The Best Melee Assassin [ 2.5 Dragon Tail Assassin Build ]
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- čas přidán 16. 10. 2022
- The Dragon Tail Assassin is an often requested build, but the most common variants have one flaw that frankly irritates me (and a few people who have turned off by the build) - today, we show an alternative setup to avoid that flaw, while still maintaining a powerful assassin build in patch 2.5 of diablo 2 resurrected. We also answer one of the more common recent questions: Should you use physical or fire sunder on the dragon tail assassin?
(and this also shows how to make a dragon tail assassin that doesn't require constantly charging up tiger's claw)
Skill videos for this build:
Finishing Moves: • The Secret Broken feat...
The Central Charges: • The Best (and worst) C...
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![The Secret Meta Build [ Bladesin Build ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rUtRxKKYBGg/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Secret Meta Build [ Bladesin Build ]](/img/tr.png)
Interested in a detailed breakdown of the skills? Check out the skill guide here:
Finishing Moves: czcams.com/video/7a0bKzBsC9Q/video.html
The Central Charges: czcams.com/video/_aRE00qGT_Y/video.html
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Just wanted to say thanks for this guide! I’ve been playing D2R on and off over the past year and kinda gave up on it after realizing that I’ll likely never have the end game gear that I see in guides because I’m playing SSF in my spare time.
I have always loved the assassin class but not having the years of experience and knowledge on how the gear and kick skills actually work together I typically defaulted to a trapsin and got burnt out on the play style.
Got to say this has been the most fun assassin build I’ve played thus far and the survivability has been far above my squishy trapsin always kiting around tougher elites and the ever frustrating Lightning Immunes.
I was cleaning house in Nihlathaks Temple (P8 NM) and got my first ever “Ist” rune off a random mob! Little to say that sold me on working with this build to slowly find gear while actually “enjoying” the hunt.
Thanks again!
I found one point in Cobra Strike very useful while leveling this build. Charging up the first six hits, then transitioning to the rotation of Tail=>Tiger=>Cobra=>Tail clears slightly slower than the Tiger=>Tail rotation, but with much more smooth mana and health management and much more forgiving gearing early on. 80% of tens of thousands of damage is an awful lot, even after physical and leech resistance.
Lawbringer really surprised me.
I am keen on trying the Sazabi set as well
After all these years, finally someone got it.
My second char this ladder is a Dragon tail sin. Hyped!
they are a lot of fun even with starter gear, though as you get to endgame stuff, they are absolutely brutal :)
Gonna give this a shot on my sp sin... Looks like a ton of fun
With sundering charms this is one of my fav builds. Aoe to clear. Decent survivablilty, and an extra few points into talon with crushing blow clear does end game bosses nice
I'm making a Necro atm having a blast . Gonna try this next season i guess 🙂
i found a crazy way to SSF this build back in d2lod:
get some white greaves in act5 normal (or a1 nm?), imbue them, and then up them to exceptional in cube. now you oneshot things on p8 nm
pretty solid strategy, too bad upgrading to elite is a bit pricey for ssf, but even just getting you through nightmare will be a major boon
Now I am sad that I leveled my char as a trapsin :(
does your fire damage on attack apply to the dragon tail explosion, similar to how it works with exploding arrow?
sadly no, the fire damage is strictly based on the physical damage you deal :(
I have some questions: 1) Dragon Tail converts all the physical dmg from Tiger Strike to fire? 2) if you play with Claws of Thunder, does Dragon Tail converts the lighting dmg to fire too? 3) as long as you have a charge, your finisher always hit?
Dragon Tail deals physical damage to the target, and then the fire damage it deals as an area of effect, is based on the amount of physical damage it dealt (this is why you never use Fists of Fire with it).
Claws of Thunder is lightning damage, so it has no impact on dragon tail's damage.
As of patch 2.4 for D2R, yes - if you have a charge, your finishing move will auto-hit as long as the enemy is in range of your attack.
Thank you for not just doing meta builds
glad you're enjoying them :) - I find the builds that play with mechanics a bit more fun to play than the copy/paste stuff
ok so, when you release the 3 charges of tiger strike using dragon tail, that 610% fire damage of dragon tail is based in the tiger strike damage? or it's based on your normal attack damage?
it's a bit weird - it's based on "actual damage" (the only skill that does that) - so tiger strike charges, damage auras, etc. are taken into account for the kick damage, but with dragon tail, it also calculates past the enemy physical resistance before determining the fire damage (so if you do 0 physical damage due to a physical immune, then the blast will do 0 fire damage) - that's the main reason for using lawbringer, since it bypasses physical resistances of undead (who make up most of the physical immunes), and its decrepify effect breaks immunity of everything else except certain stone skin flavors
Las ladder I build my own TS/DT assassin, getting 87K kick damage with only TS charged and 112K combined, (no external buffs).
I don't even needed crushing blow since I'm able to kill P8 cows with only one kick.
Using dual plague claws with +5 DT, I know lower res at the end makes less damage than the other curses, but as I used lite MA as well this option gives more benefit to both elements, also using 2 soc coa with fire facets and CoH as armor. Res are capped, 38% DR 56% block, highest possible IAS. Just love that character.
Give a try to plague claw on this build, at least worked perfectly for me. (Still have my character in no ladder)
Wow man I was lookin in the comments to see if these k8nd of builds are viable in p5-p8 games and I guess you answered my question lmao I'm hyped to try this now!
@@adrenolyn3675 I might show her in NL Wernilles#1717 if you wanna take a look on her
What,about also using venom with plague claw. Novas, venom for poison and the lower resist is awesome too also for the talon since ot stacks with sunder
wouldn't use it on this specific build, but plague claws can be fun for a few builds.
I have a pair of rare gloves with 2 to Martial Arts and 20 IAS would those be better than laying of hands? The 350% damage to demons plus +50 fire res seems better but I'm not sure
depends a bit on what you're farming, and what the other mods on the rare are - for stuff like cows, hands down the +2/20, however if doing act bosses, or demon dense zones - the LoH can win out unless the rares have good mods.
in the video, there are times when a charge up isn't used. is this just for cannon fodder and charge for bosses only?
The goal was actually to modify the build so that chargeup was unnecessary, to streamline the play (we still keep points in chargeup for the bosses, since that is faster)
Lawbrringer for sanctuary with 300% increase dmg vs undead
Laying of hands for 300% increase dmg vs demons seems like a great well rounded cheap combo
sadly, they don't boost kicks - but they are good for quite a few other builds - the main reason for using these were resist penetration (Lawbringer) and attack speed (laying of hands)
How about Martial Arts builds, then? This looks pretty good I have to admit.
Stormlash, or azurewrath are good options, I am running this build in s2 ladder ATM I have um stormshield and flickering flame, I have max death sentry so lawbringer will wreck its effects for me.
I would generally go dragon talon with stormlash (faster, triggers the static a bit better), but azurewrath is pretty solid for the undead punch with this, makes ghosts so much easier.
anyone got a maxroll build of the versions hes recommending ?
Question. How would this do in ubers now with sunder charms?
I made uber quest by Dragon Tail without life tap, with crushing blow only from boots (15%)
Wonder how this build would do with Mosaic?
I tried this on a playthrough about a month ago and hit a brick wall in hell had some decent boots but not much else. Any tips on starting hell with all the fire and physical immunes in act 1? I tried claws of thunder but it didn’t work well
for fire immunes, just means kicking them directly in the face - for the physical immunes, drag them next to any non-physical immune, and they'll pop in the fire quickly - does require a bit of monster herding though.
use phoenix strike, instead of tiger strike, maxs out all required skills put a few points into shadow master and the rest in DS I have no problem in hell.
Question - if i run with pride for my merc would that buff the kick damage?
it would buff the outgoing physical damage, but the skill is a bit more complicated than that. Personally, I like conviction for the improved chance to hit when I'm not charging up (or when I'm trying to build charges themselves), and conviction helps ramp up the fire damage you deal as well.
This build or Phoenix Strike? I have sunder charms for all elements but confused by the mechanics and hard to tell whats more fun with little assa experience.
I would say this build (Dragon Tail) if you're wanting melee, with trapsin (video coming for that in a couple hours, had a mishap rendering) being the first choice if you prefer ranged. (they also make a fairly good pair for a hybrid build)
I've never played diablo 2 but I just started this build, all the guides online for this build chose different skills, haven't seen your exact build posted anywhere. Can you tell me which stats I should focus on leveling in the beginning? I'm completely lost but I really wanna follow ur build it looks more fun than the other guides I've seen online
I go with just enough strength to wear my desired gear at the time (the maximum you should ever end up with is 156 - since that's the requirement for the best in slot shield), and everything else into vitality for this variant.
As long as you have patience, the build can actually beat the game without equipment fairly easily - so if you find yourself butting up against a wall at some point, just take it a bit slower for a bit and let the hydras and the range of the orb do the work (in end game gear, the build can zip around and ignore pretty much everything, in "solo self found"/first time stuff - you will want to play with a little caution in hell difficulty)
@@Alzorath thanks man appreciate it
There are a couple setups that can take various stats higher, but I generally just go for equipped gear (if you go with the lawbringer like I did here - you will need dex - but if you go the non-tiger strike route, and instead just go heavy kicks w/o charges - you can get away with a fast weapon base lawbringer with minimal stats)
i went with Silence Berserker axe and a a5 merc with plague
what does anybody think about dual pheonix for this build, for maximizing -res, do you lose too much cb and damage whilst charging tigerstrike?
might be pretty cool if you went with flickering flame and infinity merc so you were consistently dealing double fire damage and had a sunder.
my first d2r char was a glass cannon 2h Edeath decap tigerstriker who's presently gathering dust,loved her ridiculous character screen damage numbers and she was all kinds of stylish but I'm really intrigued with doing a dtail sin now.
Last ladder I build one DT/TS sin and was my favorite character, I was able to get 87K kick damage and kill P8 cows with one kick. But instead of using lawbringer, lacerator or phoenix, I got two plague claws with +5 DT, which also procs lower res a lot paired with infinity and 2 socket coa with fire facets gives enough negative res. Also using 2 claws you get 7 frames so easily and Weapon Block. Also using coh for resistances.
@@andresalanis7767 intriguing, I'd not even considered that! I've never built an assassin that actually uses claws lol but that sounds pretty cool
Dual phoenix has a big problem and that is zero IAS in the weapon. On the other hand you could instead use Hand of justice, but it's a huge unfortunate it only has 33 ias, since the breakpoint is 54, so with 20 IAS gloves you need another piece with IAS. I prefer to use enigma for tele so also I need to consider fcr as well.
I'm leaning towards flickering flame for the big fire res boost and -enemy fire res together with +3 fire skills that works on Dragon tail. A crafted fcr Assa skill amulet, enigma, spirit shield for fcr, fhr and skills. Nosferatu coil or goldwrap. Hand of justice, raven frost, dual leech fcr ring, upped gores. I'm not entirely sure enough ED without phoenix/fortitude but it could be, depending on how much you use tiger strike. Together with might merc.
Currently i don't have any extra +ED on gear and p1 is a breeze. But i wanna build for either 3 or 5 player where death sentry is close to useless. For higher player count you basically must have a lot of negative fire res.
Are all Grand Charms skillers with Life and what did you Small Charms did you use?
Can this build do ubers?
actually, for this video just using trash skillers for the most part (since I just use what I have on single player) - the small charms are resist charms.
And yes, this build can do ubers - but dragon talon builds have an easier time.
These are fantastic build guides. Please do more melee builds! Barb with weapon options for leveling. Literally no one has that.
Also thoughts on macrobios necro thorns might discussion???
I saw his post about it, I'll watch the video if I remember later - but thorns has always been a great boss killer due to damage scaling (he does more damage to minions, and in turn reflects more back at him) - which is one reason I always say "thorns until hell is done" - just make sure when you telestomp w/ the staff to take a step back, but not "run away" due to targeting. You're also not losing much damage from minions offensively until you have access to infinity.
A budget middleground is A1 Inner Sight merc w/ Edge Runeword (for thorns)
As far as "thorns vs density" it's too wildly variable based on enemies spawned, so not entirely sure how he decided to organize his graph on that - for swarm farming, with infinity & might you're pretty quick to get your CE seed with telestomping before the focus enemy even attacks.
@@Alzorath i agree! more melee SSF guides.
So pre-Lawbringer, the weapon kinda doesn't matter? When my RNG is bad I usually roll with a Strength scim until I get something better, but interested in hearing your suggestions
the main aspects to remember on the weapon is that attack speed and weapon rangeadder do influence kicks - so you don't want to use any extremely slow weapons - but other than that, you're right in that the weapon only barely matters.
You don't NEED Lawbringer until you start encountering Phys immunes. Before that it doesn't matter but you want to make sure your charge up hits so AR, ITD, Eth rune etc to hit your Tigers will help a lot.
@@wingspantt Gotcha, I've built one of these before but wanna roll another one in S2 and was curious about alternatives
@@swishersnaaake8208 Azurewrath or Tucs are also fair choices.
can u make a video about a frostmaiden Amazon with full Mavina set + this sunder charm now? Super budget and great to play I think. Greetz from Germany, peace 0/
So off weapon ED will boost the base kick damage but doesn't affect the damage with charges?
It's additive with charges, rather than multiplicative.
So for example if you had +1000% ED with Charges and +700% ED from off-weapon gear, you'd have +1700% ED while charged. But you'd have +700% ED while dry kicking or charging up.
If you don't have off-weapon ED you'd have 1000% ED with charges, but have 0% ED while dry kicking or charging up. (which is a lot slower, and lacks smoothness)
@@Alzorath I see I see, thanks for clearing that up. Appreciate all the help with this build 🙏🏻 it's a tough one to get good info on
So does the poison from venom stack on your kicks?
on the actual hit - yes, but not on the splash.
How does slain monsters rest in peace interact with redemption aura?
prevents it from eating corpses sadly, so phoenix is strictly for the +% damage that scales exceptionally well with dragon tail.
@@Alzorath huh good to know, thank for the reliable info
Vote for law-bringer too.
Consider the small area effect of DT....that flee effect just neutralise any benefit of amp dmg....
These are fantastic build guides. Please do more melee builds! Barb with weapon options for leveling. Literally no one has that.
Also thoughts on macrobios necro thorns might discussion???
@@MikeySassounian i remember Alzorath have give opinions on this aspect before, but it just scattered over different vedio tho.
For WW build and assuring no lucky, the following runeword which can be farm in act1 countess of respective difficulty, can carry you tho act5:-
Normal: steel/malice
Nm: Honor/ insight
Hell: Insight(elite base)/ obedience .
What about Lawbringer + Phoenix shield. The Redemption aura should not work, shouldn't it?
That is correct, though you aren't using phoenix for the redemption aura - it's for the +% ED.
I am thinking about alternating between Lawbringer and Azurewrath depending on the farming areaa and/or player count .
Is plague now available in non-ladder? Thanks!
sadly single player and ladder only still, at least last I heard :( (I generally throw all my stuff away into free stuff games between ladders when I participate in them these days - since I do most my recording/testing in single player)
Lo rune 4:42 and thanks for the video
This build is awesome! I'm wondering about the optimal use of Tiger Strike, or whether or not it's optimal to use it at all.
It looks like technically the most damage output would be 3 Tiger Strikes and then alternate between Dragon Tail so it unloads the most powerful explosion and then when you're at 2 stacks, to Tiger Strike again so you're right back at 3 and can do another big one? I don't see how it would be good to use Dragon Tail 3 times in a row to spend all your charges when by far the biggest increase comes from a 3-stack and you're right back at 3 with just one Tiger Strike after spending it. Tiger Strike by itself does virtually no damage and Dragon Tail with 0 charges does a pretty chunky amount of damage. 1 Tiger Strike + 1 Dragon Tail is only a little bit better than just 2 Dragon Tails
Now in practical use you lose some time in between attacks when you are alternating and if you happen to miss an attack or use a Tiger Strike when you're already at 3 you lose so much compared to just spamming Dragon Tail, given that you hit like 3,57 times a second. Though I am 100% disregarding the knockback effect in this case
Sorry for the long text! I'm prolly just going to make an Assassin to mess around with, it looks like fun! I'm curious about using a 6-fire-faceted Phase Blade, Atma's and a Bone Break too
Ok so I've been playing this build and some variations and I feel like this is definitely a sleeper S-tier build. Ended up with a Lacerator setup and it feels so incredibly strong! Coming from someone who played high end Sorc and Pala builds, selfwield infinity light, double auradin, dragondin, dream, foh, hammers, etc.
Some things I like most of the build; it's very tanky, has good sustain, it's quite niche, has a specific tactical playstyle, it can easily spec hybrid so you can do ubers, it looks cool and lastly it has massive scaling capabilities on top of being very functional with budget gear! I think I might skip the sorc next season and go straight for an Assassin, just not sure whether to level as a kicker, bladesin or trapper
Anyway big thanks for introducing me to this!
Uh, unless they changed it for D2R, whenever you use a finishing move, you lose ALL charges of Tiger Strike.
But yeah, your overall argument is basically why in original D2, i basically just skipped TS most of the time. Though it is super effective if you can time it so you can do a DT with maxed TS right in the middle of a large pack.
@@DIREWOLFx75 it is changed, you only lose 1 charge when you use Dragon Tail now, and that works with Tiger Strike, Phoenix and Cobra, I haven't tried the claw specific ones
So you can literally dump a 3-level Dragon Tail, 1 Tiger Strike to go back to 3, then dump another one. And that explosion on my Assassin with Decrep procced does 83k to 131k on the top end using Lawbringer. With Lacerator and Amp damage the damage goes to 123k - 195 k, every other ability.
@@1000dreams Seems like this is the way overall.Im also thinking about going trapsin and then respecin in hell once i finish baal.
Its a good stony tomb farmer with practically no gear.
Does this build suffer much in hell having budget items? Like for example, will this work with no phoenix shield?
It works insanely well in hell. The biggest necessary item is uppd gore riders which should be cheap (pul for boots, lem ko for upgrade).
Id recommend going hybrid with traps till you get the expensive endgame gear
Angelic ring and amulet, stone armor, lawbringer, moser or sanctiary as shield and shadowdancer boots. Very budget and you can do everything up to players 3, just avoid packs of fire immune and nuke only uniques and champions
50%block, no more or less. Fuck sundercharm if budget. You can shop a+3 martial glove in about half an hour, and fill your inventory with martial gcs, they usualy goes for fals. With lvl 31 BoS you dont need the atk speed to reach max bp. Use strings as belt for damage reduce. Use cloak of shadow before dangerous pulls.
thank you guys!
You can get through Hell with a Rhyme shield with this build
me watching this video about to make my kicksin:
aw yeah pretty budget friendly, dont look too awful hard....nice nice.....PERFECT PERFECT GORES :O lol jp niiiice pair of boots my man. Thanks for the content 👍
Ok alzorath I made her. I think she's done. Here's my version of her. Online she's "Cleopatra"
I fought with myself on the mainhand weapon for a while. Was a close one between firelizard, Btucs, HOJ, stormlash, but finally settled on dual phoenix for a wicked lvl 29 redemption aura
Phoenix PB phoenix monarch
Fortitude ap, metalgrid, dual ravenfrost, nosferatu (needed for breakpoint, I'd rather tgods or dungos) 2/20 MA 30 fr 9 dex rare gloves, 210 gores, flickering flame winged helm. I'm rockin pretty decent on p8. -70 enemy fire res and physical sunder with fire sunder. She's slapping man! Thanks for the video and the inspiration to start the build
Also I went BOS instead of fade like you...still need to try out sanctuary. My lite res and 30%fhr was balanced out in my inventory. Only enough room for 4 gcs with lite res/fhr scs
How good this would be with +5 dragon tail claw and + 2 sockets
against things that are not physical resistant, it would do fine - but against physical immunes or pretty much any undead, it would lose a decent bit of killing power by swapping out the weapon.
@@Alzorath I see thanks for the info!
I was going to try a Blade Fury build this season, but you're kind of changing my mind...
start as bladefury, very easy and you can play on players 8 with Natalya's set.
+ it feels like immortal with the set.
Dragon tail with tiger strike charges is op and why the hell has nobody been talking about this? Its turn my trapsin into a powerhouse.
I run dual plague with lightning sentury
The reason nobody talked about it is because before 2.5 it gets walled by fire immunes and phys immunes.
2 mosaïc will not be better than lawbringer an dragon shield
Idk.. despite sundering effects id still make death/light sentry part of the build, sundering is one way to go.. but even adding trap damage into a rotation is still beneficial and just another better damage source to fire/phys immunes you or the merc can't really manage.. also definitely 1 point wonder dragon flight.. doesnt matter the build.. such a great skill.
(Edit got deleted)
With that gear setup it's be worthwhile to run death sentry for CE in a dps rotation...
Phys/fire would benefit from amp/decrep procs, and the -fire res on gear..
Cheers!
Death Sentry won't work with lawbringer, and it in turn allows us to ignore physical immune on undead (which are a large chunk of physical immune and physical resistants) as well as breaking non-undead physical immunes by using decrepify.
As far as fire immunes - we have fire sunder, and a minimum of 45% reduction in resists (putting enemy resist cap at 50%).
Death Sentry explosion is also physical fire, and since we're using dtail as our primary, rather than our support - we generally won't have points to dip into making lightning sentry potent enough.
As far as dragon flight - it was mentioned as being used in the video.
In regards to death sentry btw - traps do not benefit from -fire res on gear (they do get sunder, but they'll only be impacted by conviction and lower resist - gear does not effect traps)
I run traps and dragon tail and you dont need sunder charms. Works exceptionally well for farming because you only need gores for big dps and traps to cover immunes. This allows the sin to stack massive amounts of Mf without having to sacrifice big dps.
@@Alzorath all im sayin.. is if you're movin.. you could be dpsin' too :P
@@jprec5174 i run the same build. What weapon and armor do you suggest in budget? Does weapon block with dual weild is viable?
@@a3yristos budget gear is spirits but I use dual plague claws with +3 lightning Sentry staff mods