[2.5] Mustard's Assassin/Blade Flurry DreamFeather Build

Optional Flasks

My gear is as follows. of course using the dreamfeather weapons to boost our chaos damage from high evasion. thus all applicable gear should have the highest evasion we can find. also all applicable gear should have flat chaos damage added, since this is our main source of damage to augment with % increase and % more damage modifiers.

the next tricky part is the belt. the belt is required. this gives us flask charge duration and most importantly lower flask charges used. this, coupled with Arcane Chemistry passive (which you can view in my tree below) allows us to keep flasks up basically permanently.

cospri's will is BIS for this variation of the build. it is BIS because we have available mana for blasphemy curse since we don't use damage auras, and it gives us free poison, 2nd curse for witchfire brew, and high evasion.

gloves should be highest resistances, hp, and accuracy you can find. evasion doesn't matter here, just get the stats.

boots BiS is atziri step for high evasion, hp, spell dodge and movement speed.

helmet and jewelry will all be connected as to what you can use. this is the best jewelry i had that i could craft flat chaos damage on and retain max resistances. you'll most likely need to juggle around what you use to have in priority:
max resistances, life, some accuracy, flat chaos
those are the stats to aim for

******NOTE*******
you NEED a source for poison. if you do not have and cannot get cospri's will, you can use LEGACY voidheart. if you do not have that, you'll be forced to use poison support which i'll touch on more of in the gems explained section.
i do not recommend snakebite gloves. even as raider where it is easy to gain frenzy charges, its still mostly on kill gained. this means the lowered duration from snakebite we'll have a super short duration on frenzy. too short to keep your charges between fights, and since its on kill generation we get from poacher's mark, that means you won't have any frenzy charges basically until a pack is already dead. essentially you'll only have frenzy when it doesn't matter...when the fight is over.
DO NOT USE THESE GLOVES

Flasks are what this build is about. im basically a pathfinder without the ascendancy. my flasks are up 100% of the time.

I run one life flask. its risky, and it does cause me to die, but there you go. since we only have one life flask, and only room for one removal mod you will need to constantly swap out flasks for shock/bleed/freeze remove/immunity depending what you anticipate coming up.
yes its risky...don't run this build on hardcore, what can i say.
alternatively you could also run a basalt flask in place of a life flask, merely relying on your leech to bring you back up to full HP. obviously do not do this if running lab.

only reason why im running vinktar's is for the shock effect. it double dips and its one of the the highest modifiers we can get.
i have a legacy vinktar's but it is by no means required at all. normal vinktar's works because it still gives shock, and its still a luxury, only adding DPS. if you want to play more safely then swap this flask out for an increased effect/reduced duration freeze immune basalt flask.

witchbrew and jade flasks are required. the bonus dmg they give is astronomical. as well as jade giving you a crap ton of evasion.

atziri flask is great basically just because of the leech. it doesn't add too much DPS, but its the leech we're after. coupled with vaal pact as long as you're able to hit something you'll be full HP.

Here i'll talk about my gems and why i chose them.

first off is blade flurry. not much to speak of here. it is the most superior skill to use right now because it has the highest base damage modifier as well as the highest attack speed by a mile.
since this build is based off poison, this skill stacks it at a super fast rate because of its more attack speed and our high base atk spd of dreamfeather.

BiS supports are: Faster Attacks, Void Manipulation, Increased Critical Strikes, Added Chaos Damage, Increased Area of Effect/Concentrated Effect.
easily swap inc aoe for conc effect before separate boss fights. majority of map fights you can keep inc aoe socketed without issue.
*****NOTE******
if you don't have another means of poison, you will need to skip out on faster attacks and socket poison. this is very much not recommended.

Blasphemy one curse of your choice. Witchfire brew will take up the 2nd curse. i constantly run my flasks so i like to use poacher's mark as curse. it #1 reduces their evasion, subsequently raising our hit rate, #2 gives us life and mana on HIT, #3 frenzy charges for more dmg and atkspd #4 the biggest reason is 100% flask charges gained. this curse will allow us to sustain our flasks at 100% uptime.
other aura is obviously Grace for higher evasion = higher damage and higher defense.

wither totem is required. get it with as many support links as you can. inc duration is best 4th link but inc aoe works as well.

whirling blades for movement.

last and certainly not least is my 2nd blade flurry setup. blade flurry has replaced orb of storms for power charge generation BY FAR. you can cast it at range and only need to for half a second to get 1-2 power charges. also being melee it can apply fortify which is much more reliable and safer to do than with whirling blades.
having maxed crit rate means you cannot sustain your power charges with the measly 10% chance to gain a power charge on a non crit strike. you will need a PCoC setup and this one happens to be the best. could also swap inc crit strikes for inc aoe, more than likely, if you feel like it.

Now i'll go over my passive tree and why i chose certain things.

our tree is pretty specific, tho there are a lot of other ways you can go. we need loads of life and crit strike to raise our base 5% crit as high as possible. that thins out other possibilities available to us but you need to make sure to grab up the flask nodes. at the very least arcane chemistry is required. this allows you 3 gulps from flasks.

we suck at physical damage so that doesn't boost you at all. the best boost you can get is CHAOS damage, second best would be attack damage or DoT. just not physical damage, or physical attack damage...those are a waste of passives.

again as much life as you can get.

depending on your jewelry/helmet and whatnot, you may need to get resistances from the tree. i currently don't have capped resistances but its because i didn't want to sacrifice anything to get more resistances from the tree, because fk it.
i will eventually upgrade my jewelry to cover all required resistances, get more life, and still retain flat chaos damage......in due time.

i used 3 passives to get 18% atkspd because i feel its worth it overall. without them things just feel a lot slower. our poison damage is already amazing so i don't mind spending some passives to stack it faster.

Offense is hard to talk about because BF offense is tricky, especially since we're reliant on our poison damage. These numbers are with CONCENTRATED EFFECT linked, aka boss setup.
****NOTE****
im also using my optional sulphur flask here to pad the numbers as much as i can, which gives an increase of approx 50% increased damage (double dips)

Damage Per Hit: 11,775.69
Chance To Hit: 89%
Attack Speed: 6.56
Physical Damage: 729-1154
Chaos Damage: 2245-3528

Critical Strike Chance: 90.62%
Critical Strike Damage: 367%

Vaal Pact Life Leech: 2%
Life Gain on Kill: 5
Life Gain on Hit: 24 (from poacher's mark)
Mana Gain on Hit: 12 (from poacher's mark)
Mana Leech: 0.4%

im posting the phys/chaos so if you really wanna get into some maths you can kinda calculate our poison damage in theory. but once you add in wither totem increasing chaos damage for both initial hit and poison, and any thing such as that, it gets a little tricky so im not going to bother.

our main damage is poison however, and let me tell you it is substantial. keep in mind, as you may have noticed from my passive tree i do not have my final ascendancy points. thus these numbers do not include the temporary buff of 20% physical dmg added as chaos, or the permanent buff of 100% more poison damage.

also you're more than free to use a different golem. i have a fire golem because the damage double dips, but am very much considering using either the ice golem which gives you 91% hit rate and 93.44% crit chance, or lightning golem to slightly boost atk spd.

Life: 4,741
Armour: 15
Evasion Rating: 52,484
Estimated Chance to Evade Attacks: 74%
Chance to Dodge Spells: 16%
Maximum Energy Shield: 118
Fire Resistance: 75% (85%)
Cold Resistance: 61% (61%)
Lightning Resistance: 81% (109%)
Chaos Resistance: 7% (7%)
Chance to Block Attacks: 15%
Stun Avoidance: 28%
Movement Speed Modifier: 46%

not a crap ton of defenses to speak of here, not compared to the raider version. however with an upgrade in jewelry you should be able to hit over 5,200 life and have capped resistances. again with atziri flask and vaal pact you are instantly back up to full life so as long as you don't get one shot and you're able to hit something, you'll survive.

feel free to unsocket a dps flask and throw in basalt for physical mitigation or whatever suites your fancy.