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Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (D2X)
Assassin Guide v1.1 by iLuvMomo (Lee Kian Chong) dated: 2/08/2K1 based on: Diablo II: LOD patch v1.08 email: helsmley@yahoo.com
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This FAQ is written using Wordpad with Courier New (Western) Size 10 font.

1234567890
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If the dots are align you are set.


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Legal Stuff
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Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Assassin and all other characters mentioned in this FAQ is the property and creation of
Blizzard Entertainment. This is an unlicensed FAQ which is written and to be distributed free of charge in is unaltered state, even with typo, grammatical errors as well as the occasional incorrect fact. This FAQ belongs to the author, Lee Kian Chong. If you wish to distribute this
FAQ or have this published on your webpage, please get written permission (through e-mail or otherwise). Please give credit where credit is due.

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Contents
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What's New Here?
Why Assassin?
Benefits of playing Assassin
Double Claw vs Claw and Shield?
What kind of Assassin?
Hotkey Mania
Charge Up? Finishing?
Plan Ahead
Skill Overview
General FAQ
Build Tree
My Assassin Rig
Dream Rig
On Multiplayer
Websites of Interest
Download This!
Credits
Conclusion


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What's new here?
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FAQ v1.1
I think this update is long overdue. When I released v1.0, it was really a rush job. At that time, there were 2 other Assassin FAQs already out (though I began work on this since day 1 I got D2X) Fearing that there would be a flood of Assassin FAQs, and CJayC would not want to publish this, I quickly finished an FAQ which had more errors and a missing information than the moon has holes that I had to immediately begin work on correcting it. The update would have came out much MUCH earlier had I not spent 10 hours a day playing D2X addictively (both online and testing out skills) I also received loads of emails of critism and praise (even more than all the emails I received for my TTT FAQs) and as such am working hard to improve this FAQ and make it one of the best
Assassin FAQs around. Here is a laundry list of the changes made in the new revision of the FAQ. - added the 'Plan Ahead' section - added Skill stats from Calvin Schneider's FAQ - added 'My Assassin Rig' Section - added 'Dream Rig' Section - added 'General FAQ' section - added a 'Content' Section - added a 'On Multiplayer' Section - added a 'Websites of interest' Section - added a 'Download This!' Section - added Build tree for Claw and Shield Assassin - added Build tree for Heavy Weapon Assassin - added some info submitted in by Nicholas Vu - added the all important 'Credits' section - renamed 'My Assassin' section to 'Build Tree' - updated discussion on dual claw vs claw and shield - updated 'What kind of Assassin?' section - updated info on skills discussion e.g. WOI, Psychic Blast - updated 'My Assassin' section after completing Hell mode - corrected a few typos here and there. v1.1 of the Guide is written based on Diablo II: Lord Of Destruction patch v1.08 and is tested both on single player and multiplayer mode (battle.net as well as TCP/IP game)


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Why Assassin?
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Why not? I must admit that the main reason why I chose to play as an
Assassin was because she was a new character in the expansion. I wasn't bothered about continuing my level 60+ sorceress seeing as how so many spells in the 1.08 patch got nerfed badly. Besides I found that playing as my ice sorceress was extremely boring... what else do you actually do but run around and cast blizzard after blizzard after... well you get my point.
I had no idea whatsoever about the Assassin's game play but thought "what the heck?" So I gave her a try and found her to be quite interesting to play with.
First off, she changes the boring gameplay of Barbarian, Paladins and
Jabazons (amazons who use the Jab attack) of continuos clicking to a more satisfying combo attack. The Assassin gets charge up skills and finishing moves to be used which deals quite some damage and will put some of the toughest bosses down in a few hits.


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Benefits of playing Assassin
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- Two handed fighting style (on Barbarian is the other character out of a total of 7 characters who also can use two handed fighting style)
- Lockpicking, being a thief class, the Assassin benefits from not needing to carry keys around. She can open all locked chests.
- Balanced for Single player mode. She has it all, physical attacks and magical attacks (traps) to deal with all kinds of creatures especially those pesky creatures in Hell mode with Physical Immune
(PI)
- Interesting and refreshing gameplay... no more just click click click click. Helps keep your interest so that you can achieve Lvl99.
- Very quick with claws, and even quicker with burst of speed and a certain claw....
- Temporary physical immunity with Fade, which helps a lot in Nightmare and Hell mode, especially if you aren't fortunate enough to get your hands on resistant items.
- Tiger Strike + Claw Mastery + Venom means thousands of points damage which easily helps overcome the pesky 50% Physical Immunity in
Hell mode. - mana and life leech move available so she can look for one less criteria in her weapons. Mana leech is very versatile since you can sacrifice a lot of points of energy for your assasin and still end up with an endless supply of mana when you want to cast traps. - fun to play and very versatile (able to adapt to all situations quickly) - she is the jack of all trades, master of some (lol!) The Assassin has a few traits from the other classes, notably spells like meteor and chain lightning (sorceress), dual wield, claw mastery (barbarian), corspe explosion death sentry (necromancer) and Shadow Warrior/ Mas- ter (Amazon)

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Starting Off
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Your Assassin starts off one claw, one buckler, a few minor potions and a base stat of:

Str - 20
Dex - 20
Vit - 20
Ene - 25

Hit Points - 50
Stamina - 95
Mana - 25

On character level up she gains these bonuses:

Life +2
Stamina +1
Mana +1.5

For every skill point she invests she also gains these bonuses:

1 Vitality Point gives +3 Life
1 Vitality Point gives +1.5 Stamina
1 Energy Point gives +1.5 Mana


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Double Claw vs Claw and Shield?
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This is usually a hot debate for Assasins. I will give a pro-con debate from the Double Claw perspective.

Pros: - this is assasin with dual wielding ala barbarian - claws are assasin only weapons, and can have +1-3 to special skills, as well as +1-2 to Assasin skills at higher Clvl. This helps a lot if you have 2 claws instead of 1. - some double claw only skills e.g. Dragon Claw, Weapon Block
- Using a lot of skills will give you more bang for your buck if your mana if you use double claw (e.g. Venom)
- Highest damage possible

Cons:
- Using 2 claws means you will be lowering your defense. While this is exceptable in Normal mode, the damage you will be taking will add up to quite a lot in Nightmare/Hell mode. *pro rebutal* But with since the claws are very fast attack, most of the time you will be hitting your opponent before he hits you. Moreover, with those exceptional/ elite set and unique items especially armor, your defense alone can get quite high without double claws? *con response* And what if you are facing a boss whom is very hard to hit? And it would be higher with a shield! *pro rebutal* Its stupid to say that dual wield Assassin is lousy. Its the same like saying Dual wield Barbarian sucks. *con response* Barbarian has frenzy, whirlwind... uber skills which even in v1.08 after nerfing is still very powerful.
Assassin's Dragon Claw can't even be considered an uber skill.

- Do you really need the Weapon Block skill? Shields give you a good blocking percentage and can get as high as 75% (though that shield is very very hard to find) With a shield you need to even spend points on getting your weapon block skill to a respectable level. Thats 5 big points at least (more if you are in Nightmare or
Hell mode) which could have been used for other skills like WOI.

- Why use dragon claw when you have other skills you can put points into? Surely dragon claw can be offset by other higher level skills. *pro rebutal* Take a look at the other FINISHING move skills. There are 4 of them. Dragon Kick has a very low + to damage.
Dragon Tail is a whopping 10 mana and the additional damage is fire damage. At Nightmare/Hell mode, creatures more than likely have fire resistance. If you are going to rely on this move alone then you are going to be very sorry. Dragon flight while useful is 15 mana per use AND has a short lag time after each teleport. *con response* Dragon kick at lvl 20 has higher + to damage than Dragon
Claw at lvl 20. With so many skill points savedby not putting into Weapon block, you can easily pump this skill to a decent level. Moreover, this is a kick attack so your weapon durability will last longer. If your enemy is resistant to fire attacks, then just use poison claw. *pro rebutal* Weapon durability doesn't really matter much since you can always repair the weapon. Besides, the Dragon Claw is the most damaging finishing move possible (since it is both stat and equipment dependent) among all at the lowest mana cost. *con response* Being equipment dependent, needless to say that to do a lot of damage, you need equipment with high damage, which needless to say are hard to obtain. Even elite items do a base damage of up to 40+. You need to get lucky and hope that during your imbue/ crafting of item a good damage mod appears. Also the only weapon doing