Coming back to play after a two year absence...starting an Assassin. I haven't played since the days of Firewall Sorcing, and my friends and I are going to go through the quest by ourselves. I pulled the "Assassin" paper out of the hat, so here I am. I'm planning on putting about 10 into Claw Mastery, Maxing Tiger Strike, putting about 10 into Phoenix and Venom Strike, and then putting as much possible into Death Sentry. I'm not too sure on what all these "synergies" and stuff are. Is there anything I should be looking out for or general strategies?
Welcome to the forums I think you need to focus your build a bit more...10 points in Phoenix Strike/Venom isn't really going to accomplish anything. Most skills need to be maxed and have their synergies maxed in order to be effective. So pick 1-2 skills to focus on. This could be maxed Phoenix Strike and maxing one of its synergies, I believe Claws Of Thunder gives the most damage, or focusing on Venom, which will give you a bit more skill points to play around with. Also in 1.10 Shadow Warrior/Master are very capable minions, if you put enough points in them, they'll even kill stuff! Mind Blast and Cloack Of Shadows are also very important skills for every melee assasin, use them liberally. Although Death Sentry is a very good skill, I personally would only put 1 point there, since most monsters tend to stand relatively close together, will also give you more points to play with. Try checking out the assasin build thread... http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=126543 Good luck Lastly I just want to say that Traps assasins are very viable now. A lightning trapper is probably the most powerful assasin character out there, you could give that a try too, although she's a bit more passive than a melee sin.
Synergy is a skill that grants a bonus to another skill. This bonus increases as you add more skill points into the synergy (please note that +skills from equipment has no effect on synergy). For example: Shock Web and Death Sentry are synergies for Lightning Sentry; points spent in these synergies will increase the damage of Lightning Sentry. Synergy is very important in some builds. The current incarnation of D2 has monsters with very high amounts of life, and in order to get skills with sufficient damage to kill them, you need to focus your build somewhat. A Phoenix Striker should probably max Phoenix Strike and at least one (preferably 2?) of its synergies, and concentrate on elemental damage rather than putting so many points into Tiger Strike. Conversely, if you want to focus on physical damage then don't bother with Phoenix Strike. Death Sentry is a bit of a 1pt wonder, along with Mind Blast and Blade Fury. These skills don't need to be maxed, they are already useful at just 1pt. Venom I believe should be maxed if you're going to use it at all, and probably needs Trang oul's Claw to go with it.
1 point death sentry only, either max tiger or phoenix, not both, max venom. BoS slvl >= 8 or so. Put some points in a kick. U might like to try something that didn't work before .10 though, if you've been away that long, like u could get some crushing blow and use blade fury. Also put at least 1 point in CoS.
