/DTail Assassin with Azurewrath, it was obvious how much damage Tiger Strike adds when fully charged up. So here is my Dragon Claw assassin, with 2220 ed from Tiger Strike, 570 ed from Dragon Claw, 95 ed from Claw Mastery, 220 from merc might, and 261 ed from stats for a total of 3366.
Skills:
Tiger Strike: Maxed
Dragon Claw: Maxed
Claw Mastery: Some, doesn't add a whole lot of damage {needs buffed)
BoS: enough for breakpoints
Dragon Flight: 1
CoS: 1
Mindblast: 1
Death Sentry: 1
Dragon Tail: 20!?!
Claw Block was not used due to it slowing down attacking in groups, and thus no master was used. I got cobra strike from a claw, and no other charge ups were skilled.
Gear:
Helm: Guillaimes Helm with 15 ias / 9 Max Damage Jewel
Weapon 1: Mosaic Suwayyah
Weapon 2: Mosaic Suwayyah
Amulet: Highlords
Armor: 4 os Dusk with 4 x 15 Max Damage Jewels
Gloves: Rare 2 MA / 30 lr
Ring 1: Rare 5 min damage 7 str 28 lr 28 fr 5 all res
Ring 2: Ravenfrost
Belt: Immortal Kings
Boots: Upped War Travs
8k average damage per hit for this gal. Each MA skill adds about 2.1% damage, each 10 max charm adds about 2.1% damage. Perfectly balanced
Gear Reasoning:
Yes I had to cheat and use Mosaic at some point. Suwayyah was the best choice because they do the most damage by a lot. Runic Talons would have required an insane amount of ias to use fade and hit the 10 fpa breakpoint. One claw has +1 Cobra Strike, the other claw has +2 Phoenix Strike and +1 Blade Fury. I did not use Phoenix Strike once, nor Blade Fury. I did spend a few days racking trying to get better claws, with +3 Dragon Claw Schissors Suwayyah as the dream, but nothing better showed up and I didnt want to waste too much time. I wanted Scissors over plain for the extra durability, but had to settle. The durability was not a problem, and repair costs were not very high.
Helm: Guillaimes was my sole source of cb and goes great with physical damage with its deadly strike. I had a 15 ias / 9 max jewel already in one so it was perfect for this build.
Amulet: Highlords, again the obvious choice due to ias and deadly strike, which is a 20% damage increase for this build. I had toyed with using Atmas and a merc with amp damage instead of decripify, but the ds is just too good to pass up.
Armor: I wanted Fortitude, but it doesnt add enough damage for this build. Yes, my poor man's fort adds more damage. I thought about using Nat's armor, but 15 max damage is about 3.15% more damage and I didn't want to lose that. I also had a sweet 500 def 4 os Dush Shroud. This is where the repair costs started to add up...
Gloves: I went though most of hell with Laying of the Hands. You hit the 10 fpa breakpoint with a level 10 BoS and 55 ias (20 gloves, 20 amulet, 15 helm). During Nightmare, I realized I was just saving a bunch of skill points with no use. With level 23 BoS, you only need 35 ias, opening up the gloves slot for something that does not have ias. At level 70 or so, I used every Nef rune I had to try and craft better gloves. Since I didn't know to save Nefs, I only had about 10, and I ran countess for a few days to get a few more. Out of all my tries, I did not find a better pair than a pair of gloves I already had.
Boots: War Travs all the way, huge damage boost. I upped these in hell because I ended up adding Dragon Tail for some much needed aoe.
Belt / Ring: The thing I needed most was some kind of resistance, fire and lightning were frying me. IK Belt is pretty good, and I searched my stashes and found the ring that ends up being pretty sweet on this build.
Inventory: Charms totaling 45 max damage, 30 fire resistance (was another 9 maxer when wearing LoH gloves), anni, torch, 1 MA skiller (all I have) Bone break in cube for swap in for heavy PIs
Merc:
Reapers, Hustle Armor, Cure Helm. Reapers for the decrip, cure for the poison and curse reduction, hustle because I was wearing it before baby fort and the merc wasn't dying, so I never changed it.
The Journey:
I used dual pattern until dual bartucs, and that was rough through the 30s. Dragon claw is nice because it has huge ed and you get that ed pretty early. Max damage charms were pretty good through the entire run. Obviously the build didnt start until I got to Mosaics, and then it started to really shine.
Cobra Strike Bug - I had my first death(s) in act 3 Flayer Jungle, but I don't really count them. I found out that if I fully charged Cobra Strike, I would not leech life on flayers. I died twice thinking that every next hit I did would leech my health back. I did some searching and found that there was an overflow bug with cobra strike, and if I only charged it twice it would not happen. So the rest of the game I only got two charges of cobra strike. Now, there were many times I accidentally got 3 charges, yet I never noticed a time where I did not leech. So I wonder if it has to do with one shotting things? I dont know.
Overall Feeling - This gal kills fast, single target damage is incredible. She only does about 90% of the dps of a dual grief ww barb, except she has 100% chance to hit and can direct all of the damage to one target. With BoS you get around the map quick, I was able to keep my charges up through most zones and on to the next until I had to town to drop off gear or repair. I do wish it were longer, just because of the added stress of reapplying bo or sifting through drops and then having to find the next mob. When things weren't fire immune and grouped up, I would use Dragon Tail. Since you have full time TS and a bunch of skills, why not? Still it isn't a exploity PS Mosaic sin, right? I didnt mind the fire skill damage boost the claws have, either.
Hell- Of course I went though norm and nm at p8, and as usual I started act 1 at players 8. After completing it, I decided that I would do the rest of hell at p8, save for the maggot lair because screw that place. This character was pretty glass cannon, with no DR, 2k life, no block, low defense. She struggled mightily whenever there were unleechables. The dolls in act 3 were a nightmare as I could one shot them, and they could three shot me. Act V also had some tough situations, although the ancients were not one. They had fanatacism and would cause my life to yoyo quickly if I took all three on, but I hit and run to only fight one at a time and they went down. I died in WSK 2 trying to find the wp though, there were gloams and FI Fetish Dart shooter guys, and they spawn in biiig groups. Death Sentry was used, but they were still a giant pain while I hit every one individually. Players 8 minions and baal went down just fine, even had stone skin fanatacism enchanted Lister to make the journey memorable.
Finds:
4 os 3 skill 7 ed GMB
Other than that, poor showing with no mf. Highest rune was Pul or Um.
Future plans: I will probably rework gear around and try an uber kill. I would have to give up my baby fortitude armor for something more useful than just straight damage. I might also try out full time Mosaic and Dragon Tail. She is a great council killer as she sits, p3 trav run is quite a bit faster than with my barb.
Thanks for reading!
While doing my TS/DTail Assassin with Azurewrath, it was obvious how much damage Tiger Strike adds when fully charged up. So here is my Dragon Claw assassin, with 2220 ed from Tiger Strike, 570 ed from Dragon Claw, 95 ed from Claw Mastery, 220 from merc might, and 261 ed from stats for a total of 3366.
Skills:
Tiger Strike: Maxed
Dragon Claw: Maxed
Claw Mastery: Some, doesn't add a whole lot of damage {needs buffed)
BoS: enough for breakpoints
Dragon Flight: 1
CoS: 1
Mindblast: 1
Death Sentry: 1
Dragon Tail: 20!?!
Claw Block was not used due to it slowing down attacking in groups, and thus no master was used. I got cobra strike from a claw, and no other charge ups were skilled.
Gear:
Helm: Guillaimes Helm with 15 ias / 9 Max Damage Jewel
Weapon 1: Mosaic Suwayyah
Weapon 2: Mosaic Suwayyah
Amulet: Highlords
Armor: 4 os Dusk with 4 x 15 Max Damage Jewels
Gloves: Rare 2 MA / 30 lr
Ring 1: Rare 5 min damage 7 str 28 lr 28 fr 5 all res
Ring 2: Ravenfrost
Belt: Immortal Kings
Boots: Upped War Travs
8k average damage per hit for this gal. Each MA skill adds about 2.1% damage, each 10 max charm adds about 2.1% damage. Perfectly balanced
Gear Reasoning:
Yes I had to cheat and use Mosaic at some point. Suwayyah was the best choice because they do the most damage by a lot. Runic Talons would have required an insane amount of ias to use fade and hit the 10 fpa breakpoint. One claw has +1 Cobra Strike, the other claw has +2 Phoenix Strike and +1 Blade Fury. I did not use Phoenix Strike once, nor Blade Fury. I did spend a few days racking trying to get better claws, with +3 Dragon Claw Schissors Suwayyah as the dream, but nothing better showed up and I didnt want to waste too much time. I wanted Scissors over plain for the extra durability, but had to settle. The durability was not a problem, and repair costs were not very high.
Helm: Guillaimes was my sole source of cb and goes great with physical damage with its deadly strike. I had a 15 ias / 9 max jewel already in one so it was perfect for this build.
Amulet: Highlords, again the obvious choice due to ias and deadly strike, which is a 20% damage increase for this build. I had toyed with using Atmas and a merc with amp damage instead of decripify, but the ds is just too good to pass up.
Armor: I wanted Fortitude, but it doesnt add enough damage for this build. Yes, my poor man's fort adds more damage. I thought about using Nat's armor, but 15 max damage is about 3.15% more damage and I didn't want to lose that. I also had a sweet 500 def 4 os Dush Shroud. This is where the repair costs started to add up...
Gloves: I went though most of hell with Laying of the Hands. You hit the 10 fpa breakpoint with a level 10 BoS and 55 ias (20 gloves, 20 amulet, 15 helm). During Nightmare, I realized I was just saving a bunch of skill points with no use. With level 23 BoS, you only need 35 ias, opening up the gloves slot for something that does not have ias. At level 70 or so, I used every Nef rune I had to try and craft better gloves. Since I didn't know to save Nefs, I only had about 10, and I ran countess for a few days to get a few more. Out of all my tries, I did not find a better pair than a pair of gloves I already had.
Boots: War Travs all the way, huge damage boost. I upped these in hell because I ended up adding Dragon Tail for some much needed aoe.
Belt / Ring: The thing I needed most was some kind of resistance, fire and lightning were frying me. IK Belt is pretty good, and I searched my stashes and found the ring that ends up being pretty sweet on this build.
Inventory: Charms totaling 45 max damage, 30 fire resistance (was another 9 maxer when wearing LoH gloves), anni, torch, 1 MA skiller (all I have) Bone break in cube for swap in for heavy PIs
Merc:
Reapers, Hustle Armor, Cure Helm. Reapers for the decrip, cure for the poison and curse reduction, hustle because I was wearing it before baby fort and the merc wasn't dying, so I never changed it.
The Journey:
I used dual pattern until dual bartucs, and that was rough through the 30s. Dragon claw is nice because it has huge ed and you get that ed pretty early. Max damage charms were pretty good through the entire run. Obviously the build didnt start until I got to Mosaics, and then it started to really shine.
Cobra Strike Bug - I had my first death(s) in act 3 Flayer Jungle, but I don't really count them. I found out that if I fully charged Cobra Strike, I would not leech life on flayers. I died twice thinking that every next hit I did would leech my health back. I did some searching and found that there was an overflow bug with cobra strike, and if I only charged it twice it would not happen. So the rest of the game I only got two charges of cobra strike. Now, there were many times I accidentally got 3 charges, yet I never noticed a time where I did not leech. So I wonder if it has to do with one shotting things? I dont know.
Overall Feeling - This gal kills fast, single target damage is incredible. She only does about 90% of the dps of a dual grief ww barb, except she has 100% chance to hit and can direct all of the damage to one target. With BoS you get around the map quick, I was able to keep my charges up through most zones and on to the next until I had to town to drop off gear or repair. I do wish it were longer, just because of the added stress of reapplying bo or sifting through drops and then having to find the next mob. When things weren't fire immune and grouped up, I would use Dragon Tail. Since you have full time TS and a bunch of skills, why not? Still it isn't a exploity PS Mosaic sin, right? I didnt mind the fire skill damage boost the claws have, either.
Hell- Of course I went though norm and nm at p8, and as usual I started act 1 at players 8. After completing it, I decided that I would do the rest of hell at p8, save for the maggot lair because screw that place. This character was pretty glass cannon, with no DR, 2k life, no block, low defense. She struggled mightily whenever there were unleechables. The dolls in act 3 were a nightmare as I could one shot them, and they could three shot me. Act V also had some tough situations, although the ancients were not one. They had fanatacism and would cause my life to yoyo quickly if I took all three on, but I hit and run to only fight one at a time and they went down. I died in WSK 2 trying to find the wp though, there were gloams and FI Fetish Dart shooter guys, and they spawn in biiig groups. Death Sentry was used, but they were still a giant pain while I hit every one individually. Players 8 minions and baal went down just fine, even had stone skin fanatacism enchanted Lister to make the journey memorable.
Finds:
4 os 3 skill 7 ed GMB
Other than that, poor showing with no mf. Highest rune was Pul or Um.
Future plans: I will probably rework gear around and try an uber kill. I would have to give up my baby fortitude armor for something more useful than just straight damage. I might also try out full time Mosaic and Dragon Tail. She is a great council killer as she sits, p3 trav run is quite a bit faster than with my barb.
Thanks for reading!
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