[3.10] [Assassin] Shirou's DuskDawn CoC Cyclone Wave of Conviction -> Need optimization

Welcome!

This is actually my first build guide, and I was looking to share it and also try to improve it for the upcoming league!

Please bear in mind that I am a beginner, I have played PoE for quite some time but I've always followed guides and quit the league before being able to finish all content :)

Currently, I am having a lot of fun with this build, and I keep thinking on how to even further improve it!

About build

(since I didn't actually play towards the end I don't exactly trust this , but based on my opinion):
Pros:
+ Fun to play with good clear speed and nice DPS
+ Very easy to use, most actions automated.

+ High block chance - scales with expensive gear. Can max up both Spell & Attack block
+ We have some extra dodge as well due to Assassin -> A test could be to go for Phase Acrobatics as there are tons of spells lately in PoE
+ Stun immune while spinning
+ Unique, out of meta :)

Cons:
- Can become quite expensive in order to survive highest bosses/maps
- Duskdawn alone costs ~1 exa at the moment. I brought a 6L for 2 exa , but I don't really know how prices will evolve during the start of a new league.
- Low HP , so we need to go for a Hybrid build. Our main passive skill nodes are on the other side of the tree
- Haven't yet tested that it's all content capable. I managed T16 hard mods ; Delirium bosses; Still under testing.




6-Link Primary damage

In-order of importance:

Cyclone - we chose this due to high attack speed, allows movement, good range; Also most fun skill for CoC :).

Wave of Conviction - This is our primary damage skill. It has high base damage, it is a physical spell and goes very well with our main unique used in this build, Duskdawn. Additionally gives -25% resistance to a highest damaging element.

Cast on Critical - Cast While Channeling was another option, but it is not working for us since the spell is being targeted towards mouse, so if we were to kite a boss, most of the spells would miss completely... Additionally it casts a spell every 0.15 second, instead of the CwC which does every 0.35sec.

Increased Critical Strikes - Goal is to reach 100% critical strike in order to avoid reflect damage and max our DPS.

Energy Leech - A defensive & offensive support gem. While it provides us energy shield leech, it also provides a lot of damage while leeching , but also if our ES is already full. Most of the time we will be leeching :). HP is our main survival, energy shield is a huge bonus tho.

Added Fire damage - This support gem takes all of our base damage and adds an additional % as bonus fire damage. It also helps if we aim to maximize Fire damage instead of Lightning.

Physical to Lightning - This is an alternate gem that we could use, instead of the Added Fire damage. This way we maximize our Lightning damage instead, and we also add % extra Lightning damage based on our Physical damage. I chose Added Fire since we already convert an additional 15% fire 15% lightning from our Passive Tree alone.



Wave of Conviction

I just wanted to have a separate section on this spell. It is quite unique, and one of its issues is that we can only have one single wave of conviction active at once.

This actually means that after we cast the second wave, the first one will disappear.

This is not a huge problem for our build. With Cyclone we need to get quite close to our enemies, and the distance it travels during that short period of time is enough to kill everything.

I found a post, which explains that when a new Wave is being cast, the initial one disappears shortly after. How shortly? It said around ~0.2 seconds, but I would need someone to confirm it for me. From my experience this looks to be correct.

With 0.16sec casts, it means we have a travel time of 0.36 seconds approximately... It is enough to clear mobs, and no issue with Bosses as we do need to get quite close, and personal with them! ^_^

We could also stack a very high -Resistance by using this skill as it natively offers us exposure of -25%. Example:

Tree penetration : - 6% elem resist ; 25% from exposure; -39% from Elem Weakness (but of course for bosses curses are not that effective).

Still, we can also add more penetration from the Amulet, or just by modifying our main damage link.



Major issues to tackle

Accuracy
We need to get accuracy in order to maximize our damage, and constantly hit in order to trigger our spells. For this we use aura Precision along with some key passive nodes. This way we require only 1 item to have high accuracy on our build.


Critical Chance
- This one is not that major issue, for Assassin build. We get high Crits from the Ascendancy tree + Increased Critical Strikes on the gem link. Obviously, we are using Power Charges to max our Critical.


Attack Speed
In order to maximize our damage we need High Attack Speed. Cyclone provides quite high AS but is still lacking in order to maximize our damage.Since we are using Cast On Critical, we know that we can trigger Wave of Conviction every 0.15 seconds. This means that we need to hit 6.66 times every second. I advise to get as close as possible to this value without going past it.

In case we have let's say 7 times / second. That means we hit every 0.14 seconds, and if the spell is still on Cooldown, we need to wait an additional 0.14 seconds before casting the next spell!! It is actually more efficient to have ~6 attacks/second then over 6.66 since we can guarantee the spell will always be ready.

We accomplish this mainly from the passive tree nodes.


Life/Hit pool
- We do not have many options in order to get high HP. We can sacrifice damage / block in order to get it but it is not worth it. Instead, we go for a Hybrid build with 25% ES && 75% HP pool. It is OK if we get more ES, of course.


Block chance

Attack Block chance can be easily maxed if we take all the Staff nodes, but Spell chance won't be that easy. Still, build will work without having max block chances, but if you have the money :). We can max it like this:
- Watcher's eye -> +8% while running Discipline
- 25% from Staff nodes on tree
- Amulet can roll 6-7% spell block -> expensive as it needs to be warlord-influenced
- Helmet can roll 5-6% spell block -> expensive as it needs to be warlord-influenced
- Cluster Jewels : Large Spell Cluster Jewel + 2x Small Spell Block Clusters : we can easily achieve 20% spell block . On small ones we can use while channeling which also brings us +8% attack block.
- Rumi's concoction : +10% during flask effect

This brings total to: 25+8+7+6+20+10= 76% Spell Block Chance - barely made it.



Damage Conversion
- In order to maximize our damage and avoid Phyiscal reflect we need to convert Wave of Conviction to full-elemental damage. Luckily , we already have 50% converted. The other 50% we can go for Physical to Lightning skill gem (easy option).

Preferred option used by me is to take the two nodes near the Templar side Divine Fury and Divine Wrath, which brings us to a total of 40% Lightning / 40% Fire conversion.

For the last 20% we can craft it on the gloves. In this build I go with Fire since it complements with "Added Fire damage" and "Herald of Ash" which both bring us a high amount of DPS.




Other Gem links


Defensive Link
Cast when Damage Taken -> Immortal Call -> Ice Golem -> Increased Duration;

It is a defensive link, while also automating our Ice Golem so we don't have to manually cast it. We max this link as we are generating Endurance charges, but not fast enough. So , we prefer using it only in critical moments , giving us a bigger duration in order to leech back to full HP/ES.


Auras Link

Precision -> Herald of Ash -> Discipline -> Herald of Thunder -> Enlighten (lvl 2 minimum)

We actually do not need any reduce mana reservation nodes, and we can run this auras all at once.

Precision -> provides us accuracy/critical strike chance helping us solve our main issues
Discipline -> provides us more ES in order to improve our sustainability. Along with Watcher's eye we can also get 8% spell block chance.
Herald of Ash -> Main aura for damage. As already guessing, our main increases in damage are "Gain x% of physical damage as Extra Elemental damage". At a very small reserved mana cost, we can take this aura.
Herald of Thunder -> Not really helping us with DPS as I thought initially, but we at least make sure that our DuskDawn is always triggering 'non-crits' affix. We do not have any better alternative.

Other mentions:
Flesh and Stone - We can use Sand Stance in order to get more defensive stats. We blind all enemies that are near us, while we take reduced damage from enemies further away.

Hatred - Another source of %Physical damage as extra Cold damage. It is quite expensive, so I chose not to run it.


Movement/MiniBuff

Flame Dash -> Faster Casting -> Arrcane Surge -> Increased Duration

This is our main movement skill. It is very fast , and we can use it to quickly get out of danger. We could also use Leap Slam with fortify, but I used to get stunned, and annoyed by using it. (in between Cyclone casts)

Arcane Surge - provides us a small bonus to Spell Damage
We keep them at very low levels so that we can trigger Arcane Surge every time we use Flame Dash.



Curse Link

Riposte -> Cast on Critical -> Increased Critical Strikes -> Elemental Weakness

We use Riposte as we have a very high chance to block in order to inflict our curse. We don't need it to be up all the time, it is enough to be applied to higher HP mobs/bosses. We have enough damage to clear T16 mobs easily.
Elemental Weakness - We can slot here anything we want but this goes quite well with Exposure from Wave of Conviction, providing even more damage. We also get some penetration on elemental resists from tree, which further helps us. Assassin's mark is an alternative, specially when we lack critical strike chance.


Last edited by Adryanmh#4873 on Jun 7, 2020, 6:47:18 AM
Last bumped on Jun 7, 2020, 5:50:49 AM
Path of Building link

https://pastebin.com/QsapL1pS

Please keep in mind the cluster jewels as they always de-activate when importing from PoB.

Sorry for laziness on creating Low-end/High-end Items. Might do in the future once I am sure this build is good.

Actually looking for some opinions now, and maybe also advice for further optimization.



Videos


T15 60%Delirium
https://youtu.be/iyC32lyCEuM

I died once but , well.. had no idea what that boss did , very bad management of flask..etc XD
Last edited by Adryanmh#4873 on Jun 7, 2020, 7:47:52 AM

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