as a result of some maths in another thread, I've hammered out the components of a pretty competent PvM build worth posting. thread with maths here;
http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=78378136&f=87&o=0PvM Dragon Tail Assassin
Build Explanation:This build exploits the mechanics for how Dragon Tail damage is calculated to get very high damage, with balanced setups being able to clear monsters in just a few hits, wiping bosses with a single charged kick, or building glass and being able to dish out hundreds of thousands of damage in one hit. Dragon Tail is the most competent PvM martial arts skill in that it can actually reach such astronomical damages, and also is quite practical in its delivery- every attack knockbacks an AoE and hitstuns the enemies and doesn't lock you in place like dragon talon. Even on a vita build, its not hard to achieve kicks that uncharged deals ~32k HP in aoe fire damage against trash mob like a Giant Mosquito after all multipliers and -resists, or with 3 tiger strike charges deals 191k. But the trick here is that its heavily dependent upon enemy resistances: Dragon Tail calculates its AoE fire damage as a % of the HP lost to the physical damage, not based on your attack damage directly, so a physical immune mob makes you deal 0 fire damage. An enemy that has -100% physical / -100% fire resist takes quadruple the fire damage. With amplify damage and -123% fire resist, a typical trash mob in hell like an Ice Boar (33% fire, 25% physical) gets a 3.33x multiplier. But a more bulky enemy like an Urdar (75% fire, 55% physical) gets a 2.15x multiplier. The real drawback of the build however comes in a weakness to double immunities- both fire and physical. Physical immune mobs release 0 damage dragon tails but can still die to dragon tails off nearby monsters, while unbreakable fire immune monsters will only get hit by the regular kick. Sadly, that means that as awesome as the damage outputs can be, this build is terrible at the two most common areas people grind, Chaos and Baal, which are filled with unbreakable fire immunes. Fire sorcs know that pain. For general PvM, the good physical damage on direct hits and the number of spare skill points (and merc infinity) lets you hybridize with traps to help clear these. But when you're fighting non-immune monsters, the clear speed is so high, even in players 8 games, that you generally don't get any opportunity to do anything but spam dragon tail and maybe tiger strike.
To max out the damage, there are six primary considerations:
- % enhanced damage from non-weapon sources
- +skills to dragon tail
- +% fire skill damage
- -% enemy physical resistance
- -% enemy fire resistance
These bonuses all have multiplicative scaling, unlike the additive scaling on normal skills. Say for example you reduce a 0/0% resist monster to -100/-100 and hit it with a level 43 dragon tail that you scaled up to 1600 physical via %ed, with +10% fire skill damage. The monster loses 3200 HP from the physical damage multiplied by its -100% DR, then you deal 470% dragon tail, so 15040 damage, multiplied by +10% from facets up to 16544, then multiply by its -100% resist to take 33088 HP in damage. Combined with the physical HP lost, that's 36k on the main target, 32k on surrounding targets. With tiger strike, not only do you add massive amounts of %ED, but it also specially multiplies the base kick damage, which is separate from your boot kick damage, allowing for numbers that start approaching 100-200k+, and on builds with lots of facets you might reach 400k+ in one hit on the right enemy.
Skills:The only core skill that definitely needs to be maxed is dragon tail:
- 20 Dragon Tail
- 1-20 Tiger Strike
I recommend 20 tiger strike, but one issue is the damage gets so astronomical that even 1 point can still kill monsters in 1 hit at players 8. The extra damage does help against immunes though.
For utility skills:
- 1 Dragon Flight
- 1 Burst of Speed
- 0-1 Cobra Strike
- 0-1+ Shadow Warrior
- 0-1+ Shadow Master
- 0-1 Fade
- 0-1+ Venom
- 0-1 Blade Shield
Cobra Strike only takes 1 point to be a pretty effective way to leech back an entire hp/mana globe at once, but its still kinda redundant with potions and redemption aura. And its unreliable, since its leech is limited by both monster drain effectiveness (ie can't leech off skeletons) and based on their remaining hp (wasting 3 charges on a low hp monster gets you nothing).
Shadow Warrior vs Master are really minor bonuses, their main help is in being meat shields. I'd recommend against even putting 1 point master, mind blast is too annoying. Shadow Warrior is really pitiful, but for only 1 point it can at least take some hits and FHR enemies with its own dragon tail. Venom just isn't too great here, even if you max it the damage is totally irrelevant against non-immunes and nowhere near enough to help kill strong immunes. Its barely worth 1 point, but its 'free damage', albeit damage you have to remember to recast. But blade shield on the other hand is a right nuisance due to its short duration, and its
really insignificant. If you put a point in it, it won't actually ever matter, unless you're a rift hybrid or something since at least it triggers on attack (but not on striking).
For skill dumps:
- 0-20 Lightning Sentry
- 0-20 Death Sentry
- 0-20 Shock Web
- 0-rest Charged Bolt Sentry
Having lightning sentries to spam on immunes can take them down in reasonable time with infinity even without much +skills or a full skill investment. Death sentries are a nice complement in theory but you're frequently killing monsters so fast you don't get an opportunity to set them up unless enemies are immune, though leaving them on right click for a shadow warrior can help when you aren't using tiger strike.
Another option is to go full retard mode with 20 phoenix strike and 20 claws of thunder- the chaos lightning can get respectable damage but its still less effective than just spamming 5 traps due to the much higher rate of fire.
And the crazy man's option is to go a rift hybrid with 20 dragon talon against immunes.
Stats:There are two ways you can stat such a build, either dumping all remaining points in strength or vitality. Strength besides being a normal %ED multiplier, also raises your base kick damage. This is a pretty small upside for regular dragon tails, since the base damage is
not multiplied by %ED from other sources (about 930% here). With 167/122 stats you have 78 base damage, with 600/122 stats you just have 205 base damage. Strength has a 1.2x multiplier on boots and tiger strike
does multiply the base damage- to the tune of ~2820%. So a 167/122 stat build does about 1500 damage uncharged / 7000 damage charged, while a 600/122 stat build does about 2200 damage uncharged / 11300 damage charged. About +46% / +61% damage respectively. The cost obviously, is losing a shit ton of life. And in PvM, with damage already this high, its impractical to build such a glass cannon. If you
do, there are other item builds to optimize like more facets and less % ed on gear, especially if you're going for tiger strikes. But even if you
can deal 400k+ theoretical kicks, when monsters die to a tiny fraction of that, its silly.
So recommended stats:
- Enough strength to equip items (167 with shadow dancers)
- Enough strength to equip weapon (122 lacerator, 136 lawbringer)
- Rest vitality
- Base energy
Items:This just lays out one possible setup. There are different item builds possible for more glass cannon builds, like facets being better than fort/phoenix if you only do tiger strike hits.
Normal Setup:
- Lacerator or Lawbringer
- Fortitude (any base)
- Phoenix Monarch
- +3 Martial Arts Circlet with 2x fire facets
- +3 Martial Arts / 10-20% ias gloves.
- Ravenfrost
- SoJ
- Maras
- Shadow Dancers
- CTA/Spirit swap
- 9x Martial Arts grand charms
- Life/resist small charms
- Torch/Anni
Mercenary:
- Infinity
- Treachery or Fort or Shaft
- CoA or Vamp Gaze or biggens bonnet
There are lots of possible gear swaps, so I'll focus on the main ones.
Lacerator and Lawbringer compete for the normal weapon slot. They both have huge pros and cons. Lacerator has amp that multiplies your damage more, but the chance to flee is a serious liability, making the amp less reliable and getting monsters sometimes escaping. Unlike a low damage build like a throwbarb, you are often killing monsters instantly or keeping them locked in FHR while they die relatively instantly, so that monster flee isn't that big a drawback. The OW and PMH are basically irrelevant but nice upsides. Lawbringer on the other hand has a more reliable decrep and the sanctuary aura has a very nice effect of ignoring physical resist on undead. The slain monsters rest in peace mod however is a significant drawback- you don't benefit from phoenix's redemption aura or get to use death sentries. And sanctuary knockback can be frustrating as it knocks monsters out of clumps for Dragon Tail, particularly the ones that don't run back into range like skeleton archers- at least when Dragon Tail knockbacks them, it
kills them. The fire/cold damage is basically irrelevant, even against immunes.
Rift is the oddball build, for a full blown hybrid to try to kill immunes with frozen orb.
Fortitude and enigma are big armor choices. Between burst of speed and dragon flight you don't lack that much mobility, you aren't a slow as molasses bowazon, but the opportunity cost of fortitude is a big deal. And since you can't do chaos/baal anyway, teleporting to areas isn't that important. For an all-in gimmick build, 20/20 facets would be best
The circlet is based on what you can find. A +3 MA/ 30% frw circlet with 2x facets, or one with strength or whatever, they all work. A rare circlet can be better overall, but are often prohibitively rare- +2 assassin and 2x facet with strength/damage/resists/frw/etc would be well worth losing +1 MA. If you go with a rift, nightwings is a great choice, and ironically using a fire facet on it still. CoA is the good defensive option.
Phoenix has the slight drawback of firestorm interrupting kicks/tiger strikes, but with the gigantic one-hit damage you deal and the short action frame on dragon tail, it barely interrupts you in regular usage, just a few frames delay. And the benefits are massive here- you greatly benefit from both 400% ed and -28% enemy fire resist. You can use a 160% ed shield to avoid the interrupts, or a 20/20 facet shield. They don't work out to as much damage in 1 hit.
Maras is a great amulet, otherwise a rare can outperform it, or if you're spicy try atmas or a +3 MA blue amulet with any suffix you desire (str, life, etc)
Shadow Dancers, upgraded Gore Riders and rare Myrmidon Boots are the only 3 good options. You don't care about crushing blow much. What really matters is the 83-149 damage, the rest is just gravy. 15% CB / 10% OW / -5% requirements isn't really worth as much as 30% fhr / 25 dex / +2 shadow skills, so I recommend dancers. But good rares can really help your resists, they just might take a huge strength investment.
This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 20 2018 10:58pm