Howdy! Typing this on mobile so forgive the formatting.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion back and forth about flurry or TB, Pen Shot or Barrage etc, and just wanted to give you guys a tip. Run 2 core skills and alternate between them every 3 combo points for massive combat buffs. Treat it like a WoW Rogue in Diablo.
My current build: Shadowstep Poison Imbue PTrap TB Puncture Flurry
Specialization: Combo Points
There are an absolute ton of Paragon Nodes and legendaries that buff the damage and non combat bonuses of combo points, and those bonuses last a long enough time to have 100% uptime in extended fights. I am sure it works with other combinations of core skills, but the one that I am running is between Flurry and TB. Spending 3 combo points on Flurry will give you upwards of 100% attack speed with all the corresponding paragon nodes and legendaries, allowing you to generate combo points even faster. With a full build, you are generating about 3 combo points per second, allowing for a core skill cast every 2 seconds. “But why wouldn’t I just run a flurry build? What is TB for?” You may ask. The answer: Move Speed, CD reduction for poisoning uptime, and raw, disgusting hot wet damage.
“If TB is my main damage move, what is flurry for? Shouldn’t I run dash or shadows for survivability?” The attack speed and self healing of flurry (damage to vulnerable enemy heal, killing a vulnerable enemy heal) will easily and effectively replace the sustain provided by almost any other move you could have in this slot. Not to mention that Flurry still hits like a Mack Truck on fire. This damage is further buffed by being concurrent with your TB returns, effectively allowing you to hit enemies with 2 main damage moves per cast of flurry, just as you cast Flurry, your TB should be returning and orbiting, multiplied if you have a poison imbue on both casts, this combo is extremely effective.
“Why am I running twisting blades for CD reduction, didn’t that get nerfed into inviability?” Yes, since the nerf, TB’s cd reduction is greatly reduced, but it is not useless. Due to the greater number of twisting blades you’ll be casting by generating tons of combo points in a short time, and due to the already short cooldowns of poison trap and poison imbue, TB’s reduced cooldowns still do restore a proportionally acceptable amount of cooldown to those already quickly regenerating moves.
“But you’re just running the meta TB build but with flurry instead of dash or death trap! This isn’t an original build” Wrong. This is a combo points build. Both TB and flurry are central to this working smoothly and effectively.
Here is generally how your rotation will go. Shadowstep in, imbue, trap, puncture 3x, flurry, puncture 3x, TB, shadowstep to edge of pack. Imbue, trap, puncture 3x, Flurry, puncture 3x, TB, shadowstep. Rinse repeat.
This build is night and day more powerful than either TB alone or Flurry alone, and I believe other effective combos of core skills likely exist as well, you could run the energy regen basic with close combat, and similarly use a melee and a ranged core skill and alternate between them. This could also work with pure range builds. Long and short is, don’t ignore those non damage bonuses on combo points! They’re extremely powerful.
I hope this has been Food for Thought! Thanks for reading.