i'd like to call this a "christmas assassin" build, since she looks like a goddamn christmas tree when fully charged

I just love this: Lama saying "if you hate it, I dont blame you" Also Lama: smiling all over his face. 😂😀

Finally! The day that LOD came out I started with a martial arts assasin and was blown away over how good she was at the low levels, 5 hours later I was lvl 28 and could not beat the ancients for the life of me, went to bed and havn't played martial arts since.

After all these years, I’ve never seen any of those finishing moves before lol

I hope they will provide such love for the Barbarian in the next patch. And for all melee characters in general

i hope when they nerf this they dont destroy it completely. always wanted this skill tree to actually work well

Man... I've been playing dual claw Phoenix Strike assassin since the character was first released. I didn't care that she was off-meta, it was just a fun build to play. To see her grow into this absolute avatar of devastation makes me so happy! Hopefully the nerfs won't slam her into oblivion

I really wanted to make a Hell-viable Dual Claw Assassin some day so this is good news. When I read about the runewords I didn't suspect they'd let those 50% chances on Mosaics stack additively, but here we are. I was sure they'd make it 2 x 50% check.

Just rolled Mosaic on single player, so I can confirm it works. It seems this time they brought everything related to the new season to single player as well! Which is awesome!!!

Finally a new character after 20 years. Thanks blizzard.

FYI, was watching Ginger Gaming Mentor test Assassin builds with dual Mosaic claws, and the game was freezing when dropping repetitive Meteor charges from Phoenix Strike on Uber Diablo. Not an issue on Hell Players 8, but the extra life of the Uber D-Clone was causing a rediculous amount of meteors to fall and was locking up the game.

Interesting thing is that you don't really need high end gear like Enigma. You can use Dragon Flight to teleport around for the most part, and it keeps refreshing your charges as well. For bosses/ubers I suspect Tiger Strike will be instant kill (8 kicks with 3rd charge of tiger strike lvl 40+ along with some crushing blow are hundreds of thousands of dmg). I suspect the charge management, especially for phoenix strike, will be a pain, especially if you overcharge.

We're all gonna be kung fu fighting

This is awesome but will most likely be nerfed hard - This is the "Vampire Survivors" build

Inspired by Llama's Hell guided playthrough on a MA assassin, I attempted to finish Hell myself with the same Phoenix strike build. Took me about 3 weeks to finish it with budget items. Because I don't have D2 Resurrected, I did it all in my old 1.13 version where I have none of the new runewords or the charges consume buff to phoenix strike. Just the fact that I finished hell with budget gear and MA assassin in the old version of the game was enough to make me feel proud, since I am not a veteran Diablo 2 player. My items were Smoke Armor, Chromatic circlet with socketed PDiamond, Rhyme shield, a magic 28 fire rest plated belt, a magic 20 frw and poison resist boots, rare gloves with 10 IAS and cold and poison res, angelics amulet and ring. My weapon was malice claw for mobs and strength claw for bosses. My merc was holy freeze with tal's mask, lionheart armor and honor thresher for mobs and strength thresher for bosses. My inventory was full with life or resist charms. It's insane how much of a glass cannon she is. She dies very easily even on level 83 with 1360 health but also deals so much elemental damage that baal went down in 2 minutes. Most of my time in the baal fight was going back to town for potions, despawning his clone or death from festering appendages rather than the actual fight.

Im starting this build tomorrow. Also the smile u got when all those meteors came down, was like a kid on christmas

Ginger mentor did some pretty extensive testing - NHD really messed with claws of thunder, especially if you use it with PS chain lightning. Ideal seems to be 3 Blades of Ice, 2PS, 3Cobra/Tiger charges. FoF messes with leech converts phys to fire), so likely want to avoid charges on that too.

Honestly I'm glad we get more S tier, and every class should have at least one build at this level.

Literally chillin at work listening to this, I took my sunglasses off and immediately after llama says “put your sunglasses on you’re gonna need them” lmao

This is the most expensive build in game, because you need to dual wield RTX 4090 for it to work

I was telling this from the beggining, if you all asked for 100% nor losing charges this will get out of control.

I'm so hyped!! I've always played as a martial arts assassin even when she was considered a C tier. I definitely feel like I have a good advantage after all these years and trial/error 😉. Super excited to try these new runes and strategies 👌

Great thing is, even just one point in Cobra Strike removes any need for leech on equipment.

”ahh, my eyes" "You are reaching 4 frames per second" "My Dell E-machine is melting!"

We should try to predict when the "fun detected" alarm goes off in the dev room (assuming it hasn't already)

I want a whole group of these doing baal runs

Love this build. Its op as hell but as someone who loved playing MA sin all the time. It just wasn't strong enough past p1. Now I can have as much fun as I want telestomping everything with fireworks.

The Claw! - Sun Tzu

I love that we have something new to try out for at least one ladder!!

when he started to explain the charges on phoenix strike i was like: "Wait dont all charges stack?" And yes. Yes they do. I hope this stays in the game. Its immense fun.

100% percent chance to not use charges is kind of a glitch. It is like 100% resistances or 100% crushing blow. Everything that adds up like this is capped to 75% or 95% so there is no reason for this one to allow 100% chance. But enjoy it as long as it lasts.

Funny how this suddenly was always everyone’s favorite build lol.

Why is it 360p?

The probability should just stack differently (should be two independent trials, so 75% total) - even having a total of 80-90% would work ok, you'd have your fun for a while then after 5-10 insane hits you'd have to recharge... I think that's fair

Just think how many claws we have thrown away in the past looking for the GG traps claws 🤣

Whenever there's a good build or skill, Llama says it's "broken", then it gets nerfed. Thanks dude.

don't forget cobra strike can also be stacked, meaning you're getting an insane amount of life and mana leech. the build is just busted. Im ok with it because the usual builds are as stale as can be.

Man if only there was a playthrough video

This is the craziest things I’ve seen in over 20 years of D2

I am happy to see another top teir build. Hammerdin and sorc have remained on top for far to long. :)

This is so awesome. Even with the next hit delay on thunder claws and Phoenix strike this build seems to wreck.. now do a tiger strike one and try it with full crushing blow build

Always thought javazon was bs op, so to put other characters up there is refreshing. It’s kinda neat and something fun to try. Also if you play sp it’s harder to get lv 40 skills so it’s not as op

My mom always thinks me eating my toenails were disgusting, but this is just on another level.

“if you hate this, I completely get it” had me fkn rollingg😂😂

this has always been my favorite build, its so nice to see it being buffed :D

Reminds me of my critical mass wizard build on D3 way back. Super fun but I can see why it might get out of hand. Granted this is like top tier end game gear. I can see a nerf coming, at least to stacking charges.

My head started hurt so much without sunglasses that i need to stop watching.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Every patch I've been waiting to hear that the sin has improved.

so early its in 360p

360p ftw xD

thats the coolest looking thing ive seen in over 20 years of playing/watching this game

Love the MA-sin, but I kind of wish that they put the new mechanic on the class rather than on a specific runeword because now this is getting closer to diablo 3 where the builds and items are dictating each other. If they would've added it to claw mastery, going up to 50% at a certain level, you could use 1 mosaic and another weapon of choice, now it's just: "playing MA? yepyep, double mosaic or play another build".

YEEEAHHH, this will get nerfed 100% ... but hopefully they will just make Mosaic way more expensive instead of actually nerfing the mechanic.

I hope this doesn't get nerfed, the game needs more fun build variety. Every class should have a build that can pop off like this.

So now we hit the crazy power creep mark everyone was afraid of.....

Assassin and Necro are always gonna be my favorite characters.

There are 3 ways to nerf 1. Maximum Charge Limit = 2~3 2. reduce the number of dragon talon kicks 3. -n% to cold/lightning/fire skill damage to Mosaic BUT NEVER nerf 50% chance

MA assassin FINALLY being viable is amazing. It suddenly looks like it competes strongly for BEST S tier bulid which is a bewildering thought. Not necessarily a bad one though. At least I hope it gets to have this power level for season 3. They can adjust it for season 4 if it proves too dominant. So so happy to see new endgame viable builds. More of this blizzard!!! We build love variety!

OMG I was thinking about this back in the old days of playing d2, I was craving for a martial artist assassin build that can shred everything with all elements at once...It`s finally real! Too bad i`m not playing this game anymore :(

Been playing a PS sin forever, 14 yr old me was dreaming of this build

Looks pretty awesome... Lightshow :D I'm all for it - but maybe the damage is a bit too much :D

OMG, thanks for doing this test, I knew it will be OP. And what do you think about TS? It's cheap x10-20 damage multiplier now. There was old TS + Dragon Tail combination which is already pretty descent, but can go even further now.

I remember as a teenager running my Foh paladin i worked so hard on just decimating in pvp on us east, ah nostalgia.

you can also stack tigerstrike to get just another silly 2000% phys dmg. It may not be much since your boots are probably not made for kicking but will probably still be 1-2k phys dmg on each kick

Love you MrLlamaSC ! Hyppe for 3rd Ladder !!! Better turn my Immortal King Rap on Spotify!

Seems very gear dependent. One thing about hammerdins for example is that they can be really good before you have all the end game gear.

There was someone who did ubers with this. Took them 58 seconds, that's including the mini-ubers. This was with a fire version.

I expect us to see a "Can't Stack Damage Charges" nerf in the future.

This is worth it, a small nerf is ok, but really it needs to remain S tier. I was smiling the whole time. Thanks!

that 360p

"That just comes from that" Great guidance.

OMG...FINALLY...I've loved Sin from the start. Now I have a reason to come back again.

I get how people dont like seeing their powerful builds get beaten but why cant every build be powerful

I really hope they don't change this, even if it's just for one season. The assassin has needed some love for awhile -- let it be broken for a bit. Those of us who have played assassins since 2001 will finally feel some vindication.

As someone there said "Hammerdin on acid" This affix was a bad idea from the start. And good job Blizzard we have now just 1 usable claw in entire game.

How to fix martial arts: They need to revamp all the assassin runewords and unqiues to have a 100% chance to proc ONE of the abilities. Like shadow killer should have blades of ice, bartucs could have something from claws of thunder , etc. I think this would solve this issue and still be in line with what they are trying to do. That way you can also build certain types of martial arts. Right now you have ALL of it all the time for very little investment and every other weapon for sin is completely useless. This is the wrong way to go about this.

Martial arts deserves to finally be good. Been dogpoop for 20 years

Im with everyone that said that every class should have a fun s tier build like this.

Im waiting for martial arts for 20 years straight, thank God this happened

I kinda saw this coming after that patch announcement. But it is nice to see it played out. But damn, that is both beautiful and disgusting at the same time. Martial arts assassins needed love but these claws are the only items that can let them shine.

These videos are how nerfs happen lol

This is the best addition to D2R and looks like a lot of fun!

ive been waiting for the Martial Arts tree to be useful since I was 13. It is about time they did something. Martial Arts always got neglected.

Definitely need a nerf. Another proof that the devs dont test their changes enough. I think they should remove the charge duration refresh, but increase the charge duration. I also think the number of different kind of charge should be limited. Something like 2 kind of charge at the same time. It would enable more strategic play when dealing with immunes.

This is like a PoE Cast on Crit build with easy 100% crit. Hope this lasts through ladder.

It's nice that the martial arts assassin has more viability pvm. I'd rather them let her own this patch and nerf next patch like the cold sorc and her reign. I'm probably just going to start barb and rush hustle and see what builds work well.

Still believe one day new class sets will come with new effects like: "Assassin's hammer deal 4000x more damage" or "Necro's fire golem ignore 200% fire resistance and explode enemies killed by him"...

Finally the Assassin got buffed and is playable.

they keep destroying the game with their stupid changes man...

I remember way back in the day when Assassin was first introduced to the original game. I was so excited to make a martial arts assassin. Sounded great, but in practice it kind of sucked. Now.... my dream from 20 years ago... can finally come true. O.o

OMG that is AWESOME! Love it! Thanks Lama for the build.

Let it cook, Blizzard. This is going to be interesting.

It's like one of those jamella edited characters back in the day but on steroids lol.

- Res light damage is still bugged on assasin after patch. lots of testing done

So a few notes for those not overly familiar with MA. Fists of Fire will NOT WORK with Cobra Strike. Fists of Fire converts ALL physical to fire damage so you don't get to leech that way. Also Claws of Thunder will NOT STACK with the 2nd charge of Phoenix Strike. Only one will be doing damage due to the Next Hit Delay.

Man. Martial arts/ blade sin was my favorite character as a kid. Two seasons ago I broke down and bought D2r and made one for when the quality of life changes to finishers came in, and it was really fun. Now this? I wanted to do something else this season but man, this is tempting. Or maybe if they roll these ladder runewords into normal I can use my old assassin... assuming I even find a Gul rune, let alone a Mal.

I love it and I hate it at the same time. It's really cool, like making a Tesladin or whatever with insane gear, but it doesn't require insane gear.

Good thing shockwave druid got that nerf. Man, that thing was OP. It was killing like a few monsters at a time at a slow pace and only did one damage type. It also required an inventory of skillers, which we all know is basically as common as chipped gems on a normal run.

Jesus Christ... insanely badass God, I love this!!

I love it, this game is my go to just for the sheer destruction and solo abilities it provides the user. Please dont change it Bliz