The demonic hordes are free to rampage again with the release of Diablo 2 Resurrected as ARPG fans return to the world of Sanctuary to fight off hellish enemies. This Diablo 2 Resurrected Assassin Leveling guide will help you hone your knives and help you level in the most efficient way possible.
Diablo 2 Resurrected Assassin Leveling
The Assassin class specializes in Traps, and this will serve as its primary source of damage, especially in PvE.
On a general note, we will utilize Fire Blast and Wake of Fire in Normal difficulty, and from here, we will move on to Lightning Sentry and Death Sentry in Nightmare and Hell difficulty.
Level 1 to 35 Leveling
For the first 35 levels, we will focus on using Fire Blast and Wake of Fire. Until you reach Level 12, your main damage will be dealt from Fire Blast.
Fire Blast has AoE damage, and you can hurl these in the center of a monster pack to deal massive damage.
When facing fewer monsters, try to throw the blast a little ahead of the monster, so it lands on the monster as it might be moving.
From Level 6, we will also start upgrading Burst of Speed. This allows you to not only move faster but also increases attack speed, meaning you can launch attacks faster and set up traps quicker.
Now that we have a good enough damaging attack, we can now focus on our traps.
From level 12, focus on upgrading Wake of Fire. This will become your new main damaging skill.
As you progress through the level, keep on setting multiple traps, and they will be enough to kill all your enemies.
One of the mechanics you need to keep in mind is the Next Hit Delay. Due to this, any enemy who is hit by a Wake of Fire will not get hit by the next trap for 0.16 seconds.
This seems insignificant, but two Wake of Fire traps can overlap enough to keep the Next Hit Delay active, wasting your traps.
Level 35 to 75 Leveling
Next, we move to the Nightmare and Hell setup. Here, the only thing similar to the previous is that we will keep up Burst of Speed at all times because we need to be able to set our traps efficiently.
The main traps we will use are Lightning Sentry and Death Sentry. For the best offense, we will set up 4-5 Lightning Sentries at one location, and these will then always target a single monster. The collective damage of multiple sentries will be enough to one-shot almost every monster.
Behind the Lightning Sentries, we will place Death Sentries out of the monster’s reach. The Death Sentries will use their Corpse Explosion and cause the dead bodies of the monsters to explode. This allows you to damage more monsters with a minimal setup of sentries.
With these, we will invest in the Mind Blast skill. This is a very convenient skill, as it confuses and stuns monsters and also has the chance to convert some of the monsters to fight for you.
These monsters act as tanks on the front lines, dealing damage to the enemies and providing you a breathing room.
Since these monsters that are on your side for a few seconds cannot be damaged from your attacks, they act as a wall, preventing others from advancing and allowing you to freely attack simultaneously.
The last skill you might want to look at is Cloak of Shadows. This skill makes it impossible for your Assassin to be spotted by monsters as you move around.
It is very useful when you are getting cornered or under a barrage from ranged monsters. You are just using it to get away or even set up your defense unnoticed.
In case you are worried about Lightning resistant monsters, we have two options for you. First, you can use Lower Resist to make them weaker to Lightning attacks.
Second, you can simply reroll. The areas that can be rerolled have the option to spawn less Lightning resistant monsters. For Lightning Immune Monsters, we recommend avoiding them altogether by using the Gnarled Staff of Teleportation.
Assembling the Build
Here are a few items that are recommended to make everything better for you.
First, your main weapon should be a Dagger. The Speed of laying traps is determined by your primary weapon’s Attack Speed, and daggers are the fastest primary weapon early on in the game. You can get a dagger from Charsi in Normal Act 1 or in the wilderness.
Next, we suggest Stealth Armor. Stealth Armor provides +25% Faster Walking/Running Speed as well as +25% Faster Hit Recovery, making the game much easier and is a huge quality of life improvement.
The 2 socket body armor can be bought from Charsi in normal Act 1, and the Runes can be found in The Countess.
The third recommended item is Leaf Short Staff. It applies +3 to Fire Skills, which applies to Fire Blast and Wake of Fire. It can be bought from Akara in Normal Act 1.
Spirit Crystal Sword is the last big item we have on our list, as it provides +2 to all Skills, Mana, Faster Hit Recoveries, and Faster Cast Rate.
The sword will make you better in all aspects. The Crystal Sword can be found in The Secret Cow Level, and will a socket reword from Act 5 Quest 1 can be used to craft it.
Here is a list of optional items that you can get to improve your Assassin even better.
- Ancients’ Pledge Shield provides high resistance and makes you tanky.
- Gloves of Anarchy that provide +20 Attack Speed.
- Belt of Colossus provides you fire and lightning resistance as well as +50 life.
- Wand of Lower Resistance to reduce enemy resistance to different elements.
- Gnarled Staff of Teleportation for increased mobility and avoid Lightning Monster.
- Lore Cap that provides +1 to all skills can is good in Nightmare and Hell.
- Death’s Hand and Death’s Guard provide 30% Increased Attack Speed.
- Possibly any amulet with a +X to Skill effect is good.
Attribute
To get the Assassin into fighting shape we will invest in Strength, Dexterity, and Vitality.
For strength, we only use enough points so that we can easily equip all our gear. The same goes for Dexterity,
As for the rest, allocate all your points into Vitality. You can also put a few into energy until you are level 12 but not after that.
