poe 3.0 Shadow Build | The Azure Knight, Assassin version

poe 3.0 Shadow Build | The Azure Knight, Assassin version is broken down into 2 different gear/gem setup, Cold and Light/Cold based, full explanation of differences included. There is also a small Frost Blades gem section, if anyone prefers it to Blade Flurry. Vast majority of the guide applies to Frost Blades option as well.

• Build Pros
• Build Cons
• Passives, Bandits and Ascendancy
  • Bandits
  • Ascendancy
  • Example tree level 90
• Detailed leveling advise
  • ACT1
  • ACT2
  • ACT3
  • ACT4
  • ACT5
  • ACT6
• Pantheons
• Gear
• Gems
• Path of Building code and stats
• Difference from original build

1. Build Pros:
- Fun, fast paced build
- Non-meta, hipster build
- Can beat 2.6 HoWA Blade Flurry dps, while being much, much cheaper
- Fast clearspeed, and an amazing clearspeed with Frost Blades
- Cheap (6L not included)
- Can be used as a league starter
- Can run Elemental Reflect maps with a few gear/gem changes
- Flexible, can be played as any class in the game, each with different pros and cons

2. Cons:
- Some map mods can range from annoying (no mana regen), hard (vulnerability), to very hard/undoable (no leech)
- It's not a 15k ES or 8k life build, so cannot facetank everything and you need to dodge telegraphed attacks
- Not recommended for HC due to low life values and use of Abyssus (Altough, if you choose Starkonja/Grace/Shield it might be HC viable).

3. Passives, Bandits and Ascendancy

Bandits:
Alira, but if your gear is good (easily capped resistances, some mana regeneration on jewelry) then 2 additional points are better.

Ascendancy:
- Unstable Infusion: Free Power charge generation. Very important on any budget crit build.
- Deadly Infusion: This node alone works almost like +20% MORE multiplier. Great dps boost.
- Ambush: Greatly increases clear speed. Against trash, with additional crit chance and multiplier, you can kill everything except for rares in one shot.
- Assassinate: Free Culling strike on crit, great against bosses.

Example tree level 90

Why don't I take additional Power Charge near the claw wheel? Because it doesn't increase our dps as much as other nodes that we could take easily. Also, pathing to life nodes is more important then damage, which is plentiful anyway.

4. Detailed leveling advise

ACT1
2L: Frost Blades + Pierce (great for clear speed)
3L: Onslaught for even more clear speed or Added Cold for more DPS and/or bosses
4L: Added Fire
+ Riposte (drop it when you need the slot for something more useful)
+ whirling blades

ACT2
Frost Blades + Pierce/Added Cold + Melee physical + Added Fire
+ Herald of Ice
+ Vaal Lightning Trap on bosses
+ Blood Rage (caution : use only if you have enough life leech)
Use this until you can get Blade Flurry in ACT3
Bandits : kill all (can change to Alira later if needed but I prefer the points)

ACT3
Reach Winter Spirit in the skilltree. It's time to start using BF

Blade Flurry + Melee Physical + Elemental Damage + Elemental Focus
seems to be the best DPS combo according to PoB
Swap Herald of Ice with Hatred when possible
+ Ancestral Warchief
+ Enduring Cry
Add Fortify + Faster Attacks to Whirling Blades
+ Enfeeble (self cast at the moment)

ACT4
+Ice Golem

ACT5
nothing special here

ACT6
Can start using Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call or Vortex or Frost Bomb
If enough mana pool and mana leech can even use Blasphemy + Enfeeble or Elem Weakness
Get ascendancy points as soon as possible. The order to spend points is already in the guide.
With correct stuff it should be easy to get level 90 quickly

5.Pantheons

- Soul of Lunaris is a great pick, synergizes very good with our defenses. Best mapping choice imo, also increases your spell dodge chance to 35% with Perfect Form, and gives you a chance to avoid projectiles.
- Soul of Solaris is also decent, but not as good as Lunaris, even if Solaris bonus can be better in some rare cases.
- Gruthkul is great, as being close ranged character we are getting hit constantly. Additional slow also helps with survivability.
- Finally, Yugul helps us deal with reflect, if this is your main concern. Take it especially if you are playing Frost Blades version.

6. Gear

Abyssus best dps increase from any non-weapon gear slot, at the cost of survivability.
The Perfect Form gives us free 30% spell dodge chance, free Arctic Armour,
and Evasion matching that of other top tier Unique armours. A corrupted rare 6 link might be better due to a price, until you can afford your own 5-6L Perfect Form.
Rare boots/belt should come with a lot of life and resists on them. Movement speed is unnecessary, it's more of a QoL.
Hrimburn/Hrimsorrow convert the remainder of our damage into cold.
Rare rings/amulet follow the same pattern as boots/belt - you want life and resists. If you can squeeze any offensive stats, accuracy/physical damage/crit multiplier are great to have.
Doryani's Catalyst is BiS offhand, greatly increasing your dps, however that is not included in your tooltip. Other, cheaper offhands include Doon Cuebiyari and Singularity.
Rare claw/Touch of Anquish/Wasp Nest are also BiS for this build. Even though ToA has only around 270 dps, it beats most rare claws with 300 dps or even higher, thanks to cold damage increase and high critical strike chance. Wasp Nest also provides 95% dps of ToA for 5% of the price, so it is superior choice until Frost Blades meta dies off.

7. Gems

Attack:
Blade Flurry / Melee Physical Damage / Weapon Elemental Damage / Elemental Focus / Increased AoE or Concentrated Effect / Cold Penetration

Auras:
Hatred
Blasphemy+Elemental Weakness (unless you have gloves corruption, then use Herald of Ash)
Arctic Armour

Utility:
Cast when Damage Taken / Ice Golem / Blind / Ancestral Warchief
- recasts your golem so you don't have to, allows your golem and totem to blind enemies.

Buffs:
Enduring Cry / Blood Rage / Vaal Lightning Trap
- EC helps mitigate increased damage taken from Abyssus.
- Blood Rage increases dps and leech.
- Lightning Trap increases dps against bosses that can be shocked. You can use Vaal Haste as an alternative since 3.0 nerf.

Debuffs:
Cast when Damage Taken / Frost Bomb / Vortex / Inc. AoE
- chills nearby enemies and applies -20% cold resistance debuff.

Movement:
Whirling Blades / Faster Attacks / Fortify

8.Path of Building code and stats

Over 5.22 million dps using a 320 dps claw.
Over 4.25 million dps using Touch of Anquish.
Over 2.91 million dps using a 320 dps claw against bosses (without Frenzy charges)
Over 2.37 million dps using Touch of Anquish against bosses (without Frenzy charges)
Over 6k hp at level 90.
9.5k Evasion buffed.

Link : https://pastebin.com/vBZcxgCK

9.Difference from original build

Occultist can run 2 curses, Elemental Weakness and Enfeeble. Thanks to that, Occultist is a much easier build to play, being safer as it takes less damage and is much less likely to be critically hit.However, Assassin can reach higher dps values one shotting packs faster then the Occultist, and can also kill bosses much quicker (basically one shot anything with less then 10% hp).