[3.12 Ready] CoC Discharge Assassin - 10M+ Shaper DPS

Hello, welcome to my 3rd build guide. I decided to make this guide based on a decision that there won't be that much to upgrade (unless you invest into really expensive gear, like +2 or even +3 Voll's Protector, or +1 Endurance Charge Inya boots (Damage difference with +1 Endurance boots and +10% Ele pen is minimal only about 30k-ish Average damage), +1 Endurance Charge Voll's Devotion, Corrupting Blood jewel (Either on Intuitive Leap or on any Crit multi jewels)



Heist update based on Player Feedback

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So there's been a big issue with people having problems with Survivability of this build. I've tried to change a tree a bit.w I've tried to keep decent enough damage with a 6k+ HP and Acro + Phase Acro but I didn't really come up with a decent enough of a solution.

I'd probably drop the whole Templar area of the tree, loosing decent chunk of our damage, and some HP.

PoB - https://pastebin.com/xnRDcSn0

Since PoB seems to be havving issues lately, here's link to Poe Planner tree instead - www.poeurl.com/c4jC

This version of the tree, will provide 40% dodge and 30% spell dodge. On top of that, I'd drop Bottled Faith, and run Quartz flask instead for additional 10% dodge and 10% spell dodge + Phasing to be able to move through mobs much easier, especially in heists which seem to cause a huge problem.

I'd drop Haste or Herald of Ice + War Banner (depending on which of these you've decided to run. Running Blood and Sand should improve survivability quite a bit. Less damage taken from anyone outside of Sand stance and if they'd be in melee range, the blind from Sand Stance will help with having easier time dodging any incoming hits.





3.12 Shaper (With Discharge jewel)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErTlhy4elGs


Proper 3.12 Update
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So patch 3.12 hit, and we finally know how rare the Discharge seems to be. It looks really common which is huge plus for functionality of this build. On the other hand sadly, 250ms Cooldown of Discharge can't be bypassed. It's fixed cooldown, so no matter what we'll always be stuck with 4 procs per second.. I haven't noticed any difference in clear in terms of Less AOE. Less damage doesn't seem to affect build as much. Damage wise it seems better, since we are dealing higher damage per proc now than we were before and we might actually have higher overall dps now even tho we are stuck at 4 procs at max.

So as a summary, build is still playable, getting it going should be fairly easy, and it should perform well.

POB (Community Fork) - https://pastebin.com/jdkZwWy7



IMPORTANT, READ PLEASE! Thoughts on the day when Heist releases
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So. We finally have all the necessary info about our lovely Discharge. Sadly, nor the new gem or the jewel have been added to PoB yet. It's approximately 14,5 hours till Heist start as I am writing this. Considering, the Discharge damage got buffed 2-2,5 times and the Less damage when triggered was removed - Really nice change. But we got a jewel info. And even with the new damaga numbers, it might be kinda rough. 60% Less damage when triggered, even with the damage buffed, we should still be able to jump up in damage. 60% Less AoE is not great, and it might hurt our clear on open maps. And last change, that might hurt our overall damage is the proc rate. We are going down from easily 7 procs a second down to 4 just like that. I honestly think, that our best bet will be CDR Belt (either Shaper or Crusader base). And it'll finally be time to drop Inya's Epiphany for actual CDR boots, and swap one of our rings for Precusor's Emblem with same mod (15% chance that if you would gain Power Charges, you instead gain up to
your maximum number of Power Charges). We'd loose 10% chance there, but it's still really nice boost for single target. Any other mod on Precusor apart from Lightning damage will be fine.

I don't know, how to do calculations and stuff, so I can't tell you the exact proc rate we'll be able to achieve with CDR stuff. In the end, we'll be having 20% CDR From belt, 15% CDR from Boots and 22% from Level 5 Awakened Cast On Criticalgem. 57% CDR might help us combat 250ms Discharge cooldown quite well, and even tho the Discharge will have 60% Less damage when triggered, we might still be able to achieve higher damage output than we have now.



Conquerors + AL8 Sirus (Rip 2 deaths because I am useless)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nT2ELXK_3Q
Uber Atziri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA6l11P6hto

Revenge on Sirus (Deathless, and yes I guess I got kinda lucky with what he did on last phase
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5WanHaHxUM



3.11/3.12 Update (Post harvest)
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With Harvest crafting being so broken, I tweaked this build a little. I've finally started to use a Cluster jewel, and I crafted very high end gear. Build feels much safer and less clucky now due to Blind from Disorienting Display from Cluster jewel and much higher HP Pool. I have no idea sadly, how this build will perform after 3.12 changes to Discharge so we'll have to see.

POB - https://pastebin.com/bamsNA0C
Shaper - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z32DNVsGhg&

Gear as of Post Harvest
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3.10 Update
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So as 3.10 is coming Assassin is getting buffed. We get 5% more damage for single target. Both for Full life enemy, and 5% for Low life enemy.



Pre 3.9 Update + 3.9 PoB
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Because Blight League finally ended, I was able to get myself +1 Endurance Charge Voll's Devotion and Corrupted Blood Intuitive Leap. Meanwhile I dropped Stygian Vise with Life/Res/Ele Damage for Life/Res belt with +1 Max Endurance Charges, I recrafted my Helmet for more Life, some % Life, Some dex, 1 res and -% Lighting resist to nearby enemies.

With Dex on helmet now, I might get different gloves, we'll see.

As I am writing this, I am trying to hit Inya's boots with Pen enchant and +1 to Maximum Endurance Charges.

Updated PoB with new Gear = https://pastebin.com/dSkbNYiM

3.9 Patch Notes = As 3.9 Patch Notes go, Discharge will receive small buff (Able to hit more enemies at once, not really that important with amount of damage we can get). New Awakened Cast On Critical Strike is HUGE damage boost for our build, letting us utilize higher Attack Speed than previously, because of Cooldown recovery speed. Atm, my current build version is capped exactly at 0.15s attack speed to keep up with 0.15s CoC cooldown. New Awakened gem'll help us dish out damage much faster, because of reduced cooldown recovery speed of our Discharge linked to it. Ideally, we'll want to push Haste to higher level (Mine is level 17 now, cuz level 18 puts me at 0.14 attack speed), and instead of Dex on gloves attack speed would help us immensely, but I'll still have to look into it, cuz we'd be short on resist if we dropped it, and if we dropped Dex from gloves, we'd struggle with Haste leveling, but with AS on gloves it should come together really nicely.

We have 2 nerfs that can hurt min-maxing in new league. Shaper's Elemental as Extra chaos has it's values turned a bit down and Multimod is getting actual Cap mod for how many mods you can craft onto an item. It should be fine Dagger wise, we'll just have to think of a better way how to get Ring with Assassin's Mark going.

3.9 PoB - https://pastebin.com/3PgNL8Ni



Pros & Cons
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Pros
- Fun to play
- Very high offensive capabilities for CoC build
- Discharge explosions are Satisfying (For me that is at least)
- No need to gem swap for Bosses
- Fast Melee build

Cons
- Vulnerable to Oneshot/Burst Damage
- Not Tanky, only Defense we have is our Offense (kill anything before it even reaches/touches you, you have to be more careful against ranged mobs with damage mods, but I never had problem with them)
- Not a T1 Clear Speed build (we still have to reach groups of enemies to kill them because of Cyclone range)
- Balancing Resists for Wise Oak is painful
- Expensive if you want to Min-Max
- Some people with weaker PC may have problems with CoC Discharge build


Gear
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Item Choices
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Weapon
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This is pretty much what you are looking for. +1 to Either Cold/Fire/Lightning gems and Elemental Damage as Extra Chaos with crafted Hits can't be evaded. (Check Shield for more info). The other dagger I was using (not having +1, instead it has crafted Spell damage with Non-Chaos as extra chaos is as good as the +1 Dagger. +1 Dagger has lower damage, but fully buffed you achieve a bit higher overall damage. For starters I'd recommend anything that has just decent attack speed (1.6 Aps and higher) and some Crit Chance (7% and higher


Armour
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There's nothing better than Voll's Protector for CoC Discharge build. It gives us Power Charge when we crit an enemy (Works for both Cyclone and Discharge)


Helmet
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I personally prefer Starkonja's with the same enchant for Discharge, but for easier gearing I chose this random rare helmet. Starkonja gives extra clear due to Attack Speed and Movement Speed, but you'll have harder time gearing your character (especially for Wise Oak balancing) when you choose Starkonja over Rare helmet.


Shield
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So there are 3 options. Either High spell damage shield with Life and some resist or when you don't have a lot of currency Lycosidae. Lyco is a great shield for starters, especially because you don't need to care about Accuracy Rating (Later on Hits can't be evaded dagger is recommended). If you want to go 1st route with Spell Damage shield, I'd recommended dropping Haste for higher level Precision aura with War Banner and getting flat Accuracy on at least 2 gear pieces (Gloves/Rings/Helmet). This should get you over 90% chance to hit easily all together with zero tree investment.


Boots
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There are no better boots for this build than Inya's. If you decide to start with this build on a new league, any rare boots with high MS/Life/Res will do just fine, but Inya's are definitely BiS. They provide us with % Damage per power charge, they give us nice Movement Speed, some Life, but most importantly we have a 25% chance to get to max power charges instantly instead of gaining only 1 power charge through Voll's Protector. So let's say we hit 1st pack in a map, if boots proc we intantly jump from 1-2 Power charge to 7 and that is insane damage boost especially for bosses because it makes our Power Charge generation much faster thus making our damage overall much more consistent.


Gloves
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So for gloves, I haven't found much use in Unique ones (especially because build already uses few unique items that provide us with almost no resists (I can recommend Legacy Maligaro's Virtuosity that provide % Crit Multiplier and % Crit Chance or Shadows and dust that do the same but with less value, but they grant us Rampage that boosts our map clear speed.). What you are looking for in Rare Gloves is definitely High life, some dexterity (depending on your gear) and resists to balance your Wise Oak resists (if you don't have Hits can't be evaded Dagger, nor Lycosidae having some flat Accuracy here helps along the way)


Amulet
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Like the shield, we have 2 options even here. Voll's Devotion is BiS. It gives us insane damage boost, because us using Voll's Protector (Gaining Power Charges) and Discharge (Expending them) gives us extra Endurance Charges. At max we are at 7 Power Charges. When we discharge, we instantly gain our Maximum Endurance Charges which is 4. 95% of the time we'll be sitting at max Endurance Charges due to this item, thus making our Damage much higher than not using this. The other option I'd recommend is any Rare amulet, with High life, Crit chance, Crit Multi and some Resists if you need them. Crit multi and life being the most important ones.


Rings
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I chose Diamond Ring because it provides us with % Critical Chance that helps with our Cyclonce Crit, the other ring is to help my Wise Oak balancing with crafted % damage nothing special there). It's very basic ring as you can see. Diamond ring is to provide us with extra damage against cursed enemies, most of the time during clear you won't even curse an enemy, because you'll oneshot everything but it's definitely nice to have on bosses. Before I was using Warlord's Mark ring for leech, but they got nerfed for spells so I dropped it for Assassin mark one. They are kinda expensive to craft so be careful with that. Warlord rings are much easier to craft, sadly they don't have use to us anymore. Assassin's Mark as mod alone takes at least 500-600 alts to get, but you have to take into consideration Regal (If what you Regal is bad + the Assassin's Mark rolls with useless mod too), you have to double Annul the item to get to base item I have to Multimod it further. In ring like this you are obviously looking for that Curse on hit, life, damage, resists to help your Wise Oak balancing and most importantly Flat cold damage (if you don't have any on your Weapon/Other Ring/Gloves) to proc Elemental Equilibrium. Avoid any type of flat Elemental Damage unless it's Flat Cold (Don't use global crafted ones, they add to Discharge as well, thus making Elemental Equilibrium completely useless),. If you craft Flat cold, always craft the one that provides Cold damage to attacks. If you want to skip Assassin's Mark ring, aim for Life, Resists (Wise Oak balancing) and Accuracy (if using Rare shield without Hits can't be evaded dagger)


Belt
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So belt can be expensive piece as well. For starters I'd recommend any Stygian Vise that helps with Wise Oak balancing and have some life. Great things about Stygian Vise's is, they provide us with Abyssal socket so we get extra benefit from belts like this. Abyss socket is mainly used to get ourselves bit more Flat life and some Global Critical strike multiplier via Abyss Jewel. Best choice would be Shaped Stygian Vise that has % Cooldown recovery speed, % Ele damage, Life and some resists. The one I am using is a normal Stygian, with some resists, % Elemental damage, and crafted life (With abyss jewel and crafted life you get at least 80+ flat life which is decent). With let's say T1-T3 life and nice Abyss jewel you can easily achieve at least 130+ life and that is decent rolled Leather Belt.


Jewels
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You are looking for at least Double Crit multi jewels (Global crit multi, Spells, Elemental or Fire/Cold/Lightning ones. For Abyss jewel, Life + Global Crit Multiplier is fine (cold damage helps along the way for EE if you can't fit it on rings). For Templar side we use Intuitive Leap to grab Power Charge, Endurance Charge and Life (Saves up 2 travel points)



These are 3 Stat examples for Standard
= https://poe.trade/search/amitakoniataka




Gem Links (In Order Of Importance)
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Cyclone
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Concentrated Effect for Bosses like Shaper/Uber Atziri/Uber Elder, Increased Area Of Effect for Mapping and bosses up to T15 (You can even kill T16 Bosses with Increased Area but it takes longer.


Aura
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Precision Level 1 is all we need. Haste to boost our overall clear speed, and Zealotry to boost our damage. At least Enlighten level 3 is recommended for setup like this. If you are using Rare shield, without Hits can't be evaded dagger, replace Haste with War Banner (placing it at full stacks on bosses will provide you for short extra damage boost). Also be careful how much you level up your Haste. In my current setup I am at 131 Dexterity, so I am nowhere near Max Haste level.


3.12 Aura update - I'd personally drop Haste. With that, we have 50% less Mana reservation. If you are struggling with survivability, drop Blood and Sand and use Sand Stance. If you'd like to push more damage out, run Herald of Ice + War Banner. But personally, I'd run Blood Sand + War Banner + Precision + Zealotry.


Whirling Blades
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Self explanatory = Whirling Blades + Faster attacks is a must, than we add Blood Magic to not spend the little mana pool we have to move as much as we want. Fortify is great as well, and you can definitely do that setup too in the Helmet and swap Herald of Ice and War Banner into your weapon)


Cast When Damage Taken
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Higher level Cast When Damage Taken doesn't proc that often like level 1, so we have some time to gather some Endurance Charges in between hits. Us having 4 endurance charges 99% of the time will provide us with about 3 seconds of 29% Less Physical and Elemental damage taken. Vortex is a great addition to this, because 90% of the time we spend in melee range, so if something hits us, Vortex procs. What exactly that means? 1. Damage boost because of Elemental Equilibrium 2. Chill = Enemey moves, attacks and casts slower.


Vaal Righteous Fire
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Vaal Righteous FIre is linked with Increased Duration to boost our uptime, but be careful, Linking Increased Duration boosts your uptime YES, but it also boosts your downtime (Soul Gain Prevention) so this skill should be only used for bosses. Also Flame Dash linked to it, is extra Movement Skill to help us over Cliffs or Gaps.


Free Sockets
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My helmet has basically 4 free sockets. I have inside War Banner, Herald Of Ice and Ice Golem. Use Banner if you don't have Lycosidae shield nor Hits can't be evaded dagger. Use Herald of Ice for maps with Porcupines (Instead of Haste) to Shatter them. With our 100% Crit chance on Discharge, you'll always shatter Porcupines, so you don't have to be scared while mapping and encountering them, it just takes 5 seconds of your time to turn off Haste and turn on Herald Of Ice to be safe while mapping against Porcupines. Ice Golem provides us with some Critical Strike Chance, but for someone who doesn't have Lycosidae or Hits can't be evaded dagger it has much more use, becuase of the % Accuracy it provides. Also for this 4 link Helmet setup, you can transfer these 3 gems into your Weapon where I currently have my Whirling Blades setup, and in this 4l Helmet setup you can add Fortify to provide you with 20% Damage reduction.





Skill Tree/Bandits/Pantheon
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Skill Tree
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Path Of Exile Tree = www.poeurl.com/cCqs

Path Of Building = https://pastebin.com/zdshw7qv

Ascendancy Order = Unstable Infusion, Deadly Infusion, Ambush and Assassinate, Opportunistic (If you want to level up faster pick Opportunistic when you do Normal lab)



Bandits
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Choose Alira. She provides resists to help you gear, flat mana regen to help out with Single target Cyclone, but most importantly she gives us juicy Crit multi


Pantheon
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For Major god I chose Lunaris, because of % Movement Speed and some Phys damage reduction. For Minor I chose upgraded Soul Of Shakari to get immunity to Poison




Showcase Of The Build
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3.5


3.7


3.8
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3.9
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Buffed Shaper run (From 18M Hp to 77M Hp) = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KEsGScxDdo





Leveling Skill Trees + Skill Choices for leveling

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Skill Points 1-12
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www.poeurl.com/cCqk

As leveling skills go = Freezing Pulse + Explosive Trap


Skill Points 13-28
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www.poeurl.com/cCql

Keep going with Explosive Trap (You can swap Freezing Pulse for Firestorm to level up faster) Throw a firestorm or two on a pack and run away. Firestorm doesn't look like it does a lot of damage, but it's great for leveling. I can also recommend Orb Of Storms. You place it and with enough damage (Life sprigs and Added Cold + Added Lightning) it's easy to level up with.


Skill Points 29-50
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www.poeurl.com/cCqm

When you reach Act 3 and you manage to level up to level 28 in it while killing General Gravicius buy Discharge (Level it in offhand or any free socket). It'll be your main Damage Skill later on. No real gem progression, we keep leveling up with either Firestorm or Orb Of Storms and Explosive Trap (Single Target) depending on which one you chose to level up with. When you kill Daresso and Kaom in act 4, you can get Cast on Critical Strike gem. With Voll's Protector and Ungil's Gauche (Provides lot of Critical Strike especially if you Dual-Wield) you can start using Cast On Crit from level 38 Onwards that's how I always leveled up. I RECOMMEND DOING NORMAL LAB AFTER YOU SWITCH TO CoC SETUP.
GEM LINKS = Cyclone, Cast On Crit, Discharge, Increased Critical Strikes Support (4l is enough to get you to maps)



Skill Points 51-80
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www.poeurl.com/cCqo

From now on, we fill up a bit more Life nodes and we start to get up our Power Charges, alongside Critical Strike Chance for Spells. Doing Cruel Lab after you pick a bit of damage is really easy, especially if you know the mechanics. If you are a newer player, I recommend to wait till you get at least 2.5k HP to be safe to prevent being oneshotted by buffed Izaro


Skill Points 81-105
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www.poeurl.com/cCqp

At this stage I love to get my damage up by getting Jewel Sockets for juicy 2-3 stat Crit multi jewels, and getting last Power/Endurance Charge. Getting Increased Area in Witch and Templar Tree helps to clear open maps faster especially if you are sitting on 5l Voll's Protector already and you are able to swap Increased Area support for mapping and Concentrated Effect support for bossing. If you are kinda NEW to Path Of Exile, I advise you to take more % Increased Life instead of taking damage like I do. It'll make your life much easier while doing maps, killing bosses and progressing through Atlas. This build has a lot of damage even with bad gear for your to clear maps and map bosses comfortably.

At this stage you are at least level 70. That means you have level for most of your gear already. Every single level now just means closing in on more damage (picking up Jewel sockets)


Skill Points 106-117
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www.poeurl.com/cCqq

Yes, skill tree says we are at 120 and not 117 used points, but take into consideration Intuitive Leap jewel. This jewel allows us to allocate points in Templar tree without actually traveling to nodes we need. We just need to grab Jewel Socket from Left of the Templar Start. This jewel will allow us to drop 3 Travel Points. Intelligence node, Power Charge and Endurance Charge Duration. These 3 nodes we save up by using Intuitive Leap are used to get another Jewel Socket for Juicy Crit multiplier jewel. At this stage the build is pretty much finished. If you manage to push for 100, I'd advise to drop 1 Life node and get another Jewel Socket that is located right under Minion Instability

Last edited by Sallynátor#5847 on Oct 14, 2020, 10:37:48 AM
Last bumped on Jun 5, 2021, 4:01:24 PM
Added Ele Reflect Hydra run + Level 2 Discharge Shaper kill
Added Uber Elder + Uber Elder Guardians run
^
exactly what aura's are you using in video's since there not showing any? cept ice golem n power charges...
IGN ARROWUPYOURAZZ
"
dragnmith1 wrote:
exactly what aura's are you using in video's since there not showing any? cept ice golem n power charges...


I don't know why, but I haven't got a message saying I have a reply on this post. Hello, sorry for late reply because of this. I am using level 1 Precision, Haste (Level depends on your Dexterity) and Zealotry.
How would you leaguestart something like this? what assasin build would you go first then convert.

What are some alternative daggers, those ones are like 20-30ex
Last edited by Lanzatron#2939 on Dec 4, 2019, 7:36:24 PM
Thx you n no problem
IGN ARROWUPYOURAZZ
"
Lanzatron wrote:
How would you leaguestart something like this? what assasin build would you go first then convert.

What are some alternative daggers, those ones are like 20-30ex


Hello. Before 3.7 you were able to start Discharging right from Level 38, because Voll's Protector was easily available it was no problem to level up this build. However after 3.7 hit, Voll's Protector was changed to drop only from Legion so I'd suggest to level up with any spell you like. Leveling tree is provided inside the guide and because we are taking only Global Crit and Spell Crit it's really easy to level up with spell you like. You can use something like Firestorm from level 12, till level 12 you can go for Explosive Trap/Freezing Pulse combo (Works great everytime). But if you want to go faster on packs during leveling I recommend using supported Orb Of Storms. It's great especially with how much crit we are taking and for Single I'd either use Firestorm or Explosive Trap.

To the dagger part - For the start I'd recommend using foil to help you clear maps faster because of extra 4 weapon range Foils provide. You are looking mainly for High Attack speed foil, with decent crit and some crit multi if you can get it. Because Hits can't be evaded from the start of the league won't be really available and Lycosidae won't be cheap I recommend dropping Zealotry and leveling up Precision and using War banner to gain extra accuracy so you don't have to worry about about your Chance To Hit too much. If you are above 90%+ you are golden. If you still insist on using daggers however, any dagger with higher base attack speed (1.4+) esence crafted with Woe (Spell Damage) and getting either decent Attack Speed or Crit Chance (1 is enough, you can bench craft the other one if dagger has free suffix).
How's mana as an assassin without -mana rings? I've been playing some form of Fakener build for a LONG time, but haven't tried assassin since the changes to cyclone and channeling skills. My current standard character is trickster to combine 0 Mana cost movement with Shav's Revelation ring. The free 3% es Regen is a nice defensive qol on top of the es leech in my CI version.

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