My current build, what do you think?
 

My blade fury assassin

The entire point of this assassin is to take the largest slowest weapons in the game and make the fast and ranged, the build focuses on strength, it was built for a hardcore character so there is a lot of vitality if not playing hardcore you could put some points from vitality and put them to energy! Shadow master is very important to the build it can tank for you.

510 stat points… (495 from levels 15 from lam easens tome)
For these I usually put in 3 to strength and 2 to Vitality and throw in a point or 2 of energy every once and a while. You want to top out strength by level 75 at least.
Strength: 255 (253 needed for highest strength requirement)
Dexterity: 20
Vitality: 220
Energy: 100

Skills 111 skill points (99 from levels 12 from skill quests)
Shadow Disciplines: 66
Claw mastery: 1
Psychic Hammer: 1
Burst of Speed: 1
Weapon Block: 1
Cloak of Shadows: 1
Fade: 20 (after Venom, Shadow Master, and Blade fury.)
Shadow Warrior: 1
Venom: 20
Shadow Master: 20

Traps: 43
Fire Blast: 1
Blade Sentinel: 1
Wake of Fire: 1
Blade Fury: 20
Blade Shield:20 (after Venom, Shadow Master, and Blade fury.)

You should have 2 left do whatever you want with em….

Gear: the heaviest shit around!
Armor: Templars might
Helm: Crown of Ages
Gloves: Steelrend
Belt: Thundergods Vigor
Boots: Sandstorm Treck
Ring: Manland heal or Stone of Jordan (for mana enhancement or steal)
Ring: Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band (Life enhancement and steal)
Amulet: Crescent Moon or Maras Kaleidoscope
Weapon: Maul;This is really all about you and what you want, Earth shifter is good stuff but is more pointed towards the druid. There are 2 Mauls that have 300 percent enhanced damage for a possibility Earthshifter and Bonesnap, If at all possible I would try to up my bonesnap to elite because of the resistance but that is ladder only, if not ladder go with earthshifter, Windmaul works too, I use it occasionally for its 33% chance to cast level 22 twister.

Use different rings, rares suggestably.

Don't use such str dependant items, maybe hel-hel an IK maul.

Thats the entire point, I want to use high strengh items, I dont really have anywhere else to go with them points anyways, high strenght impractical items generally over 220 strengh go for cheap.
IK mauls require 225 strengh that is pretty high anyways, right?

sounds pretty good, but what kinda damage can be expected with all that gear, and what would it be used for? does blade fury go through enemies or does it stop?

No this build is NOT good, no block, no ar, low life.

NO well made build requires ANY points in energy.

might not need ar, if blade fury always hits, life can be fixed with no dex pts and less str, no energy

First thing blade fury bounces from enemy to enemy, and does more damage with each bounce.
The build needs that much energy and it isnt that much it makes up for the lack of dexterity, If you dont have them energy points you cant shoot 2 3.1 mana costing blades persecond. The damage you do is not enough to take everything in the game, you need that shadow master to tank for you, I would also sedjust a merc to tank for you as well. I am able to kill anything in nightmare with my windhammer, I am still yet to test hell.
The build finsihes with more than 800 life, and with 2 people tanking for you you should have no problem staying alive if it was that bad, then I wouldnt be moving on to hell in HARDCORE.

Also, just so you know, you miscalculated how many skill points and stat points you get from 1-99+quests. You don't get anything at level 1, so you only get 98 levels worth of skill/stats. That would be 110 skill points and 505 stat points.

This is not a good build, mainly due to the bad choices of items.

I will elaborate on that later.

if the point of this build is to have a blast owning nightmare it might be a playful experimental build. But I doubt you'll survive in hell. Also the need for 2 tanks shows the incompetence of the build. But as i said earlier, if your trying to have fun and play nightmare, it could be interesting. Good effort!

Your gear doesn't give you much help, meaning you won't survive in Hell. You might be able to get through Nightmare (I'm not too sure about that actually)

Templar's Might doesn't give you anything but high str requirement.

Crown of Ages is pretty much the same. Nothing that helps this build. Maybe the resist and DR, but you can easily have those from other gear. (Not to mention you will max Fade, which is 20% DR and ~65% resist)

Steelrend... simply put, you won't need this. Doesn't help a lot.

T-God, while there is Lightning damage and Vita, they are insignificant.

SandStorm doesn't give anything useful other than the little Vita.

Soj, BK ring, Mara's... You won't need much Skill boost in this build.

And at last, don't use Maul as your weapon. 2 handed Maul is not the best choice of weapon, weapon + shield can do much better.

Blade Fury needs AR, but it works with ITD. So, it is possible to go with base dex IF a two handed maul can work in Hell.

The skill allocation isn't the best possible.

Looking at the skills you've maxed...

Blade Fury, Shadow Master, Venom, Fade, Blade Shield.

Blade Fury and Blade Shield do not require a high level when you have a real weapon. Blade Fury can work well with only 1 point, because the real damage comes from the weapon. adding 19 more points into it for... 100 more damage? Not worth it.

Thats what I thought at first but it was neccessary to survive in the begining, the build is going fine. I am doing NM baal runs and am surviving the windhammer is an exelent choice for the build. I do close to 2k damage now, thats not alot but add in the twisters tanks and all the other people and it works.
I am a level 76 (or 75 forgot) hardcore east ladder and I survive fine in baal runs right in the center!
My items choices were not that good but I will make the better as my build ideas progress.

You should use Soul Drainers as gloves for Dual Leech. You might want some DR with using Leviathan. Otherwise have Ironstone and SS on switch in case you get into some pretty heated battles. I advise a Holy Freeze Merc to slow the enemies down.

Lv 20 Blade Fury is not needed, because if you have the right weapon, you will be able to do well in those levels.

Fade is quite essential in Hell for the 20% DR, especially if you don't max blocking. The real problem with the items are, you don't have mods such as Open Wound, High CB and DS to aid with the killing. A better choice of weapon would be Stormlash Scourge, High damage, high Lightning damage, chance to cast static, and you can have a shield on the other hand. A Ethereal one would be much better, of course.

Soul Drainers is a great choice, not only because of dual leech, but the Chance to cast Weaken which will greatly reduce the enemies damage.

You are bringing out some good points I think i will rebuild this assasin next ladder season whenever that happens or when I die. I want to see if the one I have can be sucessfull the way it is It seems to be working soo far. I will admit that blade fury at 20 is wasted points but if you put them into almost anything else it is not a BF assasin but prolly somthing elses the only thing I can think of is putting them to fade first but I didnt need fade till I had my other skills maxed out.
I just want to keep it on the path of a blade fury assasin.
I hope the idea becomes more popular, I mean it dosent apply any specific element or damage type, Currently I do Physical, poisin, fire, cold and magic damage. The build is perfect for hell you just need the right wepon.
And tanking isnt really bad, my shadow master is godly.
Somtimes when I summon her she appears in sigon armor that still puzzles me O_o.

Shadow Master and Valk. both have random items equipped everytime you cast them, and it depends on the skill level.

Since the differences between Nightmare and Hell is huge, so your build might not work that well throughout. Also, it might be impossible to solo in a 4+ people game.

But, of course, it is not too possible to get whatever you want in the game, so sometimes the gear choices depend on what you can get.

this build finishes very early (~lvl 60) without maxing blade fury and shield...does claw mastery help blade fury?even just the critical...i think with eth botd thunder maul this could be good, or even ethereal earth shifter since you dont need to attack with it..i might try this just for fun, all i do is bot anyway

well claw mastery wouldnt help if you used a botd thunder maul because it isnt a claw ;)

Claw Mastery will help only if you wield a Claw, and the Damage/AR/CS will all apply. But claw's damage is too low to make this build effective.

Damn i shouldve tried this build, some guy offered me a botd thundermaul for my 234 gf and sojs and a few little shitties... I was thinking about this build but remembered all my friends saying it wouldn't work... And my friend saying he pwnzts maulers everytime...

Eth weapon, not the normal one.

alright..im trying this...lvl 13 currently, just screwing around using sigons for now

maxing:venom/fade/shadow master
thats all you need lol, rest is 1 pt, i might max cloak of shadows on a whim since there really isnt anything to put pts into

items:
earth shifter (looking for botd t maul)
enigma(i like to tele)
steel rends
vamp gaze or giant skull for knockback, crushing blow, and str
gore riders
verdungos
maras
dual leech rings or bul kathos, dunno
cta on switch

ill comment on this later, after i see if its any good at all

Cloak of Shadows is good for this build, because you don't want the enemies to get close to you, especially if you have no blocking.

You need AR if you don't have ITD...

whats good that has itd

Yea, I am going to put the points that I was going to put into BS into cloak of shadows, it hit me in math today.
It performs really great with the windhammer, I love the tornados. Baal runs are good too.

I think I'm going to build one in single and test around, some of the numbers don't turn out to be the same as what I've calculated.

You will prolly die, I can take everything in nightmare and I have full resist, but I still havent hell tested,but I know I will be able to do hell mephi or pindle.
But I have goten it up to level 75 without dieing beacuse I am HC and that means it at least SORTA works.

whats a non weapon with itd...and im gonna use nosferatu's coil and giant skull, for piercing and what i mentioned above on giants skull....wrong forum i know but anyone got a bonesnap or nosferatus on east ladder?

If you do it east ladder HC I can give you tons of mauls normal bonesnap uped bonesnap and a treestump thingy, I got the other things I used as well.

Why would I die? Geez. Testing in single doesn't even require getting my hands dirty.

I think he neglected to read 'single player' :(

Just so you know, I died just a few munites ago doing baal all alone some pally came in and lured a bunch of monsters into the corner, I died.
I am all around happy with the way the build happend, I will make another one after this palidin!

oh assassin, we knew ye well, but the bell hath tolled for thee

no big, im making this and will comment, along with sens hopefully

I blame the noob pally who is on my "Kill next" list, but not to play the blame game. Fucking pally leads all the little annoing bone kid type things with big knives at me and I have to go for the corner, the escape key jams DEAD! Not to greif I will be bak on my feet in no time!
That and I was eating jelly beans ^_^

No wonder it is way off. Two-handed weapon suffers a bigger penalty when you use Blade Fury. Precisely, 3/8 instead of 3/4. That applies to any two-handed.

I've finished building one in Single... I can upload it if anyone is interested.

mind u all misleading this poor pvm'er, rather than taking time and trying to explain i will do so with a guide written already here(aint mine, all i do is pvp):
http://www.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=168832

that sucks so bad lol...time to switch to death cleaver and storm

Ha, I found a way to make this build kick some serous ass!
I would say this would dubble the damage. I should of thought of this before SCREW BOTD, this is better for the situation


Beast

5 Socket Axes/Scepters/Hammers Ber + Tir + Um + Mal + Lum


Level 9 Fanaticism Aura When Equipped
+40% Increased Attack Speed
+240-270% Enhanced Damage
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+3 To Werebear
+3 To Lycanthropy
Prevent Monster Heal
+25-40 To Strength (varies)
+10 To Energy
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
Level 13 Summon Grizzly (5 Charges)