Poison Blade Blast Assassin is still a solid well-rounded build

*** BUILD OVERVIEW *** This build really isn't anything particularly special. It's the same BFBB Assassin that people have been playing, just catered to my personal playstyle. Blade Blast got nerfed in 3.15, but is still mechanically sound enough to prop up the build and honestly doesn't feel as different compared to before as I expected it to. Assassin got nerfed but is also still just a sound Ascendancy. It offers a good mix of offense, defense, and mobility: - Mistwalker + Withering Step offers us great dodge and movement speed, as well as taking no extra damage from critical strikes while elusive (a sometimes overlooked but very powerful defensive mechanic). - Opportunistic also grants us more defense against large groups of enemies where a hit eventually makes it past our avoidance and damage against single targets with more telegraphed attacks that we can (hopefully) avoid manually. *** LEVELING *** - I leveled with +1 phys wands and generic leveling uniques/resist gear - I used EK until Unleash, then started used BFBB from then on - In the past I've gone with Vitality instead of Herald of Purity in the beginning. I already had a life gain on hit ring by the time I was starting the character so I skipped using Vitality this time around. *** ITEMIZATION/GEARING OPTIONS *** - CHEST: - In Ultimatum I ended up using a Redeemer chest with "Nearby enemies are blinded". This has a larger radius than Flesh and Stone and frees up 35% reservation for something else. Depending on your other gear, and your personal perferences, you could use a Blasphemy curse, Herald of Agony, Aspect of the Spider, or really anything else. - This league I got a lot of early 5L Harvest crafts and I just so happen to roll a lot of green sockets on a Covenant, so I used a 5L Covenant for a while. I eventually 6-linked it for further use and I still plan on using it for a while, possibly for the lifetime of the character. It makes mana sustain far less of an issue because Blade Blast is going to cost health instead. On top of that, it does offer a bit of life and intelligence (something we're slightly starved for because Obliteration requires 179 and we're mostly in dex territory). In my current setup, the level 15 added chaos that comes with it offers a roughly ~11% damage boost which is nothing to sneeze at either. - Upgrades: The Covenant will carry you for as long as you want it to in my opinion. If I do end up replacing it my ideal candidate is probably a double-influenced chest that would be a fantasy to acquire in SSF. At a minimum I would probably want it to have +1 to active gems, Nearby enemies are Blinded, and crafted life. More ideally than that it would need either int or resists as well, to help ease the strain on other gear slots given that mana would be more of an issue as well. - WEAPON: - The go-to is Obliteration for clearing, Cold Iron Point for bossing. There's probably a theoretical weapon out there that does a better job than Cold Iron Point, but it's very powerful for accessible it is in both SSF and trade leagues. If you really want to (or if you have extra laying around in SSF), Wands can be corrupted for a % increased AoE implicit, and daggers can get 50-60% increased damage over time. - AMULET: - Ungil's Harmory is generally the preferred amulet here. It has life, mana, int, and huge crit chance. We don't care about losing crit multi, so the increased crit chance along with Mistwalker helps us keep our Elusive at pretty high numbers on average. We generally go for a damage anointment because there are some very powerful notables for poison that are much too far away for us to ever get naturally. I start with Poisonous Fangs because it's dirt cheap, then switch to Dirty Techniques when (if?) I get a Silver Oil. - OFFHAND/SHIELD: - If you don't care about ailment immunity as much as I do, you can use another Obliteration for better clearspeed and another Cold Iron Point or Saffell's Frame for bosses. - I prefer full ailment immunity, so I use a dex or dex/int shield. Dodge or movement speed implicit. Mine currently just has life, resists, and ailment avoidance. An upgrade I'm currently working on is a Redeemer shield with +# to minimum frenzy charges, though I'm not sure it's going to be feasible with the rest of the gear I have available because of where my resists are currently at. - HELMET: - I'm currently just using an Elder helmet with physical damage added to spells. This doesn't offer as much single target as a concentrated effect helmet would, but it's still a nice bit of damage (over 5%). It also has the extra benefit of adding physical damage to our CWDT Ball Lightning setup. We have 100% chance to poison, so adding phys/chaos damage to spells from our gear will mean that Ball Lightning is going to apply a lot of poisons. This is pretty nice for the Noxious Strikes benefit (life gained on kill per poison), but isn't a big deal either way. Again, endgame helmet is an Elder Concentrated Effect helmet. - RINGS: - I personally think a Shaper ring with life gained per enemy hit by spells is mandatory once you reach a certain level/map tier. This build hits a LOT over short periods of time. If you're near a group of enemies and just so happen to fail the dodge check several times in a row and get hit for a few thousand each time, you should still survive between Bladefall, Blade Blast, and CWDT Ball Lightning hitting the enemies a ridiculous number of times and bringing you back to full life. A lot of deaths people view as "one shots" are actually several medium-large hits, which the life gain on hit does a lot to mitigate. - Second ring, which I'm still working towards, is a Hunter ring with Despair on hit. This is a massive damage increase and is my main priority at the moment, even though I'm going to be sad that I'm losing 59% chaos res from my Blight Knuckle :( - JEWELS: - Jewels are pretty standard. Life, resists, generic damage, damage over time multiplier are all nice stats. There are some good options for abyss jewels too if you want to go that route. - Once you get a Very Large Thread of Hope, socket it in the jewel socket near Acrobatics and pick up Revenge of the Hunted, Heart of Oak, and Swift Venoms. - EVERYTHNG ELSE: - Like I've mentioned a few times, resistances have been a bit of a pain point for me in this variation of the build. Part of that is my insistence on getting as much chaos res as I can. Part of it is the fact that a lot of the mods we like on this build are suffixes, two of the bigger ones being int and ailment avoidance.