I have the same hard time figuring a good build as you. have restarted my assasin twice until now, i was so unhappy with my points. At the least i can now give you a few tips how not to waste points until you are certain about what you want. 1) dont put points into CM if you are still uncertain about wheter you want heavy weapon, or claw-sin. 2) dont put points into WB unless you are certain you want dual claw. 3) dont raise either of CM, BoS, WB as long as you dont have a good estimate on how many skillers your sin will have. my biggest error was raising these, than finding a bunch of skiller items, and my points becoming almost useless due to diminishing returns. (well, CM is the safest of those three...for BoS brain hurting break point calculations are needed as well)
Now of course all these are useless advice if you go for a straight trapsin.
For a martial sin, i am trying to figure a good 2-claw build that capitalizes on CoT-Phoenix. (though i have serious doubts about CoT doing enough damage in late hell, so this might be a bad idea) 20 will go into both, SM will get enough points so it is 17 with skillers (or as an alternative, i will raise warrior to 15, most people hate it, but for an elementalist sin it might be really nice) DS will get at least 1, CM will only get (more than one) points if i have bad AR issues, and the rest will go into DS/FoF so i have some fire damage. (of course shadow cloak, mindblast, wb, bos will get their points and possible fade and venom, but i am not sure about those yet)
advantages:
- you can spend 50 safe points (phoenix, cot and prereqs and 1 pointers) while you are making your mind up.
- i have played up to lev47 with a similar built before restarting and it works like charm on nm players8 but that means _nothing_. one does not build a char for nm
- low str/dex needs means a bunch of vitality
- versatile damage (lightning, fire, physical. and there is no triple immunes)
- dual claw means 2 charges/hit, with FoF and CoT you can release 4 charges on every third hit. (or 6 on every fifth)
- dual claw also means less AR issues, less points into CM, more points into else
disadvantages:
- i am really uncertain about this char working on late hell. i will have to try. with everything having insane high resistances, my elemental damages may be too low to be effective.
- vulnarable compared to a shield-sin. not only lower blocking, but you will certainly have a difficult time getting enough resist. (without sacraficing some nice skillers or else)
- not really a good boss fighter build (especially compared to a tiger-sin). but might still be a nice tomb raider/den runner, and as for wsk...well Baal is not the hard part anyhow.
- hard to pick a useful merc. might doesn't help elemental dam. defiance is more useful with builds which already have a good base defense. hf is rendered somewhat redundant by cloak of shadows. blessed aim won't be needed if you have the right gear, in a 2 claws build (Note: that is just my opinion, for ex. i have chatted with Nightfish recently in a mp game and he said the exact opposite about blessed aim. ) archers or mages are always an option though.
speaking of Nightfish he has a tiger/LS/DS hybrid guide on the site somewhere , and that char really sounds like a lot of fun to me. you might want to read it and try it instead of listening to the nonesense i speak
