New-Old Assasin, seeking advice.

[Grawr]

New-Old Assasin, seeking advice.

East Softcore Ladder, character name: Talons

Alrighty, to start off; I've made two assassins before my current one- each in a different era of playing Diablo II (divided by dark times of broken discs and decievers such as Titan Quest). They were both dualclaw assassins, and I thought they rocked. Then I tried out those crappy-looking kicks, and holy heck I'm dealing so much damage it makes me giggle!

So, I've got this PvM kick assassin started; she's level 51 now, mastered Tigerstrike and Dragontail, and has one point in BoS, Fade, Venom, Claw Mastery, Cobra Strike (a wasted point, I think, but that's okay), Dragonflight, and Shadowmaster. I have five points sitting unused at this time, and have no idea where to go with them. I was going to go Venom, but I've been reading things that make me wary of that. I'm dealing 8702-13k damage, with Venom applied and three TS charges. I'm not really into traps, but I've hardly even looked at them and apparently one uses corpse explosion; sounds nifty, but if one monsters is dead, chances are a lot are from a Dtail, so it doesn't seem that practical. My shadow tends to either do fine or die suddenly and horribly, so I'm not sure if investing points into her is worth it.

My stats are str:125 dex:226 vit:40 energy:34, that's with item bonuses; going to be putting the rest into vitality at this point- usually my life is fine, but when I get hit, it's hard and a lifesteal isn't always triggered in time. Wielding Bartucs, Sigon's shield and belt, Atma's Wail, a +1 Asn Skills circlet, a +2 MA ammy, Venom Fist, Natalya's Boots, and Manald Heal and Angelic Halo. I have a Jade Talon in storage, but I'll probably trade it off. A Wizardspike too, probably going to trade it (got it for three Amn runes!), but the idea of having an insta-near-immune in my secondary weapon slot is tempting (currently occupied by a Shadowfang for looking cool/easy to spot in trades).

So the meat of this topic is: Where should I go next with this assassin? All stat points to vitality, but what about those five burning skill points (and future ones)?

EDIT - I also need to research this "upgrade" business; never tried it.

 

[PrkChopXpress]

Shadow Master is a great tank, and would be pts well spent. Ideally, you'll want slvl17 after +skills so that she spawns with a full accompaniment of rare gear. If you don't want to devote that many points to her that your choice, but you won't regret it if you do.

Venom is basically an all or nothing. Either you max it and pre-buff it as high as possible, or you don't bother with it at all. It's up to you, but it's a perfectly valid PI solution. I'm guessing you're still in NM so you haven't run into too many immune issues yet. Just remember, DTail's damage is calculated from the actual physical damage done. So if something is immune to physical damage, neither TS or DTail will do anything to them. So you're going to want to think about how you want to deal with them.

Another really good PI solution is Death Sentry. I completely ignored traps for a while, too. I much prefer melee, so I didn't even bother looking into any of the traps tree. That was a mistake. Even if you only want to use it as a 1pt-wonder, it'd be a very good idea.

And a point in Cobra Strike is never a waste. Even if you only charge it once, you can't really beat 40% LL (and probably much higher than that after +skills). Especially if you don't have a huge life pool.

As for your gear, Bartuc's is great and the +2MA ammy it pretty good, but even on a pretty tiny budget most of your other gear could/should be replaced.

Nat's boots are terrible boots for a DTailer. At your level you'd ideally want Goreriders, but they're not cheap. But really, any elite boots (excluding Myrmidon Greaves because of their ridiculous str req) would be better, even plain white ones. Another temporary alternative would be a pair of IK boots (you can trade for them for like 3 or 4 pgems).

Making "Rhyme" in a Grim shield would be a nice cheap upgrade over your Sig shield and it'll give you a source of "cannot be frozen" that it seems you're lacking (which is a very good thing to have). If you're looking for some resists, Moser's is cheap (a few pgems) and socketed with a couple pdiamonds offers pretty good res and decent blocking.

If you're using IK boots, IK belt would be a nice cheap belt (just another 3 or 4 pgems), and even if you're not using the boots it's a decent belt. You can get a String of Ears fairly cheap too, and some more LL and damage reduction is always a good thing.

There really aren't that many good helms that you can find for cheap. Nat's helm is ok. And a Peasant Crown or a "Lore" helm are both cheap and they both give the +1 skills your circlet gives but they also both have other useful mods. Guillaume's Face is more expensive than any of the other cheap stuff I've mentioned, but it's not that expensive and is really good.

Decent gloves are another item that's kinda hard to get cheap. Venom Grip gloves aren't bad, so you could probably just keep using them, but Bloodfist would probably be better. If you're using Fade instead of BoS, Magnus' Skin, or IK gloves (if you're using one of the other IK set items) both have 20+ ias. You could also try to shop a pair of +2MA or +3MA gloves from the vendors. At clvl51, I don't think you can buy +3MA gloves yet but they'll be possible in another 4 lvls or so.

Don't think that you need to upgrade all your gear as soon as possible, especially if you're having fun and haven't run into any difficulty yet. But once you get to Hell you'll definitely want to have at least some of that stuff upgraded.

 

[Grawr]

Thanks for the advice, going to see if I can get any of that stuff with my Wizardspike and IK helm; seems like the spike's gone down in value since I last played, but it still seems like an "I win" for or against a caster to me, with the 50% FCR for and the 75 resists against. Going to go ahead and put into my Shadowmaster first, NM cows kill her in seconds, still eying Venom.

EDIT - Have another dilemma. Just found some totally unremarkable gloves- 13 defense, 25% reduce poison time- except that they give +2 MA. My current gloves give 100 more defense, make me 50% immune to poison... not sure if the +2 is worth the lack of anything else decent.

 

[Zigot_HD]

Laying of hand is always good for PvM. ( until you find one perfect gloves with skills, ias, stats, resist, lech etc.. )

Full Natalya set is also decently cheap and it gives ton of bonus once you reach the req lvls.

 

[PrkChopXpress]

Nat's boots are aweful for a DTailer. But you're right about LoH, I forgot about them.

And I'd definitely use the +2MA gloves over Venom Grip. Keep checking the shops for a better pair, and once you get to Hell I usually ID pretty much every pair of gloves I find just hoping and praying for those "perfect" gloves Zigot is talking about.

And you should probably get about 10 pgems for the Wizzy. First thing you should do is find a pair of IK boots (if you're lucky you'll find them for 2 or 3 pgems). They're the most important piece of equipment you need to upgrade. They'll be a huge increase to your damage. Your 8k-13k dmg should jump to something like 13k-16k (I didn't do any math, that's just a rough guess-timate off the top of my head). With what's left over you should easily be able to get a SoE and hopefully a 2os Grim shield (although you'll have to get lucky and find good deals for everything).

By the way, while your visiting the vendors, make sure you check out their katars. You're looking for as many useful shadow skills as possible. A pair of +3 Shadow Disp. katars will really help (ideally they'll also have +3 Fade/BoS and +3 Shadow Master, but don't hold your breath waiting for them to show up).

 

[Grawr]

Got the IK boots, ditched the Nat's for a Lidless Wall, spent ten minutes convincing this guy that Lidless Wall for his Peasant Crown was a good trade. Still pursuing Gore Riders... but everyone who has them only wants an Um rune. Damage spiked, though- 12k-18k. Now, something that confuses me: Is the 12k-18k applied to every monster in the Dtail radius, or is it distributed equally?

 

[PrkChopXpress]

I said that Goreriders wouldn't be cheap. ;-p

The damage shown on the character screen is the sum of the physical and and AoE fire damage. If you have a little time, you may want to give the "Kicking Basics" sticky a read-through. The math can be a little tough to follow, but the rest of the information is pretty useful.

I just ran the numbers assuming:
str:125
dex:226
TS slvl:29
DTail slvl:29

Each 3 charge TS / DTail should be doing 10466-16231 total damage (not counting any other sources of dmg like elemental charms and stuff). That should be 2492-3866 physical damage to the single target, and 7974-12371 AoE fire damage.

I'm coming up 2k damage short of what you're seeing, so I'm guessing that you have some combination of elemental, off-weapon ED, or Aura ED that accounts for the rest. Or my that could just be a little off. Either way, that should give you a decent idea of what kind of damage is being done and how.