Phoenix Strike Assassin Guide

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. 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 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.

Death Sentry* uses Corpse Explosion which causes nearby corpses to explode for Fire and Physical Damage. If there are no bodies to target, it fires off a weak Lightning bolt if it’s close enough to a target.

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)

Burst of Speed* provides you with a massive movement speed and Attack Speed buff. This increases your mobility and the rate at which you lay your Traps.

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.

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)

* 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 Feral Claws 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.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

Act 5

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.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Infinity, Might

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.

Gear Progression

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.

General

• Start your runs by switching to the Weapon Swap with the most +x to Skills and Cast Fade and Shadow Warrior.
• Shadow Warrior summons another Assassin that mimics your Skills and acts as a meat shield. Resummon it whenever it dies or as a decoy to get out of scary situations.
• Use Phoenix Strike to gain charges against enemies, then discharge with Dragon Claw to clear out the first few enemies. When there are corpses, cast 1-2 Death Sentrys to help clear out density.
• If you get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemies, you can use Mindblast to Stun and Convert or Charge 3 Phoenix Strike to Freeze everything in place for a moment.
• Cloak of Shadows to Blind every enemy within its radius and stop their ranged attacks.
• The Plague Greater Talons are extremely expensive to repair, use an Ort Rune in the Horadric Cube to repair it.

Immunities

• If you do not have Infinity equipped on your Mercenary, purchase a Lower Resist Charge Wand from Nightmare Drognan, this is great for breaking some Immune and highly Resistant monsters. Repair this Wand as needed using Gold or the Chipped Gem + Ort Rune Horadric Cube recipe.
• With this build, we have no monsters that are fully immune to us. If we need Fire Damage, we can use Fists of Fire or Charge 1 on Phoenix Strike.
• For Lightning Damage we can use Claws of Thunder or Charge 2 of Phoenix Strike.
• Cold Damage is dealt with Phoenix Strike or Charge 3 of Phoenix Strike.
• Death Sentry does both Physical and Fire Damage if needed.
• Cold Rupture, Crack of the Heavens, and Flame Rift ALL break immunity and bring monsters down to 95% resistance. Pair this with as much -% Enemy Fire, Cold, or Lightning Resistance as possible.

Late-Game

• Start your runs by buffing yourself with Battle Command 2 times then Battle Orders from Call to Arms.
• Use Infinity to break Immunes and for an overall DPS increase. Your Mercenary also benefits from the increased Chance to Hit and Crushing Blow.

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 (IAS)

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.

Plague Greater Talons

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

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.

Skill Point Changes

• Put the Skill Points from Claw Mastery into Fade for Resistances and Damage Reduction.
• Allocate at least 1 Skill Point into Weapon Block if you do not have claws with the Staff Mod.

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).

• Base amount of available shots is 5, which can be increased by putting Skill Points into Fire Blast. Every 3rd Skill Point, Death Sentry gain +1 shot to a maximum of 11 (with Fire Blast Base Skill Level 18).

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

• The lightning beam behaves exactly as Lightning Sentry:
  • Monsters are pierced.
  • Travels in a straight line.
  • Every monster on the travel path takes Lightning Damage.
• Death Sentry shoots at a rate of 31 Frames per cast (Every 1.24 seconds) before they expire. This rate cannot be influenced.

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

• Death Sentry shoots at a rate of 31 Frames per cast (Every 1.24 seconds) before they expire. This rate cannot be influenced.
• The Corpse Explosion is weaker than its Necromancer counterpart, dealing only 40 - 80% of the monster's regular base Life.
• Damage does not increase with higher player count.
• Its damage is split into 50% Physical Damage and 50% Fire Damage.
• When the corpse's Monster Level > Character Level the damage is multiplied by Character Level / Monster Level.
• Within the Area of Effect, the damage is always afflicted. It cannot be blocked by any means.

• Teleport instantly moves you to a selected square on the visible screen in which you can stand. The game tries to to place you within a small radius around your cursor even if it would be impeded normally.
• Teleport is not obstructed by walls or other impediments but can fail if your cursor is not completely passed those impediments when cast. Your Mercenary and Minions are teleported with you, Traps do not.
• Certain Minions in large quantities can become “stuck” in position after teleporting. Move away from that position to give them the chance to spread out.
• You can “extend” the visible screen by opening UI-windows like the Inventory or the Character screen. Continuously cast Teleport and drag your mouse to the edge of your screen.
• The Mana cost of Teleport decreases with additional Skill Levels down to 1 Mana per cast.
• You can use “ESC” to open the menu in single player to pause the game after a Teleport to determine if you are safe.