[3.0] Dual Varunastra Assassin (Softcore)

INTRODUCTION

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This is a blade flurry character built around this beautiful unique

The idea is to stack as much flat phys as we can and use almost all the crit multiplier nodes exclusive to daggers/claws/swords on the right side of the tree, the result is a fast and hard hitter whose main defensive mechanic comes from crit shattering mobs before they can eat up your measly 4.5k life pool, this includes bosses.

Pros +

-Can easily transition from claw, dagger and sword leveling start

-Multiple types of damage from scaling flat phys, hatred and poison

-Consistent damage with 95% crit chance, map bosses with no phases melt within 5 seconds

-Fairly maneuverable with high attack speed and whirling blades
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Cons -

-Meta Flurry

-Softcore 4 life

-Squishy, running around maps with 4.5k life means you'll have to play somewhat non-afk

-End game gear is expensive, varunastra is around ~100c at the time of writing this

-Reflect maps are a no-no

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Pantheon Choices:

Pantheon List

Major God:

- Soul of the Brine king

Stops mobs from chain stunning you to death if your evasion is low, especially relevant in breaches.

Minor God:

- Soul of Yugul

Helps mitigate one shots from unlucky ruthless crits, still need to be somewhat careful around reflect mobs.

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My Current Gear


Skill-gems & Setups:

Main Skill:

Blade Flurry - Faster Attacks - Increased Critical Strikes - Melee Physical Damage - Ruthless - Vile Toxins (Swap out increased critical strikes for critical damage if you're running a diamond flask)

Movement:

Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic

Cast When Damage Taken:

- Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Vaal Grace (Keep CWDT and Immortal Call at level 1)

Totem:

Spell Totem - Wither - Faster Casting - Increased Duration OR
Ancestral Warchief/Protector - Faster Attacks - Melee Physical Damage - Increased Critical Strikes

Auras:

Blasphemy - Assassin's Mark - Hatred

Optional:

Vaal Lightning Trap + Increased Duration (Helps with +monster life/physical damage reduction map mods, bosses die too fast to notice much of a difference otherwise)

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Skill Tree:

Ascendancy Nodes:
Noxious Strike > Toxic Delivery > Unstable Infusion > Deadly Infusion

The modded poison damage and chance to poison you get from the Toxic delivery route is a large part of your total damage and should be prioritized over Deadly infusion, you can almost cap crit with a diamond flask until you spec it.

Endgame Tree (Character Level 90)

Important note:

I chose not to run Vaal Pact just to make life a little easier for Lab runs and degeneration (Chaos zombies, Strongboxes, Corrupted Bloodline etc.) however it will mean you have to have Vaal Grace permanently on during physical reflect maps and pace yourself accordingly, and also means you won't be able to facetank large packs of strong mobs, Use your head and don't stand in the middle of 50 breach monsters and you'll be fine.

Alternatively you can give up the small claw cluster next to vaal pact and spec it to be a little safer against large spikes of damage:

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Leveling:

Your leveling playstyle will be pretty squishy but you will do a lot of damage as soon as you equip your 6l blade flurry, prioritize crit nodes for whatever weapon path you choose and attack speed, an early diamond flask works wonders. You'll have to manually dodge hard hitters but the damage is more than enough to make leveling fairly straight forward, cruel lab was done at level 48 with 1.6k life.

Claw path gives a lot of life gain on hit thanks to claw bases and the uniques generally have high attack speed meaning you'll be faster using whirling blades to level than quicksilvers, my personal favorite for leveling.

Dagger path makes your crit kick in a lot earlier, if you get an early cruel lab done along with the Adder's Touch node you'll have considerable poison dps early on.



Equip these as soon as level requirements are hit:





- 1 Elreon ring makes your Blade Blurry free to cast, I personally use 2 until I can get Blood Magic on Whirling Blades

Bandits:

- Kill all

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Gearing Goals

Helms:

Abyssus takes the cake for dps, even after the nerf to crit multiplier it still bumps our damage by an insane amount, just be careful of the 45% increased damage taken: slams, windups charges are even more deadly to you with this equipped.

Starkonja's Head is the safer option with +Evasion and life, your dps won't be terrible and you'll still clear mobs in 2-3 hits, bosses require slightly more effort.

Chestpiece:

Belly of the Beast is BiS for this build, we already have a small life pool as it is.

If you can't afford a belly or still leveling with Tabula you have to swap Abyssus for Starkonja's, otherwise even autoattacks will start one shotting you.

Gloves:

Any decent rare with +resists and life will do, added physical damage to attacks are a nice bonus.

Alternatively Shadows and Dust Gives a good damage boost if you can cap out resists elsewhere.

Boots:

Atziri's step gives nice evasion and spell dodge, if you're finding it hard to cap resists with just jewellery then swap these for boots with +life and resists, movement speed is irrelevant since we Whirling Blades everywhere.

Kaom's Roots are amazing boots if you've chosen to spec Vaal Pact, even with loss of evasion it means you won't be dying to anything that doesn't outright one-shot you provided you are constantly attacking. Swap Atziri's Step for these if you don't want to reroll temporal chains map mods.

Jewellery:

Standard Life + Resists, bonuses are added physical damage and crit multiplier on amulets. Amulet needs to be agate base to make up for stats.

Flasks:




Atziri's promise and Sin's Rebirth gives added chaos damage and scales both your hits and poison damage, Sin's being a Stibnite base also helps tremendously with facetanking.

I have tested Lion's Roar and while dps increases by a lot the knockback doesn't work in tandem with Blade Flurry, you end up pushing bosses out of range before you can release 6 stages.

Quartz flask will be replaced with Taste of Hate when I get enough currency.

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Stat Screencaps:

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Gameplay:

T11 Shaped Strand
T13 High Gardens (1:40 demonstrates what happens when you attack a reflect mob with ruthless crit, don't play brainless like I do)
T15 Twinned Dark Forest

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Thanks for reading my first guide, build has a lot of problems vs endgame content but leveling has been super fun.

Kappa

Did you not use any jewel slots?

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Miggaletoe wrote:

Did you not use any jewel slots?

I did not, fit them in if you can find good ones, good mods are Crit multiplier with any one handed weapon, life and increased physical damage