New player - shadow - assassin - can you give me some suggestions for my build & items

Hi, It's my first time playing the game and this is what i came up with for my character until now. Even if it's not that good i would like to stick to this hero and try to fix it as much as I can. I'm not sure what to do, the character lacks with sustainability it's very squishy and dies easily if i'm not careful enough. Can you help me fix that as much as possible ? I did skill a lot of physical and crit points, but also good amount of life points too, although i have only 2k life and 800 energy shield. My equipment is not that good but at the moment, i need more farm to afford something better for myself. Still i would like your opinion of what should i change to make the character better.I have around 20 refund points also. I'm using "Rave" as a skill mainly and trying to develop around it. Would be happy if smn gives me some advice.
Thanks in advance :)

For playing for the first time, you did a pretty good job with the skill tree actually. Still, there's room for quite some improvement, so let's see what we can come up with...
1. Multiple copies of the same support gem do NOT increase the skill's damage.
2. Resistances are important, try to get your lightning resistance as high as the others.
3. You have s bunch of support gems not really linked to anything. You should try make your primary skill a 5l and then maybe add 1 or 2 4l supporting skills.
4. Facebreakers do very little for you. Maligaro's virtuosity would offer you some critical strike chance, while some decent rare gloves would give you life and resists.
5. Even if your skill tree is rather well made for the first time, there's still a lot of room for improvement. You pick a lot of redundant travelling nodes. You could save about 7-10 skill points without really losing a lot. You should use the points to travel to the ranger area to grab some more life. You also have additional accuracy and crit nodes, so there's that.
6. Your gear could use some small improvements: You can still craft life on the amulet, le heup of all can be replaced by a good rare ring, the broken crown should be replaced by a rare helmet with life and resists and you should consider swapping to an evasion body armour.
7. Gem setups need a lot of work, so here we go: I'd replace reave with blade flurry. Plays pretty much the same, has higher base range and single target damage. Link should be something like Blade flurry - faster attacks - melee physical damage - increased aoe - maim/chance to bleed/poison/lesser poison/fortify. Whatever you prefer in that 5th slot.
Next one is whirling blades - faster attacks - fortify - power charge on crit.
Heralds don't need supports in your build, neither do auras. Speaking of auras, I'd recommend hatred, together with herald of ash.
Maybe also get a golem, any of them would work, really. Put them in something like cast when damage taken (not too high in level!) - golem of choice - immortal call - increased duration. Keep in the gem levels in mind, as cast when damage taken can only trigger spells up to its own gem level.
8. Last but not least: put quality on your equipment. I mean it.

This might sound a bit harsh, but you have a lot you can improve there. I tried to help you as much as I could, but nobody is perfect, so I'm pretty sure that even though I covered a lot, I might have missed something. Still, I hope I was at least a bit helpful. Good luck with your character!

Thank you a lot for the answer I will do my best to change it accordingly step by step and will post here to show the results. I really appreciate it.

Before changing anything in my skill tree can you tell me what you think about what I came up with the path to the ranger and etc. With the refund points i have i managed to make smth like this. What do you think ?

note that you don't get to hit with both weapons, so while in most RPGs dual wield means you hit like a truck here there isn't that much benefit to having two good weapons in both hands. What I'd recommend is using a weapon with which you can't hit, but provides good benefits. I.e. in the case of reave good unique sceptre, axe, mace. (Death's Hand, The Dark Seer, Lavianga's Wisdom, Relentless Fury)
You need multrike for reave in your main gem setup. Increase area gem would be good for general map clear as well.
You need to max your resists. There's HUGE difference between having 70% and 75% resists here, the benefits grow exponentially, this is not like pure math.
With your new tree I'm assuming you're dropping Energy Shield and crit. I'd suggest you go for vaal pact. In general i don't think it is good idea to be assassin, if you don't invest in crit.
Get as much life in your gear as you can.

Thank you for the post. Yes indeed i did get rid of 6 points in crits in the new tree and energy shield which left me with 4 points in crit and 4 points with crit in the assassin tree. About the both weapons, i'm already committed to claws so i should keep only 1 claw ? I haven't changed the tree yet this is just from the website test tree with the refund points i have. I can get back the crit points in the future levels as they are close and easy to skill. And the resistances i will try to get them from the gear in the future when i have more currency to trade with. Will this work ? If you have any suggestions for a different tree with please do share. I have 27 refund points overall.

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Ire_of_Desire wrote:

note that you don't get to hit with both weapons, so while in most RPGs dual wield means you hit like a truck here there isn't that much benefit to having two good weapons in both hands

Actually, with most attacks you do hit with both weapons, but they alternate. So you're not hitting with two weapons at once, but rather main hand first, then off hand.

It's typically dual weapons, two-handed weapon, bow & quiver, or one handed weapon and shield. Dual weapons yields more damage mods, two-handed lets you run two 6Ls (or one 6L plus Kaom's Heart), bow & quiver same, and one handed plus shield gives you more armor/evasion/es, block chance, elemental resist, etc.

Thank you for all advices, here is what I've managed to make with all ur help. What should I aim for from now on, what type of gear, what skills should i go for next and how to continue, will be glad if smn can help again :)

Looks a lot better now! Though keep in mind that most normal support gems don't work with auras and even then, it's usually better not to support them with anythink to keep the reservation cost down.
You can also still craft some life on that amulet which I'd recommend doing.
The tree looks pretty solid right now, though it may be worth it to respec the three attack speed nodes at the beginning and invest those in the accuracy and crit nodes, to increase your chance to hit. Accuracy is an often overlooked, yet VERY important stat for attack based builds.
Your gear seems ok at this point, though I would probably replace the broken crown and le heup of all at some point in the future. Maybe even your body armour, as the socket colors aren't ideal, but you still have a lot of time with that one.
For gems, you could try to add blood rage into your rotation, it would fit nicely in that ring of yours. In your whirling blades link I would replace added fire damage with fortify, to add an additional layer of defense to your character. Whirling blades is usually not used to deal damage.

Still, overall very nice improvements, I'm pretty sure you could feel them yourself, right?