Melee - Claw - Physical ver. 1.05 - Phoenix-Hawk




Introduction:
If you want to do physical damage with your claws it seems best to dual wield as if you just use the one you'll be charging up then releasing over and over. With two claws you can use Dragon Claw as an effective standard attack then would just charge up for stronger targets and get a nice added boost from your high level Dragon Claw. Then one thing claw physical damage builds have working in their favour over kicks physical damage builds is that kicks can't seem to make use of either Critical Strike or Deadly Strike while claws can. Then as your final damage value after all skill, stat and item bonuses seems to be doubled the damage that can result is quite good, especially if you're lucky enough to get it while releasing a fully charged Tiger Strike (not 100% certain if this is possible but I think it is).



Skills: (110 points)

Martial Arts:
15-20 Tiger Strike
20 Dragon Claw
1 Cobra Strike
1 Dragon Tail
1 Dragon Talon
1 Dragon Flight


Shadow Disciplines:
20 Claw Mastery
1-3 Burst of Speed
5 Weapon Block
1-5 Fade
15-20 Venom
5-10 Shadow Master
1 in the rest


Traps:
1 Blade Fury
1-10 Blade Sentinel
1 Death Sentry
1 in each of the 5 prerequisite skills




Stats: (505 points)
Strength: 100-150 (enough for your gear)
Dexterity: 175-225
Vitality: 175-225
Energy: 0



Gear:

You'll want two high damage claws as well as a good bit of resistance and damage reduction items. As you should be able to keep the number of attackers you need to deal with at a time to a minimum blocking, resistance and damage reduction are very helpful but not as crucial as they are for characters that can't as easily limit the number of attackers you'd need to deal with at once. Remember that you'll be attacking at a good rate and have at least Claw Mastery always boosting your damage value so items that add to your minimum and/or maximum damage will be very useful here. Attack properties such as Crushing Blow that have no duration will be pretty helpful and those that have % cast on attack/striking will have many chances to be applied. Items that slow, blind or other such things would be a helpful here in addition to the use of Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast.

Natalya's Odium (Nat's set) would be pretty helpful here then you could use something like a Chaos (rune word) claw for more damage or Bartuc's Cut-Throat for the +skills and passive bonuses as well as to increase your attack speed by increasing the averaged base claw speed (see the "Assassin Attack Speed Notes & Reference" post for more on that matter). Jade Talon would be another option for the second claw due to the small averaged speed bonus and the passive bonuses it gives you. Gloves that boost your attack speed resistances, damage as some will do and other things would be good and is why I rather like the Laying of Hands gloves from The Disciple set, there are other good ones too. The unique String of Ears belt and others are still good then other than Nat's set you could go with various rune word items like Chains of Honour armour, a Delirium helmet and then wear boots like War Travelers, Gore Riders or Shadow Dancers.

Act II mercs seem about the best choice here as you should be able to throw around a good bit of damage and range mercs will be constantly pulled into melee range resulting in frequent deaths. The defensive mercs from Normal (Defiance) and Nightmare (Holy Freeze) would work well but you'll need to spend a good while leveling the one from Nightmare before he can be too useful, with you in there with him along with a shadow keeping him alive shouldn't be too hard most of the time though. The Offensive merc from Nightmare (Might) wouldn't be too bad either, especially if you play with other physical damage melee players. If you can pull it off though a Defiance or Might merc with a Doom rune word polearm would work out very well as then you'd either be more protected or do more damage and monsters will be moving at 50% of their usual speed making them easier to deal with. A Holy Freeze merc with Breath of the Dying would be another good choice as then he can do some good damage and is slowing critters down by about 50% or a bit more once you level him enough. Although with the Holy Freeze merc he won't be doing anything to add to you directly and he won't get Holy Freeze much higher than level 12 without +skill items anyhow.

• See the "Tips for Solo Melee Fighting", "General Play Tips" and "Assassin Attack Speed Notes & Reference" posts for standard tips, notes and ideas.
  
• Boost up Claw Mastery early as it will enhance everything and gives you improved odds to deal double damage. Dragon Claw being your standard attack is next with some points going to Tiger Strike and Venom at the same time to help with the critters with lots of life and add some poison damage to each attack.
  
• Blade Sentinel is a great skill to help you attack groups and one target more often. Either toss it out into a crowd or directly in front of you to add to the number of attacks you can put out at once. With some added points in this skill or +skill items the duration would be sufficient to use this as a trap you could toss out in front of a door before opening it or get several in an area and lead critters into that area.
  
• Blade Fury is another useful skill which will let you attack from range when you'd sooner not get in melee range such as with those blasted lightning enhanced critters or the Oblivion Knights due to their Iron Maiden curses.
  
• Do not try to charge into a pack of critters in Hell, use Cloak of Shadows, Mind Blast, your shadow and merc to let you deal with them one to a few at a time then draw them over the corpses and blow them with Death Sentry.
  
• That one point in Cobra Strike will let you leech a good bit of life and mana then to boost the amount you leach by some more add one or more Tiger Strike charges to that.
  
• With a good bit of leeching items, high level Claw Mastery and Dragon Claw you should be able to leech a good bit so could avoid using Cobra Strike as much.
  
• Remember that the defence of critters has about tripled in Hell so you will need a good bit of dexterity to hit well, keep your level at least close to what the average monster level in that area is and some items that boost your attack rating and/or ignore some of their's would be helpful.
  
• In your second weapon set you could get two +3 to Shadow Disciplines claws and cast Burst of Speed, Fade, Venom and your Shadow Master from that set.
  
• While the faster claws will be easier to get at top speed with Burst of Speed and some added Increased Attack Speed you should be able to get slower claws at least near top speed with even Dragon Claw and then the higher average damage of those slower claws would let you do more damage than the fastest claws would.
  
• Other than with normal attacks it seems all your attacks that make use of claw speed (which include kicks) use an average of your two claws base speed and then apply the Increased Attack Speed of the claw in your left weapon slot and other items to that average. See the "Assassin Attack Speed Notes & Reference" post for more details on this and how to use this to your advantage.
  
• When groups with critters that raise their minions from the dead pop up throw up Cloak of Shadows and then you could Dragon Flight your way to the one/ones that brings them back and kill it/them first while the minions stand around.
  
• While Increased Attack Speed on your claw in the right weapon slot does nothing for you other active properties like leeching will kick in when attacking with that claw when using Dragon Claw and the passive bonuses (+skill, +stats, resistance, etc...) will always be applied.

• 1.01 - Added points about your second weapon set in the Play Tips.
  
• 1.05 - Added some extra Play Tips points and adjusted a few other things in the introduction and notes sections as well.