[3.11] Poison Blade Vortex Assassin (Carried me to level 100 / delve 600+ / Aul / Sirus A8 viable)

We are fine, we dodged all nerfs.

I am waiting for a Path of Building update, as Vitality has been changed to reserve flat mana instead of a percentage.
Most likely it will be a buff for us.
If I saw it right, the Watcher's Eye effect we are using was untouched.

We are still going strong!

Wind Dancer is in our range and we do not need the Brutal Restraint jewel anymore to get it.

Since Circle of Nostalgia is getting nerfed, we have to take some sort of reduced mana reservation in the tree. (Or we can corrupt jewels, if we are risky).
I updated the endgame tree acordingly.

Also we loose Hunter's Gambit, because it's position is being moved out of the Thread of Hope radius. It is about 4% damage lost.

I also need to update the skilltrees again, as I missed the serpentine spellslinger node. Will do so over the weekend.

State as of 3.10

I released at the end of 3.9 a video guide for this build.
Most of it is still up to date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWqgyfwEek

To understand the damage scaling, let's have a look at how poison damage works:

Poison is a damaging ailment, that is applied by both physical and chaos damage. It lasts unmodifyied for 2 seconds and deals 20% of the base damage that applied it as chaos damage. Each target can have multiple applications or stacks of poison.

This means, we can have the following points of increasing the damage of poison:
1. Increase the duration of the poison
2. Increase the damage of the poison
3. Increase the damage of the event that applied the poison

Our defense relies upon layering multiple defense mechanics to negate most of the damage, while lowering the damage, that passed through our defenses.

Since we start at the shadow area of the passive tree, it is intuitive, to choose evasion as our major defense mechanic. This gets supported by acrobatics and phase acrobatics for attack and spell dodge.

The Mistwalker Ascendancy node provides us with the elusive buff and negates extra critical damage taken, while we have elusive.

Elusive is a buff which gives us additional chance to dodge as well as movementspeed, but it looses it's strength over the duration of it's effect.

Furthermore we can choose a shield for the ability to block damage. In this case, Mistwall is a really good choice.

In addition to those mechanics, we choose a CWDT Immortal Call setup, to counteract bad luck streaks, where hits pass by all your defenses.

If you are willing to invest some more ress ources you can also include a Brutal Restraint jewel to aquire the Wind Dancer keynode.

Wind Dancer let's you take less Damage if you have not been hit in the last 4 seconds and boosts your evasion if you have been hit in the last 4 seconds.

For a poison based character there are some obvious choices, that directly interact with poison. Namely the Pathfinder and the Assassin.

In this case the assassin was chosen, because of the better starting point within the tree and how powerfull the Mistwalker node is.

My suggested Ascendancy nodes are:
1. Mistwalker - This provides you with a massive boost to your defenses and also increases your movement and cast speed as well, which directly benefits leveling speed.
2. Noxious Strike - It is a huge boost to both damage and recovery.
3. Toxic Delivery - It increases your poison damage, as well as crit scaling.
4. Opportunistic - It is another good boost to your movementspeed, as well as it boosts damage against bosses.

This part is for masochist who like to use Blade Vortex from the beginning. A more comfortable leveling method is in an extra section bellow.

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/QvjQScED

For leveling my suggestion is to start scaling physical damage over poison damage and transition later when you reach maps to a full poison build.
Most likely you find yourself in a situation, where your damage scaling is not yet good enough for pure poison.

The best approach would be going strait for the skill duration node at the Scion starting area, as well as the life nodes there, if needed.
From that point you want to move forward within the shadow starting area and work your way forward to the Force Shaper node, while picking up the usual suspects.

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/h5g2fgqa

As you have reached maps, it is time to think about shifting more damage from physical into poison.
The following passive tree can assist you with a very budget friendly choice, that is fairly damage orientaited.

WARNING: The point in Perfect Agony may result in damage loss, if your equipment is not yet good enough. Please take a look into path of building, to find the most optimal timing for your character.

Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/xgEpAvwN

The next change in the passive tree includes picking up more defensive nodes and compensating within the passive tree for the lack of resistances, that some quality of life improving uniques bring with them.
Don't worry, it will be worth their costs.

The first big step is including 2 Might of the Meek jewels within the scion starting area to boost our life and resistances.
The second step includes a Thread of Hope jewel from the Awakener with a very large radius, to pick up a lot of points that would be normally out of reach, but increase our defense and poison damage massively.

Last l but not least the most costly improvement will be an Unnatural Instinct jewel, which will provide us with a huge boost to life and gives us access to the corpse devour talents, which we trigger by the Devouring Diadem.

We help Alira!

In the beginning the all resistance helps us out a lot and the mana regeneration is a nice feature.

Later the crit multiplier is the main deciding factor.

The pantheon can be a matter of your preferences.
For the major pantheon the choice is between the Soul of Lunaris for further defensives or the Soul of the Brine King to prevent yourself from being stun locked.

For the minor pantheon, the suggestion is Abbarath for immunity to burning ground and Rhyslata, for flask recovery when bossing.

Since you will not yet have enough reduction to reserved mana at the beginning, you will most likely carry those auras to already level them, but have them inactive.

Chest 6-Link


Helmet 4-Link


4-Link


(1+1+2)-Link


CWDT (3-Link)


Shield (3-Link)


Offensive Weaponset (3-Link)

Weapon Slot


Helmet


Chest


Gloves


Belt


Boots


Rings


Amulet


Jewels


Flasks


Cluster Jewels


My Equipment (end of 3.9)

It is for me impossible to say, how the prices in a new league will develop, so please think for yourself and do not follow like a sheep!

The first goal should be acceptable weapons and enough resistances (75%+) while picking up as much life as you see fit.

Our endgame weapons are most likely also our starting weapons:


All those are usually relatively cheap and Obliteration is obtainable with a very common card set.

If the Embalmer are cheap, try to get them, they will boost your damage a lot at the beginning.

The next big upgrade should be the Golden Rule and a method to be unaffected by poison. I already mentioned a few sources in the previous section, but don't limit yourself to it, there are more ways.

After that we have to either push for the Elder or invest some currency for . It massively boost the damage through Despair as Aura.

Then it is a matter of how the league develops, but the Devouring Diadem or Mistwall are bound to certain bosses (Syndicate Mastermind and Conquorers).
Make it dependend on the current economic situation, but probably the additional auras from the Devouring Diadem will help you more.

The Circle of Nostalgia is a bit gated behind the Cortex boss. Getting one with the right affix might be expensive in the first 2 weeks, after that I expect a drop in prices. Keep your eyes open for one with 20% reduced mana reservation, then you can finally run the full aura setup (considering you leveled by then Enlighten up to 4 and have the passive point in the tree).

Asenath's Gentle touch and most of the passive tree jewels are luxery that you will obtain later, when your income is steady. By that point you will most likely already have killed Sirus a few times.

This league I changed up the way I start the character and it works so much better, but we do not start with Blade Vortex anymore until almost Act 5.

We start in Act 1 by buying Caustic Arrow, any bow and a 3G-Link.
Getting iron rings and a quiver with attack damage is helpful.

At level 4 we get Pierce and link it to Caustic Arrow. Use either Frostblink or Dash, whatever fits your colours.

At level 8 we add Void Manipulation to it and take a second of that gem for Toxic Rain later.

At level 10 we should take both: Flame Dash and Withering Step.

Before Merveil (level 12) we use a second 3G setup with: Toxic Rain - Void Manipulation - Mirage Archer.

In Act 2 we pick up the Herald of Agony, but it will not provide a lot until we use BV.

In Act 3 we pick up Malevolence and start looking for caster weapons (+ phys/chaos dmg to spells on wands or scepters) and a 2G-2B-linked or a 1G-3B-linked item.

After Act 4 we can finally swap to Blade vortex - Unleash - (Lesser) Poison - Deadly/Unbound Ailments.

I think a 4-Link is enough to go from this point on towards maps and from this point you can directly follow the offensive poison variation in the trees.

This is the approximate route that I went during leveling.
Be sure to adapt it to your needs, so take for example life, when you need it and don't be afraid to use the +30 stat passives to meet requirements during leveling. (Orbs of Regret are cheap, so don't be afraid to modify)

Q: Is it possible to play this build energy shield based (CI / Low Life)
A: I do not recommend it with this build. You can play energy shield based Poison BV, but you have to rework the tree and the equipment. Basically it is another build then.

Q: What to do when you do not have the helmet or amulet?
A: You have to play with less auras. There is no way around.

Q: Do you have other guides?
A: Yes, my video guides are in this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHs1z6wAbUQCyZaJnoWYoJ80tHxWA89FA

Q: My question is not (yet) covered here?
A: Please ask your question in this thread. While I currently do not play a lot, I still have a look in here and try to catch up with questions.

- Removed Bug Warning
- Bug with Golden Rule, unsure of how far it goes yet.
- Asenath's seems to be fixed
- Bug Warning of Asenath's Gentle Touch
- Another skilltree update
- Added leveling section
- Unnatural Instinct now for corpse passives instead of frenzy, power and endurance charges.
- Updated the loss of Hunter's Gambit.
- Updated the endgame tree again. This time the circle of nostalgia nerf is included. (Gear is still from my character out of Metamorph league in the PoB file.)
- Removed Antivenom from the small Cluster jewels
- Updated all trees to 3.11
- switched Herald of Agony with Vitality due to Mana Reservation issues in 3.11
- Remove Brutal Restraint from jewel section.
- 3.11 changes added.
- Started FAQ
- Clarification for The Embalmer
- Added Cluster Jewel section
- Patch 3.10 changes (round 2)
- Included Patch 3.10 changes (round 1, I am sure I oversaw something)
- Swapped Withering Step and Vitality around to make Withering Step benefit from the support gems
- Added a suggested league start upgrade path
- Added Path of Building to Skilltrees
- Released initial version

- include serpentine spellslinger
- 3.11 update for endgame tree
- Cluster jewels
- Upgrade priorities for gear
- Use symbols for Gems and Items