Best D2R Ladder Season 2 Assassin Build - Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.5 Dragon Tail Assassin Build Guide

Best D2R Ladder Season 2 Assassin Build - Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.5 Dragon Tail Assassin Build Guide

10/18/2022 3:37:20 PM

When building Assassin from Normal through Hell, how do you level up and what sundered charms should it use? Here we’ll bring the best D2R Ladder Season 2 Assassin in Patch 2.5 with fire sunder, check out the stats, skills, and gear options.

Best D2R Ladder Season 2 Assassin Build - Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.5 Dragon Tail Assassin Build Guide

This D2R 2.5 Dragon Tail Assassin build by Alzorath avoids a common flaw but still to be overpowered.

D2R 2.5 Assassin Build Stats & Attributes

Getting enough strength and dexterity for gear, which you will need more strength than you think since you do want to be using Greaves or exceptional boots as soon as they're available at least, and then you want to dump the rest into Life, as we get into Nightmare if you're transferring gear or Hell if you're doing solo self-hound, that's when you want to worry about dexterity you might be tempted to go for energy right after getting Tail as well, but you should be able to maintain yourself well enough with the occasional Mana potion, so you don't have to waste points in this.

Strength 158

Dexterity 302

Vitality 273

Energy 58

D2R 2.5 Assassin Build Skill Tree

Starting with the skill points, this Assassin build uses two skills that are Tiger Strike and Dragon Tail with a 40-point investment to make a powerful tool since it can stack massive amounts of plus percent damage while transferring that into an area of effect fire damage skill, this means there is a lot of flexibility in what you end up pairing it with through Normal. You'll generally be focusing on these two skills and probably getting some of the skills like Burst of Speed, Fade, Cloak of Shadows, and Mind Blast, the other advantage of actually using the combo at least in D2R is that as long as you have a charge, your finishing moves are auto hit.

- Martial Arts: Tiger Strike 20, Dragon Tail 20

- Shadow Disciplines: Burst of Speed 1, Fade 20, Mind Blast 1, Cloak of Shadows 1

D2R 2.5 Assassin Build Gear

- Weapons: Lawbringer (Phase Blade). Lawbringer automatically sends enemy physical resistances to zero if they're undead, even if they're naturally immune like ghosts and it's ironically actually a semi-budget rune word in of itself, the reason we want it in a phase blade is that we can improve the attack speed easily and also because it's indestructible, so you can whack things with as much as you need. If you are using Burst of Speed, you can actually use Lawbringer and alternate weapons to change up the attack range.

Lawbringer

20% Chance To Cast Level 15 Decrepify On Striking
Level 16-18 Sanctuary Aura When Equipped (varies)
-50% Target Defense
Adds 150-210 Fire Damage
Adds 130-180 Cold Damage
7% Life Stolen Per Hit
Slain Monsters Rest In Peace
+200-250 Defense Vs. Missile (varies)
+10 To Dexterity
75% Extra Gold From Monsters

- Helm: Guillaume’s Face (Winged Helm). To top off attack speed, hit recovery and a little bit more crushing blow, the jewel in this one also has a low boost to enhance damage, which is an intentional choice for the goal of making this build not require the use of tiger strike against standard foes.

Guillaume's Face

Defense: 217 (Base Defense: 85-98)
Required Level: 34
Required Strength: 115
Durability: 40
+120% Enhanced Defense
+30% Faster Hit Recovery
15% Deadly Strike
35% Chance of Crushing Blow
+15 To Strength

- Armor: Fortitude (Archon Plate). This provides us a number of solid mods, but more importantly 300-enhanced damage on attacks with the rest of it just being nice to have and the cold armor actually helping us out a decent bit for defense.

- Shield: Phoenix (Monarch). This can go up to about 400 enhanced damage and has a nice side effect of minus percent enemy fire resistance, which we are taking advantage of with our fire sunder charm and is also one of the reasons we're using an Infinity mercenary with conviction as well.

- Rings: Raven Frost, Doom Loop. On the rings, you can go with Raven Frost for the Cannot Be Frozen, and boosts to dexterity and attack rating, the most important aspect of the second ring is the attack rating and mana leech.

Raven Frost

Required Level: 45
+150-250 To Attack Rating (varies)
Adds 15-45 Cold Damage, 4 sec. Duration (Normal)
Cannot Be Frozen
+15-20 To Dexterity (varies)
+40 To Mana
Cold Absorb 20%
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)

- Amulet: The Cat’s Eye. It provides plus dexterity, increased attack speed, and faster run/walk. The main alternative Highlord's Wrath becomes a lot stronger, you don't get the deadly strike from it, but the lightning resists plus skills and the same attack speed boost work as well.

- Gloves: Laying of Hands (Bramble Mitts). Go with Laying of Hands for the fire resistance and increased attack speed, though some crafted gloves can be orders of magnitude better than these, what you're looking for is a blood-crafted set with that crushing blow increased attack speed, and the plus martial skills.

Laying of Hands

Defense: 79-87 (varies)(Base Defense: 54-62)
Required Level: 63
Required Strength: 50
Durability: 12
+25 Defense
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+350% Damage To Demons
Fire Resist +50%
10% Chance To Cast Level 3 Holy Bolt On Striking

- Boots: Gore Rider (Myrmidon Greaves). Gore Riders gives the crushing blow same, base damage, and open wounds, you could actually use upgraded Goblin Toe as a sort of cheaper alternative, but you may want to save your resources for upgrading the Gore Riders.

Gore Rider

Defense: 140-162 (varies)(Base Defense: 43-53)
Required Level: 47
Required Strength: 94
Durability: 34
Assassin Kick Damage: 39-80
+160-200% Enhanced Defense (varies)
30% Faster Run/Walk
10% Chance Of Open Wounds
15% Chance Of Crushing Blow
15% Deadly Strike
Requirements -25%
+20 Maximum Stamina
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)

- Belt: Verdungo's Hearty Cord (Mithril Coil). Pretty much any of the popular melee unique belts will work quite well.

Verdungo's Hearty Cord

Defense: 125-158 (varies)(Defense: 58-65)
Required Level: 63
Required Strength: 106
Durability: 16
16 Boxes
+90-140% Enhanced Defense (varies)
10% Faster Hit Recovery
+30-40 To Vitality (varies)
Replenish Life +10-13 (varies)
+100-120 Maximum Stamina (varies)
Damage Reduced By 10-15% (varies)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.10 or later)

- Charms: the sunder charm we actually choose is the fire sunder - Flame Rift grand charm despite Fade actually being a really solid option for covering that physical resistance penalty, it's much easier for us to consistently take advantage of the fire damage and we can actually bypass most of the physical immunes in the game with the exception of swarms and monsters in Act 5, for those we can exploit them with this same Diablo 2 item that lets us bypass all of the undead physical immune enemies.

Mercenary

You can always go with The Reaper's Toll on your mercenary or even Vile Husk on an act 5 mercenary to get a different source of decrepify or amplify damage respectively, which does open up your weapon a little, but it reduces your consistency with this build in areas with undead, it is still viable.