A Newbie needs Help - Shadow Assassin (Dual Dagger)

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rahsaan wrote:

You need to learn the mechanics of each boss.
If you're talking about the totem boss of Atoll, for instance, you've got to anticipate when he is going to cast his ice nova and evade the AoE (with Whirling Blades, best option IMO).
By nature, a dagger Assassin is a glass-cannon : i know what i'm talking about, i've played one for years. Melee characters are having a hard time in Wraeclast, compared to Rangers/Casters builds.

This kind of character you play requires lots of player skills and split-second reflexes to evade attacks and spells yourself. Since you will never be as tanky as a Juggernaught or a Gladiator, far from it.

Your skill tree is ok. Your stuff seems good, with lot of Evasion. But this won't protect you from Aoe and/or spells.
BUT you lack life on your rings and amulet. 50 on each would be a minimum, and 70+ would be more confortable.

Flasks : you absolutely need one with freeze-immunity.

+ you need 20% quality on each dagger.
Then poison and/or damage over time modifiers on your stuff.

There are a lot more improvements you can make. You should check the poison builds on the forum.
Keywords : Lycosidae shield, Wasp Nest claw, Dendrobate body armour.

Hope this helps.

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alator777 wrote:

Heya, I looked over your character in Path of Building (a great tool for character building, if you don't have it already, you should get it). First I have to say, for a first character you seem to have really gotten a lot of the basics down. That already looks way way better than I remember my first character being, and congrats on making it to level 79! You're using a lot of cool tricks and interactions that aren't immediatly obvious (like the curse on hit assassin's mark herald of ice trick), and also went for a five link, which is more important than most people realize at first.

That being said, you're going to have a quite difficult time progressing any further with that character. While you did make sure to pick up life and defenses on the tree, and keep your ele resists maxed, you still don't have enough for mapping. You've picked up 118% on the tree and have just under 2.8k life total.

As a general rule of thumb, when you start mapping you would have wanted to have picked up at least 160% increased life, and have around 180% (or more) by your "completed" build at level 85 or whatever. With flat life on almost all your gear, this should be between 3.8 - 5k life, which will feel a lot more comftorable.

Additionally, your gem links aren't really set up for too much damage. Ancestral Call, Greater Multiple Projectiles, And Multistrike all have a "less" damage multiplier, which compounds with each other and will make your main attack skill feel quite bad. Especially since both Ancestral Call and GMP are for used for clearning mostly, and Frost Blades already has good clearing, you really don't need them. Also, Mana Leech should also not be necessary, considering you have leech from the Taproots.

Without having to change any colours, the gems I would use in your case would be Frost Blades - Ancestral Call - Elemental Damage With Attacks - Cold Penetration - Vicious Projectiles. It should feel like you're doing a LOT more damage that way. Path of Building is great for figuring out what support gems to use btw, it sorts potential gems by damage.

That being said, as a side note, Frost Blades isn't the best skill to use with poison. Poison damage is calculated based on Physical and Chaos damage done with a hit, and half of Frost Blade's damage is converted to Cold, which isn't counted for Poison. So all of your Poison damage will be half as effective as it would have been if you were using a skill that wasn't Frost Blades. That being said, I'm assuming you're using Frost Blades because its the most fun to play, so fuck it. Fun is more important anyways.

The last major thing that I see can be improved in your build is to get Movement Speed on your boots, at least 25%. Additionally, you should run around with a Quicksilver flask. It will make the whole game feel a lot more smooth and fun to play, as well as help with the dodging of everything.

Your tree is good for a first character but unfortuantly I don't think you can get much further in the game and have fun doing it. If you are determined to stick with it I recommend using the respec points from the main quest (and maybe some orbs of regret, but no more than 10) to make your tree look closer to this:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.4.0/AAAABAYBAH11W6_tQQ3Rl9Bh692oS3iNfXpTOkINjRa_1CPjn0cGbyePYJLz7YPjhGyMgUGi2W1sCC6yGSaVo4qEogBeTI6aav66eu-Eb9unzepb0_LhOrNNku4OvV2VZt-gfeNOKujWdO0j9iPTCpsFLfljFfDrFBvIXkXPepsmdPEHmZ2qLOGHdmNDZ6DUQgOH-usMc3X9sbMJWLVIKjjbbjY9jooyAbDYjb9h4kCgeOusZtP8uT5W9dh2GY7Tfud0wYsFtTBxVUs67WKsNe8hYOLVWfBKffzF

If you do that, change the gem links as recommended, and get some more flat life on your gear (especially those gloves!), and move speed, I guarantee you it will be way more enjoyable :-)

If you don't have enough respec points to do that though, I would recommend taking the lessons learned and starting up a new character. Remember the rule of thumbs for life (160 - 180% before mapping / 3.8k min), and get Path of Building to help ya out.

Cheers!

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alator777 wrote:

If you would like to go Poison, I would highly recommend trying out the Blade Flurry skill instead. It's much better suited for poison as its fully physical.

Starting with a new char I think is a good idea, just remember to pick up more life nodes on the tree!

Figuring out what gear is good or bad does take a while, just comes with experience playing the game. For levelling (so everything pre-maps), the only thing that matters really is having life and elemental resists on gear, movespeed on boots. If you're going an attack build, having a decent weapon is also important, as well as having linked gems.