Phoenix Strike + Dragon Claw

[WingedAngelz]

Hi, I need to create an Assassin with Phoenix Strike + Dragon Claw. I've been struggling for years creating a highly damage Assassin. I do not like Traps for your information.

I need to know what should I MAX my skills to beside the following:
Claw Mastery
Phoenix Strike
Dragon Claw

Do I need Burst Of Speed or Fade?
Also do I need Blade Shield or is it a waste?

Any idea?

[HiTS]

If you want to max out Phoenix Strike you need to max the synergies, that's FoF, BoI and CoT. That's 80 skill points just there alone and you've not even got your physical damage, TS, or a finisher. I suppose you could just use an unsynergised, or partially synergised, PS, but you're not getting the full bang for your buck. You can synergise one though and still have an effective killer. If you have a good few +skills or + shadow tree you can usually get by with just one point in BoS, you really only need enough to get you to your fastest attack speed. DC looks good as a finisher but it is the slowest of all the finishing moves, putting on some heavy boots and using the kicking finishers is worth a look but it my not be your style. Don't overlook CoS, one points and the pluses makes the enemy disregard you long enough so that you can, usually, get everything killed before the spell ends, perfect for golams and succubi. Except in the old 1.09 blender build I've never seen much use in blade shield, claws only have a range of one.

[saracen85]

as mentioned, you need to put points into synergies for phoenix strike to do decent damage. you don't need to max all, but the important ones are cot (great attack by itself when synergised by ps), and fof (to synergise ps's meteors)...

check out the phoenix striker guide for assistance.
http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=599

[WingedAngelz]

Hmm, so Fade and Blade Shield are optional?

[HiTS]

You cannot have fade and BoS, going at the same time, so fade is out imo. As for BS, I really don't know, if it doesn't restrict the use of other things, like venom, you could use it, but if you are using claws the range of the BS will mean that you are only hitting things that a basically on top of you. Remember that if you go down the FoF path as a synergy, and you're thinking of a kicker, DTail and FoF don't mix. FoF converts physical damage to fire damage and DT does fire damage based on your damage, use can loose a lot of potential damage that was.