[3.10] Complete Cobra Lash Assassin Guide | >10m Shaper DPS | All content | Noob Friendly | Video

First off, thanks for the amazing guide MoosGames! Followed it in 3.9 and now played a CL character on my own in 3.10. Done 36 challenges now so felt like giving some feedback and input on what i did while playing the build - i decided to go with a one-handed version for 3.10 as i figured it'd be easier to build up a high HP pool.

The build had used around 5-6 ex and sitting at ~5.2k life and ~5mil shaper dps when i started to minmax most of it. Getting started and making a solid base and then working on it felt VERY VERY fun as there were many areas to improve on: CLUSTERS!, maxing out gems/getting awakened support gems, getting a helm with enchant/- chaos ressist, getting watcher's eye, upgrading claw, upgrading other parts of gear. I crafted most of my gear myself over time (and bought some bases to hunter orb on) as i saw fit and the items are very niche so looking at trade they cost a lot more than what i spent to craft them usually.

At level 91 i made the transition to Cluster jewels, they are absolutely amazing for the build! What i found to work the best is a Chaos damage large cluster with Wicked Pall + Unholy Grace and then another damage notable. For both mediums i used a +5% to chasos damage over time multiplier with Haemorrhage + Wasting affliction, crit works nicely and faster poison is probably the best stat i can think of - getting all of your damage out in a shorter timeframe really sped up mapping and boss killing as i did not have to doubt myself if they would tick down and normal packs just evaporate in under second. For smalls get life and whatever else you happen to get or need. The best way to incorporate clusters i found was using The Thread of Hope jewel on the tree to save a bunch of points and grab an extra node from the bow ring - this has been suggested before in this thread and works wonders with clusters. I experimented with many non-cluster verions but i could not push both the dps AND health as high and had to pick between the two, and even then neither the hp nor dps meaningfully surpassed what clusters gave me.

This said i still did rarely get one-shot randomly and misplays often meant death - leveled to 95 relatively easy and decided not to push it any more and focus on bossing and other endgame stuff which happened to kill me time to time.

This is my 1st ever char i got into doing red maps regularly and any content beyond that so I was extreamely excited and surprised how well the build performed and allowed me to push it further :)

Current PoB at 12 M shaper dps and 6180 HP: https://pastebin.com/mmeDG9j4 - I have no idea anymore how much i've spent but it's definitely not astronomical, probably close to 40ex - chest was 5 ex, used ~8ex crafting the claw (still has useless roll), ~5 ex to craft the helm. Belt/ring used Hunter Orbs on around 150c bases. Used some divine and exalt freebies from Syndicate to improve other stuff. Did extreamely well for any content i did - sirus 8 , uber elder, T16 100% delirious maps, simulacrum last waves to 5 rewards.

Hi. I love your guide so far. The clear speed is quite something. My question is: Would you recommend Contagion over Wither? Contagion has a 5 sec duration, does quite a bit of chaos damage, and can spread upon death, whereas wither is only 2 seconds long and doesn't spread. I need your view on which would be better in mapping.

First ans foremost a huge shout out to Moos not only fur this build guide but also for your guide on fossil crafting. Much, much, much appreciated. Thank you very much sir! I played this build in Metamorph, having a blast and am planning to play it come the Harvest League. Barring any nerfs to CL.

2nd shout out to ThunSaren. Looking at your PoB really helped a lot. Especially your glove setup with despair. I was wondering how your mana management is working out having to use agony, aspect of the spider, malevolence AND blasphemy/despair. Some more insight would be great.

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Bonsai017 wrote:

I was wondering how your mana management is working out having to use agony, aspect of the spider, malevolence AND blasphemy/despair. Some more insight would be great.

Hey, great i could be of use! :) I'm using Herald of agony + malevolence linked with enlighten lvl 3 and socketed into my shield with 10% reduced mana reservation for socketed spells. The mana reservation line isn't necessary if you use enlighten 4 / don't run leveled precision - i just happened to get the absolutely amazing shield so i opted to use precision (leveled to 5) to get some extra accuracy and crit in. Precision is just an extra and slotting in level 1 is majority of the benefit if your other gear and mana allows it.

For Despair I have the unique neck "Impresence" (chaos version) - it has "despair has 100% reduced mana reservation if cast as aura" - PoB doesnt recognise this so it shows as having the mana reserved. Without this i don't think theres a way to do it besides what the guide already suggests - "Witchfire Brew Stibnite flask" - this flask gives level 21 despair aura while active. The neck has pretty useful mods but locks you out of some resists and potentially "- 8-9 to mana costs craft". That said, the 4-link setup with enhance4 + blasphemy + despair is really really strong imo. When i decided going for the neck and thus double rings for mana/resists i looked at the other possibility which would be good rare neck + Circle of nostalgia unique ring with chaos damage / buff effect for Herald of Agony, but the ring + good neck looked to be a lot more expensive and produced worse results with what I had available. If one was to run a rare chest with - mana costs to socketed attacks / some resists i think both the neck AND ring could be possible for some extra potential damage. (though my chest is very very strong and the +1 to gem levels corrupt puts it ahead)

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TheAtrocity wrote:

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RoxasGrylls wrote:

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TheAtrocity wrote:

Alright so a few things to note:

I utilize the new cluster jewels, I feel like they are too strong to ignore. But if you're new and don't wish to take that risk you can either import my build: https://pastebin.com/NfXRBx0a

Or, some suggestions for your current one:
* You can afford to drop damage line on jewels. Get 7% life on ALL of them.
* Your Belt, Rings, Boots, Helm, and even Amulet are quite low life rolls. You need higher life. Taking life nodes on the tree doesn't do much if you don't have the flat life to scale with in the first place. Generally speaking, 112% life from tree is very paltry. Level up, drop damage nodes (The last jewel near witch area is a good one to drop, too many passives for 1 jewel), and put more into life.

Thank you for your suggestions. Now I can handle t13-14 maps! (Except Baran that oneshots me rotfl)
I wanted to ask another question: how did you obtain your armor? I tried to alteration spam a warlord influenced zodiac leather but I get the socketed attacks mod only one every 250 alts.

Fairly end game crafting method provided you have enough currency to do it. Specifically, if you only want socketed attacks have -15 mana, you just alt spam until you have it, regal, and exalt for 6 mods or multimod.

This is quite wasteful of course. Here's how to craft my armor:

To get mana cost, you know you need a Warlord influence. However, to get crit chance to attacks (literally a bottled faith), the armor needs to be elder influenced. This means we need a doubled influence dex armor, preferably assassins garb.

You'll need 30+ exalts for this:

Grab the appropriate Base armor with correct influence and ilvl. Preferably assassins garb obv. Buy a cheap one.

Second, buy any armor, be it str hybrid int or dex base. Doesn't matter. All it needs to have is the other influence you didn't buy (meaning if you bought assassin garb warlord, buy any elder influenced body) with correct ilvl, because how else are you gonna roll that influence mod?

Next, alt & transmute spam each base until you have only 1 influenced mod each. It can have any number of mods but may NOT have multiple influenced lines!! Check craftofexile to double check if your rolled mods are influenced or not.

Next, once both items have the 2 influenced mods (1ea), you will need to use an awakener orb to combine the influences. Sacrifice the garbage base into the good assassin garb base. This method guarantees you 2 influence lines. It also turns the resulting item rare. An awakener orb transfers 1 influence mod (if available, and will randomly pick 1 of there are multiple) and the influence to target item, reroll to rare. The initial item that got transfered is destroyed.

Now you must hope you have an open prefix. Because both influence mods are suffixes, we need to craft a prefix mastermod "suffixes cannot be changed". Yes, you might get a bad 3rd suffix but who cares. It's res or not stellar mods otherwise. We want to reroll prefixes for life. High life.

So, after getting lucky with an open prefix (if you didn't you can redo the entire process! Don't risk annul!) and crafting mastermod suffix cannot be changed, your last step is to exalt slam 2 prefixes. If the first one isn't garbage you can attempt a 2nd prefix roll for high life. If not, scour the item and recraft mastermod suffix cannot be changed before exalt slamming again. Repeat as many times until you get the desired prefixes (T1 life). I say this so as to avoid accidentally slamming 3 times and losing that open prefix. Good luck.

Hi, first of all, thanks for the guide and all the tips that helped me to finally enjoy this game even tho ps4 performance and my first char were both equally bad. After a bit of farming and trying things, the build is running pretty smoothly. the final thing I need is that chest piece. I already got the base ( iLvl 86 elder assassin's garb ). I'm still a noob in crafting and after wasting quite a bit on fossils for the -15 mana cost ( not possible with fossils .... I know I'm stupid xD ) I found your explanation here. but before starting I wanted to make sure I understand everything and not waste any more currency if possible.... So I got the base I want. what I need is -15 mana cost and as much life and chaos resistance as possible. now I need a warlord ilvl85 chest for -15 mana cost. after that, I need to roll the influence mod I want on both with alteration und transmutation orbs. then I need an awakaner's orb to transfer both influenced mods to my assassin's garb. after that I got a rare assassins garb with - 15 mana, the elder influence mod I chose and a third suffix that is hopefully not to bad (am I wrong in thinking that this is the point where I need to get the chaos res?). After that, I go to the crafting bench and craft the "suffixes can't be changed" mode to keep my suffixes while changing prefixes with exalted orbs until I'm happy with the outcome. is that correct or did I make a mistake somewhere? Furthermore I really need chaos res, do I have to be really lucky or is there a way that is not to to expensive after crafting the mastermod? I'm thankful for every piece of advice I can get! :D

@ThunSaren

Thanks for the elaboration on your mana management. I completely whiffed on seeing the 100% less mana reservation on despair as an aura on the amulet. :/

The enlighten jewel surely helps a lot. Had that in metamorph when i first played the CL assasin. This leagues iteration was started about 10 days ago just for testing out the cluster jewels and all the new mechanics. I am really looking forward to the new league. Whoohoo :D

3.11 viable?

Holy Crap guys! this build made it! Even the POB Atrocity released a few months back only lost about 800K dps.
And have you seen the new eternal suffering jewel node? Thats gonna be good, right?

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Korpivaellus wrote:

3.11 viable?

I'm taking a break from PoE these days. But the build was viable with little to no changes from 3.8 to 3.10, so I'd be surprised if it wouldn't work in 3.11.
There are a bunch of very active community members who have been answering questions inside this guides comments and been posting their own PoB-variations and tips&tricks. Thanks to those guys from me, I don't want to call out their names, because over the 3 leagues it's been too many people, but they know I mean them when they read this. <3
Everyone who's been posting something here in the past weeks and didn't recieve a reply from me, sorry but also thanks for the kind words. :)

Maybe someone can pick up my work for this league and make a little write-up about the changes the build may need to undergo or if it can still be played as posted. Maybe someone makes a new PoB for the new players.
If that doesn't happen, I assume most players that have played a previous league can just follow the build as is and make the necessary adjustments on the fly, the build should stay a valid starter build for coming leagues.

Have a nice day everyone and when the game seems stressful, boring or like a unhappy grind, go outside and enjoy the sun (the true sun). GL & HF! :)

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TheAtrocity wrote:

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VRCEEEEE wrote:

https://pastebin.com/TM3Sf2CH why is my dps so low compared to you guys? i followed @TheAtrocity's skill tree and he has like 20mildps

after spending about 30ex i figured i'd be at least close but it's so farrrr. can anyone help what i need to improve?

Hey man i followed your pob i saw in the earlier pages. I was just wondering how much u spend coz i spent about 30-35ex already and my dps isnt even close to yours

I have an updated pob I sent to a fellow CL in game I will reshare here in a bit. Don't follow my current tree if you just took it directly off searching my name as I've sold everything and gone a new build. I'll take a look at your PoB too.

EDIT: Here's my PoB, some explanations in Notes but anything that's unclear feel free to ask here as well. I strongly believe cluster jewels are the way to go on this build for higher health pool and dps so just a heads up.
https://pastebin.com/LZjsfQZz

@TheAtrocity. Would it be possible to send an updated POB for your build of the final min maxed version? or is this link still the best version of your build? Thank you so much for your help in the comments!