Build Something

A few notes about my builds in general:

Light Footed: As I understand it currently, Light Footed is bugged. In all of my hybrid builds this would be the choice over Cat's Paw. So for example, in my Corruption/Swift Strikes/Offhand build rather than have 2 in Cat's Paw I would have 2 in Light Footed.

Hybrid - Corruption / Swift Strikes / Offhand Hits

I put this build together as an almost purely offensive minded Hybrid build. This is the build I'm currently using. The focus is around Deft Blades, Corrupting Strikes, Dark Weapons, Dread Weapons, and Burden to Bear. The idea behind this build is that during a fight, if you're able to proc Burden to Bear and land a Swift Strikes your target should die. You have the passive +offhand, but you also have Corrupting Strikes that you can fire off mid combo to increase your +offhand even further. You also have the utility that comes with Snap Kick/Golden Lotus Extract/Cat's Paw to makeup for the lack of Unholy Armor.

Variant: You could move the 5 from Dread Weapon into Unholy Armor and have a more balanced build.


Corruption Melee Survivability Build

If you're finding that casters drop relatively easy (and they do- but only if you open) then perhaps you need to find that staying power versus melee. When you go up against those Guardians, Conquerors, Barbarians... classes most Assassins are afraid to fight this build gives you a pretty large edge over the previous build- you lose your 'extra heal' in Golden Lotus Extract but you focus on mitigation, stun/knockdown prevention, and you use your leeches to heal in Golden Lotus' place.

I still haven't been able to make Slow Death Strikes comparable to Swift Strikes in damage output within the current itemization parameters and with two ranks of Grim Corruption and Impede Life available to use in between Swift Strikes cooldowns, I would still suggest avoiding Vile Corruption.

Corruption Slow Death Strikes Build

This is my corruption build which has a lot of the melee survivability but focuses on Slow Death Strikes/Dark Weapons/Dread Weapons and Seeds of Corruption plus Burden to Bear to bring out the damage instead of Swift Strikes. Currently the Swift Strikes build has been slightly more effective but when itemization kicks in I could see the Slow Death Strikes build being very, very good due to the lack of Unholy Invulnerability stat floating around.

Variant: One thing I've tried to do is get accelerated with my Slow Death Strikes build but I just can't justify the point difference, if you're trying to do it in corruption.


Lotus Poison Stacking Build

The idea behind this build is that you would focus on landing Grim Corruption IV, Grim Corruption III (the debuffs stack to be a total -8.8% Poison Invulnerability) and then fire off a Slow Death Strikes. By that time Corrupted Body (more -% Poison Invulnerability) should've proc'd, you would have Kidney Shots up and be putting out a seriously large amount of DoT damage with Flesh Rot and Lotus Weapons. Curse of the Lotus in this build is your Death's Gaze AND From the Darkness, in that... with a Lotus Build when you open on someone, it's almost exclusively going to be Stealth Attack -> Curse of The Lotus -> Grim Corruption IV -> Grim Corruption III. You have to be extremely fast to land Grim Corruption while the target is moving from Curse of the Lotus. This build is extremely strong against casters with the base invulnerability's along with 5 Excellent Balance and 3 Escape Artist and Golden Lotus Extract.

Build Your Own: In this build, I've left 5 points unspent. This is for a couple of reasons. One, I haven't tested enough. I would strongly suggest looking at Arcane Backlash, Combo Blindside, Acrobat, Toughness, Swift Shadows, Quick Recovery, and Second Wind as possible options. Combo Blindside in particular looks interesting, if you can land it during SA->Curse of the Lotus, but that's a pretty large if.

The original direction I planned on taking with this post, was that I would give you several (8+) different builds with tiny variances and reasons for those variances. I decided that this would've been a bit pretentious and was also very time consuming so what I did instead was showcase the three primary builds and what you should be looking to do with all three of them. I have some pretty off the wall defensive builds and offensive builds and perhaps in time I'll post some of them, but with the sheer amount of bugs and no idea how itemization is going to scale, I don't think it would be appropriate. In a month or so when people are in mostly dungeon gear/upgraded gear, I'll revisit my builds and post my alternative builds that were left out today.