Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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I think the elemental damage will assist in taking out PIs. Remember, I have Lightning Sentry, which, as the name implies, fires lightning bolts, and Death Sentry, which works similar to the necro's corpse explosion in that it is half fire, half physical damage. Death Sentry requires an initial corpse, also like corpse explosion. Unlike corpse explosion, the average damage dealt to monsters is 80% of their life total, meaning you usually need two corpses to set off an explosion chain. Also unlike corpse explosion, a single casting of DS will explode up to five corpses. The only downside to DS is that it has to be able to "see" the corpse to explode it. Once you travel about a screen length away from DS, it cannot see any corpses, so it won't do anything, even if it has charges left over.

Therefore, the elemental damage on the weapon won't have to do the job all by itself. Since the elemental damage is applied to each kick, and I'm looking at a 5-kick DTalon, it should give me an average of 300 more damage per kick, or up to 1500 per cycle. Physical immunes can be handled with Lightning Sentry, and Lightning immunes can be kicked to death, and either way, as soon as a corpse pops up, I get to use Death Sentry. The only truly problematic monster would be a dual physical and lightning immune. That might be a run away situation.

The winning modifier for me is the 50% IAS. I also plan on using Treachery runeword armor, which comes with +45% IAS. Those two pieces of equipment alone should get me to the breakpoint for all kicks after the first to be at 3 frames. A "perfect" speed is 7/3 (the first kick at 7 frames, all others at 3 frames), but +95% IAS gets me to 8/3, and I'm not going to quibble over 1/25th of a second.

The only other real option for a weapon is using a rare class that gives some IAS and +2 to all assassin skills (which I have). My weapon switch definitely will be two claws that give +3 to shadow disciplines - which I also have. That will add 6 levels to my Shadow Master, and +6 to all my prebuffs like Fade, and Burst of Speed. I don't have to invest in Venom if I go with Treachery, as that has a 25% chance of casting a skill level 15 Venom on striking. A skill level 15 Venom lasts a little over 4 minutes, which should be more than adequate to get it to activate again before the timer expires.

The point is, I'm not sure if adding two skill points to my DTalon is worth it. DTalon gives an extra kick for every 6 levels. I can get to level 24 for the 5-kick DTalon without use of a weapon that gives +skills. But I cannot get to level 30 for the 6-kick DTalon, even with the use of a weapon that gives +skills. With equipment I have on-hand, it's level 28 with a +2 all skills claw (or level 29 with a +3 Martial Arts claw), versus level 26 with a weapon that offers no +skills. The elemental damage offered by BStar exceeds the damage increase of two more levels of DTalon, especially when one considers that skill level is just one of several components affecting kick damage. Now if I should find equipment that will allow me to get to level 28 DTalon without use of a weapon that gives +skills, I'd definitely consider going to a +2 all skills claw, as an extra kick would definitely be better than the 300 average elemental damage, and it would make my traps a bit better too.

I also have to do a bit of looking into what armor I want to make treachery out of. The question will be whether or not I want to be able to wear the armor at a lower level, or make it in the highest defense armor possible, which in the case of elite armors will raise the minimum level requirement. My belt is almost certainly going to be Credendum from the Diciple Set, and along with the headgear giving my +24 strength, will save me some points in equiping BStar. BStar gives me another +15 strength, so at a minimum I'm going to have 168 in strength. Two more points in strength get me to 170, which would allow me to equip all exceptional armors, and all but the heaviest elite armors.

 

Credendum has just three modifiers, all of which are rather useful. Resist all +15%, which is about as good as you're going to get on a belt. Resists are of some concern with this build, as I basically only have my belt, shield, and helm to work with. If I go with Fade over Burst of Speed as a pre-buff, that could be adequate to get me to max resists on hell difficulty. I can reasonably obtain around 50% resist all with +skills. The other thing I like about Credendum is that it gives +10 to strength and dexterity, which saves me some points (20 to be exact) in equipping the rest of my equipment and getting to max block. So that item is worth 20 points in vitality - nothing to sneeze at.

Thundergods grants +20 to vitality directly, and +20 to strength, so it's giving me 40 more to vitality, and truth be told, I never considered it before you mentioned it. It does offer some lightning damage, which would transfer to kicks. I guess the question is whether or not I want better lightning resists, and better overall resists. I will consider this option.

Verdungos never did much for me. Part of the problem is that the %DR and +vit mods are variable, and my lone version is one of the worst possible ones you can get. It has the minimum of 10% DR, and just one above the minimum in vitality at +31. If I wanted to get damage reduction, I might be better off going with String of Ears (I have a 15% DR version) and get some life leech out of it.

I think the ideal belt for this build (assuming I'm OK with resistances) would be Nosferatu's Coil. It gives +15 strength, life leech, slows target and IAS. Alas, I do not have that item.

I'm really starting to ramp up my thoughts and fine tune my assassin build now that I'm nearly done with the amazon. I only played for about half an hour last night, but I got through the first part of Act IV, killing Izual, and getting to the WP. Additional skill points are only going into Cold Arrow for the synergy to Freezing Arrow, and I think this might be my first build where additional attribute points are actually doing more for me than additional skill points.

I'm actually considering a respec. I have to take a gander at how much damage my magic arrow does. I'm switching over to MA anyway as soon as I run out of mana versus physical immunes, and there doesn't seem to be much drop off in performance. My dexterity is so high that I might be doing almost as much damage with a level 20 MA as I am with FA. If that's the case, I might siphon those skill points into decoy, as that would present another target for enemies to shoot at, and decoy synergizes Valkyrie, offering 20% more life(!) and an additional 2% resist all per point spent.

Tonight, I will get what is almost certain to be my umpteenth disappointing hellforge rune drop. I wonder if they might eventually throw me a freakin bone here. Can a brotha get at least an Um for a change?

 

Maybe for you. Back when I was playing on Bnet, I had a far higher count of runes. Then again, I only made the switch to SP about 6 months ago, so I cannot expect to have completely replenished my stock in that short of a time.

As for my typically pitiful Hellforge rune drops, I bucked the trend and picked up a Mal, which is the highest rune I've ever received from Hellforge (Ist and Gul are the only possible higher ones you can get). I went on to defeat Diablo, who dropped nothing of interest. The drop of the evening actually came from a Meph run that I did earlier, I got the armor from Trang-Oul's set. The base item type is Chaos armor, which I believe is an exceptional piece. (It's definitely an improved version of full plate mail based on the graphic, but I do not think it's an elite piece.) So I'm not sure if it qualifies as a great drop or not, but I didn't have the armor piece before yesterday regardless.

So in a typical game sitting, I run Countess, Pit, Meph, and then proceed to questing. After tonight, I'll be able to add Shenk and Eldritch to the list of targets to run. One thing I have noticed is that while my merc deals more damage than the valkyrie, he cannot come close to matching the punishment she can absorb. My merc regularly dies when fighting a boss. (He gets smoked by both Meph and Diablo.) Both Meph and Diablo have been able to kill the valkyrie, but it takes them a lot longer, and I can have a new valkyrie up in a second. (Granted, without my prebuff equipment, it's a level 25 valkyrie, as opposed to level 27 valkyrie, but it works.) I have never had to resummon two valkyries in the boss fight.

Now that I've gone through nearly the entire game, I'm prepared to give a final verdict on this character.

Killing speed/Damage Output/Versatility: Moderately high. Strafe is a machine gun, and now that I'm level 85, I have a 85% chance of landing a deadly strike. This, combined with a 49% chance of landing a critical strike from the skill, means only around 8% of the arrows I fire are NOT dealing double damage. So anything that isn't physical immune goes down pretty quickly, especially if/when Amplify Damage activates, when most of my arrows will deal quadruple damage. It's definitely faster than a skellimancer, and nearly any melee character I've tried (although my SS druid was really fast too). About the only character I have played that I would say is noticably quicker is the meteorb, with the druid perhaps marginally quicker.

Normally, getting Amp to activate is entirely unnecessary, as small packs of regular monsters go down with a few strafe volleys regardless. The time you really want Amp to activate is against physical immunes, as that greatly speeds the killing. You have three methods of dealing with physical immunes:

1. Frozen Arrow - typically the preferred option (kills about twice as fast as Magic Arrow), but it's mana intensive, so unless you carry around mana potions (I typically don't), it's sometimes not practical to use Frozen Arrow exclusively against large packs of PIs.

2. Magic Arrow - mana free so you always have this available to fall back on if you run out of juice for Frozen Arrow. It is also your sole means of dealing with cold and physical immune boss.

3. Strafe until you get Amp to activate in order to break the physical immunity. All regular monsters can have their immunity broken by Amp Damage. Occassionally, bosses will have an unbreakable physical immunity, or in the case of a possessed physical immunes, they won't be affected by Amp.

The bottom line with physical immunes is that the speed with which you can deal with them is largely a factor of how long it takes you to get Amp to activate. The 2% chance activates fairly frequently with Strafe, but not nearly as often with FA or MA. If I get unlucky and Amp won't activate against a PI pack, it can take a bit of time to deal with the PIs, and as such I usually retreat a bit and try to funnel them through a doorway, where my merc and valk can hold the line while I fire away. If I get lucky and Amp activates fairly early, I immediately switch over to Strafe, and they go down just as quickly as other monsters. So in addition to being fairly quick, there is quite a bit of versatility with this build as well. There is nothing you cannot kill reasonably quickly.

Survivability - surprisingly high. I'd say the only safer character I've played is a skellimancer. So long as you don't get yourself in a situation where your valk and merc are getting overwhelmed, you're pretty much safe standing behind them. To this end, in situations where you know you're going to be in a tight spot, be prepared to feed your merc a ton of FRP. He needs a lot of them against act bosses, and also went through 3 or 4 against the the packs you release when you activate the seals on the way to Diablo (especially the one that releases the fire-breathing balrog things). While I have not reached them yet, I believe a similar situation will present itself when I fight the Ancients. There was also an issue with Diablo's fire wave attack, in that it insta-killed my merc who has 75% fire resistance and was at full health when hit with it. (So don't be surprised if your merc dies in boss fights.)

Just because you rarely get killed, I'm not suggesting that you have much of anything in the way of tanking abilities. For the heck of it, I checked my character screen immediately after I fought Diablo. While my chances of hitting him were relatively good at 80% (considering he's level 95 so I had a level penalty to my hit chance), his chances of hitting me were 94%, which made me chuckle. 95% is the cap, so with around 2000 defense, his chance of hitting me was 1% less than if I had no armor on whatsoever.

Trouble spots: are few, and in most cases are either avoidable or there are mitigation strategies to employ.

You have to be a little careful in areas where there are a lot of enemies firing some type of projectiles. While stafe itself is uninterruptible, you cannot start a strafe in the middle of of your dodge moves. Normally, not a big issue, but if there are a lot of missiles coming you're way, you may have trouble starting a stafe volley. This is especially so in areas where you're fighting large numbers of flayers using blow darts. The strategy here is to retreat, and have your valk and merc go in front of you so the darts him them. Flayers are easily killed, so once you start strafing they go down very quickly.

As always, gloams deserve special mention. I have found that the skill Slow Missile works with the gloams lightning attack. It slows down the lightning enough that the bolts can be dodged. So what you do is fire a single strafe volley, then move, which gives you just enough time to get off another strafe volley before more lightning starts coming your way. Sadly, while this strategy greatly increases your own survival chances, your merc and valk are not nearly intelligent enough to exploit the advantage you have in slowed lightning bolts. They just walk right on through them. Your valk has enough life that she can actually take a few direct hits and keep going, but the merc gets pwned. I have tried some fighting retreat strategies with gloams, but there's no 100% effective strategy for avoiding merc death when fighting them. In areas where I enounter gloams, I usually hold off on resurrecting the merc until after I get to the next area.

All in all, it's a really fun character to play, with the caveat of having a strict weapon requirement in an upped WWS. If you don't have an upped WWS, a standard strafazon setup would not be nearly as versatile. The deadly strike chance equal to your level and chance to cast amp are the two mods that no other bow comes with, and without them you'll have a hard time matching the damage. Furthermore, you have two empty sockets that you can stick shaels in which make the WWS a very fast bow as well. Finally, you get a very nice 40% resist all on the bow, meaning you aren't struggling for resistances despite the fact you aren't using of a shield. There is a lot of variability in what you can use to fill out the rest of your equipment, but the WWS is essential.

The only point in which I would disagree with the author of the WWS guide is I didn't have any problem without having a maxed pierce. The author recommends that you get your pierce to slvl 9 and use Razortail, otherwise max it to 20. I only placed a single hard point in it, and with +skills it was level 7, giving a 63% chance. There's so many arrows flying around that there's still a whole lot of piercing going on. Even if I didn't go for maxed Freezing Arrow, (and I think I'm glad I did as it is faster than Magic Arrow on PIs), I feel those points would have been better spent on Decoy than Pierce, especially since by the time you get to slvl 7, additional points are only adding a couple percent to your pierce chance.

 

Well, since I'm planning on playing an assassin next, I can at least give you the skinny on two of the three main trees. Since I'm planning on a kicksin, I wouldn't be able to give much insight on the Martial Arts builds that are out there. And really there are only two trees. The Shadow Disciplines are like the Amazon's Passive and Magic Tree - no one specializes in them. In fact, they are strikingly similar in that the only two skills that are ever maxed are those that give you a minion. Amazon's have Decoy and Valkyrie, while Assassins have Shadow Warrior and Shadow Master.

I, too, have thought about a bone necro. I think in general he will have many of the same strengths and weaknesses as a skellimancer, with the exceptions being that he will deal more damage, but be less safe. All the bone skills deal physical damage, so you'll still need to use amp damage. Bone necros also tend to invest in bone wall for crowd control. Corpse explosion is still essentail (even if you only go one hard point and rely on +skills). CE is on the bone/poison tree, and since you'll be specializing in those skills and gearing your character towards that tree, it is entirely possible to have a fairly high level CE with just one point in the skill. The only other decision is if you want to be a pure bonemancer, or a hybrid and take some poison skills as well (or at least one poison skill to deal with unbreakable PIs).

---------- Added 23 hours, 0 minutes and 14 seconds later... ----------

It has been a banner couple of days for me in the rune-finding department. After getting a Mal from Hellforge, I landed an Ist last night. Granted I need an Ohm or a Lo before I get into truely high-end runeword territory, the relative value of the Mal and Ist in the last two days probably exceeds the value of all of the runes I had on hand up to that point. I have spent several Ums, Puls, and Lems on runewords, as well as weapon and armor upgrades, so it's not like those two exceed everything I've acquired, as I probably would already have a Vex (or at least close to it) if I didn't spend a lot of the mid-level ones on other things.

 

Just inching my way along, now at level 86. I've now reached the point where I've completed the first four quests in Act V, so the next step is the battle with the Ancients. Hopefully, I'll be able to separate the initial group in the begining.

The plan is pretty straight-forward - assume the merc dies within the first 30 seconds of the battle, and hope that the valkyrie can handle everything OK, or at least get beat on long enough before she dies for me to do some damage.

The issues are obvious - if any of them spawn as extra fast, extra strong OR extra strong, cursed, I'm pretty much toast. I can probably deal with any one of them being physical immune, but two physical immunes would be problematic. So anything like that will be cause for respawning them.

Another thought occured to me about the assassin. For my leveling weapon, I think I will want just a regular old 2-socket claw with the "Strength" runeword:

Strength - Amn + Tir - Any melee weapon with 2 sockets

+35% Damage (won't apply to kicks)
25% Crushing Blow (will apply)
7% life stolen (will apply)
+2 mana per kill (will apply)
+20 to Strength (will apply)
+10 Vitality (will apply)

Lots to like there, especially considering it's probably the easiest way to get some CB on low level equipment. And I should be able to use the weapon by late Act I. I'll make it in a regular claw, and it should have a low level requirement. Runeword level requirement is calculated from the highest level rune used in the RW. It's 2 * highest rune number +1. Amn is rune #11, so it should be a level 23 requirement. The only downside is that normal variety claws do not come with +skills on them, so it will not be possible to raise my DTalon skill with the claws.

As for the rest of the low level equipment, I'm taking a long look at Sigon's Set. It appears to have everything I need. First of all, while it uses a lot of pieces, it leaves the weapon slot free. The level requirement is only 6, but that's largely irrelevant, as the heaviest piece of gear is the shield, which has a strength requirement of 75. So the Strength runeword will help there, effectively making the strength requirement 55. And the gloves give +10 strength so really 45.

All the pieces have some nice mods on them. The helm gives high defense and +8 AR/clvl (while +AR on claws don't transfer to kicks, it does tranfer from everything else). The armor gives resistances and attacker takes 20 damage (which actually is worth something in normal). The gloves give the aforementioned strength boost as well as AR and 30% IAS. The boots give FRW, 40% Cold res, AR, and 50% mf and they are greaves, so the highest normal variety boots you can get for kick damage. The belt gives life, and fire res. The shield gives +1 skills and 20% increased chance to block (on a tower shield, so that's high). The completed set offers another 10% life leech, +100 defense, +20 mana, fire res, +24 fire damage (transferred to each kick), attacker takes damage of 12 (so 32 total), and damage reduced by 7.

 

I did see that guide, but I only skimmed through it once I saw that it pretty much required a Rift war scepter to be effective, and I don't have any Gul runes. That said, if you do, I can see it being a very powerful build. HotO seems an odd choice for a weapon switch, espcially since it's only used for prebuffing. Why not dual SD claws? Or, if you're after both traps and SD skills, one super cheap +3 claw of each tree? It's not like you can equip two HotOs. (Unlike barbs, you can only equip two weapons if they are both claws.) Upped Goblin Toes also seems like an odd choice. While they do give a bit better chance of a CB than do Gore Riders, upped Gore Riders will have a higher damage output.

Anyway, I'd probably tweak the equipment and skill points a bit, but it definitely looks solid. For example, while level 17 shadow master is adequate, like the valkyrie, it keeps getting additional equipment all the way to level 27, so that's the level I'd shoot for. The sacrifice you make for that is trap damage. Assuming you max DTalon, SM, DS, and LS, you won't have many leftover skill points to donate to Shock Web as a final synergy. If you saved the 10 points on SM, that's 10 more points into the trap synergy. That said, it appears that the powerhouse part of the build is the ctc Frozen Orb (at level 21!), meaning you're more of a kicker than a trapper anyway. So I think I'd want a more powerful SM. And it's not like you're going to be hurting for lightning damage on traps. Even if you were conservative and said you're LS will only be level 25, with a maxed DS synergy that you'll be getting, you're looking at 1-1830 per bolt, you're going to have four LS out a time, and they each throw 5 shots. They fire about once per second, so say an average of 900 damage per bolt, you're dealing 3600 lightning damage per second.

Finally, it's not like you're going to have NO points in Shock Web. It would be the final skill you work on once you do everything else. Base build (w/o SWeb) requires 92 skill points, so you're done at level 81, and all points beyond that go to SWeb. If you save 10 points on SM, base build with SWeb requires 102 skill point, done at level 91.

I also find it very odd that the author advocates BoS over Fade for a HC character. With the equipment, you already hit the last breakpoint for DTalon, even w/o BoS. How is the ability to walk faster better than getting a defense and resistance boost, along with %DR?

 

I have read a ton of assassin guides before planning my character. The over-riding point that you see in all the guides is this: All assassins are hybrids. Every single assassin guide you see out there has the shadow discipline tree as support skills and no one specializes in them. The only skill in that entire tree that you will ever see maxed is Shadow Master, and even that only happens in about half the build guides.

Which leaves the Martial Arts and Traps tree. All assassins use both, and thus all assassins are hybrids. This is not to say that assassins split their skill points evenly between the two trees. In fact, I'd say the opposite is the case - you specialize in one tree and only concentrate on a single skill in the other tree. Which leaves you with basically two base assassins types. You are either a trapsin with a single martial arts skill (which is almost always Dragon Talon) or you are a martial artist, with a single trap skill (which is almost always Death Sentry).

The beauty of a rift-sin is that you can take that build either way. While I agree with the author that you can specialize in traps and take Dragon Talon as your primary (and only) attack, you can just as easily max only death sentry, and make a martial artist.

With a powerful level 21 Frozen Orb going off frequently, you could take a martial artist in a number of directions - you could go with Tiger Strike for big physical damage, or specialize in any of the elemental martial arts skills. While you wouldn't want to take Blades of Ice as you already have a good source of cold damage, Fists of Fire or Claws of Thunder would certainly be options. CoT does more damage, but FoF does splash damage when you release the charges and leaves a burning patch on the ground, so while CoT does more to an individual target, FoF is area of effect. Either way, the synergy you'd pick for either skill would be Phoenix Strike.

The only thing is, the charge-up skills would only be placed on the first kick of Dragon Talon, so you'd use a different Finishing Move. Dragon Tail is probably the most popular choice here, as that gives you kick damage +300% or so area of effect fire damage.

So you could say there are two types of rift-sins:

Rift-Sin A:

Max:
Dragon Talon
Death Sentry
Lightning Sentry
Shock Web or Shadow Master (or some split between the two)

Rift-Sin B:

Max:
Death Sentry
CoT/FoF (whatever you prefer)
Phoenix Strike
Dragon Tail
Shadow Master, Tiger Strike, or Lightning Sentry (or some split)

The last skill is based on what you feel is lacking. Lightning Sentry gives a decent trap setup. Shadow Master gives a powerful minion. Tiger Strike gives 1000% physical damage, and would be your attack of choice against anything that wasn't physical immune.

I think both builds would be effective, as they both offer three damage types, that all have decent damage rates, but having not done either, I am not certain which would be moreso.

---------- Added 16 hours, 58 minutes and 2 seconds later... ----------

With a single drop last night, I probably exceeded my rune wealth from all the years of playing D2. While doing a pit run with my WWS zon, I got a Cham. Stunningly, a regular monster dropped it, although I have no idea which one. It was an area that was filled with fallen and shamans that always have a few "fallen rogues" lying about the room. There were also a few skeletons and dark rogues. As I was just strafing away like mad, there is no telling which monster dropped the Cham, but since I didn't see the Cham with potions lying around, I can safely conclude that there was no boss or champion in the room that dropped it.

And so with my new found Cham rune I will make... Um... I will make... I guess nothing. The only runewords I can think of that require a Cham are "Doom" and "Hand of Justice" which grant Holy Freeze and Holy Fire, respectively (and a bunch of other really nice mods) - I'd consider both options top choices for a merc weapon, meaning all the Act II mercs would now get two auras (although Doom would make the Holy Freeze merc obsolete). However, both RWs also require a Lo, which I don't have. Still, I cannot complain about my recent rune drops. In the last week, I've got a Mal, Ist, and now a Cham. Definitely a banner week for rune finding.

The thing is, I didn't even play that much last night. I ran Countess, Pit, Meph, Shenk, Eldritch, and Pindle. Took maybe a half hour tops. I wanted to get a work out in after that, and by the time I was finished, MNF was on, and so I didn't play again after that.

 

The battle with the Ancients was surprisingly easy. My merc even managed to live through it. None of them spawned extra strong, cursed, or immune to physical, so I kind of lucked out there.

With any luck, I'll be on to the assassin by the weekend. I really like this character though - I may use it for a lot of my future runs.

 

Yeah, a Cham is nice, although I would have prefered a Ber, as that would have allowed me to make Chains - I already have everything else besides the Ber. Although thinking about it, I'd have to think long and hard before making CoH. A Ber is also the rune you need for "Beast", which looks absolutely fantastic just based on the first half of the mods:

Level 9 Fanaticism
40% IAS
+250% damage
20% CB
25% OW

And everything else beyond that is just gravy.

A Jah would have got me closer to making an Enigma, but I think you also need a Ber for that, so I'd still be short one of those.

So while I'm happy about the Cham, I'm not thrilled that there is no means of my putting it to use any time soon. Unless, of course, I get another "struck by lightning" drop and get a second Cham, in which case, I now have a Zod. Of course, I'd still need a Vex for BotD, so that wouldn't even be an immediate benefit.

The annoying thing is I'm one HR short for so many high end rune words. A Ber would allow either Chains of Beast. An Ohm would give me Call to Arms. A Lo would allow Fortitude. And I could go on.

I was thinking about the rift-a-din, thinking about what other modifications you could make that would work. Instead of Rift, I think Chaos would be even better:

Chaos - Fal-Ohm-Um - Only works in claws. Now, it is a bit more pricey than a Rift, as Ohm is #27 while Gul is #25 - but not loads more expensive.

Comparing the two side-by-side:

Chaos:

9% ctc level 11 Frozen Orb
11% ctc level 9 Charged Bolt
+35% IAS
+290-340% damage
216-471 (that's such an odd range) magic damage
25% OW
+1 Whirlwind
+10 strength
+15 life per demon kill

Rift -Hel-Ko-Lem-Gul polearms or scepters (scepters in this case)

20% ctc level 16 Tornado
16% ctc level 21 Frozen Orb
20% AR
160-250 Magic Damage
60-180 Fire Damage
+5-10 All Stats
+10 Dexterity
38% damage goes to mana
75% gold find
Level 15 Iron Maiden (40 Charges)
Requirements -20%

At first it doesn't look that close, because you get a level 21 FO with Rift, and get a level 11 FO with Chaos. But, if you were interested in pursuing the martial arts path, the 300+% enhanced damage on Chaos completely blows away the damage output on what you get with Rift (although that +ed% would not work with DTalon, so it's not a good choice if you're going the kicker/trapper route). There's a big 35% IAS, which is absolutlely lovely. The magic damage is about equal (a bit more actually) to the combined magic and fire damage on Rift. It gives some lightning damage. It gives you whirlwind as an attack, which I could see being very useful. All that is great, but here's the trump card as far as I'm concerned:

If you make it in an exceptional or elite claw (and why wouldn't you?) there can be +skills on it that the claw would retain after making the RW. Obviously, there won't be any +all skills, but you can get up to 3 +3 specific skill mods on exceptional and elite claws. Sure, the scepter you use to make Rift could have pre-set +skills on them as well that will be retained on the RW, but as an assassin, you won't actually be able to use them.

The caveat is that you'd go MA with Chaos. If you're set on going with a kicker, then you're still better off with Rift. Also an admission on my part - the only reason I'm playing a kicker/trapper is because that's what my equipment dictates (the only thing you really need is a nice pair of boots). If I had the stuff for it, I think a MA build looks far more interesting.

 

The charge ups don't the finishers do. I'll use Claws of Thunder as an example. I'll use a conservative estimate of level 25 in the skill, and Level 25 in the finisher, Dragon Tail. I'll also assume you maxed the synergy Phoenix Strike.

When you attack w/CoT, you'll gain a charge for each successful hit, and you can have a maximum of 3 charges. (You can keep on attacking after you have 3 charges of course, you just won't build up any more than 3.) The charge ups just do regular claw damage as you build them up (with any damage bonuses you have from equipment, strength, and claw mastery of course). They also will only hit a single monster.

The money shot is the finisher, and that is most definitely area of effect. So let's say you build up 3 charges of CoT and then use Dragon Tail. The first thing that happens is DTail is a swing kick that hits all the monsters in melee range around you. So you get the kick damage (which is dependent upon boots, strength, and dexterity), and 380% of kick damage in fire blast damage in a 2.6 yard radius. To put that 2.6 yards into workable terms, the entire screen width in 600x800 resolution (the higher one) covers 13 yards. So 2.6 yards is exactly 1/5 of the screen's width. So it is more than melee range around you, but not a hell of a lot more.

In addition to the damage of your kick, it releases the 3 charges you built up from CoT, which with the skill setup I listed above would do the following:

Charge 1 releases a 1-1164 damage lightning bolt. It travels in a straight line, and so it is possible that this hits more than one monster.

Charge 2 releases a 1-702 damage Nova, which will hit everything around you.

Charge 3 releases a 1-1123 Charged Bolt, and this is actually the most damaging of the attacks. The damage listed is PER BOLT, you release a ton of bolts, and it is possible for a monster to be hit by more than 1 bolt.

So it is possible to deal thousands of points of combined physical, fire, and lightning damage to everything around you with a single series of CoT.

Some notes:

CoT (as well as Fists of Fire, Blades of Ice, and Phoenix Strike - so all the elemental ones) require claw class weapons. You'd probably want a claw class weapon anyway, as they can come with +skills, but just mentioning that up front.

Deciding on whether to use 1 claw or 2 claws is actually a pretty tough decision. When you attempt to charge up CoT, if you're using two claws, you attack with both claws simultaneously, and assuming both claws hit, you get two charges. So with two claws just two attacks are enough to completely charge the skill, even if one of the attacks misses. With a single claw, you need at least 3 attacks, and potentially more if you miss. The benefit of using a single claw is obvious: you get a shield.

Most MA assassins do go with 2 claws, because it allows them to get to the finisher faster. They compensate for not having a shield by placing a single point in weapon block (which enables you to block with your claws), and rely on +skills to get as much out of that point as they can. If you have 5 or 6 points worth of +skills, you'll have a block chance of around 50%. (One point is 25%, with pretty good returns for additional points at first, but by the time you get to Level 10, it's only 1% more per point spent, which is why most assassins go with just 1 hard point in this skill.) The block chance is NOT affected by dexterity like it is with shields. The percentage listed on the skill is the percentage, regardless of whether your dexterity is 50 or 500.

Finally, most MA assassins use Burst of Speed much more than Fade. Again, just one hard point with +skills. A decent level BoS will get your dual claw attack down to 7 frames, meaning you can fully charge CoT in just 14 frames. The finisher is a 10 frame attack, so two attacks + finisher take exactly 1 second.

 

I too, finished the WWS zon this weekend. I will still run the Countess and Pits with her, as I can do both areas so quickly.

I started the assassin. I'm in Normal Act II, just completed the Pit Viper Temple. I'm using Sigon's Set, as it offers a bunch of nice bonuses, decent boots, and even +1 to all skills. (That said, an assassin looks ridiculous in full plate mail and a horned helm.)

Some early notes - if I could do it all over again, I'd sink my first 12 skill points into DTalon, instead of picking up pre-requisites along the way. As soon as you get that 3rd kick, it greatly speeds things up. Despite being able to equip "Strength" claws, I haven't bothered up to this point. My 3-kick primary attack kills everything on p5 (which is why I'm playing on p5). Since a crushing blow deals 25% damage, and my kicks are knocking off at least 1/3 of the enemies' life, "Strength" would only slow me down. Besides, with the dual leech claws I'm currently using, I'm leeching back all the mana I'm using with my kicks. The toughest thing I've run into so far is Andariel, and I kicked the crap out of her with about 5 sequences of DTalon (so dead in seconds).

On the ancillary skills - I use Burst of Speed more than Fade. While I can see Fade being very useful for boss fights and on higher difficulty levels for the enhanced resistances and %DR, at this point moving faster is more beneficial than defensive play. I've sunk a single point into Shadow Warrior at level 18, and while she doesn't do much, I guess it's worth having her around. I plan on using Shadow Master once I reach level 30.

I have also played around with Cloak of Shadows, and I can see that being very useful throughout the game. It works similarly to Dim Vision with two notable differences. 1) It covers the entire screen, so it has a much better area of effect and 2) It follows you around, so you can cast it when you're out of range of enemies. I can see it being very useful for the same things Dim Vision is useful for - mainly shutting down ranged enemies, most notably Gloams. I can see CoS being used well in conjunction with Mind Blast, as you can shut them down prior to them being able to see you, and then convert a few to your side. I haven't played around with MB yet, as there's been no need, although perhaps I should to get the hang of it for later use.

The lightning bolt trap is underwhelming at this point, but seeing as how it's level 2 (one hard point and a +skill), I'm not jumping to any conclusions just yet. No Death Sentry yet.

As for your questions regarding the unique and set items, Natalya's Set can be used for a MA/trapper build, but is ill-suited for a kicker for two reasons: 1) The boots on it are exceptional (mesh boots), which is not what you're looking for in a kicker. 2) There is no source of CB with that set. Since it takes up your weapon, armor, helm, and boot slots (I don't think CB is available on any belts), the only place left to get CB would be on crafted gloves, and even then, you're only looking at 1-10%. IIRC, none of the unique claws come with CB either, so you couldn't even dual equip a second claw to get some CB. (However, with the unique claws, you could get CB out of your helm and/or boots.) Of the unique claws, Bartuc's is far and away your best choice. If going the MA route, I would equip two of them, for +6 to the MA tree.

One thing occured to me after posting about a MA build - you cannot be a rift-sin and be a martial artist. All of the elemental attack skills require a claw-class weapon, which means "Rift" is out of the picture. Of course, if you're going to be a MA assassin, "Rift" wouldn't be a top choice even if it was usable. You would be much better off going with dual claws for more +skills.