So, I just completed Act 2, 3 today. Act 1 was fun, I was doing good damage and it felt good. Act 2 was okay. Act 3 is where I started dying.
The close combat just feels so underwhelming in this game. I stand there in one place, Ghouls shoot lightning right at me, and Stygian Dolls are splashing in my face, while I am switching skills and charges like crazy to just do moderate damage and avoid immunities. At the same time, I need >50% resist Fire and max Lightning AND at least like 30% Damage Reduction, otherwise I just die in the melee when a stronger boss comes up.
The physical damage of the Martial Arts Assassin is just ridiculously low. I upgraded my Bartuc’s, gave me like 15 max damage. The claw damage is 90-150 or something like that. That is just not enough. So I am left with my maxxed Claws of Thunder and Phoenix Strike. These do okay-ish damage for p1. But lightning immunes are a problem in Act 3. I can only use Phoenix, but I can’t see the charges to trigger the meteor, which is the only one that does good damage. So I end up shifting and Dual Clawing like crazy just to kill a normal monster pack.
Another problem were bosses. It took forever to kill any Act boss without Crushing Blow. I tried CoT, Phoenix, Fire Claw, Tiger Strike. No. Just scratches them. On p1…
The best Assassin skill is still – by far – … yes, you guessed it, Corpse Explosion. Without it I wouldn’t be able to endure to Act 4. And I have absolutely no idea how I will complete Act 5 with its Moon Lords and Crawling Dead. And the Ancients. It just looks painful.
I am using the best from the unique and set items they gave us. No OP runewords as Enigma since we won’t have this on the ladder for a while.
TL;DR: Phys dmg is very bad, elemental is often hard to time and apply. It is very APM-heavy and you die often. It’s just not worth it at this state, when you have auras that auto-kill almost everything or one-click spells like Blizzard/Lightning Fury.