"Last minute" Assassin rework for 3,27

You could take the "crit" entirely out of the ascendancy and instead focus the entire thing on those three damaging ailments.

Functionally you would need:
1) All damaging ailments can be caused by any damage type
2) Ignite can scale off non-fire damage, Poison non-chaos, Bleed non-physical
3) Chance for all three
4) Speed for all three
5) At least SOME damage scaling
6) Some type of AoE effect for the ailments (most likely). Or else you could specialize in powerful, quick, single target ailments.

THIS would make it "average", or at least closer to average.

DoT easy scales by DoT nodes on tree and/or Clusters.
The second DoT node is already strong and can be further weakened, for example, you have a 33% chance to be Poisoned, Ignited, and Bleeding.

Did you read the nodes i wrote? Assassin can Poison, Ignite and Bleed BY HIT WITH ANY DAMAGE TYPE (and after they applied each deal their own type of damage).

For full time defense nodes come to Champ/Chief/Hiero, everyone else have weak or time limited defenses.
P.s. Current Assassin is all about 9+ Power Charges which scales his damage. It will still work with updated nodes ;)

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Vaqic#7503 wrote:

DoT easy scales by DoT nodes on tree and/or Clusters.
The second DoT node is already strong and can be further weakened, for example, you have a 33% chance to be Poisoned, Ignited, and Bleeding.

Did you read the nodes i wrote? Assassin can Poison, Ignite and Bleed BY HIT WITH ANY DAMAGE TYPE (and after they applied each deal their own type of damage).

Yes I did.....and those nodes along with this comment show a misunderstanding of DoT and, more importantly, combined DoTs like you suggest. Just because they CAN apply those ailments with all damage.....doesn't mean they inherently DO apply them. It's not like non-damaging ailments....The only way to ignite is with ignite chance, the only way to poison is poison chance, etc.

It is going to be quite costly, either via gear or terrible tree pathing to get enough chance at even TWO of these, let alone all three....for it to be remotely reliable. And then we have the 50% chance cap on top of that, so if you want to capitalize on the much higher HIT damage.....you functionally can't because you'll miss half the time. How many builds are running around with 50% accuracy?

And then there's scaling: sure this idea opens more possibilities for damage scaling via %increased elemental shenanigans, but FUNCTIONALLY the game isn't really set up for these three ailments to be scaled meaningfully together. Unless I'm very much mistaken, Fire DoT multiplier is only going to scale ignite damage, NOT your bleed or poison even with this modifier. You would be limited to universal DoT multipliers only to capitalize on increasing all three ailments.


And then there's scaling via gear and mods: there are very few "universal" mods that apply to all damaging ailments. In most cases, they are specific mods to the specific ailment: Poisons you inflict deal % increased damage, Ignites you inflict deal damage %faster, etc. You could specialize in ONE ailment via this new Assassin node....but why would you? Elementalist already has better setup for ignite. Pathfinder has better setup for poison.

So your ONLY choice with this node is to create a universal damaging ailment build. But you will be fighting with the passive tree layout, item mods, unique items, and basic game design at every step of the way. Is it worth doing that in the end? Only the actual ascendancy can answer that question and it doesn't.

****Did you just add the "40% chance to damaging ailment" or was that always there? If it was always there than I apologize, I must have missed it. That would definitely help solve one of the major flaws.

I see you had this in one of the responses too.....my bad, don't know how I completely overlooked that. Take that one off my list of grievances.

But the scaling concerns are still there!

The first node gives a 40% chance, and the second one introduces a maximum limit of 50%, it is your choice to raise +10% or not. Also, if you don’t understand the second node, maybe you shouldn’t take it and play with one Ailment?
You can scale 2 or all 3 damaging Ailments (btw Elementalist not the best for Ignite, unless we are talking about blowing up your own golems)
CLUSTERS are the plague and salvation of building construction.
Top tree is ok, i didn't do enough only for 2 crits nodes under.

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Vaqic#7503 wrote:

You can scale 2 or all 3 damaging Ailments (btw Elementalist not the best for Ignite, unless we are talking about blowing up your own golems)

hehe....that elementalist comment....okay. A nice window into what we are working with here.

Shaper of Flames does literally everything your entire Assassin rework does....but better in all aspects. If what you believe is true that Elementalist is NOT the best for ignite....than your entire premise for THIS ascendancy is flawed from the outset.


I would LOVE for you to show me a build that scales and uses all three ailments, or two of the three ailments, in a functionally GOOD way that people would actually choose to do. You can easily do this in PoB by just typing in your unique modifier onto a single item, and then craft the build. I actually dare you to do this. I can, with near certainty, predict that even the absolute BEST build with this assassin is going to be sub-par when compared to almost any other build specializing in damaging ailments. The triple DoT idea, in this particular setup, is a meme.



Look....I think the idea of having an ascendancy specialize in triple damaging ailments is fundamentally a COOL concept. I think you don't have the knowledge to make it happen, and this idea fails at realizing it.

Well, the updated Elementalist is the new Trickster (she will be nerfed since she is super strong and can be used in most builds, that's how good she is now)
I can do the same with Assassin but doesn't want him be nerfed 3 leagues in the row.
"Omae wa mou shindeiru" after 1-2 strong hits (not limited to attacks!) is what i want from Assassin. No POB. Think, Mark.

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Vaqic#7503 wrote:

"Omae wa mou shindeiru" after 1-2 strong hits (not limited to attacks!) is what i want from Assassin. No POB. Think, Mark.

ha, good reference.

Yes I believe that was your intention. It just won't function that way. You are seriously and vastly underestimating the amount of power you are going to LOSE by "splitting focus" between multiple ailments. The addition of "all damage can ignite/bleed/poison" is simply not even close to enough to make up the difference.

The CURRENT assassin works that way, massive amounts of damage at the cost of basically everything else. It's why its quite a good class for crit-based autobombers OVER the classic elementalist cheese.


What your suggestion is going to need is nothing short of a NEW archetypal chase unique to do the vast majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to damage. To me.....that represents a failure at the ascendancy level. Otherwise, your entire ascendancy is going to rely on Voices shenanigans to function, since you will lose a lot in terms of gear power and regular tree power.

Here, this buffed variant does not require strong uniques to work.

Noxious Strike: 40% -> 50% chance to Damaging Ailment on Hit
Recover 1% of Life per Damaging Ailment affecting Enemies you Kill, up to a maximum of 20%
Toxic Delivery -> Delivery Master:
All Damage from Hits can Damaging Ailments
Removed line: Your maximum Chance to Damaging Ailments is 50%
2 Small nodes: 10% increased Damage over Time
10% increased Duration of Damaging Ailments

Ambush and Assassinate:
150% increased Stealth
+50 to Dexterity and Intelligence
Small node: 20% increased Stealth
15% increased Evasion Rating

Mistwalker: You are Elusive
You take no Extra Damage from Critical Strikes

Deadly Infusion, which moved to old position of Opportunistic:
20% chance to gain a Power Charge on Hit
+1 to Maximum Power Charges
+5% to Critical Strike Multiplier per Power Charge
Unstable Infusion -> Destabilisation Strikes:
If you've dealt a Critical Strike Recently, you and nearby Allies have 15% more Damage
If you've dealt a Non-Critical Strike Recently, nearby Enemies deal 15% reduced Damage
Added: Grants Level 26 Temporal Rift Skill
Opportunistic:
+3% -> +5% Critical Strike Chance while Dual Wielding same Weapon type
Critical Strikes have Culling Strike
3 Small nodes: +10% to Critical Strike Multiplier
15% increased Critical Strike Chance

^You sort of buffed the things with the least issues though...

Temporal Rift is a cool thematic "thing"....but ultiamtely doesn't really add anything meaningful.


The biggest problem of this ascendancy is the whole identity around triple DoT and the limitations of the GAME on scaling all three together. As I mentioned earlier.

The crit nodes weren't an issue. They were a bit weak, but as you said almost functionally the same as the existing assassin nodes. The problems with the crit nodes are that you removed the DoT crit synergy from Toxic Delivery and Ambush and Assassinate, with basically no replacement.


It's the ailments that are a problem. Being able to 100% is probably for the best, but all that really does is allow you to have a more reliable build with heavy investment......but it does nothing for actual damage output for MOST builds. Therein lies the problem: if we truly want to lean into the multi-DoT theme, we are forced to ignore MANY mods that were designed for individual DoTs. There simply aren't enough sources of universal DoT nodes (outside of a select few medium cluster nodes).

We need something that functionally allows for scaling of all three at once, unique to assassin, but that isn't so overwhelmingly powerful as to make it the ONLY choice. I'm just not so sure that the "All damage can" provides this all on its own. I mean....perhaps the triple ailment allows for some ground to be made up but without the scaling potential that singular builds have I can just see a build that simply creates 3 simultaneous and lackluster dots instead of 1 very strong dot for no real reason.



What would I add? Perhaps also specialize the assassin in FAST ACTING DoTs by giving it a node saying: Damaging ailments deal damage #% faster per different damaging ailment on the enemy. This would make sense since you also removed the poison duration buffs from the existing assassin with nothing to replace it.

Or grant Assassin a somewhat better version of Perfect Agony on one of the crit nodes.




Without any of those things, the ascendancy idea is an instant skip because the damage is simply not there. And that's why you would choose Assassin with its unreliable defensive options over another class......its damage output potential needs to exceed the other options available.