[3.6] Dual Strike crit assassin with claws

I haven't played Dual Strike in a while, been playing Reave instead, but from what I remember, the biggest problem was reflect. With full mirror gear, I was doing too much dps and would die to reflect. Occasionally to volatile explosion rares as well. Even after dropping Abyssus, I would still get random deaths. Party reflect was unmanageable.

I previously mentioned the gems I prefer with DS, namely Melee Phys, Multistrike, Melee Splash, P2L and WED. Weapon Ele Damage is monstrous since we're doing mostly ele damage with P2L + Hatred + Herald.

I was using Flicker Strike extensively to jump from pack to pack. I pretty much only used WB to move long distances. I also had Flicker linked with CoC and Assa Mark and PCoC (later switched to Forfity) to generate power charges, which allowed me to use Herald of Ash instead of HoI/HoT with curse on hit. If you do use a Herald with CoH + Assa, I would go with Thunder over Ice when playing on a melee char.

I would definitely use Heart of Oak instead of US. Spend those points going to the duelist area instead. I'd also suggest getting the jewel slot up by the dagger nodes in the shadow area, as it's just 2 points and a good jewel is easily worth at least 3. Additional Frenzy charges are also powerful.

I'd also recommend getting a good rare belt instead of that unique one. The resists it will add will let you get an amulet with more dps which is what the amulet slot if best suited for imo.

Thanks for those tips, lots of them sound really awesome.

Reave just seems to be the better choice right now but there is less fun in using that skill imo.

Anyways I will go through those things and I expect them to help a lot :)


Actually the biggest problem are big bosses because they survive sometimes too long but I expect having the Taste of Hate flask will solve that.

I had 1.3 mill tooltip dps with Vaal Haste + flasks using Melee Splash, so bosses where never a problem. Could solo up to 78 bosses by myself in a full party while the 5 others watched. Never got to do above 78s with that build.

With 1 or 2 mirrored daggers that shouldn't be a problem, playing with them must be insane.

The problem is that it is very difficult to get an amulet with good dps at low cost, meanwhile I would have to change my belt aswell to compensate the lost resistances. This would cost me at least 3 ex aswell, so all in all I expect at least 10 ex to be able to do that change.

In fact I have almost no currency and the last exalted I have found was over half a year ago. Having many items doesn't help me because the awesome trading system makes it nearly impossible to sell anything.

I totally agree that a more dps heavy amulet and a good rare belt with life and resistances would be better, I just don't know how to get enough currency to do so.

So I thought a lot about the skilltree and US takes very many nodes that are only +10 stuff. I have tested some combinations I could go for if I would take Heart of Oak instead and go for the Duelist area.

Here is the skilltree I would probably go for without US:

Compared to the US path I can get more life, more damage / attack speed, life regen etc. It is probably stronger than my current tree, the only thing I am worried about is the vulnerability to stuns.

Actually I am searching the forums for some melee builds that use Heart of Oak + IR so that I can watch some gameplay, I will make a decision soon.

I took the tree I used and removed Acro for IR: Link

Compared to your new tree it's got less Eva/Armor, Accuracy and Crit chance, and in return has more attack speed, phys dmg, life and charges + jewel slot.

I wasn't IR so I didn't need Eva/Armor nodes. Not sure how much you're getting from those. I had lots of accuracy from gear so I didn't need that much from tree. Crit chance was fine too, so this tree fit me very well. Might not be the same for you.

Edit: I don't think stun immunity is necesarry at all unless you're CI/Low life. It's not really that much of a problem for life based builds.

That tree is very nice, I compared them aswell, I wish I would know how my stats look like without the increases from passive tree, I have 87% hit chance with my current tree and my crit chance is anyways at 95% with 3 power charges, on 85% without charges. I am not sure how armour/eva nodes influence my armour while having IR, I took that mainly because of the resistances but with the 3rd jewel I can cap my resistances also which should be better.

I am not quite sure about the frenzy and power charges, having some nodes that work also without being able to gain charges seems better to me. I especially mean bossfights like atziri etc. but maybe I am wrong (Atziri also spawns minions from time to time). Also they require 2 passives and that is quite much for +1 charge...I can't tell yet if I will go for that or not.

I watched lots of builds and gameplay vids, Heart of Oak should work well enough instead of US and enable me to get other stuff aswell.

Edit: I definitetly need Spirit Void so I will take that for sure.

I just realized that I made a huge mistake, instead of just counting an additional charge as 'having to spend 2 passives to allocate' I should have seen it as 'instead of 2 passives (each 10 dex / int / str) I get +1 charge and increased charge duration for just 1 passive more'.

This means that I'll probably get the power charge node and the duelist frenzy node.

Here is how it acutally looks like:

So I watched lots of other melee guides and Hyrri's + acrobatics seems to be quite op.

I think I won't invest many regrets into changing the tree of my currenct character. Instead of that I will level another character (level 62 right now) and test how a build with about 4k life, 50% chance to evade, 50% chance to dodge attacks and spell dodge (maybe I will use atziri step for the additional spell dodge and evasion) will work.

Sorry to the ones who want to see an atziri run but I will do that second dual striker before. Please note that this of course doesn't mean that the armour, 5k life character I was playing until now doesn't work but maybe the other one is stronger in really lategame maps, maybe even stronger at all.