[3.9] Aziire's Venom Gyre Assassin - Dodge & Freeze Everything!

Will this likely chain Herald of Ice explosions for clearing? or does that normally involve getting Ambush & Assassinate

Herald of Ice explosions should be juicy. Not going to be on Autobomber levels but we will definitely notice it bursting down whatever is left of a pack. If you take Hypothermia instead of Vicious Projectiles these will probably be way more noticeable.

No Guard skills like Steelskin?

Also I don't have much experience with low life builds, but it seems like stuns are a bit of a concern with them no?

I may be missing something, but I can't see it accounted for in the spectral throw PoB... Venom Gyre has 50% conversion to chaos, so you aren't going to get nearly as much cold damage, which will make the elemental scaling a lot less valuable (losing a bit less than half of its benefit).

Or have I misread?

I'm super keen to use VG but having a hard time making elemental work after the chaos conversion. Thanks :)

Immortal Call is the Guard Skill I use. Thanks to the base 3 Endurance Charges we have while mapping we take quite a lot Less Damage when Immortal Call is activated.

You aren't missing anything, it does suck but yeah 50% of the Damage will be Chaos Damage right off the bat because of Venom Gyre. While I will have far less Cold Damage, 50% Cold should still be enough to Freeze a very large portion of monsters.

The flat added Chaos on the Venom Gyre gem is the saving grace, and by the time that scales with even just the few bonus chaos points we pick up (near the start of Shadow) it should be okay. A lot of people (myself included) forget that Chaos damage is still really strong even when you aren't trying to poison off of it. We will definitely feel it however I think the skill will still play well with the Elemental Playstyle, and I am definitely looking forward to testing it out. I'd much rather give this playstyle a go and scale big on hit damage than take the poison route (I'm just not a huge fan of poison).

I'm blind I dunno how I missed the immortal call. But it still seems to me that Steelskin would be better considering how low life we are. The flat health buff is more significant the lower the health pool right

You are right however, the Steelskin buff is more significant for lower health pools, however they need to be really low.

For example lets say a hit makes it through all our defenses, and we ignore any reduced damage etc and only focus on both Immortal Call and Steelskin. If this hit smacks us for a solid 1500 Damage then with Immortal Call we would take 645 all up, and Steelskin we would take 495. As soon as you enter Damage above 1800 it switches however and Steelskin will now be worse off. If we were going to get hit for 3000, we would only take 1290 with Immortal Call, however we would take 1995 with Steelskin.

The example doesn't include other reductions but I feel as a standalone it says enough about the difference between them. Enough to make an educated choice anyway. If you are an absolute glass cannon then definitely take Steel Skin, but barely any build would be rocking below 2000hp.

Do remember though these Calculations are done with Levels that a Level 8 CWDT can support as well as the fact I have 3 Endurance Charges. If you are trying to do bosses where it's not at the end of a map and you won't have Charges then Steelskin would be your better choice.

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You aren't missing anything, it does suck but yeah 50% of the Damage will be Chaos Damage right off the bat because of Venom Gyre. While I will have far less Cold Damage, 50% Cold should still be enough to Freeze a very large portion of monsters.

I got curious how much it mattered and tested this by changing the rare claws to be elder items and giving each 25% conversion of physical damage to chaos. (I removed the critical chance suffix from both versions to make a fair test.)

Overall.... not as big of a hit to DPS as I feared.

It's basically -12% to total DPS (-10% with flasks up).

This happens because you've got 90% phys to cold, and only 50% phys to chaos, so you end up with "actual" 64% to cold and 36% to chaos.

So after accounting for the "extra" chaos that you get, you're only losing out on the cold boost on about a third of your damage, and you get the chaos damage to compensate, so... 10% loss of DPS overall. And that's not too bad for the extra utility of constant freezing.

It's important to note though, that the hrimsorrows are absolutely critical for this to work. Without them, you're losing out on 25% total DPS. (Or put another way, Hrimsorrows add 32% MORE damage.)

In any case, nice build. I learned a thing or two from this little exploration.