Melee Assassin - need input!

Hey fam,

i wanted to ask if there are people out there, playing a melee assassin? Or at least were there attempts to try it?

I know, assassin per se is pretty weak and probably way more overwhelming if shes played as trap with meetshields and as a glasscannon.
But nontheless i was thinking really hard all the time how you could actually get her to work. And i dont think of a melee assassin as a one-button-kicker... Thats boring lol.

I was thinking about the real martial arts system, with loading up 2-3 charges and letting them out with a finisher.

Im just curious what weapons/gears you could use for that. If you take one of these overpowered swords (tf/fm/fh) you cant make use of your charger skills. And if you use claws, you wont get the elemental damage to anywhere near useable. Or am i wrong? Im pretty sure it would work if you switch from claw/claw to tf/shield to charge with claws and unleash a huge amount of damage with tf/shield slot but that seems to clunky and surely its not fun at all.

@Game maybe you can help me there a little? You must have had a idea of how you want us to play the martial arts tree. And when you tested it, what was your setup? I feel like im too blind to see any viable option here.

Also there is the thing that i only see one "finisher" in the whole skill tree - Dragon claw. My charges wont unleash with the flurry kick. I havent tested "Ambush" or "Dragon strike" yet, but they are also not classified as finishers...

i hope i get some inputs. I dont need exact gears or something. Just a few ideas what you guys think.

thanks so far :)

~Lucid

I have a few ideas in mind, but it is up to you guys to figure out what works best :) The potential is definitely there, while the elemental damage can be strong I recommend not focusing solely on it.

ww sin with chaos +the new claw is pretty strong. Jack of all trades buffs all the +elemental damage on the new claw by a ton.

New claw? Is it in the wiki yet? I have seen only tricksters and firelizards there.

and thx rrra for the ww sin input. But like i said, i wanted to try a martial arts sin like it was meant to be played. Not focussing on a single skill like ww or kick. I wanted to try to make a working base of a martial arts sin, that really has this "dps rotation".

I dont see a way yet. Maybe this comes with skill and gearscaling :)

http://annihilus.net/wiki_index.php?...Death-Assassin
That's the new claw. It makes several of the builds you are thinking of decent when paired with a nats set. With higher level gear, you could do even better.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rrra

ww sin with chaos +the new claw is pretty strong. Jack of all trades buffs all the +elemental damage on the new claw by a ton.

---

I wanna know the exact ww sin build, please:)

All I played was trapsin and hybrid win and ghost sin on reg bnet. I'm currently testing gear combos to make a hybrid ww sin work. Main issue is AR ATM.

I dont recall the exact build, but I remember parts of it: Chaos and Touch of death claws, crown of the skeleton king, lich boots, sanc armor, steelrend. I don't recall the rest. Max venom, claw mastery, jack of all trades at least. I know some people basically treat it as a ghost and maxed fade for the damage reduction with the rest going into shadow +jack of all trades synergy. You could also max blade shield +shuriken flip for the extra blade shield damage. Experiment with it.

The above is similar to what I have been testing.

I was thinking of doing more of a hybrid than a pure ww sin. Faster kill speed overall.

Well...something really interesting happend yesterday with the sin(currently 96 lvl),.... Skill points distribution: jack max, claw mastery max, venom max, cobra strike max and some other points to shadow etc. I was making 99 k dmg. At the moment of the reset and build i was 95 lvl. When i get to lvl 96 i decided to put that skill point to blades of ice and then boom - 20 k dmg. WTFFFF.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucid

New claw? Is it in the wiki yet? I have seen only tricksters and firelizards there.

and thx rrra for the ww sin input. But like i said, i wanted to try a martial arts sin like it was meant to be played. Not focussing on a single skill like ww or kick. I wanted to try to make a working base of a martial arts sin, that really has this "dps rotation".

I dont see a way yet. Maybe this comes with skill and gearscaling :)

---

WW and kick have always been the best melee builds for sin mostly because of the hits per second. The ww sin works nicely, lots of hit power. Ive wondered how a tfury kicksin would do with a corrupted stornsheld and nephalem. Use blade shield or shurikens for venom...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rrra

I dont recall the exact build, but I remember parts of it: Chaos and Touch of death claws, crown of the skeleton king, lich boots, sanc armor, steelrend. I don't recall the rest. Max venom, claw mastery, jack of all trades at least. I know some people basically treat it as a ghost and maxed fade for the damage reduction with the rest going into shadow +jack of all trades synergy. You could also max blade shield +shuriken flip for the extra blade shield damage. Experiment with it.

---

Here it is:
Skeletal king crown - vital for attack rating, cb and life % 2x light horad chanted 35lph
Sin nephalem - holy shock adds light damage with jack of trads
Sanctuary balance - 6x Psn horad 2x chanted 35 lph
Chaos runeword - death sentry base for corpse explode, blade shield is nice too, mine comes from anni but I'd rather it on claw chanted 300 life +2% life
Touch of death - this adds amazing elemental damage with jack of all trades 2x light horad. Chanted 300 life +2%
Steelrends- splash and CB chanted 1 sin
Scourge lord - don't be scared to overflow your dr% remember it's adding life. Also source of magic resist.
Deaths advance - chant 1 sin
1 sin soj, 1 cons ring
30+ life ma gcs

Max fade, venom, jack, claw mastery, and twin fang.

This sin can solo anything and can slaughter hell cows just by abyss blinking. Mine has almost 7k hp and hits 110k wws without buff chars.

-Enjoy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Drlukifer

WW and kick have always been the best melee builds for sin mostly because of the hits per second. The ww sin works nicely, lots of hit power. Ive wondered how a tfury kicksin would do with a corrupted stornsheld and nephalem. Use blade shield or shurikens for venom...

---

Jack of all trades does not seem to work on holy shock. At least it doesn't show up in the sheet dps for me? @Game is this intended?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rrra

Jack of all trades does not seem to work on holy shock. At least it doesn't show up in the sheet dps for me? @Game is this intended?

---

http://annihilus.net/showthread.php?t=11324


is it for kick or ww?

kick

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rrra

Jack of all trades does not seem to work on holy shock. At least it doesn't show up in the sheet dps for me? @Game is this intended?

---

It is definitely adding damage, the damage chart is often inaccurate unfortunately.

Thats one more point rendering the stacking attacks of an assassin useless af. If a flat 3000 damage of each element gets buffed by enchant and jack it gets more viable if you can attack as fast as possible. Which means that skills like kick and ww get really good while the stacking up and unleashing skills get less attention to the playerbase.

Is there one assassin out that plays with fists of fire/claws of thunder/blades of ice unleashing them with dragon claw?! It doesnt feel very strong compared to twin fang or kick. It takes a huge amount of attention to manage your stacks right and everything and then the final damage is just meh.
@Game i reaaaaallly like the reworked martial arts skill tree and i know how much work and love you put into the whole game! Dont get me wrong pls. But it doesnt feel very odd to make that martial arts assassin as it was meant to be.

may is suggest a little thing or two?

First problem i still see: You get 2 of 3 loads per attack with FoF/CoT/BoI resulting in only getting 1 every second attack which means 25% of your stacks is lost due to the mechanic.
A possible fix: Make the attack can have 6 or even more stacks (i dream of 20+ :P). Meaning, that you attack a 10 seconds with Claws of Thunder getting stacks up and then unleashing (still 3) them within the next uses of dragon claw. This results in less losses of stacks and making it able to stack up on a single mob and unleashing more if you face a group. It would feel more odd already.

Alternative fix: Soft-rework the martial arts skill tree again in maybe the following way. Make the FoF/CoT/BoI like the druid attack "Feral Rage". Meaning that you can load up one or all to 3 charges and then unleashing with dragon claw (or kick) with each attack as long as the charges sustain. Ofcourse we need a nerf on the numbers then :P
I see two major problems with the latter: The diversity of the martial arts skill tree would suffer (it then could feel like called Feral Rage drood...). And it maybe pretty much effects in a short amount of time, ending up in lags...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucid

Thats one more point rendering the stacking attacks of an assassin useless af. If a flat 3000 damage of each element gets buffed by enchant and jack it gets more viable if you can attack as fast as possible. Which means that skills like kick and ww get really good while the stacking up and unleashing skills get less attention to the playerbase.

Is there one assassin out that plays with fists of fire/claws of thunder/blades of ice unleashing them with dragon claw?! It doesnt feel very strong compared to twin fang or kick. It takes a huge amount of attention to manage your stacks right and everything and then the final damage is just meh.
@Game i reaaaaallly like the reworked martial arts skill tree and i know how much work and love you put into the whole game! Dont get me wrong pls. But it doesnt feel very odd to make that martial arts assassin as it was meant to be.

may is suggest a little thing or two?

First problem i still see: You get 2 of 3 loads per attack with FoF/CoT/BoI resulting in only getting 1 every second attack which means 25% of your stacks is lost due to the mechanic.
A possible fix: Make the attack can have 6 or even more stacks (i dream of 20+ :P). Meaning, that you attack a 10 seconds with Claws of Thunder getting stacks up and then unleashing (still 3) them within the next uses of dragon claw. This results in less losses of stacks and making it able to stack up on a single mob and unleashing more if you face a group. It would feel more odd already.

Alternative fix: Soft-rework the martial arts skill tree again in maybe the following way. Make the FoF/CoT/BoI like the druid attack "Feral Rage". Meaning that you can load up one or all to 3 charges and then unleashing with dragon claw (or kick) with each attack as long as the charges sustain. Ofcourse we need a nerf on the numbers then :P
I see two major problems with the latter: The diversity of the martial arts skill tree would suffer (it then could feel like called Feral Rage drood...). And it maybe pretty much effects in a short amount of time, ending up in lags...

---

i tried it last 2 days. and ended up with 175k unbuff kick tried to charge it with thunder claw but somehow it didn't gave any dmg. got 11k ar so im sure it didn't miss tried it for like 30 mins or so

http://i895.photobucket.com/albums/a...sla5av1n6.jpeg
@liumtra

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by liumtra

i tried it last 2 days. and ended up with 175k unbuff kick tried to charge it with thunder claw but somehow it didn't gave any dmg. got 11k ar so im sure it didn't miss tried it for like 30 mins or so

---

yea thats because kick is no longer a finisher skill. You will need to use dragon claw or standart attack to unleash the charges you have made with FoF/CoT/BoI.

and @Drlukifer is that a fully charged dragon strike with your gearsetup? Or a uncharged? I mean i had exact the same damage (136k) with my lightzealer last ladder. He got that damage every single attack and dindt had to charge something up before or so :/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucid

yea thats because kick is no longer a finisher skill. You will need to use dragon claw or standart attack to unleash the charges you have made with FoF/CoT/BoI.

and @Drlukifer is that a fully charged dragon strike with your gearsetup? Or a uncharged? I mean i had exact the same damage (136k) with my lightzealer last ladder. He got that damage every single attack and dindt had to charge something up before or so :/

---

It's @liumtra I don't know

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucid

yea thats because kick is no longer a finisher skill. You will need to use dragon claw or standart attack to unleash the charges you have made with FoF/CoT/BoI.

and @Drlukifer is that a fully charged dragon strike with your gearsetup? Or a uncharged? I mean i had exact the same damage (136k) with my lightzealer last ladder. He got that damage every single attack and dindt had to charge something up before or so :/

---

actually thats my dragon strike sin. its uncharged and unbuffed its does no dmg on dl boss even with CoT