Phoenix Strike Assassin

[Afro AmeriZON]

Short and sweet. Never made one, want to try one. They any good with all syngeries maxed? Thanks

[HAMC8112]

Short and sweet. Never made one, want to try one. They any good with all syngeries maxed? Thanks

I think any char with maxed synergies will be good, take the lightningsorc for instance, mine at lvl92 has a CLdmg of 4/6500, the lightningdmg is around 4/12800. I'd call that pretty good. So i suppose that an assa maxed will be good aswell.

[Afro AmeriZON]

Well this was for people who have played one and has experience or currently have one/building one. Maybe some ideas, etc. I figured all synergies maxed would be good but is it a playable build in hell? I don't care about cookie cutting, I just want to be able to handle things. I just don't want another worthless high lvl mule.

[Silkweed]

Do NOT max all PS synergies. It's pointless and there aren't enough skill points to go around. Like other characters, the idea is to choose one element to focus on and to have one element as a backup. When I made my PS sin, she looked more or less like this:

PS 20
CoT 20
FoF 10 (backup element)
BoS 10 (or whatever is comfortable for you)
WB 10 (50% block)
SM 10
DS 1
DFlight 1

I went dual claws for the weapon block. Strength and dexterity should be about 115 each after items. Rest into life.

The build is very flexible. You can max fire and keep lightning as your minor, fewer in BoS and WB if you have the +skills, and choose to put more into your shadow, or whatever you want really. Just so long as you don't put any more points into BoI, since it does crappy damage.

[Ratel-OWNS-Ity]

One thing you have to know about weapon block is that it only works while you stand still. So if you plan on moving around alot expect to get hit and not block. I currently have a kicker that i switch to duel claws after having 75% block and you get hit alot more.

The phoenix sin with the skills silkweed provided would do pretty nicely and you should be able to handle anything in hell as long as you get your res up. I would suggest to max Shadow master incase you get in trouble and need to jump out of a fight she can handle her own and still kill things.

[Silkweed]

Wrong.

Weapon block is active at all times and does not suffer a running penalty the same way as shield blocking does. In fact, weapon block is in many ways superior to shield block. Maximum block on a shield is 75% with appropriate dexterity, but this is reduced to 1/3 when running (not walking though), so for characters that move around a lot, you are effectively only blocking 1 in 4 hits.

Weapon block however can get as high as about 65% with the right gear and skill points, and is active at all times. Also, weapon block can block most elemental attacks, including sorceress spells. A full list of what can and cannot be block can be found in the Assassin FAQ in the Assassin forum.

However, most C/Cers will either put 10 hard points into WB to reach 50% block, rely on +skills to reach 50% block, or leave WB at base and depend on other skills to make up for a lower block percentile. If you don't have a lot of gear to twink your character with, I recommend putting the hard points into WB, and even with the gear, I have a preference for a higher block.

As a C/Cer, you will find that you have trouble finding resistances. In which case, you might want to consider using a Jade Talon as an offhand weapon. It really isn't as bad as most people make it out to be. Your main claw should no doubt be Bartuc's Cut-Throat though, as it is easily the best claw in the game for a melee assassin. Upgrade it if you have the means, but remember that the str/dex requirements go up to 115 each for runic talons.

[5zigen]

Wrong.


Actually, you are wrong here. Do some testing and read up in the assn forum. Weapon block ONLY works when you are not moving, it doesnt even work if you are walking (but with cloak of shadows you shouldnt be taking hits while you are running anyway).

I still suggest if you have access to a jade talon to use it, as it pretty much beats any shield for a meele assnt (especially if you can get your hands on a 2/2/50 like my pheonix uses).

I recently got my dual claw pheonix sin to level 77, and here are my reccomendations.

Pick 2 elements of pheonix strike to focus on, usually people choose lightning and fire, but in theorey cold could work alright.

Here is how my character is setup (roughly, im not at home so i dont know exact skill spread)

20 pheonix
20 CoT
14 FoF (currently maxing)
18 Fade (i may max, but having +6 or 7 shadow skills provides lvl 25)
1 in prereqs, Cloak of shadows, Mind blast and Shadow master.

Also i have 1 point in dtalon and 1 point in dclaw, which is my standard finisher.

some things i reccomend against:
Putting 1 point in dflight.
There really is no point, dflight is still pretty much worthless unless you are trying to CLOSE distance on an enemy. In general it is poor at getting you out of "hot" situations as it is plauged with interuptability and desynch issues. (read the kick faq in the assasin forum for more details).

Upgrading bartucs.
no point, it just increases the requirements in this build, as pheonix sins dont rely very much on physical dammage (unless you end up using fists of fire, i suppose, but thats another build altogether).

Using burst of speed.
Its kinda nice to be able to run fast, but unless you have a super good ping, and alot of skill, burst of speed will not help you as much as it could. When it comes to pheonix its generally best to release on the first or second charge (unless you went ice) and getting less than 3 hits with bos is often difficult.
Furthermore with burst of speed you dont get fade. Fade is good for a lot of things. First off, the reduced curse duration is great. In hell you are cursed for about as long as you are in normal difficulty normally, about 3 to 5 seconds i think with high lvl fade.
Second, it provides a massive resistance bonus. 67% resist all frees up ALOT of gear space for +skills and +life.
Lastly, it provides 1% dr per lvl, making maxing DR on your dual claw sin, either a shaftstop, or a gaze and a string away.

Some general notes. I use dragon claw as my finisher because i wanted a way to keep my mana up at reasonable levels. its slightly slower than a normal attack but it has a MASSIVE ar bonus with my +skills, which is very important. In hell, getting the right charge can be a total pain when you have a low hit% and the enemy blocks many of your hits. And as with any sin, learn how to use cloak of shadows and mind blast well.

Lastly, i would highly reccomend using jade talon. You can probably trade for one with a lum rune, or less. and even a poor jade talon will afford you with alot of things a shield wouldnt. As its been mentioned, blocking elemental projectiles (gloams lightning comes to mind, as do blood stars), high resistall (rivaled only by things like mosers) and +skills (which this build is very reliant upon) and a huge 30% fhr. Hell, it might even be worth using 2 of them if you could get 2x 2/2 jade talons.

you also might want to use a full nats set as with that, and low level fade you would be set as far as DR goes (i decided that using uniques is better for me though).

Hope this helps some. Its not an overpowered build, and as always, stat points should go like:enough dex for gear, enough str for gear, the rest in vit.
I think my pheonix has 1280 hps, max dr, 27 nominal dr, and some odd 70 mdr, fire / cold absorb, and max res in hell with no anni.

she has lvl 30 pheonix and lvl 30 claws of thunder lvl 25 or so fists of fire. Her dammage is about 2000 per meteor and 5000 per chaos lightning bolt, so she is a little underpowered, but she can still kill alright in small player hell games. To be honest i tend to use claws of thunder and fists of fire though, as waiting for meteors to hit can be aggrivating, and fists of fire does good fire dammage even at lvl 15 (because of the physical conversion).

If you would like to know what my gearsetup is i would be happy to post it, sorry this reply got a little overly.

[PsionicAngel]

Weapon Block does work while running and attacking. At his full %.

[det]

Short and sweet. Never made one, want to try one. They any good with all syngeries maxed? Thanks

The great thing if you max all synergies is that basically nothing is immune..but will you be able to spend all those points?

20 in PS and 20 in each synergy are 80 points, not counting pre-reqs. And you might want to invest into Fade or BoS or SM as well.

There will be monsters that you rather not touch, so Mind Blast for crowd control as well.

I'd suggest chosing that synergy that is triggered most easily first (or does the most damage) and then maxing the others after that. Try and max the least favorite (hardest to handle) last. Just lightning/cold might kill well already and you won't need the last synergy.

[5zigen]

Weapon Block does work while running and attacking. At his full %.

Did you not read what i just posted. it does NOT work. LOOK IT UP. At least back up your claim. you will not block while running or walking with dual claws.

[PhatTrumpet]

If I were to make one I'd probably go fire and lightning, with BoS at base and a few into Fade and WB. Pumping a Shadow seems unnecessary with a Merc and decent dmg claws.

[PsionicAngel]

I've been playing Sin since the game has been released and been in the assassin forum for quite a while. So I think I can back it up, I've tested it myself. Had 10 pts in it and bocked while running and attacking. If you don't trust me, Just go in the assassin forum and ask Lunatic or Nali.

Edit: It definitely works while attacking. Though it "seems" to be disabled while walking/running, (It is said in the assassin forum but it has yet to be proven.).

[Afro AmeriZON]

Hey thanks for the responses! I have made assassins before and I always have went claw/claw. I currently rebuilt my death sentry/ MA assassin, she is lvl77 and doing great. I just never used phoenix strike before so i figured I'd try one out, just wondering if it was worth it. I usually get my block up to 50% after + skills and save the hard points for more shadow Master. Well since I got positive feedback it looks like I'll be making one soon. I figured I would use nats set and a bartucs, dual bartucs or bartucs/jade. Eh, I'll let you know how it turns out.