I played my bladesin with death in a ETH ettin axe and stormshield ( don’t have the money to build phoenix). Using forty, loh, string of ears, gorerider, dual angelic combo , and a rare circlet with 2 to traps, attack rating per lvl, with 30 frw.
Did an uber ran last night, with maxed fade, was not that easy but worked.
The damge in pve is awesome, most monsters are 1 Hit. But a big issue is the ar(especially with sentinel and blade shield). I use the blessed aim act 2 Merc with reapers and now, I have 24k ar with fury and 14k with blade shield and sentinel. Diablo in CS dies in 4seconds.
Another question is the mod attack on striking. I doesn’t work with every skill.
When I use death the glacial spikes won’t cast with fury but with blade shield.
When I use lawbringer the curse cast with fury.
When I use rift, the frost orb won’t cast but the tornado does.
If I use 2 claws with 5% chance to cast amplify damage it won’t cast with fury. Makes no sense to me.
The claw mastery is mostly not working for blade skills. Therefore I put only 1 point in it.
From my various testing,
Blade Sentiel: AR, damage, critical strike all of them works
Blade Fury: Only critical strike works.
Blade Shield: Did not test. But I did other tests where it appeared that 2 handed weapon does not have penalty, and the skill damage does not go through off weapon ED.
The entire character screen for a bladesin is deceiving at best.
My setup is phoenix, fortitude, rare circlet, string of ears, gore rider, loh, and some random rings. My merc however is holding infinity for me, which allows me not to worry about AR. It also boosts Death Sentry’s Damage.
For the weapon, I use a plague claw with +3 Blade Fury mod on it, or Lacerator.
The issue with this setup is that it lacks ways to deal physical immunes. Lawbringer slains monsters in peace, but I need the corpses. Lacerator is more like a trap to me, because it has 50% terror on it which can override the amplify damage curse. For white mobs it works pretty bad, while for uniques and bosses it works like a wonder. Ideally I should be using plague claw as my primary weapon and lacerator as secondary to deal with dangerous melee mobs. But the current game has a very annoying weapon swap bug, where as a bladesin I have a very high chance that the weapon swap is disabled some point in the game, making switching to lacerator impossible.
Oh man, it’s really disappointing.
So besides attack rating going up for blade fury on the character tab, with more points in claw mastery, it’s useless? 
But if it works with blade sentinel, it’s kind of fine with me, since I play the bladesin most of the time in melee range, since blade sentinel pierces, and prefer that style.
My sin seems to be tanky enough so far.
I got my hands on a phoenix as well and it’s great, I might test with a dual claw setup, but dont have another good base right now.
Have a Plague in a +3 blade fury base and dual plague, with +4 skills and +6 blade fury might be better than the phoenix.
Weapon block would also work, which is great for defense.
Right now, I’m level 77 and not sure, how to spend my skillpoints.
Got 10 left, after maxing out all the bladeskills, got death sentry, bos.
Venom doesnt seem to be very effect and i dont feel, like i need fade.
Playing mostly solo on bnet.
I really hope, that they will rework blade fury with the next patch.
If blade fury pierces and they take away the casting delay, it will be absolutely op 
I absolutely enjoy her playing right now.
Can you link this test? This is so far the only difference between resurrect and original if it’s true. See Amazon Basin for a test 13 years ago for the original game.
Okay I did a test. With 198 str/309 dex against Crusher of Canyon of Magi (9748HP/50PhysRes) and all 50/50 str/dex weapons. All averaged over 20 kills:
Heart carver (35DS/CS in total): 3.88 hits
Fool’s claw (22DS/CS in total): 3.35 hits
Fool’s claw (34DS/CS in total): 2.90 hits
Weapon dmg *0.75+ skill damage is controlled at 950. Actually heart carver is slightly higher (957) than fool’s claw (948). Claw mastery is at lvl 26: 22CS and 135ED. All off-weapon enhanced damage sources have been removed. So off-weapon ED only comes from scaling and claw mastery.
It seems to me that ED in claw mastery is working. However, when I calculate the average damage, the only way I can reproduce the average hits listed above is to assume 50/50 str/dex scaling to be 0.5/0.5, instead of the previously confirmed 0.75/0.75. I will need to confirm this further…
Actually… I found another possible explanation: if the skill damage also suffers from 0.75 penalty, the result is kinda equivalent to 0.5/0.5 scaling in my scenario. Either case, it is a bug that needs to be fixed in my opinion.
I did this myself. I did this with hero editor in single player mode.
- For blade fury’s AR, I compared a trash white claw and trash white sword, with 1 point in blade fury, and maxed claw mastery. The attack rating of basic attacks says the chance to hit is 4x% and 7x% for sword and claw, respectively. In practice, the difference feels the same as there is a significant one between the two weapons.
- For blade fury’s damage, this is kind of hard to tell, because even at level 20 the claw mastery only gives around 100% off-weapon ED. There will always be off-weapon ED from other sources.
- For blade fury’s critical hit, this one is easy to tell because it has a clear visual effect. Comparing a white trash sword and white trash claw, the sword never crits and the claw does. This is the same for both normal attack, and blade fury skill.
I just did a test myself actually. I posted right here:
So is a grief glorious axe the best weapon for a sentinel/shield build?
Why not Thunder Maul BotD?
What kind of AR charms / gear is required for this build on a budget? Would rather not use Angelics if possible…
On budget just get full nat set, no brainer. Nat claw has ignore target defense, which pretty much solves the AR problem. Yes no effect against uniques, but you can kill the minions and blow the corpses up. Charms are just trap skillers.
If I use 2 Natalya claws. Do I get the damage buff against demons and undead from the second claw?
No you don’t. Only skills and defensive mods count on the second claw.
Okay thx,
So, first I played with an ETH death ettin axe , Forti, storm shield (waiting for a Jah) , gorerider, loh,angelic combo, full trap sk. Haven’t maxed claw mastery.
Now I tested Natalya’s set.
Maxed claw mastery, socked Nat Armor with 3 40ed jewels. Second claw for now is a bartucs.
The dmg against demons and undead feels higher, especially with the blade shield, she is also more stable. But now it comes to the choice of the second claw. Because I want to stay with Nat claw in the first place, because of the damge to undead and demons. So if I take a plaque claw, the death strike want work? What would be BIS? Maybe a chaos claw for ww and the magical dmg on it ? I use a act2 might Merc with reapers.
DS on the second claw also doesn’t work. But +skills from plague do work. Before you have a Phoenix, plague (or any 5+ blade fury weapons) is better than head hunter/lance guard, which is better than bartuc/spirit, damage-wise. Elemental/magical damage on second claw also doesn’t work, unless you want to use WW (which is way worse than blade fury on a pvm sin imo). Reapers will take care of most physical immunes. When in rare occasions reaper can’t break the immunity, it’s not worth the time.
I have written a blade sin guide here, too, which explains how to convert all mods on a weapon or non-weapon to equivalent skills, for damage calculations. Take a look if you are interested.
I think nat’s claw + bartuc is also a good choice, even without full set. If you are lazy just use full nat’s set before you have both fortitude and phoenix.
Blade sin easily beats any ghost. I can show you the way.
My sin’s name is Blade on Ladder
i think blade sin is not stronger than trap sins. much more problems because traps are not melee… its a funny build til now but in hell… slow…really slow progression until you find a VERY good Weapon.
sure sc player dont have problems like that… 
I disagree. There is an easy-to-find weapon (lawbringer) for blade sin, which is easier than +5 LS claws for trap sins. Some people even think lawbringer as a good end-game weapon, even though I would disagree, mainly because of its RIP effect.
Bladesin is much more better than a trapsin. Just take Natalya’s set and shred everything in seconds. With Nat set you get enough protection even with bartucs. You can Tele kick in any monster group and the bladeshield will keep you alive with around 30% lifeleech.
das sagst du so einfach. ich hab ja nix^^ 
wie gesagt. self found. da kannste nich einfach mal was ausm lager holen *g muss damit klar kommen was ich hab. (und nein ich beschwer mich ja garnich.^^)