[2.2] The Queen of Blades is Dead

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onavelzy wrote:

is scion zerk/assasin still the BiS in Prophesy given the zerk changes for scion? any suggestions for alternative ascendancy paths or different character choices altogether, e.g. pathfinder, etc

It's not hit *that* hard. You are just losing 0'5% life leech during clearing, and then only lose the other 1% with single bosses long fight without adds. Which is really just a handful of fights. You still get the main leech from Warlord's. But that's still a case for not needing Zerk so...

For CoC to build fully without having to maximize your crit chance through items and additional nodes difficult to reach, you need the assassin class. So it's still Ascendant Ass-? or Shadow Assassin. Shadow Assasin with the potential of having 8 points now and have BOTH Assasinate and Deadly Infusion, can be a DPS beast. AND give you Culling Strike (I would have got Core Malachai with that :( ).

For the second class of Ascendant... Zerk still has 10% more damage which is really nice. But... Occultist is not a bad choice, and this build would benefit and save a few (2-3 I would say) passive points with the witch start. You are going to miss the +40 STR from the warrior ascendant path, though. Slayer is not bad either for dps (and +20STR+20DEX is still pretty good for this build).

Without Assassin... well, I think you are going to miss a bit of crit chance. Truly make you dependent on Assasin's Mark for sure (and I like to replace that with Enfeeble). But Pathfinder is always solid with a crit build. Trickster and Occultist are always solid choices for ES builds, too. In particular Trickster makes your Cyclone cost no mana, but that becomes more QoL thing mostly, since usually leech is enough for that (it would make no mana and life regen a true walk in the park, though).

So I would say:

1. Ascendant Ass-Zerker (still best balanced approach in my oppinion)
2. Assassin (best offensive approach)
3. Trickster (best defensive approach)
4. Occultist (if you really want to play it with a witch)
5. Pathfinder (if you have really good unique flasks and like to use them, but you miss a bit of passive points here, I feel).
6. Other Ascendant Ass-*** approaches (Ass-Trickster or Ass-Cultist)

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Fhark wrote:

Thanks for the advice lucio_sila , yeah i figured it wasnt ideal but since i rolled it i wasnt going to reroll :D, i till try spectral throw,coc since its always been one of my favourite skills.

I am testing ST for this build and it is indeed faster for map clearing. A biiit safer for bosses, but slower too, so it balances out.

I would only add to this that if you want to try Atziri (warning, I still have to try this myself), the build should go back to cyclone and then replace EK with and GMP with Faster Attacks.

After some time...

Definitively the setup with Spectral Throw + GMP + CoC + ICC + BladeFall + Arc (or Ethereal Knives for the incredible rare 5G1B shav) is a lot better, a lot safer and it cleans a lot faster than the Cyclone one.

I have managed to do Atziri with this build, though, with the Cyclone + CoC + ICC + Concentrated Effect + BladeFall + BladeVortex. I did die twice, but more being careless I feel (and not the best flask setup for Atziri), so it's doable. Maybe with the right possitioning it could be done with ST, but not sure...

Aaand, I guess this got totally butchered for 2.4

Well, it was fun while it lasted.