To tell the truth, I’ve never attempted to build an Assassin, but heres a good link to the ‘first hand knowlege’ you seek.
pairaducks, what sort of C/C assassin are you looking to build? And are you on Single Player or Battlenet?
Any road, my standard thought about assassins (and it’s really only one thought; I don’t play the char class) is to max claw mastery, get a good bit into claw block, and max shadow master. I might (half-thought here, I guess) put about 5 or so each into fade, poison and speed and use them when you see fit. Lightning sentry (okay, two thoughts total. Sue me;)) would also be a good thing if only for those times when you want stuff not to be resurrected by its daddy (radamant doing so to his minions and Fetishes, etc). That’ll take you into level 50+. 60 skill points right there, assuming 5 for claw block (which gives diminishing returns, and if you aren’t walking your block percent is cut to 1/3 of its normal value. That alone might make you want to invest in some speed).
Interesting that you mentioned this now, as I just (like, just. Most recent run I did. Like 10 minutes ago) found my second Bartuc’s. Only a 167/8 spawn, but it’s only my second so I figure I’ll do better in the future (found my first a month or two ago).
Different topic now … as I mentioned in my livejournal, I completed Naj’s set two days ago. But I don’t think it’d be really useful on a sorc b/c the weapon is 2-handed. That means no blocking.
I don’t think a sorc with no blocking would be terribly effective. But hey, what do I know. Anyone have suggestions for its use? I can’t trade the set because the armor is a friend’s, and although he’d let me put it on one of our chars I don’t have his permission to trade it.
A plea for help masquerading as helpful advice:
My 'sin was tearing stuff up in normal, but with the resistance drop in NM, I had to go with non-assassin equipment (Angelic set and some set with a shield) and though I can get by going long range with traps and a neato keen crossbow whose name I can’t remember, my martial arts skills aren’t nearly as effective as they used to be.
Just my little anecdote.
KK: Singleplayer, USEast/West?
For the -40 drop in NM, you might just consider going claw-shield and dropping either Ral-Ort-Tal, Shael-Eth or a few P. Diamonds into said shield. That should do you nicely (and the CBF on Rhyme [Shael-Eth] is a good touch for a melee char).
If it’s the unique crossbow, it’s Ichorsting. Other crossbow-class weapons (note: not a complete list, just off the top of my head) are Pus Spitter (siege crossbow), Langer Briser (arbalest), Demon Machine (chu-ko-nu), Hellcast (heavey crossbow) and Doomslayer (repeating crossbow). And, of course, our good friend Buriza (ballista)
I’ve actually been having extremely good luck with my trapassin. I don’t think I’ve ever cleared the chaos sanctuary as quickly as I have with her.
Someone should show you a MS Burizon or a novasorc:D
I just found a 205% (min 150%, max 220%, so a pretty decent spawn) Pus Spitter if anyone wants it.
Raises hand.
BTW: you free for helping out with the MF Amazon stuff? I’ll be in
Game: sdmb
pw: cecil
for the next hour or so.
Invest in fire-based traps. They’re quite useful when you get to level 2 in the viper temple.
Fenris, we need to coordinate this. What times are you on during the week and week-end? I should be on around noon or so today (depending on when I wake up) and until 6 or so, or until B gets home. And then from about 10 or 11 PM every night (depending on if I’m tired of playing from the day’s events) until I feel like stopping … usually before 2 or 3 AM. All EST timezone.
You ain’t gonna be using a Pus Spitter, no way. I have your Buriza picked out (much better wep). A Pus Spitter is no MF bow (the true mf bow is a langer briser, but its killing power is crap even for last hit, so we use the buriza).
Mean time, what level are you and what’s your skill/stat point allocation so far? Depending on what you’ve done we might need to rebuild. Hope that’s not the case:)
I get home about 3:00 MST every day and usually play a couple of hours. Since I get up at 4:00/4:30 in the morning, I’m out by 9:30, latest.
I’ll have most of Saturday morning and most of Suday free.
I’m almost up to level 32
My stats (including modifiers)
ST: 80
DX: 118
VI: 57
EN: 56
With nothing on my stats are
ST:67
DX: 96
VI:37
EN:36
Skills, per your suggestions, I’ve been splitting 50/50 between stuff that’s on the path to Pierce (dodge, etc) and stuff that’s on the path to Frozen/Immolation arrow (with a few points put into multiple shot and the path towards Valkerie…I like having a valkerie around–they keep hordes off you). Loaded, I’m up to Immolation 7 and Frozen 3
I’m wearing Frostburn, Peasant Hat, Rattlecage (what is "crushing damage?) Treads of Cthon, and BladeBuckle, along with a couple of Manard Heal rings and a maiden amulet.
Also, I still haven’t gotten my gift from Charsi or socketed anything, pending your advice. Any suggestions? (And does Charsi give anything but crap?) Also, whatshername who names an item for you—does that do anything?
So how’m I doing?
Fenris
PS: thanks again to you and Who_me? for giving me a good start. I haven’t had so much fun playing in I don’t know how long!
PSS: I’m also playing a paladin–any suggestions for where to put points/skills or just suggestions in general?
A crushing blow instantly reduces the target to 1HP. It doesn’t work on bosses or superuniques.
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Charsi generates a rare item for you, its mods determined by your level. The longer you leave it, the better it becomes. The best thing to get imbued IME is an item type that has innate + to specific skills - wands, staves, rods, sceptres, heads and CS helms. With a touch of luck, you can get a rare with +2-3 to three different skills.
Anya’s personalisation doesn’t do anything except make an item moderately worthless for trade, but you can have a bit of fun with weird character names; MyDick’s Humongous, Flatulator’s Windforce - you get the idea.
Hmm…damn power went out before my reply posted. Oh, well.
Well, sure, if you’re going to cheese the game with an item specific build… 
Actually, any build that uses a corpse explosion type attack is going to kick ass in 1.10. It’s really been pumped up in power. My other character is a CE using zookeeper who’s currently tearing through Act 5 Hell with very little difficulty.
Evil Death I was under the impression Crushing Blow had a percentage chance to knock off 20% of the monster’s total hit points…so, if a monster had 10,000 hp total, a crushing blow would do 2,000 points of damage in one swat. Very useful against bosses, although Blizzard limited bosses to being knocked down to 50% in this manner.
Really? I think Necros have been nerfed in 1.10. At least I used to get stuck at Diablo in Normal - now I can’t even touch Duriel.
What build are you using? I recommend using skeletons and skeleton mastery instead of golems for crowd control–they’re quite a bit more durable now. CE is my major killing skill–unlike previous patches, it scales with higher players settings. It really is quite powerful even with only 1 or 2 points in it.
Come to think of it, Lower Resist and Amp Damage is really nice now, too. You can actually use them to remove the various immune mods from monsters, even phys immune, assuming the monsters’ innate resistance isn’t too high (in 1.10 a monster that’s immune to an attack really just has a resistance to that attack in excess of 100%).
My current zookeeper has maxed skeleton mastery, maxed raise skeleton, maxed skeleton magi, 1 pt in everything else in that tree. CE is currently around 10, 5 in lower resist. 1 pt in all other curses. He’s using the Arm of King Leoric, a runeword Lore circlet, Chains of Honor runeworded armor (for the resists and +2 skills) and a necro shield with +2 necro skills, +1 to magi. He’s a meatgrinder. With 32 points in mastery and skeletons, each skellie is doing something like 900 pts of damage per swat with a similarly buff attack rating/defense and hp total. And they’re kinda underpowered compared to the magi…the defiance merc is just candy, albeit candy with a war pike version of the Spire of Honor. 
Normal difficulty was really tough for me until Act 5 Normal. Just bear with it until you have a decent wall of meat around you at all times. I wouldn’t bother too much with golems unless you’re going to put a LOT of points into them. Their recastable, which comes in handy in a pinch, though.
No, that’s not how CB works. Crushing reduced the monster’s current hit points by 1/4, 1/8 if you’re using a ranged attack. For bosses/uniques/champions, it reduced the current hit points by 1/10, 1/20 for ranged.
http://www.diabloii.net/items/modifiers/special-modifiers.shtml
Blood Golem/IM in single player.
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And how would you recommend tromping Duriel and Big D?
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That was the general idea. The guy has no points at all in skeletons.
Um. Er. Ah…
I must not have suggested strongly enough (perhaps at all … I thought it was standard practice not to touch energy unless you were a javzon) to keep energy base (i.e. don’t put any points in it). My burizon has no extra points in energy.
The reason for this is so you can put the points somewhere else and stay alive longer:)
A suggested point allocation up to level 42 (and you’ll be pumping str from about level 35 to lvl 42 to get to 110 for Buriza) is, for a burizon who will be getting no help in +str from anything:
Str 110
Dex 85
Vit 80
En15
I know it looks like you’ll shoot one frozen arrow and be empty. But after you shoot a frozem arrow, you shoot a regular one and leech. Or something. But leech.
The ideal thing to do would be to rush you into hell cows (and given three lag-free hours, I could do it without much trouble) and then you just stand there and level.
I’ve used this build for my burizon (you get cold damage from a buriza as well as Freezes Target +3, so using frozen arrow is not necessary):
20 each in guided and multishot.
1 in Fire arrow (for immune to colds, mainly)
10 in valk
maxed penetrate (accidentally … had I known I would have only put 15 or so in it)
10-ish in crit strike
5 each in dofge/avoid/evade. At least.
1 Inner sight, 1 slow missile, one decoy
about 5 in pierce
I’m missing a few there, of course, as I’ve used 108 skill points and I only have 104 listed there. The other 4 are probably all in pierce.
An imbue you’ll want to save for that char until you’re level 39, I believe, because of the select group of mods you can get at that level that change very next level. I might be off on that by a bit, though. I used to imbue bows at that level hoping for a good one (this was in the days of one buriza and no eaglehorn). But these days I might just, were I you, wait until I find something elite (in cows, probably) and imbue it. Boots, perhaps. Myrmidon Greaves or Mirrored Boots would be interesting to imbue. You wouldn’t be able to wear whatever you made because of the str req, but they might make good boots for a barb or druid.
Socketing you should save. I’ll show you why.
Naming does nothing to an item in terms of explicit value. Really it’s only for two purposes:
-
Pritty. “Look what has my name on it!”
-
“That is mine, biatch. See my name there on it? Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Any item you get from Anya (which are almost always crap, but that’s another issue) is worth more if only so you can sell it.
Other than my SP paladin (playing him to get used to paladins again), I haven’t played a paladin seriously in over a year. I might actually suggest you’d have a lot of fun with a specific type of paladin … a Fistdin. It’s a paladin that almost solely relies upon Fist of the Heavens (along with very high mana regen). The ideal build, as I see it, would be:
STR (enough for a hand of blessed light, which I have enough of that you can have one) 103
DEX (for maxed blocking with a Lidless Wall Grim Shield) will increase each level. The formula for maxed blocking is:
Total Blocking % = [Blocking x (Dexterity – 15)] / (Character Level x 2)
Paladins have 50% blocking with a lidless, assuming maxed blocking (the returns are extremely diminishing past maxed blocking, so while you could get 60% blocking with this shield, you’d be using way too much dex for it to be practical).
Vit: a lot. Over 200. Probably over 250.
En: not much. And I’ll explain why:
This paladin maxes fist of the heavens (duh), conviction, partially maxed meditation and fanaticism. He also puts several points into vengeance so he can leech back, though with the chars I’ve played that isn’t necessary much. Also put a few into redemption and one or two into holy shield, because with the +skills you’ll be sporting you’ll pump those up several levels each.
Hand of Blessed Light doubled your AR, gives you 50-140 dmg (along with the wep speed this is actually very good), 15% mana regen, and +2 pal skills and +2 fist of the heavens (in addition to 5% chance to cast level 4 Fist upon striking). IMO it is the ideal Fisting weapon.
Shield is Lidless Wall, which will among other things give you +1 skills and +mana/kill and +mana anyway.
Helm and amulet will be the generic +2 skills. Nothing extra specially spiffy, but then you don’t really need that.
Gloves will probably be frostburn unless they’re something else, in which case you’ll probably be using something with IAS and some sort of leech.
Boots will be Silkweaves. +mana/kill, +mana base, 30% FRW.
Most people opt for a Thundergod’s Vigor. I’m not that rich (I have a few but they’re in use). So instead we go for probably Mav’s belt. Either that or a combo of Wilhelm’s Pride and Magnus Skin (IAS, dual leech, nice +35 to life. The partial set mod for adding Whitstan’s Guard doesn’t justify using it.).
Rings you’ll want are at least a manald heal. If you decide to get more life leech from socketing your Hand of Blessed Light with an Amn, you can pretty safely go with something of a ring with resists, more mana, etc. If you do not, you will want to either use something like a Cathan ring (generic 6% life leech, also you can use it starting at level 12 and it’s the most leech you can have on a ring until level 35) until you can use a rare or whatever.
Oh, right. Armor. Well, there a few options. The most basic is Spirit Shroud, which gives you +1 skills, cannot be frozen and +10 replen life. Skin of the Vipermagi also gives +1 skills but gives you nice +20-35 res (depending on spawn). I also have a Guardian Angel, but the str req is 118 so unless you want to dedicate 15 more str for it, you’re perhaps better off with one of the two other armors I mentioned, unless you’d like to try a Que-Hegan’s Wisdom, which gives you +1 skills, buncha mana (including per kill) and faster hit recovery.
I’m not going to discuss charms because this post is long enough. Suffice to say you’ll want lots of mana, life and resists, and some +skills if you can manage it.
Very simple way to play this guy: get far enough away from stuff that all you get hit by is projectiles (this sometimes is easier said than done). Put conviction on. Put Holy Shield on. Fist. Fist. Fist. Etc. Fist until you run out of mana. Then switch to vengeance and fanaticism and either kick ass or run away. When you’re running, put meditation on to regen mana. Then switch back to conviction. Fist. Fist. Fist. etc. When it’s safe enough to stand with redemption on and you can either hit cows physically or with Fist of the Heavens, do so if you need more life o r mana to recoup what you lost.
Takes a lot of finesse, but it’s fun when it works.
So what other than BG/IM do you have points in? Bone Spear/Spirit? Bone wall/prison? AD? Bone armor?
A couple each in CE, Bone Wall, Bone Armour, AD and Bone Spear. (How on earth am I supposed to get points in Bone Spirit by Act II Normal?) I’ve also got a wand that adds +2 to AD and +3 to CE.