"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 build can reach 1 million shaper dps with garbage gear, cheap, around 1 exalt in total, but of course we can gradually build it up. Have high clear speed with +173% movement speed while mapping, good aoe from Rain of arrow.

Quick Jump

• Pros & Cons
• Playstyle
• Skill Tree 
• Gems Setup
• Gear Setup
• Leveling
• Expectations & POB

Pros & Cons

Pros

• +Can reach 1 million shaper dps with garbage gear.
• +High clear speed with +173% movement speed while mapping, good aoe from Rain of arrow.
• +Cheap, around 1 exalt in total, but of course we can gradually build it up.
• +1700 Life leech/s. 43% Evasion, 30% Spell Dodge, 5k life, 50% reduced curse effect, overcapped resist for elemental weakness, plenty of evasion, artic armour, pantheons.
• +Don't care about map mods.

Cons

• - Damage over time build, mobs don’t instantly die, no fancy Herald effect, no instant safety from that. The feelsgood factor from mobs instanly dying should also be considered.

Playstyle

Can facetank bosses up to red map, in which we try to stand a bit far away and rely on the knock back on crit to push the boss back. 

Skill Tree

Ascendancy

Noxious Strike>Toxic Delivery>Opportunistic>Unstable Infusion.

Bandit:

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

Kraityn gives the most dps and utility.

Pantheons

The Pantheon List

• Major god: Soul of Lunaris (Really good in Delve, all effects are helpful)
• Minor god: Soul of Tukuhama (For more facetanking potential, it's equivalent to several thousands of armor)

Skill Tree:

Gems Setup

Listed in order of importance.

Single target:

Barrage-Added Chaos Damage-Greater Multiple Projectiles-Withering Touch-Deadly Ailment-Vicious Projectile

Clear:

Rain of Arrows- Added Chaos Damage- Mirage Archer – Deadly Ailments- Vicious Projectile- (Vile Toxins)

Note: Toxic rain is a viable alternative, but it is a bit slow to apply life gain on hit part, which can be dangerous in some situation.

Actually you don't need a 6 link Rain of Arrow to kill trash mobs, 5 links is fine.

Herald of Agony setup:

HoAg – Minion Damage- Vicious Projectile- Faster Attack

Note: No greater multiple projectile, the mana multiplier is just too much.

Cast on Damage Taken :

CoDT – Immortal Call – Enfeeble – Chaos Golem

Utility setup:

Phase run – Blink Arrow- Arctic Armour- Whatever you like (Decoy Totem?)

Gears Setup

Bow: Lioneye's Glare. Explanation above. A common alternative is Quillrain, it indeed can get you to maps. But the Lioneye's glare is still beter because we really don't need that much attack speed.

Quiver: Maloney's nightfall : Blind, Life, and damage. Very good and cheap unique. You can corrupt it for an extra 1 additional arrow.

Body Armour: Rare Armour with life and resist. Evasion based for chroming. Don’t use Dendrobate because we don’t need the duration and it is just 10% more damage increase with no life and resist.

You can get an easy 6 link body armour by searching for a 6 linked non-corrupted white body armour item level 72 min for 30-40 chaos. Buy some Screaming Essence of Greed and try to roll some resist on it. If you can also master craft resist on it if it has open suffix. Very cheap overall

Belt: Stygian Vise with life and resist. Flask charge duration mod is a good bonus.

Amulet:

Impresence chaos version is best in slot.

Budget: Rare amulet with life, resist, and Intelligence (you need 111 Intel to equip Added Chaos gem)

Boots:

Bubonic Trail is best in slot, even with 1 jewel socket. We don't need another 4 link anyway so let's utilize that.

Budget: This Bubonic Trail boot is 1 chaos at the moment

Helmet: A Helmet with +to level of Socketed Minion gems, life and resist. Evasion based.

Glove: Rare Glove with life and resist, +% attack speed is good. You can use The embalmer is an easy 5 link for Barrage early.

Ring: Thief’s Torment. Look for High life gain on hit and quantity.

Other stats to look for if you have the money: Crit chance and crit multiplier, any stats that you see fit.

Flasks

• Budget version: 1 Instant Life Recovery Flask- Quicksilver Flask-Diamond Flask-Jade Flask- Basalt Flask
• Final version: Remove Basalt and Jade Flask for Dying Sun and Witchfire Brew/Sin's Rebirth

Jewel

All jewels have to have life, and are abyss jewel. 

2 Jewels with mod +>5% chance to Onslaught. (Enough to sustain while mapping)

Best dps mod for jewels: +% attack speed if crit recently

That is the general guideline, any other mods you can find is a bonus.

You can use Fertile mind to compensate for intelligence early on if needed.

Leveling 

Use caustic arrow for leveling till you complete normal lab. After completing normal lab, respec to have at least 80% chance to poison (Use some chance to poison nodes from the tree, don’t use the gem, then respec after you have over 100% chance to poison). By then switch to toxic rain/ rain of arrow, and have barrage as single target, get Herald of Agony ( you have 60% chance to poison from Ascendancy and the herald alone, fill out the other 40% from the tree). 4 links work just fine to maps. Remember to buy the gems and level it when possible.

Don’t take any crit nodes early on. Take the jewel node only if you have good jewel. You can get +30 intelligence from the tree and then respec if needed. Try to collect all the damage overtime node/poison node and then only life afterwords. Pick Acrobatic and Phase Acrobatics as soon as possible.

If you don’t have Thief’s Torment and don’t want spamming mana flask early on, get the Essence Sap node.

The Cast On damage Taken setup helps quite a lot, get it early if you have the links.

Milestones: 1k hp for normal lab, 2k hp for Cruel Lab, 3k hp for Merciless Lab.

For Uberlab, 4k2 hp works fine. Swap out the jade flask for an extra life flask. Switch the pantheon to Soul of Solaris.

If you have Quillrain and Thief’s torment early on, then leveling is a breeze.

Expectations & POB

POB link: https://pastebin.com/1EdhpSe0

(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!