[3.10] Complete Cobra Lash Assassin Guide | >10m Shaper DPS | All content | Noob Friendly | Video

Hey, I've been playing Venom Gyre for previous league and was considering trying Cobra Leash for Metamorph.

Can you please enlight me about a few point ?

• why not using Aul's Uprising with free Malevolence (no mana reservation, still need to socket the skill) ? Would allow you to socket despair instead of your malevolence skill, which would free one mod on your claw

• what's the point of leveling so high CwDT ? 3.3k dmg taken is pretty much a big hit, isn't it better to leave it lvl 1 with IC lvl 4 and self cast Withering Step & Blood rage ?

• what the point of withering step as part of CwDT setup ? I mean the skill explicitly states that using any skill will remove the buff so I really don't see the utility of using it at all here. In my understanding of this, it'd be better to activate plague bearer, cast withering step then run in middle of mobs and look at them dying. but you'd need movespeed. I am probably missing something but it really bothers me not figuring it out.


Thanks in advance for your enlightments !

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shadowSpoupout a écrit :

Hey, I've been playing Venom Gyre for previous league and was considering trying Cobra Leash for Metamorph.

Can you please enlight me about a few point ?

• why not using Aul's Uprising with free Malevolence (no mana reservation, still need to socket the skill) ? Would allow you to socket despair instead of your malevolence skill, which would free one mod on your claw

Aul's Uprising with "Malevolence reserves no Mana" is quite expensive and rare. I wouldn't object using it, if you find it, but I wouldn't advise to specifically buy it for this build. As I said, I consider crafting a rare Amulet will give you the best options to increase the damage (my Amulet is good, but there are many other good mods that I didn't even hit). But this CL build is flexible and if you know what you are doing you can change many things to your liking.

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• what's the point of leveling so high CwDT ? 3.3k dmg taken is pretty much a big hit, isn't it better to leave it lvl 1 with IC lvl 4 and self cast Withering Step & Blood rage ?

You don't have to level CwDT so high. I just did it, because I felt like having the Withering Step on it. It would be better to self cast Withering Step and Blood Rage, yes. Since we are playing an Evasion build, hits that will go through the Evasion will be rather big anyways, since we don't have Armor Mitigation. So the CwDT-IC will procc on pretty much every hit that goes through and will then make sure to protect us for the very short moment we need to regain full HP from Life Leech. If you aren't as lazy as I was with the CwDT-WitheringStep-BloodRage, you can totally unlink Blood Rage and Withering Step and gain a little advantage over the QoL choice that I preferred. The Blood Rage will procc very soon in any map and will then stay active until you leave the map (if you don't idle around for too long).

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• what the point of withering step as part of CwDT setup ? I mean the skill explicitly states that using any skill will remove the buff so I really don't see the utility of using it at all here. In my understanding of this, it'd be better to activate plague bearer, cast withering step then run in middle of mobs and look at them dying. but you'd need movespeed. I am probably missing something but it really bothers me not figuring it out.

Elusive is a little complicated, but here we go:
We chose Mistwalker in our Ascendancy and this grants us a chance to gain the Elusive buff on critical strike and increased Elusive buff effect. While you are affected by Elusive, the user gains increased attack and cast speed, damage reduction, and takes no extra damage from enemy critical strikes. This is very powerful, but Elusive fades over time:
Unlike most other effects, Elusive loses its effectiveness over time, at a rate of 20% per second, and lasts until it decays to 0% effectiveness. This causes Elusive to have its duration be based on its buff effect. Modifiers to skill effect duration will not affect the duration of Elusive, but buff effects will.
You cannot refresh the effectiveness of Elusive by reapplying it. You must wait until Elusive expires to be able to reapply Elusive again. The only exception to this is Withering Step.
So Elusive loses effectiveness at a rate of 20% per second, which means it doesn't go
100%-80%60%-40%-20%-0%-100%
but instead it goes
100%-80%-64%-52%-42%-34%-27%-22%-18%-14%-11%-9%-7%-6%-5%-4%-3%-2%-1%-0%-100%.
Each of those steps takes 1 second. So you can clearly see, that without refreshing the cycle we would spend way too much time with Elusive on the lowest effectiveness. That's why we use Withering Steps, purely to refresh the Elusive buff and spend most time at the highest Effectiveness level. Like you already pointed out and as I already confirmed it would be best to self-cast Withering Steps to ensure that the Elusive Buff is really refreshed constantly.
When you check poe.ninja you can see, that 100% of the Assassins that use Withering Step also have the Mistwalker Ascendancy. Withering Step is only used to refresh Elusive, it doesn't matter if you lose the phasing or withered buffs from Withering Step right away.

Hello,

Thanks for posting this detailed build! I'm considering playing the build for tomorrow. I wanted to know how hard is it to level up with this build?

Can you do it with low tier items and the spell will carry you or it's more recommanded to do it with leveling gear as your second character?

Do you reach a plateau where the skill feels extremely weak or it scales well during the leveling without amazing items?

Thanks

Hello, just found your build when researching for league starters to 3.9. Im kinda of a new player that started in Blight with a beginner friendly arc witch guide and managed to get to uber elder on 1st playthrough. One of the things i had some difficulty with was getting the BiS items for the build due to how expensive they were. Do you recommend this as a league starter /endgame viable build? Plus, is the endgame setup super expensive? Lastly, will someone with small experience and that needs a guided hand able to follow this guide? Thank you and keep up the good work!

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nocx13 a écrit :

Hello,

Thanks for posting this detailed build! I'm considering playing the build for tomorrow. I wanted to know how hard is it to level up with this build?

Can you do it with low tier items and the spell will carry you or it's more recommanded to do it with leveling gear as your second character?

Do you reach a plateau where the skill feels extremely weak or it scales well during the leveling without amazing items?

Thanks

Hey nocx, glad you like the build. I actually played this in Blight as my starter and it was a very smooth and nice leveling experience. Since you get the gem right away, you get a good feeling for the skill allthroughout the leveling experience, which is really nice. That way you notice, when you need to pick up more damage or more life nodes on the passive tree as you are leveling (generally first chose most life nodes and do damage later).
Only things that can feel bad while leveling is the mana levels. That's when you look for claws that give mana on hit (or leech) and anoint or pick up a mana leech node on the passive tree.

You can totally use this as a starter, since most of your damage comes from your skill gems. You might start to feel a little squishy when you progress through maps very fast, though I have no clue how mapping exactly will be like in 3.9. No one does yet. :D
If you play this as your starter and you do run into serious problems, come back here and drop me a line, I will try to help. :)

Thanks a lot for the detailled answer. I guess I really terrible at ready, I played the whole blight league with Withering step and never notice the thing being removed by skill cast was the actual specific buff of WS and not the Elusive buff it refreshed. fml.

Your point on Aul's Uprising is very founded ; didn't even think cost could be the reason of this choice of yours. Glad I didn't miss some mechanical parts tho.

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AZoORr a écrit :

Hello, just found your build when researching for league starters to 3.9. Im kinda of a new player that started in Blight with a beginner friendly arc witch guide and managed to get to uber elder on 1st playthrough. One of the things i had some difficulty with was getting the BiS items for the build due to how expensive they were. Do you recommend this as a league starter /endgame viable build? Plus, is the endgame setup super expensive? Lastly, will someone with small experience and that needs a guided hand able to follow this guide? Thank you and keep up the good work!

Hey Azoorr, I kind of want to redirect you to what I just wrote in another answer here: Two posts earlier

But in regards to your specific question about BiS items, I can tell you that you will not face this problem here. Most of my recommended BiS items are crafted (fossil crafted) and use fossils that are rather cheap (if this league doesn't do weird things). That said, you just need to buy a cheap base item (like for example a normal or rare gemini claw (with shit stats, we don't care, since we will craft over it)) and then use fossils to craft the desired item. For almost all of the items there are many different mods that we can use, for example on the claw I would like to direct you to the gear section of the guide where I go over this. This makes crafting rather easy, because we will only need a small amount of attempts to create something useful (or even BiS if lucky on the mods). These items can then be further improved whenever you have more currency to spend. So you can pimp your equipment whenever you gatherered more currency. If you buy 3 claws, then you can craft 3 and use the best 2 results and recraft the 3rd whenever and if you improved you equip that one (and so on, and so on).
In that regard, you can play this build on a budget (and do most content with it) or invest some more over time and then complete all content with it. I have beat all content with it (mutliple times Uber Elder for example) and got 38/40 league challenges without any problem.
And since crafting is a gamble you can min/max this build a lot to get even more out of it. The budget variant obviously has some limitations as do all budget builds. But you don't need any specific expensive items for this build. That's why I vouch for it to be starter and budget friendly. :)

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MoosGames a écrit :

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AZoORr a écrit :

Hello, just found your build when researching for league starters to 3.9. Im kinda of a new player that started in Blight with a beginner friendly arc witch guide and managed to get to uber elder on 1st playthrough. One of the things i had some difficulty with was getting the BiS items for the build due to how expensive they were. Do you recommend this as a league starter /endgame viable build? Plus, is the endgame setup super expensive? Lastly, will someone with small experience and that needs a guided hand able to follow this guide? Thank you and keep up the good work!

Hey Azoorr, I kind of want to redirect you to what I just wrote in another answer here: Two posts earlier

But in regards to your specific question about BiS items, I can tell you that you will not face this problem here. Most of my recommended BiS items are crafted (fossil crafted) and use fossils that are rather cheap (if this league doesn't do weird things). That said, you just need to buy a cheap base item (like for example a normal or rare gemini claw (with shit stats, we don't care, since we will craft over it)) and then use fossils to craft the desired item. For almost all of the items there are many different mods that we can use, for example on the claw I would like to direct you to the gear section of the guide where I go over this. This makes crafting rather easy, because we will only need a small amount of attempts to create something useful (or even BiS if lucky on the mods). These items can then be further improved whenever you have more currency to spend. So you can pimp your equipment whenever you gatherered more currency. If you buy 3 claws, then you can craft 3 and use the best 2 results and recraft the 3rd whenever and if you improved you equip that one (and so on, and so on).
In that regard, you can play this build on a budget (and do most content with it) or invest some more over time and then complete all content with it. I have beat all content with it (mutliple times Uber Elder for example) and got 38/40 league challenges without any problem.
And since crafting is a gamble you can min/max this build a lot to get even more out of it. The budget variant obviously has some limitations as do all budget builds. But you don't need any specific expensive items for this build. That's why I vouch for it to be starter and budget friendly. :)

Thank you that is quite assuring, I don't have much experience with fossil crafting since on my previous Arc build it wasn't required. I will inform myself and I'm seriously considering using this as a starter today!

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shadowSpoupout a écrit :

Thanks a lot for the detailled answer. I guess I really terrible at ready, I played the whole blight league with Withering step and never notice the thing being removed by skill cast was the actual specific buff of WS and not the Elusive buff it refreshed. fml.

Your point on Aul's Uprising is very founded ; didn't even think cost could be the reason of this choice of yours. Glad I didn't miss some mechanical parts tho.

It's not just cost on Aul's Uprising, I also think that with a well crafted rare Amulet you gain more power and whatever stats you need.

Withering Step and Mistwalker Elusive interaction is complicated, I needed someone to explain it to me to actually understand aswell. :)

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AZoORr a écrit :

Thank you that is quite assuring, I don't have much experience with fossil crafting since on my previous Arc build it wasn't required. I will inform myself and I'm seriously considering using this as a starter today!

It seems complicated until you have tried it for the first time.
Fossil crafting works as follows:
You chose your crafting base (for example ilvl 83 Elder Gemini Claw).
You always use this website PoE Database Taiwan to check the possible mods you can craft on your base (maybe have to change language to english). The link I provided already directs to Claw crafting. You can also open the main page and chose "Mods" to chose any other bases. The website also has data on all maps and monster and literally everything in the game. It's the most complete database.
You see on top a list of all possible fossils. Also a box to insert ilvl. Below you see all mods devided in prefixes and suffixes that you can roll on your base. It's also devided by normal mods (mods that the base can drop with or be rolled with alterations, alchs, etc), Shaper and Elder mods, Essence mods (for essence crafting), crafting bench mods and for us most imporantly the Delve=Fossil mods (fossils drop in delve).
Many mods have a tag like minion, attack, elemental, ..., which indicate what tags are applied to the mod and these can be either weighted to appear more often or less or to never appear with the fossils, which each list what mods they support or not support.
You can now either check for mods that you want to have, see their tags and by that chose which fossils you want to apply for crafting or you can select the fossils that were recommended to you to use for crafting and see how the mod table has changed.
If you check Aberrant (+Chaos), and Corroded (+Poison) Fossil you can see how this changed the available and preferred mods to our liking. Because there are still very many mod rolls possible, we craft the claws using also Metallic (no physical) Fossil, to remove a lot of undesired mods from the table.
You need to have each of the fossils and put them in the sockets of a delve resonator. Then you right click the socketed resonator on your crafting base and the previous mods will be overwriten with the mods on the table. Always have a couple (I'd say at least 5) of each fossils and resonator you want to use, because it is unlikely that you get the perfect result in just 1 crafting attempt.