Phoenix Strike* is your main Skill. It gains up to 3 Charge orbs from successful melee hits. Charge 1 drops a Fiery Meteor, Charge 2 gives a Chain Lightning effect dealing Lightning Damage, and charge 3 releases a circular patterned Cold Damage attack that Freezes Monsters. When combined with a Finishing Move like Dragon Claw you can choose when to utilize your charges and how.

Dragon Talon* is the primary finisher move. With dual Mosaic you can use all charge-up skills in rapid succession, creating a massive aoe damage explosion on your screen!

Dragon Claw* is a dual-claw attack Finishing Move that expends 2 charges. It naturally grants Attack Rating, but always hits if you have multiple Charges. This finisher is primarily used on low player counts.

Fists of Fire is a Fire Charge-up Skill that grants up to 3 Charges. Charge 1 adds Fire Damage to your attack, Charge 2 is an instantaneous AoE Fire Explosion and Charge 3 is an AoE Fire Explosion that leaves a pyre for a duration.

Claws of Thunder is a Lightning Charge-up Skill that grants up to 3 Charges. Charge 1 adds Lightning Damage to your attack, Charge 2 is an AoE Nova, and Charge 3 is an AoE Lightning attack that releases Charged Bolts in all directions.

Blades of Ice is a Cold Charge-up Skill that grants up to 3 Charges. Charge 1 adds Cold Damage to your attack, Charge 2 is a Cold Explosion, and Charge 3 is an AoE Cold Explosion that Freezes enemies for a duration.

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)
* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)

Fade* provides you with a large amount of +x All Resistance, Damage Reduction, and Curse Duration Reduction when cast. Each Soft Point grants 1% Damage Reduction. (Soft Points include + Skills from gear and buffs)

Dragon Flight* is a Finishing Move that teleports you to a target and attempts a Kick attack. It naturally grants Attack Rating, but always hits if you have any Charges. This Skill is great for mobility as a pseudo Teleport.

Mindblast* stuns your enemies in a small squared shape area around your cursor and has a % chance to convert enemies hit. Converted enemies fight alongside you for a short period of time.

Cloak of Shadows* Blinds enemies around the Assassin. This drastically decreases their aggro range and their Defense. Incredibly useful in dangerous Areas with large amounts of ranged monsters.

Weapon Block* provides a Chance to Block when dual-wielding Claw type weapons.

Claw Mastery* provides Attack Rating, additional Damage, and Critical Strike Chance when wielding Claw type weapons.

Shadow Warrior* summons a mini-Assassin that mimics your Skills.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) These Claws ideally have low requirements. Runic Talons and Greater Talons are the best.
2) Death's Hand and Death's Guard together grant Cannot Be Frozen, +30% IAS, and +15 All Resistances.
3) Hsarus' Iron Stay and Hsarus' Iron Heel are great for boosting your Attack Rating in the early game.
4) Angelic Halo and Angelic Wings are great for boosting your Attack Rating significantly. You can even add another ⁣Angelic Halo to stack even more Attack Rating!

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter or Budget Variant.

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Use a Desert Mercenary with Might Aura to deal with enemies that are immune to your main damage source.
Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage.

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

You are now ready to become a Christmas tree! We don't use death sentry at this point, so make sure to respec your skill tree.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Increased Attack Speed speeds up your attack animations. Weapon bases have different IAS breakpoints. Values for recommended weapon options provided below. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR) increases survivability. Aim for at least the 48% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build is Hardcore viable. If you are unaccustomed to this playstyle, we recommend trying this build on Softcore to gain experience on how to successfully pilot it.

Death Sentry is in the unique situation, in which in combines 2 Skills (Lightning Sentry and Corpse Explosion). Both Skill effects have certain conditions in which they occur and use up remaining shots from the maximum shot count. This means that a Death Sentry with a maximum of 7 Shots can use, for example, 5 x Lightning and 2x Corpse Explosion).

The Lightning Sentry part will only be used, if there are no corpses in the sentries' awareness range (10 2/3 yards).

The Corpse Explosion is used when there are corpses within its Awareness Range (10 2/3 yards) with the following mechanics: