For what?
You can see here:
No runewords involved, not a single one.
That’s rad! I never played the Assassin when I was a kid, but the class has definitely become my favourite over the past 5 years. Especially the martial arts, I like that there’s a degree of skill when it comes to charge management and targeting the right monster, depending on the spec. So there’s always room for improvement when it comes to your gameplay and dps.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/nw0206kt
all specs currently set to fight Fire Enchanted+Stone Skin Lister the Tormentor
Personally, I think Tiger Tail is worth using both the fire and physical Sunder charms with. Some food for thought though: I think there is some merit in running a 4x +3/-5% Fire Facet Monarch (+5/-5 would be best) over Phoenix in this case. The 350→400% enhanced dmg is super diluted by Tiger Strike because they add to the same multiplier. So going from ~2800% TS dmg to ~3200% is an increase of ~14% dmg. The +Fire dmg from Facets is a brand new multiplier for the equation, so its providing 12-20% more dmg, depending on +% Facet quality. So they balance out there somewhat, and it does yield slightly less -% fire rests, but the redemption aura sucks up corpses from Death Sentry and you’re using both the physical and fire sunder charms, so that means Death Sentry is ready to go at full power. Just seems like Phoenix’s benefits don’t quite outweigh the redemption aura cancelling DS.
I think the Claw can be variable and swapped around. I think Plague is good but, If you can find a Magic Claw with:
Amplify dmg
+3 martial art or +2 assassin skills
2 sockets (Larzuk)
I think you could justify swapping to Atma’s for a combined 9.75% chance to proc amp dmg. You have to swing 3 times to charge up and the kick can apply it too, so there’s a decent chance to proc it, ~33% chance from a full cycle of 4 hits. Overall though I think Plague+Phoenix would be more than sufficient, and Crazymage’s Full Nats spec is actually very well round and powerful, its dmg output is definitely comparable to a “gg setup” for much cheaper. The set is also extremely durable with crazy resists, dmg reduction, and dual leach. You obv miss out on teleport, but depending on where you farm/how you play, it might not be that big of a deal.
When it comes to Phoenix Strike, I think it suffers from the same issues as FoF/CoT/BoI in regards to Sunder charms. You could totally use a sunder charm and pick an element, such as lightning or fire, but when using Infinity+Plague you reduce a sundered monsters resists by only -28 combined, vs -142 resists to all the other resists. You might as well forgo the sunder charms and just release the appropriate element every time you run into an immune. I’d definitely still rock dual plague for PS.
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I think CoT can be combined with a sunder charm (crack of heavens) for a complete build but it isn’t going to be cheap. The thing is infinity works at 1/5, -17%, vs sundered enemies, with double plague, you also have 40% chance for lower resist. Add to that a facetted griffon and you get very powerful damage output against ALL types of enemies. With dual claws, you can use dragon claw for release which is even stronger than dtail for CoS. If you use fade instead of BoS, 25-29% damage reduction, capped res with enigma would be possible. 60% claw block is also possible.
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It definitely seems more viable than Fire and Ice. As you mentioned, when we were discussing it prior, Ice’s freeze shattering corpses causes some issues in terms of dps, but I ran into something I didn’t consider with fist of fire as well. Since FoF converts all your dmg to fire, you don’t leech any resources at all. You kind of have to take a break from time to time to and spam DC to get some life back. But yea CoT definitely seems to be the move viable with sunder charms out of the 4 elemental claw skills. I just really wish they would make the minimum dmg scale similar to max dmg for all 3 charges, and remove NHD on Nova so monsters can be hit by Nova and at least 1 charged bolt. Just sucks when skill completely whiffs and deals next to no damage.
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I tested dragon claw version of CoT build in hero editor, it is very solid. You get 6 charges released instead of 3 with DC. By using fade, you can’t reach last IAS BP with dragon claw which is a good thing in this case (NHD).
Such a shame BoI does so little damage and shatters corpses. That would’ve been the ultimate elemental martial artist with nightwings etc.
FoF loses outright vs dragontail in element damage. Even if it worked right it would’ve been inferior.