You don’t need that much ias with Natalya’s claw. Socketing it with an ETH rune would take care of hitting boss monsters. -25% works against all minions, -12.5% vs act bosses.
The negative part of rainbow facets works with elemental skills. You could socket them into Natalya’s armor for example.
Fury is an extremely expensive but damaging option in a right claw base as main weapon.
Dragon Tail adds parts of physical dmg as fire dmg to physical dmg itself. With the right boots like upped gores or shadow dancers you can unleash enough dmg to one hit diablo in hell modus (60k). In 2.4, finishers are going to always hit when charged up and that’s the most dmging skill in the game when charged up. The skill tree would be 20 CoT, 20 PS, 20 Tiger Strike, 20 Dragon Tail. No monster is immune to fire, physical and light dmg at the same time.
this is to maintain max aps when decrepified/holy frozen, completely negating the slowing IAS affect. With that said, without the shael, you still maintain over 3+ aps when slowed, so much as it does slightly slow down your aps, maybe its a bit overkill. And yeah, eth rune is so undervalued for melee specs, such a good rune.
I’m working on a video for that. I did testing on this about a year ago when min-maxing the MA assassin, and my personal experiences found otherwise. My tests found that both +/- lightning dmg were not working at all. I know lots of websites say it does, its what made me want to test it in the first place it just seemed weird that + dmg from gear didn’t work, but - resists did. Either way my testing seemed to show different results so I’m making a video to open discussion on it.
good call, I forget about that claw a lot.
I’m aware of this spec, it’s not a phoenix strike assassin though, it’s a completely different spec. I’ve personally always called it Tiger Tail, and yeah when paired with CoT, it’s near unstoppable. A lot easier to play as well.
I dislike Death Sentry, especially for higher player counts.
I use my Shadow Warrior for Phoenix Strike (RMB) and Dragon Talon (LMB). Sure the AI ain’t perfect, but the she still manages to release a triple charged PS relatively often imho. She can clear most mob-packs by herself, which is nice if you should struggle against certain mobs (e.g. negative resistances in hell on first char).
Finally, she can get pretty decent PS dmg from better synergies with endgear. Her synergies ain’t capped at lvl 20 and can be higher. While her PS level will be lower than from your character, her synergy levels will be higher. I’m looking forward to see how well she performs once I have better gear on my sin (and more lvls. just started her recently and play her mostly “self-found” to emulate ladder start. Playing on act2 hell atm and she is still having a blast).
Definitely not a bad idea, I used to do this as well, but I haven’t had a chance to explore this again with the patch changes. I never considered that’d she’d have 3 charges to spend now too, that would definitely help her out a ton.
My only complaint, and why I stopped caring about her PS usage, is that she only obtains the synergy bonuses if she uses the skill at least once after being summon. But if she dies or gets re-summoned by accident, she has to use the skills again. I found with only 1 skill points invested, she dies a little to easily, and I’d constantly be having her setup her synergies only to get 1 shot by the next elite/boss.
Skill levels of skills used are stored and can provide synergy bonuses to skills used afterwards. Synergy bonus is not restricted to maximum level 20. [6]
But yea, if you max her out like you were saying, I bet she could become much more durable and be a fairly reliable source of extra damage. Let me know how it goes, you could even download my single player file and use a reset token to give at whirl in single player.
As I’m typing this all out I’m really starting to think the Shadow Warrior could use a tiny bit of love:
Make her skill levels automatically be assigned when summoned, instead of having to use the skills once, but she still only uses your L/R Click assignments
Give a higher casting priority to passive buff skills like: BoS, Fade, Venom, Blade Shield, etc. So often you sit there waiting for her to cast one of those skills but instead she charges into the monsters before buffing up
Give her a pair of boots, for her kicking skills. She spawns with 2x weapons that deal ~12 avg dmg, I think she should spawn with Light Plated Boots for 12 avg kick damage. The 12 dmg seems tiny, but it would help her kicks out a lot
Yeah I have spent 20P into Warrior, Phoenix Strike and I’m pushing fire as second synergy after lightning. For leveling I needed to put 5 hard points into Dragon talon to get 13 P with gear and the 3 kicks. With Endgrear all synergies will be maxed and anything else relevant (Including talon) will be 1 point wonders.
Teaching skills can sometimes become really annoying. But the warrior can learn faster than a master will run all your important skills if you know what you are doing (to some degree).
A few things I noticed (back from d2) about the AI using buffs and regular skills:
The first chance to cast a buff is while approaching an enemy. There seems to be a certain range or time window when she casts buffs.
Once she is in melee range of her current target, she won’t cast buffs until the enemy dies.
When her current target dies and her new target ain’t in melee range (not sure about melee range, but it seems so to me that it plays a role), there is the possibility that she might cast a buff spell (!!!). I even managed to do this sometimes via quickcast, but it requires timing and and the AI may still just say no and do something else like an autoattack…^^
Warrior also uses skills you are currently using via “Quickcasting” (confirmed on keyboard + mouse; dunno how it is on controller). Since my merc is still running around with meditation, I tend to spam a buff spell via quickcast while letting enemies and warrior approach each other.
Ideally your Warrior only relies on a single buff spell. 2 is also mangeable with some duration (enough skill points). 3 will start to get to annoying unless you have a good duration on all 3. For my current build I mostly go for the attack speed buff and sometimes switch to Fade if she should feel squishy (on first run when you are behind in lvls/gear for the maps or for higher player counts).
Teaching the synergy skills for PS is best done by blinding an enemy pack and scrolling via mouse-wheel trough the skills, while getting visual confirmation that she used the skill. Takes less than 30 seconds. If you are lucky about 10 seconds. This is really much easier than getting her to buff herself. If you manage to teach her Burst of Speed on approach, it will help to shorten the time needed.
Dunno if you are aware of these things, but I wanted to share em since there is lil info about the AI on the net available.
I can’t say how far my MA sin project will go. I have not much spare time for excessive D2R play & testing recently, and when I get to play, it is more chilled atm. But I plan to maybe use the build as starter build for the next season. We’ll see how it turns out and how much I play.
Hey Soup thanks so much for the guide. Very in depth.
Now that 2.4 is out, what are your thoughts on Dragon Claw? Instead of spamming meteors, do you think it’s worth building two combo points to release a chain lightning and meteor with one Dragon Claw?
Also, 15% physical damage per talent point sounds strong.
I try to use lightning as the main attack for the most part, and sometimes utilize frozen orb a fair bit too for its freeze. When used with dragon claw you can charge to max and press once for Orb and Lightning, or charge twice and release lightning and meteor. It definitely works, it bypassing attack rating checks is super handy as well.
I’ve downloaded your char and played a bit with your suggested build and then tried some other stuff too in Single Player.
My conclusion is that Dragon Talon + Crushing Blow is highly recommend for a Phoenix Strike build. I really like that you can just forget about immunities most of the time, while releasing all 3 charges at once.
Crushing Blow helps against champions and (act) bosses very good and is also very nice for higher player counts. On my own self-played/farmed char I run 45% CB atm (trying to get more atm) and it really completes the build (imho).
The playsstyle is kinda inverted. Try to preload 3 charges at the end of pack and approach the next champion/boss with Dragon Talon. Crushing Blow will have the most effect this way, clearing the champion/boss pack and most of its trash mobs. Pick one of the remaining trash mobs to preload PS charges and move on to the next champion/boss pack.
When mobs have higher HP (e.g. higher player count or act bosses) the preload strategy still works very well. When the main target (champion/boss) doesn’t die immediately the fire dmg kicks in. When the fire dmg is there, CB should have done the main part of its damage (since it loses value due to scaling with current HP) and now the combined dmg of PS (mainly the lightning and fire dmg) and DT can take care of the rest.
While the build seems to be a jack of all trades and master of none (hybrid dmg) it has its value imho. You can farm anywhere and anything. If you invest into Enigma, act boss speedruns (on any playercount) should be easily be manageable.
I haven’t done any Uber test so far. (maybe someone else wants to test that?^^) but I think with the right gear they should also be no big issue.
Imho the biggest pro side here is, farm anywhere and everything you want while still having a somewhat comparable clear time. Sure specialized builds will farm faster in their niche, but only in their niche places. This build is flexible and thus can be used to join any kind of farming group, without being a burden at any moment of the game.
The new Plague claw runeword, yay or nay for Phoenix? Would you need to skip Weapon Block to ensure you get hit as much as possible to maximize that Lower Res chance?
Plague is gonna be great for this spec imo. I’d still keep weapon block, it’ll proc enough as is, and with conviction already up, it’s just a bonus when it happens, but the weapons will be great overall imo. Potential to have +5 to PS, as well as other nifty mods. If you want to run venom, 2x plague will give you a nice -46 psn res on top of the Lower Resist proc. Cleansing will also make you pretty much immune to poison and curses which really helps to ignore Decrepify
So do facets/-resists like phoenix and griffons work with PStrike or not? I know they dont break immunity. I’m talking with infinity of course.(I have been running toons up to Larzuk and I need to know what to socket) Have we explored NEXT HIT DELAY with releasing multiple charges? Namlely with Dragon Talon . Thanks for the guide. I always prefer in depth written guides or primers over things like icy viens or maxroll that just tells you all GG runewords. lol
I had a discussion with some people in private and they explained how some skills work, and provided some links to reference. It seems I was mistaken with my tests and “- enemy resists” from Griffon’s and Facets does work with Phoenix Strike, “+ elemental dmg” does not work at all though. It has to do with how “missiles” store information when they get generated and the fact some flags were missed in programming the skill.
NHD applies to all missile skills when a monster is granted it’s temporary immunity, so if a monster is hit by your Lightning Storm, but you also released lvl 2 Claws of Thunder at the same time; anyone hit by your Lightning Storm would be immune to the Lightning Nova from CoT, and vice versa. If a monster is hit by the Nova first and then immediately followed up by a Lightning Bolt from the Storm, they will only take dmg from the Nova and the bolt will pass through doing no damage.
When we were discussing the guide with tasty soup there were no sundered charms. The problem with tigertail was when a mob was fire OR physical immune you did zero damage. That is changed now. There is no need to go hybrid. Sin is one of the few classes which can profit from using two sundered charms. OP has to update his guide, too. You can now achieve 315000 damage per second which ALWAYS hits!!!
This is the BIS build without enigma because I don’t think she needs one with dragon flight. Surplus points were sunk into claw mastery for 95% hit chance and fade for damage reduction. We don’t need death sentry due to the use of phoenix monarch. 1 point into blade fury for troublesome enemies. Also, infinity works just with -17% with fire immunes while decrepify works at full strength after being sundered. A reaper’s toll merc increases physical damage more. https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/y60106ep
Thanks for the reply and the build link. I’m guessing this build wouldn’t work well on a budget? I’m looking to play one class/build that does it all, mostly due to time constraints. I’m a new player, started D2R about a month ago and have been enjoying my level 84 Trapsin, but it hasn’t been super viable for MF routes, so I’ve sort of hit a wall in wealth progression. Assassin in general is my jam and I think I lean more toward Martial Arts as my playstyle. I only went with Trapsin at the time because it was supposedly stronger.
I am about to disappoint you. Trapsin is the strongest mob clearing sin build. The only upgrade you can have is enigma and infinity. I’d be doing cows like no tomorrow as a trapsin. She can generate there HRs and uniques (run with a 4x p topaz armor, skully is prefered though).
MA sin is no way an upgrade over a trapsin. For fun only, you can make a phoenix strike sin on a bugdet with natalya’s set or bartuc’s + jade talon combo.
You need natalya’s set, upgrade the boots to boneweave ones. Use BoS instead of Fade because the set and string of ears already grant you damage reduction. Resistances with jade talon shouldn’t be a problem. The hard is getting natalya’s mark and crappy fire facets to stick everywhere.
Ah well that’s a shame but not a huge deal I guess. Trapsin is still fun. I was thinking about trying to mix some MA into it so I get to do more than stand around watching my traps kill everything.
I guess Enigma is needed in any build that isn’t a Sorc if you want optimal MF routes. A disheartening drawback to the game as MFing is really the only viable thing left to do. D2 is a slot machine.
Kicksin, you can make a kick-trap hybrid. Instead of fireblast, put all the remaining points into dragon talon and wear double upped goblin toes. Make your trap switch then a black flail with a good shield. Natalya’s tigertail sin I described can two shot diablo in hell
it’s not a phoenix strike assassin though, it’s a completely different spec. I’ve personally always called it Tiger Tail, and yeah when paired with CoT, it’s near unstoppable. A lot easier to play as well.
