Tanky asssasin help

Inspired by https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2637111
I wanted to make an assasin that wasnt too squishy

I thought I could replace the situational saboteur defense with the more general elusive of the assasin, and get better dps thanks to the ascendency.

The tree I came up with is this: https://pastebin.com/63RUeKL4

The thing is, I'm not very good at optimising, even with path of building, and my lack of experience makes me have choice paralysis.

Should I go full crit: going with deadly infusion, I can go elemental damage if I want

should I go poison: toxic delivery and all that on a pure physical build

What channeled skill should i get: Cyclone blade flurry or charged dash?

One fun interaction is if I go poison and cyclone, I can stack anointed master of force and the pantheon -25% phys dot while moving to get a nice -53% phys dot taken protecting me against the very deadly bleed I can encounter

If i go full crit, There's more chance of me sustaining surgeon's flask (basalt would be nice)

I could go cast on crit, but I kinda want to keep fortify on the main link, and that makes CoC quite a bit lackluster.

So what are peoples opinions?

Hi there,

you should plan your build with gear.
If you want to play poison version you should rather avoid Impale.
You can get an easy bleed imunity with flask etc.
You can play whatever skill you like.
Cyclone CWC BV or just classic cyclone or whatever:)

Its not planned with gear precisely because I ask for help planing. I take it from your post that you think cyclone is strikly better than other chanelling skills

Cyclone is best melee skill, yes.

Going impale with daggers is a bit odd as they are more targeted toward the poison mechanic.

I looked at your tree and a large number of the nodes you're taking are odd. Go over to poe.ninja in the "builds" section, and see the heatmap for what other cyclone builds are doing. That will give you more of a starting point when designing your own build.

My goal wasnt cyclone or dagger. If you read the link on my opening post you will see. I wanted to take advantage of all the. Less damage taken node stacking with fortify to get tankiness in the build.

My question after that is how to add dps to the core. I wanted a channeling melee both for infused chanelling and the stun protection. I took dagger to boost elusive throught nightblade and for the easy leech node close to start. And i thought inpale went well with dread banner who boosted fortify.

But im not certain of any of these thing, so i was asking how would you go around adding dps/leech/clear speed to the outlined core.

You definitely need to pick the Assassination and Heartseeker nodes, otherwise going crit does not even make sense. I do not thinkt hat the Bloodletting cluster is worth it, unless you are specifically stacking sources of reduced damage taken.

I am unsure whether there is a point in the armour nodes and the elemental ailment avoidance ones, especially since you use Acrobatics.

You should rather fill out the Scion life wheel, because 132% is quite low.

Lastly, you should definitely pick up the 2 point jewel node between Ranger and Duelist. Jewels are usually worth as much as 3 points, give or take a bit depending on the build. You would have to have an extremely efficient or specialised skill tree for a jewel for 2 points to not be an improvement.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

I do not thinkt hat the Bloodletting cluster is worth it, unless you are specifically stacking sources of reduced damage taken.

I am unsure whether there is a point in the armour nodes and the elemental ailment avoidance ones, especially since you use Acrobatics.

As the linked build by some other guy attest, this is actually specificaly my goal.

8% reduced all from ascendency
5% reduced area from (brinkmanship)
5% reduced all (bloodletting)
5% reduced all (silent step)
5% reduced elemental (crystal skin)
20% reduced hit (fortify)
10% reduced hit (25 stage of dread banner, should be decently sustainable)

so 58% reduced ele hit and 53% reduced phys hit
but only 28% against ele dot and 23% against phys dot
I get 10% reduced damage if there's more than one rare/unique too.

stacking wise oak (10%), solaris gorgon (5%), gorgon mask (5%)and kongmin stratagem (30%) should allow me to be immune to elemental hit if i need to (against big boss like shaper/atziri/etc)

So that explain the slightly weird passive choice

I think if you want Elusive you should go more towards maxing dodge as your means of damage mitigation, rather than stacking reduced damage.

The other build you're referencing is an interesting concept but seems like an overall bad idea. Yes, you can take exclusively defensive nodes to become immune to AOE or elemental damage but the OP of that post still got his HC character killed...

he also managed to kill uber atziri at lvl 79.

How would i go getting more dodge? With a flask and elusive i should be close to max. I mostly wanna make sure I dont get 1 shot by an unlucky roll. Reduced damage taken and dodge stack pretty well together.

Even if its not a good goal, it is the only constraint of the build I'm trying. Do you have sugestion on how I could improve the current plan?