Assassin Skills Discussion

[Crystalion]

If one stumbles across the odd rare, particularly in Hell diff, with insane elemental affixes, (found a jav the other day with 1-400+ lightning, something like 40-140 fire, nd 80 poison over 4 IIRC)  then it could be useful for a long duration sentinal to whittle down a pack who is blocking your progress.

As soon as act 3 normal and clvl 19 you can shop wands with as much as 25-60 Fire or 1-120 lightning. They are, of course, 1 handed (i.e. no BS/BF 2h penalty).

I believe this means an Assassin with the requisite 1 pt. in Blade Sentinel and Blade Fury might profitably keep an eye wands for weapon switch (esp. since everything I'm about to list is a prefix, so you could get really lucky and have a useful suffix on the wand as well, like "of piercing" or charges of a good necro CC skill).

The key to the alvl (early) of decent elemental damage on wands is that (norm/exc but not elite) they have magic_level = 1. So the alvl you get is clvl+6 (clvl + 5 for shop ilvl, + 1 more for magic_level). However, in normal (but not nm/hell) you need to be aware of the shop ilvl caps:

Act 1 : 12
Act 2 : 20
Act 3 : 28
Act 4 : 36
Act 5 : 45

so clvl 19+ in act 3+:
Fiery up to 25-60 fire; clvl 18 req., alvl 25
Static up to 1-120 lightning; clvl 18 req., alvl 25

and clvl 28+ in act 4+:
Smoldering up to 50-90 fire; clvl 25 req., alvl 34
Glowing up to 1-180 lightning; clvl 25 req., alvl 34

and clvl 40+ in act 5+:
Smoking up to 80-130 fire; clvl 36 req., alvl 46 (yes yes, ilvl 45 cap no prob)
Buzzing up to 1-260 lightning; clvl 36 req., alvl 46 (ditto)

There are also poison and cold damage affixes (I omit them simply because I'm less impressed with them and don't wish to take the time to type 'em up).

Naturally if you already have good fire or lightning damage from traps then these with BS/BF aren't going to be very relevant. I have, however, played non-twink melee or BF sins in the past, and found knowing when to shop wands to be helpful.