[3.21] Assashield | Poison Spectral Shield Throw | Assassin

Hello everyone,

Since 3.15, I have been playing Spectral Shield Throw for I think it's a very fun skill. It allows to play safely from a distance, the clearspeed is decent and a big shield help for the survivability. I usually play Bleed Gladiator, but I wanted to try something different this time with a Poison Assassin.

As a "mise en bouche", here is a video of the building running Minotaur's Maze:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8N1IKY1WWo

Pros and Cons

+Quite tanky
+Crit immune
+Reflect immune
+Clear speed is decent
+Single target DPS is OK
+Very fun to see everyone dying from spreading poison and explosions

-Can get one shot if unlucky (no blocked attack directly on life)
-With current gear, very sensitive to chaos damages
-Mobs do not die instantly due to poison
-No leech/no regen maps are awkward to play
-A bit annoying to switch between weapons for bosses
-Is much less efficient without crucible items
-Why play this when you can play a Cold Conversion with much higher damages?

Main ideas

As for many SST builds, Emperor's Vigilance is used. With Crucible, you can get crazy stats on it because of the +1000% armour and +1000% ES. I was lucky enough to craft from the start of the league a +34 ES, +4% block chances:


We use this together with Seething Fury to get crazy crit chances and multiplier, which will bring us near 100% crit chances. The crit multiplier scale our poison damage by using Perfect Agony.

Usually, I would go for pierce to improve the clearspeed (obtained via Lioneye Vision). To get more damages, I use Dendrobate. To commpensate the lack of pierce, I use a Bino Kitchen Knife and Asenath's Gentle Touch:


For bosses, I switch to a more single-target oriented weapon:


Asenath's Gentle Touch also gives us free Temporal Chains, which help for the survivability and increase of DPS by a lot (poisons remain longer on the target). We have annointed Whisper of Doom on our amulet so that we can also cast Despair for extra DPS on bosses. To get even more DPS, we use an Ancestral Protector (attack speed), Rotgut with 2 minimal frenzy charges and used when hitting a boss or rare (=onslaught 2/3 of the time), and Wither Multiple Spell Totems.

Defensive layers

First, we have 74/75 block chances thanks to Emperor's Vigilance and Tempest Shield. Be aware that Glancing Blow given by Emperor's Vigilance means that we still take 65% of damages dealt by blocked attacks.

Secondly, we have 90% spell suppression chances + lucky (briging us to 99% effective chances).

Thirdly, we stack evasion on the helmet and boots + grace + an almost permanently up Jade Flask (with charges on crit + used when block), bringing us to a bit more than 30K evasion. This with Ghost Dance means that the blocked attacks usually do nothing to us.

Fourthly, we use Reckoning + Life on Touch + Hextouch + Enfeeble for extra protection layer and almost insta heal when in pure melee (like the mine). Because we have annointed Whipser of Doom on our amulet, we can have both Temporal Chains and Enfeeble.

Finally, we do a bit of Life and Mana Leech to help sustain everything.

Current equipment
Not everything is necessary for the build, and you can easily play around to find what suit you best:



POB and Passive Tree links

Passive Tree

POB Link

More videos
Minotaur Fight
Normal Elder
Uber Atziri

Interesting. Might give it a whirl, since I like poison based builds.
Cheers!