Crackling Lance Assassin Ascendancy, Bandits, & Pantheon Powers

Ascendancy (Shadow – Assassin)

Mistwalker

As Mistwalker was the most broken Ascendancy point in the game pre-3.13 in my opinion it has now came more in line with other Ascendancy Points at this point. Basically, the change costed the build a little bit of Cast Speed which is a bit sad as you want to get to max intensify stacks faster rather than slower but it will hardly be noticeable between all the Cast Speed increases we do pick up elsewhere. Other than that is has shifted its unconditional tankiness to now provide more tankiness at high Elusive Effect but less whenever Elusive is about to fall of and at its lowest. This is a fair change in my opinion but it does make you weaker overall. I still think Mistwalker is a really solid Ascendancy point though!

Unstable Infusion

Unstable Infusion gives you an additional maximum Power Charge. Since we scale a lot of Power Charge bonuses every additional source of Power Charges is very beneficial. We’re picking this up as a pretty solid improvement and as jump towards our next Ascendancy notable.

Deadly Infusion

The signature node of Assassin! Giving you Base Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Multiplier (per Power Charge again, another reason for us to scale those Power Charges) this is one of the stronger Damage nodes you can pick in the game. Depending on how optimized your Gear gets this can net you up to 40% Critical Strike Multiplier which is otherwise a rare and hard to obtain stat!

Opportunistic

Opportunistic got a lot less impressive with the 3.13 Assassin changes. It used to have a 20% Movement Speed increase, which was nice, and put it ahead over Ambush and Assassinate. Nowadays, however, I think there’s arguments to be made to make the swap. However, until further notice (read: until I personally tested it), I’m sticking with recommending Opportunistic (especially because it offers a source of damage reduction, albeit incredibly unreliable). It offers you 20% Reduced Damage Taken while there are at least two Rare or Unique Enemies nearby, which is probably great for things like fighting 10 Ritual Bosses simultaneously, but that makes you lose its 25% More Damage, which feels kind of awkward.

Feel free to experiment between Opportunistic & Ambush and Assassinate but if you want to play it safe, stick with what we know!

Bandits

You can either help Alira for Resistances and Critical Strike Multiplier or kill everything to get 2 Passive Skill Points. The newer player you are, the more I recommend picking up Alira. If you intend to min-max very heavily or invest into Cluster Jewels somehow, you’re better of killing everything for 2 Passives Points.

Pantheons

Major God

As a major god, you pick Soul of the Brine King to avoid stuns. It’s just nice to be able to avoid being chain stunned as we don’t have the greatest amount of Life and Energy Shield doesn’t help us prevent getting stunned.

Minor God

For a minor soul, I think Soul of Gruthkul as up to 5% maximum Physical Damage Reduction is the best of the Minor Souls.

Upgrading your Pantheons

Whilst upgrading your Pantheons never hurts you (besides for this particular outlier), there’s really not that much you’re getting out of upgrading your Pantheons on this build. Whatever you do, just make sure you never upgrade Soul of Shakari for this character as that does actually hurt us.

Pantheon powers can be upgraded by using Divine Vessel in the Map Device while you are activating the particular Map that contains the boss you need. Once you’ve killed the boss and captured his soul, you need to deliver the Divine Vessel, which will be filled up in the map device, to Sin in Oriath.

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