[3.24] 🗡The Nightblade🗡Nightshade Tincture | Incorporeal | New demo video up

Just don't die.

Please, just DON'T die.

Just DON'T D... Ok, I'm sorry for being cruel in my answer. But actually this is the game that is cruel with us. PoE is hard. It's really HARD. It's not hard sometimes, it's hard all the time, in every map, every corner of the marketplace, of the plateau, of the crimson temple or any place you'll go.
From red tier maps and even before, the game starts to punish you in every way it can. It punishes you with big packs of Porcupines with Union of Souls mod (you know, the more you kill them, the bigger the others become). It punishes you with Volatile Flameblood in the middle of an abyss rift puking rare monsters that throw those green delayed bombs and those phasing screaming birds that slam you to death with their wings. It then punishes you with a sudden attack from Infiltration Syndicate members that one-shoot you from their portal. And then, it freezes you with Lunaris fanatics that come to attack while you're already under a rain of Plummeting Ursas. It punishes you so hard that you start to hate the game and to hate yourself. So you rage-quit and go to cry in your bedroom, feeling shameful and miserable.

And as an Assassin, what do we have as defenses against all this ?
We are no Trickster to evade and dodge. We are no Juggernaught to tank. We are no Slayer to perma-leech, no Occultist to get 12k ES etc.
So simply said, we have nothing.
When an Assassin is hit, he dies. And that is the build you've chosen to play, as you have made me the honor to read my thread and thought it would be fun.

Welcome in this deep circle of hell known as : the Realm of the Glass-Cannons. Where everything shatters and dies instantly (you first).
I've been there before (and I am still in, actually). Everything is gonna be alright, Exile.

* First, get more life on the skill tree. And then more. And then more on your stuff. And then some more on the skill tree.
As soon as you can, complete the big life cluster west of Scion.
But you think : « oh great, I have changed my nodes and stuff as you said, but now I have lost 25% of my DPS. Thank you SO MUCH, sir. ».

Maybe. But think about it for a second : how many DPS do you do when you're dead ? Exactly zero.
How many do you do when you have to evade a fight ? Well, zero.
So at the end of the day, there is this simple rule : Whoever survives does the most DPS. And the reverse is not true : it's NOT true that whoever does the most DPS survives.
For instance, I have a friend running a 200ex Winter Orb MF build that can clean a t16 in 30 sec, while I'm struggling to do it in under 3mn. Each of his projectiles does 1M dps. And he doesn't have to aim, he can just run with WO doing all the job ; while with Blade Flurry we gotta check constantly we are in range, and suddenly dodge, and then start to channel and then... Now, my friend's char has only 4000 life. So the other day, we went together against Uber Elder, and he just got one-shot three times in a row, while I survived.
Of course, a professionnal streamer can kill Uber Elder with 2500 life. Heck, this guy could even kill it with a level 60 Ranger, who has Tabula Rasa, 1400 life and 4% cold res. Yes, you read that correctly : 4%.
That means any hit from the small squids could insta-kill him. So what does he do ? Well, during three minutes (and you know that's an eternity in this game) he dodges every single hit and finish the fight deathless.
So unless you are this guy, get more life.

* Second advice : the absolute best defense is dodging yourself. Your skill as a player is your primary source of survivability.
With the recent nerf of Immortal Call in 3.7, it is even truer. You cannot rely on your defenses to save you. Because good life pool and solid layers of defenses do not make you invincible. They just allow you to make some slight mistakes from times to times, that's all. That's how GGG wants the game to be : they just give you some defenses for when you will inevitably make a mistake. Even Mathil dies sometimes.

So YOU have to save YOU. So dodge. And I don't mean the dodge mechanics found in Acrobatics. I mean manually dodge. For this, we use the best skill in the game, our beloved Whirling Blades. No other movement skill in the game is better than this one. The other are slower, or have charges, or do not hit so you can't get Fortify etc.
Whirling Blades may not seem much but it is actually pure gold. It is fast, it is precise, it has no charges. It is just awesome. Think about it when you socket it in your equipment. Just ask your Templar of Elementalist friends, if they are not jealous of your WB, when they have only 3 charges of Flame Dash or their delayed Frostblink...

* And third advice, learn the game. Then you will probably realize that 90% of mobs are not a danger to you. Only 10% of them are and you have to know how to face them. Porcupines ? Freeze them and/or dodge behind a wall. Those vaal constructs throwing chaos bullets at you ? Dodge, and dodge and dodge, get behind them and kill them. Yeah ! « Now, THAT was satisfying ! »

And while you do this, try of course to upgrade your stuff, but do no primarily rely on it to help you. You are the one going after the enemies, not your daggers.
If you need more advice about survivability, you can check that excellent build, Hank the Tank, by Captain Warlord. It has everything you need to know about getting lot of armour, buffing Fortify etc. But the main idea I'd retain from his build is : Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. « That's the motto, says Captain Warlord, if you don't have access to specific stats or mechanics, improvise a solution. »
Take my build or his build, or any build, as a guideline you can change at will, to better suit your playstyle. Consider your strengths and weaknesses and know what kind of stuff you need. For instance, I am certainly not an expert at dodging, so I know I need lot of life to tank some damages. I know I can't do endgame safely with less than 6k life. At just 5.9k, I die too often. At 6.2k, I'm quite safe.
And anyway, do not think that the other ascendancies are immortal. Far from it. They have other strengths and other weaknesses. It is true that Assassin is not currently in the meta (in 3.7, Slayer and Trickster are the meta). Nothing has changed for our Ascendancy since 3.2 in march 2018. But that doesn't mean we can't go to the top like the other. It is just that as of june 2019, going dual-dagger Assassin is so hipster, while tomorrow it may be the mainstream.

And believe me, after all this blood, tears and sweat (mainly sweat, I hope!), you will get the best of rewards : having improved your skills and killed this boss you've considered your nemesis, since this first time when you went against him and barely survived for 5 sec. That is why I have devised this BF Assassin build : because it is fast and dangerous, because it is just fun and rewarding.
Besides, do not hesitate to ask me for help in the thread or in pm. I'll be happy to check your character in PoB and give you some advice.