[2.4] zSavage's Poison Hurricane (Crit Poison BV)[Budget Friendly][Assassin]

What would you recommend for bandits.

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monkeyman0795 wrote:

What would you recommend for bandits.

Normal: Oak for +40 life
Cruel: Oak for +16% phys dmg
Merciless: Alira for +1 power charge OR kill all for a passive

Hey thanks for the great budget friendly guide ! If i could ask for something that would be if you could break the passive skill tree down a bit more like level 30 tree then level 60 then 90 etc..

Also i wanted to ask since you are using poison a lot why haven't you invested in the poison nodes just a bit above and to the right of vaal pact? wouldn't they be really usefull since they provide 70% increased damage with poison?

Thanks

I added a section in the original post with 40 and 80 point trees.

As for the poison nodes, I've found it's usually better to scale the damage of the initial hit to scale both the on hit damage and the damage of the poison. It's also quite a point investment to make it to those nodes. As I got higher level I found that I needed more survivability, not more DPS.

Tested out this build in Perandus SC and works great! Totally budget friendly (not a single core item and average 4L gear can get you through almost everything). However, I did run into some problems and I'll elaborate them in the following points:

Stat Problems
Lv 20 Blade Vortex (155 Dex) / Lv 21 Blade Vortex (159 Dex)

Also, since we're going to focus on armor, most pure armor gears require a huge chunk of strength. For example, the best base for pure armor (Glorious Plate) requires 191 strength. Of course, we can opt for armor/eva hybrid chests but honestly I don't see a point in getting that tiny bit of evasion and sacrificing so much armor, considering we have no evasion nodes and mostly armor nodes.

Considering your skill tree passes through witch's area through to the templar region, most people are probably going to find difficulty getting sufficient dex to level their gems. Even with my character having reached lvl 90, I still have 2 passive points allocated into the +30 dex and +30 str nodes in order to use the current gear setup. (I'll explain more about my gear setup and modifications later on)

Mana Problem
Now, for most people, mana shouldn't be a problem until you start to 5L or 6L your blade vortex. We can probably stick with a 4L to melt all end game content and even into moderate tier maps, but having to use a 4L when you can use 5L or 6L is like asking me to play Mortal Kombat 1992 when I can play Mortal Kombat X. (No offense here I love the 1992 version but you get my point)

No doubt, warlord's mark does its fair role in maintaining life/mana leech, which solves half our problem. However, as we have hatred and warlord's mark/blasphemy on at the same time, that's about 85% of your mana gone. This set up thus requires you to cast 1 or 2 spells before you leech sufficient mana to spam a few more times and start melting everything in your way.

The above set up is generally fine with me, but I find myself wanting to play a lot safer by literally melting the boss in 1 sec or less. This means having about 40+ blade stacks and then running into the boss face.

Modifications
Firstly, as you've mentioned that with the Ascendancy update and assassin class, there's no longer a need to run a secondary Blade Vortex + Power Charge on Crit. This means more skills to test out with, and the following few are some notable ones that I'm using in my current set up

Rallying Cry
Physical Damage increase and massive mana regen, what more can we ask for? I link this to increased duration and the buff can easily last me over 20 seconds. The mana regen is actually much more than what you see on the skill gem itself since we have Shaper and Quick Recovery nodes taken. With this set up, I'll just need to pop a rallying cry near a stray mob, cast vaal haste and spam cast blade vortex up to over 40 stacks and just run into the boss. It's just a lot more smoother, in my opinon.

Molten Shell
More armor and physical damage mitigation, perfect for high tier maps. I link this to increased duration and again it lasts over 20 seconds easily. At lvl 20, molten shell gives 943 armor, and having 94% increased armor from passives, this alone gives a striking 1829 armor! Apart from this, there's another 1508 damage absorbed, which is essentially increasing your hp by 1508.

The downside of this is its huge strength requirement (155 at level 20), but I'd say it's worth it in my current gear setups. I managed to hit 7k armor (pre flasks) using molten shell and tabula rasa, which was why I was using tabula all the way until i hit 90 and decided on invest in better gears.

Blood Rage
Generates frenzy charges (4% attack/cast speed & 4% more damage per charge), increases attack speed based on gem level and more life leech. More cast speed means you can have more blade stacks and less stop time, while attack speed makes whirling blades a lot faster. Damage wise, this is by far the largest damage boost I can find. Overall, makes gameplay super smooth.

Of course, 4% of your hp per second seems quite costly, but with your health regeneration from the passive tree and endurance charges (4% phy dmg reduction per stack) from warlord's mark, the health degen doesn't seem to bother me at all. Even if I don't have any endurance charges and cast blood rage without leeching any mobs, i end up losing only 1/4 of my hp after the entire duration (18 secs). You probably don't have to worry about the degen unless you're doing map mods like slower/no hp regen, no leech or immunity to curses. If that's the case, just take off blood rage. It's a boost, but not a necessity.

Gem Setup
As I've mentioned, pure armor gears require huge chunks of strength, and with my current set up of about 190 strength, iron will becomes a better option than controlled destruction.
Lv20 Controlled Destruction = 44% Spell Damage
Lv20 Iron Will = 38% Spell Damage + (Strength/5) Spell Damage
Needless to say, iron will boosts your dps more than controlled destruction, considering CD also lowers your crit chance.

Gear Setup
Currently, I'm running pure armor equipment with high hp. Capped resists are a must and I find it a lot easier to get them on rings and shields. I'm using a 6L Astral Plate (after buying Celestial Justicar), but previously I was using tabula with no problems up to tier 13 maps. Didn't run tier 14 because I was saving them. With my molten shell, I have about 10k armor (pre flask). I can probably hit 12k armor if I invest in a better pair of boots and shield but currently have no motivation to, since I have no survivability issues right now.

For the above gem modifications, I'm running Increased Duration + Molten Shell + Rallying Cry + Vaal Haste on a 4L gear, while my CWDT + Immortal Call + Increased Duration is on my 3L Shield.

My Blade Vortex set up: Blade Vortex + Spell Echo + Poison + Increased Duration + Iron Will + Added Fire Damage. I would like to change my Added Fire Damage for Increased Crit Damage but unfortunately getting 2 Blue, 2 Green and 2 Red on a pure armor chest is just tough as hell. Burned through stacks of chromes and haven't gotten successful on it.

For mobility, I'm using the same whirling blades + fortify + faster attacks set up, but also a flame dash gem in case to get past some low walls etc. You can probably swap this out for Lightning Warp too.

As for the remaining gems like Hatred, Blasphemy / Warlord's Mark and Summon golem, I put them without any links but you can probably try out enlighten on the auras.

For flasks, I'm only running 1 Seething (instant hp) flask. I use 2 other Quicksilver (remove curse and remove bleeding), Atziri's Promise (more dps and leech). For my last flask, I choose between the new Sulphur (40% more damage) or Basalt (20% phy dmg reduction) flask, with Iron Skin suffix (% armor increase) rolls on it. I normally run Sulphur flasks on most maps unless theres phy reflect mods, in which I'll use Basalt. With the armor flasks on, I reach about 14k armor. Phy Reflect Mods are seemingly easy on this character, just remember to exercise caution when running map mods with curse immune, no hp regen or no leech.

Conclusion
A great build nonetheless, and I really enjoyed leveling it. It was probably my fastest and cheapest character to reach 90 ever. I probably invested about 15c worth into armor gloves and helmet but the rest were self found gears, including divinarus. Clearing speed is insane, as the only thing stopping you is how fast you can use your whirling blades to get to the mobs/boss. Vaal Haste is most of the time 100% uptime for me. Cheers!

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zSavage wrote:

I added a section in the original post with 40 and 80 point trees.

As for the poison nodes, I've found it's usually better to scale the damage of the initial hit to scale both the on hit damage and the damage of the poison. It's also quite a point investment to make it to those nodes. As I got higher level I found that I needed more survivability, not more DPS.

Thank you! If i may also ask what would some good leveling uniques be for this build? i have some good dagger levelling uniques but thy are physical damage basd. i also have a lifesprig and the new unique mace that gives a shit ton of spell crit chance and cast speed. Or would a sybl's paw be even a viable choice?

Thanks in advance

I would suggest adding the bandits guide to the guide somewhere :) other than that a great guide really.

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aarontbarratt wrote:

I would suggest adding the bandits guide to the guide somewhere :) other than that a great guide really.

Added under skill tree section.

@HeliosGR I'm currently testing this awesome build and I can tell you sybl's actually working great with as shield for my lvl 39 :)

Love the build. I pretty much own everything so far. Bosses drop in seconds. I really only have one issue. I cannot use hatred yet because of the mana reserve. I'm not using the second blade vortex so maybe thats part of the problem but with out hatred i still dominate. I guess I'll just keep running without hatred to see how far I can get hehe.

thanks again!