Yes

With the right gear i think most things are viable, this build pretty much needs aninfinity runeword act 2 merc

20 phoenix strike
20 fists fire
20 claws thunder
20 blades ice
you can use dragon claw finisher (level 1 is enough)
1 point death sentry (dont really ever need it but corpse explosion is still OP)
1 point dragon flight (your fast with burst of speed, this helps ur infinity merc get to where your at)

Hot key on either left click or right click (pick only one) phoenix strike + dragon claw u want to be switching back and forth with hot keys while holding down your left or right click as your 2nd charge on phoenix is ideal
this build shouldn't use weapon block so no shadow warrior or master either weapon block will just slow u down (you're a charge up assassin, cant be delaying your charge ups)


you will be far better off using 2x claws for speed, bartucs or firelizards (+3 martials arts) seem to work well if you dont have +5-6 phoenix strike claws

Gear i am using on hardcore ladder right now:
shako - um
upped shaftstop - um
firelizards claw
bartucs claw
tgods belt
rare amulet(+2asn,7%ML,allres 10, light res 43,+10dex)
random 10 res all ring
ravenfrost
nats boots
draculs gloves (free full health)

inventory is just martial art grand charms
resistance small charms

(this is my 3rd 90+ HC assassin this ladder, and i only made her cuz i got inifinty and i only really like playing assassins) lv 93 hc ladder east right now
also have a blade fury assassin build that can clear players 8 hell too

This post was edited by 4nothin on Mar 18 2018 04:25pm

all the martial arts skills and builds suck in pvm. Some are worse than others. They all have mechanical flaws that keep them from being on par with normal builds
dragon tail would be nice if it didn't have compounding damage mitigation issues and require building around both physical and fire damage, so as it is you can't really get competent damage output
phoenix strike's best mode is the 2nd charge chaos lightning, but this struggles both because the payoff is mediocre- 3 hits just to unleash a lightning aoe that might hit 1-2 times and deal the same damage as a single lightning sentry attack. Even fully geared maxed out you hit something like 7500-8000 average damage on lightning. That's truly awful compared to other builds. Lightning sorcs hit for 27k per cast, you're hitting 7500 every 3 hits. and its also clumsy since blocking/missing makes the charge buildup unreliable so you might unleash with 1 or 3 charges. Phoenix strike really suffers due to the fact +% elemental damage doesn't work with any of its 3 modes.
tiger strike, dragon talon and dragon claw can all be build for mediocre physical DPS compared to other builds like zealots, not totally awful, but attacking one target at a time is pitiful in PvM anyway. An act 5 merc can be build stronger than a whole physical MA sin

the best pvm build you can do with martial arts skills is to get your damage from procs and added elemental damage on dragon talon, ie a riftsin. That works reasonably well, but you aren't really a pure martial arts sin at that point.
An example guild would be:
http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=33542178&f=87
I'd suggest checking that out

Phoenix strike can be build to clear the game and play as an underpowered pvm character, pumping in items like infinity on merc and enigma and an inventory of charms, but its really terrible compared to the competent pvm builds.

Good luck max. your Phoenix skills tree with an assassin, including her synergies. Assassin is always the hardest character to level because she doesn't have many defence and life.

I made this assassin on hardcore ladder to prove there’s other builds that can clear players 8 other then dragon talon and lightning which is the only thing people seem to know how to play. This does work very well, I’m able to solo any area with full game. I also mentioned to avoid weapon block as ur trying to get charges off faster then a sorceress which is easily possible as u don’t have the casting delay spamming meteors with ur first charge. Gettin in the grove off consistently release the second charge isn’t that difficult. It’s just unfortunate you need the infinity on Merc to dominate. On softcore you can get away with using all +skill items like +3 martial arts gloves amulet circlet etc. If u went the tiger strike / dragon tail just get amp damage proc like atmas or decrepify like lawbringer act 5 Merc or reapers act 2 Merc

if you go all-in on it, dragon tail is a better build than phoenix strike. You're actually able to deal decent aoe damage on every attack instead of fumbling around with charges, although the knockback is both a blessing and curse in that you keep enemies locked up like leap but have to chase after them constantly as you knock them out of kick range. You could be either a trap hybrid like the riftsin, or go demented all-in by putting 20 tiger strike and change it up

I really don't know what the ideal mix would be though. Decrepify basically doubles your explosion on the target, merc infinity though breaks some immunes and also basically doubles it. But then on your own gear you weigh facets against %ed against +skills, since they all have multiplicative scaling with dragon tail. If you build strong enough you can just tear through mobs with dragon tail alone, no charge up tiger strike, but if you build tiger strike than % ed on gear is much lower marginal utility. If your only % ed come from stats and merc might, a fortitude is huge. If you've got +2700% tiger strike, then a 4x facet armor would be far better.

So trying to mix and match different gear possibilities off the top of my head for each slot you'd have;
weapon: lawbringer, 30/30 facet phase blade, beast, last wish, +6 claw of quickness with 2x facets
armor: fortitude, enigma, 20/20 facet
shield: phoenix, 160/60 jmod, 20/20 facet jmod, stormshield
helm: rare circlet with 2x facet, rare circlet with 2x 40/15, 15/15 or 120/45 blue circlet, coa
gloves: crafted +2 ma / cb gloves, steelrands, dracs, 3/20 ma/ias gloves
belt: arachs, tgods, dungos, string
rings: soj, raven
ammy: 3 ma / whatever blue, crafted sin, maras, highlords, atmas
boots: dancers, upped gores, rare myrmidons
merc: a2 might/pride, or eth reapers, or infinity


Some of the damage totals aren't bad. A somewhat balanced build for example: lawbringer pb, fortitude, phoenix, +2 sin / 2 facets, 3 ma amulet, soj/raven, steelrends, dancers, arachs, infinity merc. When just using dragon tail with no charges, that hits around 1670 avg kick damage with 450% explosion with +10% for about 24.8k after resists against mobs reduced to -50% physical / -100% fire: 1670 kick deals 2505, becomes 110% of 450% of that for 12.4k, then doubled to 24.8k. Against some 50/75 mob reduced to 0% physical / -48% fire, it deals 12.2k. It has some slight discomfort in staggering your kicks due to firestorm, but its not terrible because of the short action frame and the healing aura is rather nice, and the character fully benefits from both +% ed and -% fire resists

now lets say a ridiculous build with 30/30 sword, 20/20 armor, 20/20 shield, 15/15 helm, +3 ammy, 2x soj, +3 gloves, arachs, dancers, lacerator on switch, infinity/might merc. You power up a +2820% tiger strike and have uh lets say 600 str / 136 dex with +230% offweapon ed from might. That makes your kick deal about 10.6k damage, and against -100% physical / -100% fire resist after amp/conviction you deal 21.2k physical, of which 185% of 470% becomes fire for 184k fire damage which deals 369k after -resists or so
err
am I doing that calculation right? I feel like it would be somewhat limited by the HP pool of monsters to actually deal the % of fire damage based on HP lost if your physical is more than their HP, but it would be interested to see if you could OHKO an uber by hitting a nearby trash mob

well at any rate in testing, I was unable to find any non-immune monsters in players 8 that didn't die in 1 hit. and I forgot I was testing without amp damage...

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 19 2018 01:04am

id also like to point out how uniquely unsuitable dragon tail is for pvp
if you had lacerator/enigma/phoenix, 10/10 circlet, angelics, steelrends, dancers, you'd deal about ~250 hp physical dragon talon with no chargeup, which turns into ~1300 fire for maybe 138 more HP, so about 388 HP lost even with amp.
double dipping pvp penalty precludes that being relevant

also some bad synergy in above build between lawbringer and phoenix. you lose the redemption aura, because no corpses. But decrep and sanctuary aura are really nice at making dragon tail hit for more physical damage
also means no death sentry explosions

testing it, lacerator might be #1 because enemies that die that quickly can't run away, and dragon tail explosions tend to lock them up to prevent fleeing
so lacerator / fort / phoenix


oops I forgot all about laying of hands

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 19 2018 01:56am

oh no I didn't, I forgot %demon damage doesn't work on kicks, but I remembered not to remember laying of hands