[2.3 Prophecy WIP/Theorycrafting] Poison Spectral Throw Assassin

Hello. This is currently a work-in-process build for Prophecy SC. The main idea is to use Spectral Throw with Bino's Kitchen Knife, inflict Poison through the support gem and deal both massive physical and poison damage.
As it stands, the build is VERY vulnerable to reflect and I can't get much more life without giving up uncomfortable amounts of damage.

This isn't really guide but more of a theorycrafting and diary-like post, feel free to join me.


Why Spectral Throw?
I've wanted to make a ST build for a long time, but never really had any good ideas for a build. Ele/phys ST didn't feel interesting enough. I tried gimmicky Goddess Unleashed ST, which was fine until merc A4 where it hit a wall and ultimately was converted into a Oro's flicker.


The Assassin ascendancy got a slight buff when it comes to dealing poison damage - 100 MORE damage when poison is applied by a crit. That is absolutely insane. But I really hate the slow style of miners and trappers.


There's a lot of dagger and crit nodes in the shadow area of the tree, and I found a Bino's from a prophecy a while back. So how about Viper Strike? The build got insane damage but ended up with about 80% max life. Since Viper Strike is single target and melee, the build was far too squishy even for a YOLO-softcore player like myself and due to it's nature as a melee skill I felt like it would be too slow. So yeah..


Then I noticed all the projectile nodes and life nodes near them, as well as travelling all the way to Scion life-2d-cube-thingy. Since ranged builds are by nature more safe I felt I didn't need that much life so I got about 150% and was happy with that.



General Concept


The Idea is to deal high physical damage with ST and thus apply high DoT damage with poison. Since the build has a lot of attack speed and ST projectiles are likely to hit a target twice, should it need to, the poison stacks can potentially get very high. Also Bino's spreading the poison should help a bit with not missing any mobs and to kill rares next to packs if neccessary.

I'm not quite sure about the ascendancy choices when it comes to Unstable and Deadly infusions. It might be better to go Ambush and Assassinate and generate power charges some other way.
I'm not quite sure with wether to go Vaal pact or not. Bino's does give some regen, even after tthe massive nerf to it, and I'm not a huge fan of VP. This needs some testing.


Skilltree

v.1.2
PoePlanner

Made some adjustments, not going to True Strike/Hired Killer anymore, instead travelling to Witch tree for more life and additional Power charge. One more power charge should end up being far more crit than True Strike since we have Assassin as our ascendancy. Note that this is indeed a lvl 100 tree, just to see what the End Game Fantasy™ will look like.

older versions

v.1.1
PoePlanner

Dropped the idea of getting the Scion life nodes, going to ranger instead. The build now has slightly more life and damage as a result.

v.1.0

PoePlanner


poeofexile.com's cluncky, slow and non-stat-showing skilltree


The skilltree isn't very refined and I'll make changes when I start leveling. Toxic Delivery and Noxious Strike are obviously obviously best two ascendancies, but I'm not sure whether Ambush and Assassinate or Deadly Infusion and Unstable Infusion is better.


Gear

For weapon I chose Bino's Kitchen Kife. It has good enough phys DPS and high crit as well as having the poison spreading element. A good platinum kris would likely be better but Bino's is about 10chaos ATM and can be obtained through a prophecy. I got one through prophecy and I'm not too likely to ever find a better dagger so I'll use it. Here's also a random dagger I had lying in the inventory.


For off-hand Old-ones ward does give some offensive stats, but I'd use a rare shield with life and resists, like the ones above. If you want to go that way, a good spell shield combined with Crown of Eyes could be a good option too, but I don't feel like buying CoE and will most likely using Rat's Nest, which I already have. Having a non-damage-shield means that you won't drop damage if you decide to equip, say, Saffel's or Rise of the Phoenix should you need extra defence against fire damage
Spoiler
mostly trying to say, get some extra survivability incase you want to try Atziri



Rest of the gear is flexible, you can use rare gloves and helmet with life, resist and some damage stats and swap to Rat's Nest and Maligaro's/Facebreaker/Shadow and Dust. For rings, good diamond rings are the best since this is a crit build. Crit/critmulti/life/phys dmg/resists are good for both rings and amulet.


Kintsugi, Belly of the Best and Lightning Coil are all good options for body armour. A rare chest with resists and life is also good and allows rest of the gear to be more damage oriented.

I dumbed some example gear here, these are not the ones I'm using but they should give some understanding of what my gear will look like


Gems


So, I have very limited experience with ST and poison so any help here will be greatly appriciated. I will have to try things out and see what works out.


For trash:
ST - Faster attacks - poison - proj. phys. damage - faster projectiles - GMP not in any order of importance

For single target
ST - Poison - Slower proj. - proj. phys. damage - faster attacks - void manipulation/point blank/whatever, i'll try things out and report back if something works...

I'll be using Ice Golem and CwDT - IC, Vaal haste and whirling blades and proc fortify with it.

Auras would be hatred and herald of ice to freeze enemies for extra safety and shattering is fun. Curse on hit with Vulnerability on herald and Temp chains to the CwDT setup for curses.


TL;DR


Poison ST Assassin, a WIP build, will try things out once I get home and report back if the concept happens to work. I'll make a proper guide for the build if it works. Might be too squishy for end game.


Any advice and criticism is welcome, escpecially when it comes to gems and links. Except when it comes to grammar, please don't. I started playing this game in February so I don't by any means have perfect understanding of game mechanics. Just keep it mature, please.

Updates:
16.6 - Tried this out for a while in standard with shit gear and no other gem setups than ST(no auras/herald/curse/etc.). It worked fine, as in, damage did't suck and clearspeed was mediocre, but with proper gear, leveled gems and more refined skilltree I think I can make it work.
20.6 - The build is benched for now. I got to meerc dried lake and got somewhat bored. I've always played extremely high up-front-damage builds so the dagger throw-wait-till-they-die playstyle doesn't really fit me. Original plan was to mostly deal upfront damage and poison would help against single target. Might pick up this again, going Bleedquake for now, have to try that before voidheart gets nerfed

EDIT: I'll be updating the build and formatting over time. I'm new to this, bigsorry.
EDIT2: I can't format for shit...
Last edited by Juhizi on Jun 20, 2016, 1:12:03 AM
Last bumped on Aug 31, 2016, 12:37:11 AM
Reserving this incase this happens to work somehow
Good luck, hope to see some updates soon. sounds exciting.
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Any updates on this skill build? Excited to try this out in the new Essence league

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