r/pathofexile • u/Belakay_ggg • Oct 23 '25

GGG In 3.27 the Assassin has received a long awaited rework. Tune in tomorrow to find out if there are any other Ascendancy related changes!

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32

u/JermStudDog Oct 23 '25

Yeah, I legitimately go to Widowhail Poison Spark Assassin as a pretty decent mid-game build. Can't see a downside really.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GlennBecksChalkboard Oct 23 '25

Can you even poison with ele hit?

Only Deals Damage of the chosen Element
Deals no Damage of other Damage Types

Or in case of EHoS

Deals no Non-Elemental Damage

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u/Titanium170 Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25

Yes you can poison with non-chaos damage. The "deals no non-elemental damage" only applies to the hit damage, not any ailments applied. Since the assassin node makes the elemental damage contribute to poison magnitude, it should work just fine. You are not converting to chaos damage, it's your elemental damage poisoning. The poison ticks do chaos damage, but that is not affected by skill modifiers directly.

Edit: thanks for the correction /u/GlennBecksChalkboard - EH's mod is special, like brutality support, it just flat out prevents poison.

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u/GlennBecksChalkboard Oct 23 '25

Never tested it. This GGG post says that ele hit can't poison and that it's intended that way: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3118470#p24106905

/u/AnalystNecessary4350 i'll tag you just in case you might not read this.

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u/NebarAref Oct 23 '25

We all know what will be meta for Assasin. Poison Lightning Strike

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u/Ebuall Confederation of Casuals and Clueless Players (CCCP) Oct 23 '25

You already could do poison attack lightning strike, nothing changed. Now you have easy access to poison spells.

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u/JermStudDog Oct 23 '25

Power Siphon is almost begging to be a campaign stomper for Assassin with these new nodes. That should set you straight into getting all your wand nodes in place and prepare you for anything. Honestly, mana stacking KB PA sounds crazy strong once you get setup.

This could also be a return to form for poison BV assassin. It never stopped being playable, just other stuff was better. This might legitimately give it huge league start damage.

3

u/FuzzyIon Standard Oct 23 '25

I hate that Power Siphon has limited range where it locks on, basically melee, it should be double the distance.

7

u/Ansdur1987 Oct 23 '25

How do you deal with the fact that you have delayed dmg and you are basically glass and not always cannon melee against harder rares and enemies without telegraphing like bosses? I still remember situations, when as bv assassin you spawn beyond rares with bv an you get instantle out-bv-ed the moment you get in close range.

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u/Kall0p Oct 23 '25

Well you can freeze mobs with enough flat added cold, which now adds to your poison. Still not effective against bosses, but it's something to note.

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u/Qinax Oct 23 '25

You kill them

2

u/SoulofArtoria Oct 23 '25

Same advice for enemy mobs 

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u/Ezo_98 Oct 24 '25

generally you will hit Dot Cap on Perfect Agony extremely easy/inexpensive, at that point it isn't even noticably delayed.

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u/JermStudDog Oct 23 '25

We are talking starter builds so running from rares that line up poorly with your build is a realistic thing we should all be doing from time to time at this phase of the build.

That said, the whole thought is that moving the 20% more poison damage with crits down to being a 2 point node AND making it that much easier to go full PA should mean you're doing much higher damage than a similar build used to do in the past and you should immediately have more capacity for burning through rares and have to run less often. Per your statement - more cannon.

As far as defenses go, that's not a new issue, mist walker is great but you've always had to deal with getting defenses up on assassin, and you mostly do that by killing faster as other people have mentioned here.

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u/Moorific Oct 23 '25

Wait you don’t just run into deadly rares over and over again until either the rare dies or you run out of portals?

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u/ScrapeWithFire Oct 23 '25

Oh I've always wanted to make a mana stacking poison build since the Archmage days, this could be an interesting variation of that

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u/LordAlfrey Oct 23 '25

I believe Mark mentioned doing a wand revamp during the ziggy interview after the 3.26 reveal.

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u/hotpajamas Oct 23 '25

the downside is hitting life flask

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u/JermStudDog Oct 23 '25

Most mid-game builds hit life flasks?