[3.6] Dual Strike crit assassin with claws

"

Varvarel wrote:

Hey man, I made some recommendations to your build already but that had been rather quick as I missed some important stuff.

Herald of Purity: I use this instead of Herald of Ash as higher physical damage works well with many other buffs (hatred, taste of hate, chaos flasks)

Vaal Ancestral Warchief: The damage buff is very high, both for ordinary totem and also vaal totem. Also, the totem makes a quick work of nearby trash monsters.

Flasks: Of course, flasks choice depends on the fight and encounter but for a full dps setup, I would use Lion's Roar instead of a silver flask (I know, a blue silver flask can provide freeze immunity). In fact, the following setup seems best against Uber Atziri:

Thanks again for your great build. I like the tone of your build much more when compared to another similar forum post with a slang language. Moreover, that post is way too causal and arrogant without any shaper, uber atziri or uber elder videos (and still making stupid claims about it).

Thank you very much! Your recommendations again sound like good improvements to the build, they should work very well. I will test them all in the next league with hopefully more time!

My test on vaal double strike worked out pretty well, I think it is a good addition for boss fights. The other tests didn't go that well unfortunately, kaom's roots don't fit in as well as I hoped to so I might give up on that. (Although tabula + kaom's is probably very stupid :D)

After I spent at least 5k fusings without a 6l success I think I will stop going for uber elder this league. With a tabula and pretty budget gear (you can check for yourself - the only expensive thing was my main hand claw) I brought this leagues character to tier 14 maps and depth 227.

With more time and luck this league would have been way more fun for me and I could have tried out uber elder.

Anyways, if there is anything else I can help you with feel free to ask - as always! :)

Can you please clarify, where did you get the endurance charges for the immortal call?

"

Fromus32 wrote:

Can you please clarify, where did you get the endurance charges for the immortal call?

The only ways to get endurance charges that I used with this build are enduring cry and the passive claws of the magpie.

Wanted to say thanks for the build, I started the league with it and had a lot of fun. Experimented with banners a bit as well, War helped a lot with accuracy before I got better equipment, and Dread Banner helped with evasion for late game.

My equipment:



Passive tree: almost the same, except I skipped the Claw of the Falcon and Written in Blood clusters, instead choosing Duality and Ranger life nodes. A bit worse overall, but saves 2 passive points.

"

Xzarg wrote:

Wanted to say thanks for the build, I started the league with it and had a lot of fun. Experimented with banners a bit as well, War helped a lot with accuracy before I got better equipment, and Dread Banner helped with evasion for late game.

My equipment:

Passive tree: almost the same, except I skipped the Claw of the Falcon and Written in Blood clusters, instead choosing Duality and Ranger life nodes. A bit worse overall, but saves 2 passive points.

Looks and sounds very good! I think this league is really great for the build, good rare claws aren't that expensive and those banners are really good just as you said.
So far herald of purity seems to be the strongest damage herald but I am not sure if I like those minions. For boss fights both vaal ancestral warchief and vaal double strike are very good.

I have some questions at this point: How far did you play? Did you have problems at some point and if yes, what were these? Did you enjoy something a lot which I didn't include in my guide? (for example herald of ice, I love to use that but HoA and HoP are just better)

"

AquaFreeze wrote:

"

Xzarg wrote:

-snip

Looks and sounds very good! I think this league is really great for the build, good rare claws aren't that expensive and those banners are really good just as you said.
So far herald of purity seems to be the strongest damage herald but I am not sure if I like those minions. For boss fights both vaal ancestral warchief and vaal double strike are very good.

I have some questions at this point: How far did you play? Did you have problems at some point and if yes, what were these? Did you enjoy something a lot which I didn't include in my guide? (for example herald of ice, I love to use that but HoA and HoP are just better)

Overall, I got to lvl 90 and just started on red maps.

On paper(well, in Path of building) Herald of Purity had the higher DPS boost than Herald of Ice, and I did use it for a lot of the campaign. But at some point i switched to HoI due to lack of red sockets and my clear speed increased greatly. The ice explosions helped extended the area of my attack to the point where I was able to destroy most crowds in one mouse click. Herald of Ash might have had similar effect, but my overkill damage with claws wasn't that great. Plus, there was lack of red sockets this early in the league for my mostly evasion equipment.

I also tried switching out Maim from the main attack to Damage on Full life, and instead have HoP and Warchief Maim. It could have been a nice DPS boost, but I couldn't consistently keep my life full while using Blood Rage. Maybe with some equipment that provided % life regen I could have done it, but my DPS felt good enough that I didn't bother looking into it yet.Maybe when i get to shaper/red elder I might try to optimize it more.

Problems? well the main annoyance was that this melee skill had a short range. Numerous occasions i was stuck just outside of a pack attacking nothing. It became more obvious during Delve where you clear the vaal/abyss outposts, and need to turn on the lights by standing on that light source. The enemies spawned to far to reach without stepping off the light panel, so had to move around a lot to kill just a couple of mobs. During mapping it is less of problem as the mobs tend to come in crowds and the attack speed is great enough that i can close distance quickly. This is really more of annoyance that an actual problem and common for single target melee skills.

Another annoyance was trials with those green fonts that punish you for using movement skills. My previous chars didn't have such a fast movement skills that used Blood magic, so I often outright ignored those green circles and powered through. Couldn't quite do that so recklessly with this build. But that's the price for being able to cross large distances quickly.

"

Xzarg wrote:

Overall, I got to lvl 90 and just started on red maps.

The more you invest the more fun it gets (at least that is the way I experienced it).

"

Xzarg wrote:

On paper(well, in Path of building) Herald of Purity had the higher DPS boost than Herald of Ice, and I did use it for a lot of the campaign. But at some point i switched to HoI due to lack of red sockets and my clear speed increased greatly. The ice explosions helped extended the area of my attack to the point where I was able to destroy most crowds in one mouse click. Herald of Ash might have had similar effect, but my overkill damage with claws wasn't that great. Plus, there was lack of red sockets this early in the league for my mostly evasion equipment.

Even just with claws the overkill damage itself was pretty good but when it comes to pack clear herald of ice might be useful. I will need to test them more but so far herald of purity is more annyoing thanks to the minions than HoA or HoI could ever be :D

"

Xzarg wrote:

I also tried switching out Maim from the main attack to Damage on Full life, and instead have HoP and Warchief Maim. It could have been a nice DPS boost, but I couldn't consistently keep my life full while using Blood Rage. Maybe with some equipment that provided % life regen I could have done it, but my DPS felt good enough that I didn't bother looking into it yet.Maybe when i get to shaper/red elder I might try to optimize it more.

Switching ancestral call with damage on full life against bosses is how I am doing it but I just saw that I didn't include it in my guide yet. If your attack speed is high enough you outleech the blood rage drain (as long as there is something to hit). Said that, dofl should only be used on bosses.

"

Xzarg wrote:

Problems? well the main annoyance was that this melee skill had a short range. Numerous occasions i was stuck just outside of a pack attacking nothing. It became more obvious during Delve where you clear the vaal/abyss outposts, and need to turn on the lights by standing on that light source. The enemies spawned to far to reach without stepping off the light panel, so had to move around a lot to kill just a couple of mobs. During mapping it is less of problem as the mobs tend to come in crowds and the attack speed is great enough that i can close distance quickly. This is really more of annoyance that an actual problem and common for single target melee skills.

Another annoyance was trials with those green fonts that punish you for using movement skills. My previous chars didn't have such a fast movement skills that used Blood magic, so I often outright ignored those green circles and powered through. Couldn't quite do that so recklessly with this build. But that's the price for being able to cross large distances quickly.

This reminds me of the good old times when dual strike didn't get additional range on levels, I was using daggers and there was no ancestral call :)

If you don't whirl right into the pack there can be trouble, very true. I try to compensate that with tons of attack speed but there is no such comfort like reave or sunder give. I didn't play a lot of delve at all and right now I ain't doing it at all. If you want to know how this build can delve quite well I can turn around and study this - still wont make a delve fun out of me.



Thank you very much for all the great input!

Update: Added damage on full life support to gem section, totally forgot that!

Hi thanks for the guide I have used it to level my character and I'm currently starting to do the map, It works very well. I wanted to know what gives you the immune to reflect ?

Edit : nevermind I don't know how to read. the protection from reflect comes from opportunistic.

"

fennecdore wrote:

Hi thanks for the guide I have used it to level my character and I'm currently starting to do the map, It works very well. I wanted to know what gives you the immune to reflect ?

Edit : nevermind I don't know how to read. the protection from reflect comes from opportunistic.

You gain reflect immunity (thanks to the ascendancy node opportunistic) but ONLY for your critical strikes. If you want to do endgame maps with reflect I recommend an always activated diamond flask (maybe use 2 slots for diamond flasks on those maps).
If you want to be perfectly immune you can
1) go for a watcher's eye with +% to crit chance with hatred
and / or
2) drop the ruthless support gem (highest danger for dying to reflect on a non-critical strike) or use added fire damage on that map