I just wanted to point out some observations I’ve made about the update to blade fury and its synergies. In short, I’ve realized that the recent buff to blade fury and the other blade skills is a huge game changer for the blade fury assassin. In the past, blade fury builds required quite a bit of expensive gear to be endgame viable. Let’s take a look at some of my lvl 90 assassin’s gear:

Fort
Monarch (4x 40%ED jewels)
Gore Rider
Guillaume’s (40%ED jewel)
Angelic combo
Ravenfrost

Now, this is all well and good if you’re really dying to get all of the damage you can, but after doing some testing I’ve realized that most of this stuff is completely unnecessary. Here’s the thing: even pre-patch, the majority of your damage is going to come from blade fury itself, not your weapon. With the added syngeries, the damage of blade fury alone has increased so significantly that your weapon damage and off-weapon enhanced damage are basically completely unnecessary. After removing all gear and and sticking on a Malice Suwayyah, the difference in my clear speeds is hardly noticeable because I’m still killing everything in one or two hits, even after sacrificing 500% enhanced damage and swapping my weapon for one that does less than half as much base damage. Basically, what this tells me is that blade fury is now strong enough to function on its own as a spell. Instead of gearing for enhanced damage and using difficult to acquire runewords like Fury, Chaos, Death and Fort, it appears that you may actually get the largest benefit from simply using +skills items. This opens up a world of possibilities for gearing and makes blade fury extremely budget friendly. Why use fort when treachery will do the trick? Gore rider and guillaume’s are probably still BiS, but are they really necessary? Probably not. Why not throw on a wisdom helm and razortail belt and have 66% pierce? Now you’re basically throwing bone spears every 6 frames and they actually do decent damage . To top it off you can do some silly stuff with blade fury and ctc on strike. You’ve got all the damage and attack rating you need now, so you can come up with some ridiculous stuff that’s actually viable. Here’s a fun build:

Wisdom
Razortail
Harmony
Peace
Angelic combo
Gore rider
Dracul’s

Probably not the strongest build ever, but it will no doubt get you through hell and you’ll be zipping around the battlefield like you’re on crack with a level 15 Valkyrie following you around. None of this stuff is that expensive. You can use voice of reason, you can use crescent moon, you can use any +skills, hoto, claws, whatever. Best of all I think would be lawbringer. Then you’ve got -50% target defense and decrepify which will double your damage and break resists without needing to rely on a merc with reaper’s toll. Depending on your build you can even throw on Atma’s or highlords if you’ve already got some decent attack rating. The possibilities are endless

It cant pierce.
The damage scales heavy on it with ed in gear.
Make a build with pheonix shield, take of that shield and loose 35% of ur total damage...

Yes wepon means less, but the offhand ed% is extreame.
Treachury does nothing, u can cast fade urself, and the ias dont do anything on this skill...

This post was edited by gel87 on Jun 5 2022 11:35am

Dang, I didn’t know it couldn’t pierce. My point though, is that blade fury is doing so much damage that the off weapon enhanced damage isn’t really necessary, you have the option to spec into other things like ctc or more crushing blow (duress) and you don’t really lose much by doing so. Btw, you get more dps out of a monarch socketed with enhanced damage jewels than you do with Phoenix due to the firestorm casting delay. Treachery gives you fade and venom for free, plus two to all skills and you don’t have to spend a Lo rune on it. Not putting 20 points in fade gives you more points to put into death sentry and fire blast, or any of the assassin’s other incredibly useful skills

This delay no longer happens.

What. Seriously. I didn't see that anywhere. The delay was the only thing holding me back from making the damn thing.

They changed it in the last version.

“Casting delay will no longer share its cooldown with other skills that have casting delay.” Sounds like it still happens. Have you tested it?

Yes, it does not interupt attacks.