CI EQ Dual-Curse Assassin Faux-Tank (w/ Varunastra)

DISCLAIMER: Varunastra and a decent ES chest 5L/6L is not cheap. The rest of the gear is relatively cheap, since not so many people play phys attacking energy shield builds anymore, but the core of it is likely going to be 10ex+, especially early in a league.

I've been incredibly surprised both with the durability and damage of this setup. I'm crushing t15's w/ generally "mediocre" gear (for end-game, it's clearly good stuff). I feel confident about being able to tackle further content, it's just a matter of getting some specific upgrades and the map drops in Essence League (I've done them with my previous char with a guildie's maps, so I know what I'm getting into, will upload vids when I get there)

This build is also lacking the ES it needs for hardcore-viability, though I think a slight re-focus on passives, better gear, and a shield would work (I break 11 w/ this setup with a 450 es shield), and I really only die from stupid, usually involving Enfeeble and Temp Chains on me at the same time. Of course Taste of Hate and Vinktar's would be OP, but impossible to keep up if you're not a Pathfinder, so this build tries to focus on the fact that you can't shock some of the biggest baddies, and Taste of Hate often chills you, isn't reliable at removing chill/freeze, and is "just" some added physical as cold, when we already have ~110% added from chaos and fire already, making it far weaker than on most builds. Personally I feel being able to keep monsters Enfeebled while also having Vulnerability is a fair trade.

I've seen a lot of Varunastra builds that seem *blinded* by the light of the triple dip nodes down by duelist. While undeniably sexy, they also are just a certain amount of stats, and take a long journey to reach. While giving up the ranger flask nodes makes me shed a single tear, the value of being able to double curse from your passives is invaluable. I'm sure that both setups have their pros and cons - for instance, going to duelist *does* give you life leech that applies to your more-than-your-physical amount of fire and chaos damage, but of course Atziri's Promise leeches the chaos, and 3% phys leech ends up still being 1.5% of total damage if you don't have Promise.

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The Gimmick: EQ dual-wield (Death's Hand) scaled w/ Dagger/Claw nodes and Melee on Full Life

The Defense: Enfeeble, Temp Chains, Fortify, Vaal Pact, Dual-wield block

The Flasks: Stibnite (12% evade, 50% blind miss chance), Rumi's (54%/16% atm, phys redux of maybe 5% vs bosses), Basalt (32.5% flat phys reduction), Atziri's Promise (Chaos Leech)


Earthquake does very high per-hit damage. Assassin allows you to scale crit astronomically; we go with the Toxic Delivery line instead of the Assassination line b/c "more crit chance" is basically worthless to us, we didn't try hard to get our crit. With charges, up, which are always up, we have 84% without a single bit of crit chance on our gear. Utilizing dagger nodes for crit multi, claw nodes for damage and leech, and dual-wield nodes for accuracy and some block, we can scale EQ in a way it really is difficult to scale elsewhere on the tree. With concentrated effect, you can really see the degens rolling, and the secondary hits killing low creatures create insane burns even without scaling.

Earthquake also has the same function as Ice Crash, where even if you dual-wield maces, it will only ever attack with your main hand. Unfortunately, GGG has yet to fix the tooltip to correctly show the dps of you only attacking how you actually will attack. Importantly, this allows us to use a *mace* in our offhand without ever attacking with it; Death's Hand seems to suit the unused off-hand place excellently, both helping to quickly generate charges when they've fallen off, and to keep a constant 30% physical damage added as chaos - which for our build, is about a 14% total dps boost just from Unholy Might, not to mention dual-wielding.

While it can occasionally be annoying to proc the 30% increased skill duration from Noxious Strike, it certainly doesn't inhibit your clearing speed, nor will it affect you during most boss fights, and there's usually nothing getting poisoned, then maimed, then dying.

The idea with the curses is to always enfeeble, you'll temp chains surprise attacks and ranged attackers, while being able to swap to vulnerability for when it's time to hurt things. With the bonus cast speed in the Curse wheel, I didn't notice it feeling "clunky".

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Passive at 88 -------- poeurl.com/O7R

It can be argued I could drop the dual-wield nodes and swap to a shield, at the moment I've only got about 450 accuracy on my gear, need to roll my helm better, so bear that in mind as I need those accuracy nodes. I'll likely take the two block nodes if I stay dual-wield. While I could save a point pathing to the northwest of CI, for that one point I gain 10% es from the two nodes in the hybrid wheel; I end up with better mana leech (enough to get by in -60% recovery maps) and similar life leech to pathing down below ranger, and similar physical damage with weapons, gaining a good bit of crit multi and accuracy for it.

In the end, the point of this setup is to utilize double-cursing over flask nodes.

For jewels, I sought out .35% or higher physical damage leeched as life, then whatever other goodies I could squeeze on there. Strength and resists may be an issue earlier, otherwise you want to prioritize generic damage, area damage, and most importantly, critical multiplier to take advantage of our insane critical strike chance.

Obviously (?) you want to use Energy from Within between Witch/Shadow.

Of note, life leech *cannot* roll anything but Crimson Jewels, making it impossible to get a life leech + energy shield jewel, at least not without corrupting so many Emperor's Mastery Prismatic Jewel (from running the fastest Uber Labyrinth time) that you can sell 5 rare "bricks" to get an uncorrupted rare to scour and then spend a fortune trying to roll those two mods together...

... for funsies, you can swap in an Inspired Learning in the Witch jewel socket.



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Gear ------ (first flask is a constant swap utility, depending on group/map, usually it's an Experimenter's Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline; and I'm trying to get an Alchemist's Basalt Flask of Heat; ignites and shocks are huge concerns generally)



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Gem Setup

Earthquake + Melee Physical Damage + Melee Physical Damage on Full Life + Less Duration + Increased Critical Strikes + (Increased Area of Effect / Concentrated Effect) .../ Increased Critical Damage - for when you need some AoE on bosses still

Leap Slam + Fortify + Faster Attacks (preference to get over gaps, whirling is fine)

Enduring Cry + Warchief Totem + Increased AoE (totem is a buff)

Discipline + Blasphemy + Enfeeble + Enlighten

CWDT + Temporal Chains + Ice Golem (or Chaos if you want tankiness, or are crit/acc capped)

Vulnerability (self-cast, I had it as a 3L + 1L, but you could give it AoE or Faster Cast)

CWDT + Immortal Call + Increased Duration + Vaal Discipline

Herald of Ash in an Unset Ring (could get rid of increased AoE on warcry, but it's nice QoL)