[3.0] The Azure Knight, Assassin version (Blade Flurry/Frost Blades/Life/Crit/Conversion)

bugverwirrt:
1. By default, you can only have 1 active curse on the enemy. You can increase this limit with items, Occultist ascendancy or a node on the passive tree. If you have 2 curses but only limit of 1, then only one will be effective.

2. You are losing additional bonuses you could get from an offhand weapon, like over 120% increased damage and some crit chance with Doryani's. You would be able to either free up 3 points on the tree (and maybe take different pathing if you want) or change gloves for Shaper's or some very nice rare. However, in the end your dps will drop compared to Singularity or Doryani's.
Moonbenders is alright for builds that run even more uniques then this one, they need extra resistances on the gloves to reach the cap, or builds that take completely different pathing then we are and aren't anywhere near Winter Spirit.

3. Since we use Elemental Focus support, any type of damage is really superficial in practice, as we cannot Shock or Freeze anyway. Main difference between Light/Cold and Cold builds are that L/C can be cheaper to get end game armour due to colors and availability, and normal damage is slightly higher. Cold version, however, uses Penetration gem as well as Frost Bomb, meaning that its performance is a lot less affected by map mods increasing monster resistances or just monsters with high resistances in general (ghosted, uniques, some rares or essence monsters).

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I don't have the Perfect Form, therefore I don't have a free Arctic Armour which means I can't use Blasphemy+Elemental Weakness. Instead, what I have been doing is spamming it when I am around mobs. Is that the right thing to do? Or would you recommend that I drop Hatred for now and use the B+E combo instead? Obviously I would love a Perfect Form but it is very expensive. So I hope for a lucky drop or someone very generous to gift me one or sell me one cheap. hahahaha

I have yet to properly update the build again, having leveled with this build and starting a league with Blade Flurry twice now I've learned a few things, and there is some additional information that could be useful to other players.
I'll update the leveling and gearing up section in the main witch thread, and add more information to alternative Ascendancies sub-threads from the main thread.

Now, back to your question:
Personally, since Perfect Form is quite expensive at the start of the league, I believe that just buying a corrupted 6 link armour might be the best bet, until you farm enough currency for Perfect Form, which would be an end-game goal.
Since we don't have free AA anymore, best thing would be to just run Blasphemy and Hatred, as Arctic Armour is just a sweet addition, but we can play without it. On the other hand, bonuses from the curse or aura are way too strong to pass up.

If, for whatever reason, your dps was very low, then manual casting of the curse would be fine. However I haven't heard from anyone that their dps was low enough that they had the time to cast curses in between monster packs, so Blasphemy+Hatred is probably the best bet :)

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Now, back to your question:
Personally, since Perfect Form is quite expensive at the start of the league, I believe that just buying a corrupted 6 link armour might be the best bet, until you farm enough currency for Perfect Form, which would be an end-game goal.
Since we don't have free AA anymore, best thing would be to just run Blasphemy and Hatred, as Arctic Armour is just a sweet addition, but we can play without it. On the other hand, bonuses from the curse or aura are way too strong to pass up.

If, for whatever reason, your dps was very low, then manual casting of the curse would be fine. However I haven't heard from anyone that their dps was low enough that they had the time to cast curses in between monster packs, so Blasphemy+Hatred is probably the best bet :)

Awesome, Thank you very much! I went back to my stash and found The Essence Worm Unset Ring that dropped for me a while back. I wonder if I should put hatred in there and run all 3 auras that way. The only downfall is I lose resistance from my current rings. Maybe I should sell it to save up for Perfect Form.

How does the frost blades variant deal with elemental reflect? How does either build deal with it? I am getting one shot with no idea how to cope, now that we made all of our damage elemental.

You cannot just attack these monsters head on. Make sure you are only clicking once on the monster and watch your lifepool. Try to lure as many trash monsters as you can so that you also leech back as much life as you can with each hit. If anything fails, you can let your totem pound on it to kill it, or simply skip it. Having your Atziri flask ready is also helpful as it increases life you leech with every hit, but not the reflected damage. Taste of Hate also helps as it increases your maximum cold resistance.
If you are having major issues with reflect, you can use pantheon power to help you out, personally I didn't have much problem with them, just have to be careful and keep your eyes open (they are easy to spot, so you know when you have to slow down).

Well, that answered all my questions regarding the gear and playstyle! Thank you again. I guess I will stick with Elemental weakness then and maybe switch in enfeeble when I get killed from mobpacks too quickly.


If you got a few minutes to spare and could take a look at my current gearset, I would be happy to hear, what you think I should upgrade next for the biggest impact.
My next skillpoints will go into the life nodes and the jewel Slot next to Vaal Impact and as soon as I found the last missing Trial, I will take my luck to the last lab to max out my Ascendancy.
For my gear I am not so sure. My shown dps (with lvl 83) in hideout with Hatred and HoA up is around 4,6k with 30% Evasion and 4,2k life pool. Started doing Tier 9 maps and have to be more careful with certain types of Mobs or bosses.
Got a few Options:
1. Get a 6L Body for the Cold Penetration gem
2. I want to switch my helm for either Starkonja's or Rat's Next as soon as I find a decent belt to get my resistances back up.
3. Getting a BiS Chest (even though I dont have the materials to 5l/6l it
4. Getting either ToA for mainhand or Doranyi's for offhand
5. Rings/amulets are a mess, but I feel without having a proper belt, I am uncertain how much resistance I have to put on those.
6. Most of my core gems are almost lvl 20 and I will trade them for 20% Quality ones (Even though I have to Level them up again and loose some power in the meanwhile)
7. Maybe you got another idea.

Thanks in advance!

Unless you can afford good jewels (3-4 damage mods or life + 2 or more damage mods) it is better to just fill out your life/damage nodes on the tree instead of unlocking jewels.

Apart from that, in mind opinion, your near future upgrades should include:
- replacement of you amulet, it doesn't have much at all going for it.
- Onslaught Twirl is ok but you can get much better ring for 1-2c.
- Atziri flask, those are cheap and quite good.
- when you are able, do get 20 quality on your gems through vendor recipe. Your dps will drop, but it is worth it in the long run. You might need to run maps 2-5 levels lower then normal if your dps drops too much, no shame in doing that.
- If you have any free respec points left, convert your 4% life + evasion nodes into 5% life around Scion wheel. If you don't have free points to respec, don't worry about it, Regret orbs are expensive. Personally, I quite frequently take and remove points to get maximum efficiency, then put points in both when I reach high enough level. But paying for it isn't worth it, for 5 Regrets you can get a good gear upgrade, from which you might benefit more.
- Starkonja is a great upgrade once you cover your resists (once you get another amulet that should be easier).
- Finally, getting a 6 link (corrupted one will do as well, they are also cheap) will increase your dps by a lot, but try to upgrade your rings/amulet first (and get Starkonja/Atziri, they are quite cheap atm).

I wouldn't bother with Perfect Form if you cannot afford to at least 5 link it first. Same with Touch of Anquish, after 2.6->3.0 changes, I don't think there is a reason to overpay for expensive ToA while Wasp Nest provides 95% of the dps for 5% of the price :)

If that can be of help this is how I leveled my Assasin with this build :

ACT1
2L :
Frost Blades + Pierce (great for clear speed)
3L :
Onslaught for even more clear speed or Added Cold for more DPS and/or bosses
4L :
Added Fire
+ Riposte (drop it when you need the slot for something more useful)
+ whirling blades

ACT2
Frost Blades + Pierce/Added Cold + Melee physical + Added Fire
+ Herald of Ice
+ Vaal Lightning Trap on bosses
+ Blood Rage (caution : use only if you have enough life leech)
Use this until you can get BF in ACT3
Bandits : kill all (can change to Alira later if needed but I prefer the points)

ACT3
Reach Winter Spirit in the skilltree. It's time to start using BF

Blade Flurry + Melee Physical + Elemental Damage + Elemental Focus
seems to be the best DPS combo according to PoB
Swap Herald of Ice with Hatred when possible
+ Ancestral Warchief
+ Enduring Cry
Add Fortify + Faster Attacks to Whirling Blades
+ Enfeeble (self cast at the moment)

ACT4
+Ice Golem

ACT5
nothing special here

ACT6
Can start using Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call or Vortex or Frost Bomb
If enough mana pool and mana leech can even use Blasphemy + Enfeeble or Elem Weakness

Get ascendancy points as soon as possible. The order to spend points is already in the guide.

With correct stuff it should be easy to get level 90 quickly

Hey, thanks for feedback! I will make use of it when I finish writing next update :)

I'm wondering whether equipping a shield instead of a weapon then allocating shield nodes instead of dual wielding will be a good modification to this build. Thoughts?

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Luigi_Jeremiah wrote:

I'm wondering whether equipping a shield instead of a weapon then allocating shield nodes instead of dual wielding will be a good modification to this build. Thoughts?

That would be like swapping Abyssus for Starkonja. You'll get a lot more survivability but you'll lose a lot of DPS

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Bristoling wrote:

Hey, thanks for feedback! I will make use of it when I finish writing next update :)

You're very much welcome your build is exactly what I wanted for a new char and I'm having a lot of fun mapping with it :) I got some nice stuff and I'm pretty happy with it (jewels could be better btw but they're not cheap). I'm running a 5L Perfect Form with BF/Elem damage/Increased AOE/Elem focus/Item Quantity + bisco's collar to improve farming while mapping and up to T11-12 maps are freaking easy right now.
I'm now focused on getting a 6L Perfect Form with better stats and 20/20 gems and making my way to T15 maps then guardians/shaper.