"Death is a banquet. It's up to the murderer to write the menu"

The Assassin is a offense-oriented class centered around critical strikes. The class offers enhanced crits on full or low life enemies and enhancing their power charges.

This is a poison build that used to clear Shaper/Elder and all of their Guardians on a budget (see gear section). Uber Elder is also possible, though requires better gear.

Quick Jump

• Pros & Cons

• Skill Tree 

• Gems Setup

• Gear Setup

• Networking Mode

• Leveling

• Expectations & POB

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Looks nice
• Mostly cheap
• You can tell everyone you did Shaper with <10k tooltip DPS
• Can do every map mod, doesn't rely on leech or regen
• Literally melts bosses
• Tanky, can facetank most of the game with good gear
• Vaal Pact nostalgia (very fast life recovery)
• Slows down enemies a lot

Cons

• BiS items are expensive
• Destroys your GPU aswell as GGG's servers
• Not HC-viable due to lag combined with risky playstyle
• Extremely backloaded damage
• No one will want to play with you
• Not a clearspeed build
• Defensive layers are RNG based

Skill Tree 

Ascendancy

• Normal Lab: Noxious Strike
• Cruel Lab: Toxic Delivery
• Merc Lab: Unstable Infusion
• Eternal Lab: Deadly Infusion

Bandits

This quest is given to you by Eramir in the Forest Encampment after you complete Through Sacred Ground or talk with any of the bandit leaders. There are three different bandit leaders. You can either side with one of them (and kill the other two) to get the respective reward or you can kill all of them to get the reward from Erami - from Gamepedia

Kill them all for 2 passive points.

Pantheons

The Pantheon List

Major God: Soul of the Brine King is very important, as getting stunned is a major weakness/annoyance.

Passive Tree

Gems Setup

6 Link: Molten Strike - Added Chaos Damage - G. Multiple Projectiles - Multistrike - Ancestral Call - Deadly Ailments

The first five gems are pretty much required to have, Deadly Ailments is the best DPS gem we have left.

Level 21 Added Chaos Damage is very desirable because it's the main source of base damage

A 6-link is very important for your damage, as the final link is another 60% bonus.

Recommend getting a Tabula Rasa or 6-linked rare item for a cheap start.

Volkuur's Version

Replace Added Chaos Damage for Immolate because it has higher numbers (you can ignite with critical strikes).

Frost Blades

Frost Blades - Added Chaos Damage - Chain - Multistrike - Ancestrall Call - Damage on Full Life

If you want, you can try out Frost Blades It produces less lag than MS and has better area coverage, but significantly worse single target damage.

The gem colours are the same as Molten Strike, so you can easily swap between both skills. Threshold jewels are not needed.

4 Link: Shield Charge - Fortify - Faster Attacks, Arctic Armour

As Movement Skill I highly recommend Shield Charge, as it's more precise than Whirling Blades and costs less mana.

With Fenumus' Weave, these gems have to be in the gloves because every other setup would support Aspect of the Spider, increasing the mana reservation.

Volkuur's Version

Replace Arctic Armour for Anger for some extra fire damage.

4 Link: Spell Totem - Wither - Increased Duration - Faster Casting

The totem pretty much doubles our damage and should only be used in bossfights. The Hinder debuff does not stack with Aspect of the Spider, but overwrites it for a stronger effect instead.

4 Link: Cast When Damage Taken (level 1) - Immortal Call (level 3) - Increased Duration - Enfeeble (level 5)

Just the usual IC/Curse setup to protect you.

Note that you can use any curse you prefer, but Enfeeble is the most defensive.

3 Link: Herald of Agony - Pierce - Minion Damage

Adding support gems to the Agony Crawler will increase you mana reservation to a total of 85%, which is still fine.

If that's too low for you, you can swap Minion Damage for Additional Accuracy (which doesn't have a mana multiplier).

Note that the Crawler starts extremely strong, but falls off the further you progress through maps

A level 21 Crawler with 40 stacks will end up dealing ~120k single target DPS, which makes it sufficient for packs, but relatively weak against bosses. If that's not enough for you, feel free to consider another setup

Level 21 on the Herald is highly recommended, as is 20% quality.

3 Link: Cast When Damage Taken - Summon Lightning Golem - Blood Rage

Both of these buffs boost our attack speed. Blood Rage can be sustained with our life regeneration, so it actually helps survivability by increasing our hit rate.

These gems are on CWDT because I'm too lazy to activate them myself (Blood Rage is instant so you could also manually activate it if you want).

Gear

Recommended gear progression

• Wasp Nest, Coralito's, Wildfire and Thief's Torment
• 6-link body armour, rare (Tabula Rasa also works)
• Fenumus' Weave or Volkuur's Guidance
• Lycosidae
• Level 21 Added Chaos Damage and 20-quality gems
• Well-rolled Stygian Vise and a blind jewel
• (Delve league) fossil-crafted rare claw
• Enchanted helmet and unique 6l body armour
• Good Elder rings with life gain on hit
• Four-stat jewels

Networking Mode

• For smooth gameplay set it to predictive.
• For safety (i.e. in important bossfights) use lockstep.

Leveling

Leveling is very smooth if you can afford a Tabula Rasa and Thief's Torment.

You can also use this build as a starter - many core uniques are rather cheap and none of them are specifically required.

You might feel a bit squishy at the start because most of the life passives are at the bottom left corner of the skill tree.

Gems

Molten Strike is available right after Hillock, although not for Shadow. You can buy it on poe.trade, with another character or later in act 3.
Use the support gems from the build section as you aquire them.

Herald of Agony is available in Act 2. I highly recommend linking it to Pierce and some damage supports (Minion Damage, Damage on Full Life, ...) because it shits on the entire storyline once you get GMP/Multistrike.

Try to keep your chance to poison at 80% or more, use Lesser Poison or Poison support gems if you have to. Once you reach maps, your chance should always be at 100%.

Your poison will take some time to deal good damage, but it should be noticeable after the first Labyrinth.

Gear

Cheap Unique Weapons you can use during leveling: Redbeak, Wildslash, Al Dhih, Mortem Morsu

After that, Added Chaos Damage Support should provide enough damage until you get a Wasp Nest.

Endgame Gear with low level requirements (more expensive): Tabula Rasa, Lycosidae, Thief's Torment

Expectations & POB

POB link

• Fenumus' Weave: https://pastebin.com/16WnwTbf
• Volkuur's Guidance: https://pastebin.com/JcB46nre

(If you do not know how to use it, see the instructions below, otherwise please ignore)

• Download Path of Building (link: https://github.com/Openarl/PathOfBuilding)
• Copy pastebin URL.
• Launch path of building.
• Click on Import/Export.
• Click Import from Pastebin
• Paste the URL copied in step 2.
• Done!

Fenumus' Weave