[WIP] Vaz's Poison Frost Blades Assassin!

Use poisoned cold attacks to inflict your enemies with poisons, encase them in ice and finally shatter them. And their friends. And everyone else nearby. Nice!

This is done using the Volkuur's Guidance unique gloves, making it mandatory for this build to function. These gloves allows our cold damage inflict poisons as well. This also means that cold and elemental damage modifiers also apply to our poisons. With the high attack speed we will get along the road, we can inflict plenty of poisons quickly, to all nearby targets.


*Note: These gloves come in three different versions, for cold, lightning and fire damage. Make sure you get the cold version.

Frost Blades is an amazing skill for clearing, and we now augment it with strong poisons, giving it that extra kick it needs for single target.
With the amount of chaining projectiles we effectively spread poisons and shatter the screen. The satisfaction is strong in this one.

Our weapons of choice are either claws or daggers, depending on your preferences. I'm currently using daggers, but I leveled and did a big chunk of maps with claws. They both work excellent. I will include both a dagger and claw version of the skill tree, so take your pick!

My current weapons are two Bino's Kitchen Knives. These daggers have an interesting synergy with the shatters from Herald of Ice. On shattering, nearby enemies are poisoned from the cold damage, but also from the dagger effect itself. Having two of these daggers isn't mandatory at all. You can probably craft an even better one with other poison or cold modifiers, but I just haven't got around to do that yet.

*Note: The daggers really amplifies our clearing. Again, you don't have to lock yourself with daggers, claws work fine too.

As for many Assassin builds, the life pool can be somewhat of an issue, making you vulnerable at times. To counter this, I tried to add a couple of defensive layers. These are dodge chance, elusiveness, fortify and of course, freeze and shatter. If you get your hands on a Pandemonious amulet, you will also blind enemies, adding an additional defensive mechanic to the mix. Sweet!

*Note: This amulet blinds every enemy we attack. The item is quite expensive, 2-4 exalted orbs. It's not mandatory, but adds a very nice defensive layer. A good end-game item to hunt for.

Pros
+ Amazing clearing!
+ Freeze and shatter. Gives you an additional element of defense.
+ Elusiveness.
+ Fast-paced and active playstyle.
+ Flexible. You can easily switch around a few skill points if you lack defense, single target, chill effectiveness, life etc.

Cons
- Getting life can be tricky.
- The backloaded poison damage has a bit of a ramp up before it kicks in, as for all poison builds.
- Can't do maps which has elemental reflect. You will kill yourself at the spot.

When I began playing in Legion (3.7) I fell in love with the Frost Blades skill. It's fast, has great clearing and very satisfying ice shattering. In many other RPG's, I've always catered towards the sneaky rogue archetype, wielding daggers and using poisons.

I like the idea of encasing enemies in ice, letting the poisons corrode them from inside, and finally shatter them into icy, toxic shards.

With the improvements to the Assassin ascendancy in Blight (3.8), I wanted to combine this into a nice package that allowed me to use Frost Blades, while also being proficient with poisons. This combined with high movement speed, dodging and elusiveness makes this a fast-paced, satisfying and fun playstyle in my book.

Leveling this character really is a breeze. You can get Frost Blades straight after entering the town when you start the game. Until you have the mandatory gloves for this build, just focus on the cold/elemental nodes on the skill tree.

As for bandits, we choose to help Alira for the extra critical strike multiplier, resistances and mana regeneration.

Around level 35, it's time to ascend into the Assassin. The ascendancy points below are listed in the order I recommend to take them.

Noxious Strike
40% poison chance, more poison damage and duration. We also recover life when killing a poisoned enemy.

Toxic Delivery
A big chunk of poison damage. We now also get 50% more poison damage if it comes from a critical strike, and we will be critting a lot.

Mistwalker
This is where we get the elusive buff from. It has a 50% chance to trigger on a critical strike

Unstable Infusion
Since the two ascendancy points above depend on critical strikes, I thought power charges would be great to have, so we can trigger our effects as often as possible.

6-link:
Frost Blades - Elemental damage with attacks - Melee Physical damage -
Fortify - Unbound ailments - Multistrike

Head
Chest
Gloves
Belt
Boots
Amulet
Rings
Jewels
Weapons

Can this be a league starter?

Short answer, yes! However, you would have to drop the poison aspect of the build until you can get a pair of Volkuur's. This is done by defeating the Pale Council later on in the game. So before you have the gloves, focus on the elemental damage of Frost Blades. Skip the poison nodes on the tree, and instead take cold/elemental damage nodes.

Is this build HC-viable?

If you've made it this far, I want to say thank you!
As mentioned in the beginning, this is my first ever build and I'd love to hear your feedback if you want to give this toxic popsicle a try.
Let me know if you find any issues with the build, as well as suggestions and improvements.

Happy freezing!

Best regards, Vaz!