Assassin Build Guide Diablo 2 Resurrected Trapper Assassin. This is a Beginner Assassin Leveling Build that will comfortably get you through Normal, which is the first difficulty of D2. If you are looking for a Beginner Assassin Build, and aren’t sure where to begin, then this Diablo 2 Build Guide is for you. Check out our Diablo 2 Best Builds for more builds for all classes.

Trapper Assassin Leveling Build

• Class: Assassin
• Skill Line Focus: Trap Skills
• Build Focus: DPS
• Main Attribute: Vitality
• Difficulty Level: Normal
• Level: 1-40

Assassin Build Guide Diablo 2 Resurrected | Trapper Assassin

The Trapper Assassin utilizes fire traps to deal with multiple enemies at the same time. Each trap laid on the ground will periodically attack all enemies within range, allowing you to stay away at a safe position at all times.

The trap that you’ll be using for this build is called Wake of Fire. This trap will periodically spawn triangular-shaped waves of fire which deal massive damage and pass through enemies.

It’s important to note that this Build guide is meant for the first difficulty level (Normal) and up to around Lvl 40. You can still play through Nightmare with this build, but there are much more efficient builds at that point for which I would recommend respecing into something else.

If you are a new player I strongly recommend you save the respec that you get from completing the first quest Den of Evil. If you do, you’ll be able to talk to Akara and respect your character into a different build once you reach Nightmare difficulty.

Assassin Build Guide Stats | Trapper

Most Builds in Diablo 2 Resurrected have a Stat distribution that focuses on assigning enough points into Strength to meet equipment requirements, enough Dexterity to reach max Block Chance, and then assigning everything else into Vitality to gain as much Life as possible. And while this is true for most Builds, it can be confusing to decide when you should assign these Attribute Points.

LEVEL 40 ASSASSIN STATS
STRENGTH	60
DEXTERITY	20
VITALITY	175
ENERGY	25

 

Strength: Strength is a requirement for most equipment pieces of the game. During your first play through, you’ll want to have enough points to slot the best equipment for each act.

• Act I: 30 Strength
• Act II: 45 Strength
• Act III – V: 60 Strength
  From here you should only assign points into Strength if you find an Item that is worth the investment. If not, just assign the points into Vitality.

Dexterity: For most Builds Dexterity is important to increase Block Chance when using a Shield. Since Block Chance is not that important at the beginning of the game, we won’t be assigning any points here.

Vitality: All remaining points should be spent here. Increasing Vitality will greatly increase your health pool, which is essential to stay alive against large groups of enemies. Vitality also increases your Stamina, allowing you to run much further without needing to rest.

Energy: No points need to be assigned into energy.

Assassin Build Guide Skills | Trapper

While playing the Trapper Assassin you’ll mostly focus on the Traps Skill Tree to deal damage, but you’ll also spend some points into the Shadow Disciple Skill Tree to unlock the Burst of Speed Skill or some utility Skills.

Wake of Fire

This trap invokes a triangle-shaped fire wave that deals very high damage and pierce through enemies. You can have a maximum of 5 traps of any type invoked at the same time, meaning that you’ll ideally want to cast 5 Wake of Fire traps around each group of monsters.

Burst of Speed

This Spell increases both your Movement Speed and Attack Speed. Different to other Skills, traps are not affected by Faster Cast Rate but their cast speed is affected by Attack Speed instead. This means that a higher Attack Speed will mean more traps laid in less amount of time. The extra movement speed provided by this skill is very useful as well, allowing you to quickly travel through the map, or run in circles while enemies die to your traps.

Cloak of Shadows

This skill covers the area in darkness, forcing all monsters to stop their attacks and casts unless they are in melee range. This completely locks out ranged enemies. It also lowers monsters’ defense and increases your own defense.

Because of the insane amount of damage dealt by this build, you won’t need Cloak of Shadows during early stages of the game as you’ll kill everything before it has a chance to strike back. But if you find yourself struggling with ranged enemies, don’t hesitate to grab it earlier.

Fade

This Skill provides +All Resistances as well as reducing curse duration (this also affect shrines). It also has a hidden physical resistance bonus which is great for increasing survivability.

The problem with Fade is that it can’t be active at the same time as Burst of Speed. You can still assign 1 point here if you want, and use it if you are struggling with a high elemental damage area and you lack Resistances.

Skill Distribution

For the Skill distribution you’ll want to max your Wake of Fire spell first. Once you max out Wake of Fire, you can then focus on Fire Blast to further increase its damage. Here is a guide on how you should assign your skills

LEVEL 40 ASSASSIN SKILLS
Level	Points Spent	Skill
2-4 + Den of Evil Point	4	Fire Blast
5	1	Claw Mastery
6-11	6	Burst of Speed
12-28 +Radament’s Lair and The Fallen Angel Points	20	Wake of Fire
29-40	12	Fire Blast

 

The idea here is to use Fire Blast until you unlock Wake of Fire at level 12. Then keep cranking Wake of Fire until it’s maxed, and then pump Fire Blast to further increase Wake of Fire’s damage. Use Burst of Speed to increase your Attack Speed, which increases how fast you can drop Wake of Fire Traps.

Assassin Build Runewords | Trapper

Runes are a special type of socketed item that will not only provide unique properties, but that can also be combined with other Runes to create what’s called a Runeword. Runewords can be formed by inserting Runes in a specific order inside certain types of equipment. The Item must be Normal Rarity, able to support the Runeword, and it needs to have the same amount of sockets as Runes are required. Note that some magical items have sockets on them, but even if you put the Runes in the right order the Runeword will not be created and you’ll essentially lose your Runes, so be sure to use Normal Rarity items only.

While Runewords are often referred to as End Game equipment, some of them can be crafted very early into Diablo 2 Resurrected, and should not be so hard to come by. If you are lacking a base, you can check with the merchants as they often sell socketed items, but make sure that they are Normal in rarity.

Runewords are the most reliable way to gear up your character while you advance through the game, so I strongly suggest that you take a look at the complete list on our Wiki and periodically check the runes that you have and the Runewords that you can craft.

Runes can be farmed by doing Countess Runs. The Countess is a Super Unique Monster that can be found inside the Forgotten Tower in Act I. Each time you kill her she will always drop between 1 and 3 Runes and their level will depend on the difficulty setting.

What Equipment To Use

Elemental Resistances are key when trying to survive in Diablo 2 Resurrected. Most enemies deal elemental damage and having high resistances will mitigate a great percentage of this damage. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you focus on equipment pieces that provide +Resistances during the Normal difficulty of the game.

You can check your current resistances by opening the Stat menu and looking at the bottom of the menu. Resistances cap at +75%, and ideally you’ll want to max all of them when you are reaching the end of Normal difficulty. Make sure to periodically check your equipment to balance them out and get them as high as possible.

Since loot is random, you won’t have control over the equipment that you get during early and even mid-stage gameplay other than creating Runewords. Having said that, there are some general guidelines on the Stats that you should be looking for on your items to make sure that your character scales up with the increasing difficulty.

Remember that Trap throwing speed is not affected by Faster Cast Rate (FCR), but instead by Increased Attack Speed (IAS). This is very important when it comes to selecting which items to equip.

Helmet

Nadir (Runeword): Nef–Tir Runes – Lvl 13. This Helmet provides a good amount of defense as well as +5 strength, allowing us to save some Stats during early stages.

Lore (Runeword): Ort–Sol Runes – Lvl 27. If you happen to come across a Sol rune then you can use it to craft this helmet which provides +1 to all Skills as well as +30% lightning resistance.

Weapon

Leaf (Runeword): Tir–Ral Runes – Lvl 19. This runeword provides +3 to Fire Skills which includes your traps, grealty increasing your output damage. It also provides a good amount of defense, as well as +33% cold resistance. The runes required can be farmed from the Normal Difficulty Countess, so you should make a couple of runs until you get a Tir and Ral runes. Once you do, make sure to talk to Akara to buy a 2 socket Staff to create the runeword.

Spirit (Runeword): Tal–Thul–Ort–Amn Runes – Lvl 25. This Runeword can be crafted on both Weapons and Shields. It increases both your damage, thanks to its +2 To All Skills, as well as increases your defense, thanks to Faster Hit Recovery, Vitality and Life Stolen Per hit. Finding a 4 socketed weapon can be a little tricky, but stay on the lookout for Crystal Swords, Longswords and Broadswords. If you happen to play the Secret Cow Level, if you find any unsocketed of these types of Weapons, you can get a guaranteed 4 sockets from Larzuk by completing the Siege on Harrogath quest.

Claws (Magical and Rare): Claw weapons are exclusive to the Assassin and usually come with +Assassin Skills or +Trap Skills on them. You can equip 1 Claw on each hand, allowing you to greatly increase your outgoing damage. If you come across one of these that provide good stats then it’s a perfect fit for this build.

Shield

Ancient’s Pledge (Runeword): Ral–Ort–Tal Runes – Lvl 21. This shield provides a huge boost to resistances. If you can’t find an Ort Rune you can make one by combining 3 Ral Runes inside the Horadric Cube.

Spirit (Runeword): Tal–Thul–Ort–Amn Runes – Lvl 25. If you find the Runes and four slot Shield then Spirit is a great option as well. This shield provides +2 to all skills, and provides many defensive stats such as Elemental Resistances, Faster Hit Recovery and Vitality.

Armor

Stealth (Runeword): Tal–Eth Runes – Lvl 17. This is by far the best armor that you can get early on. The faster walk speed works great with this Build, while the poison resistance and Faster Hit Recovery (FHR), which allows you to recover control of your character sooner after each hit, and provides you with more survivability. The FHR is very important, as it usually helps you avoid stun locks when surrounded by enemies.

Gloves

When it comes to gloves you’ll want to focus on defensive stats such as Life and Resistances. Increased Attack Speed is another good mod that can be found on gloves but prioritize defense over offense on these.

Belt

Make sure to swap your belt as soon as you reach Act 2 for the maximum amount of potions. Regarding stats, you’ll want to focus on Life and Resistances. Some merchants might offer magical belts with a lot of life on them, which are a great option.

Boots

You’ll want to search for Faster Run/Walk speed on your boots as well as Resistances and Life. Run/Walk speed is important to quickly navigate through the map so make sure to get it.

Rings

You’ll want to search for rings that provide resistances and life.

Amulet

Similar to rings, you’ll want to find an amulet that provide Life and/or resistances. An amulet with +Trap Skill can also be great to increase your damage.

Charms

You’ll find many Charms as you advance through the game. While having these in your inventory is great, they can easily occupy a lot of space limiting the amount of loot you pick up. Try to focus on +Life, +Resistances and +MagicFind as these are the more important ones for your build.

What Mercenary to Select & Gear to Use

Act 2 Mercenaries are the best choice for all Builds due to their Paladin Auras and the ability to equip Polearm Weapons. Being able to use Polearms is very important, because many powerful Runewords can be created on them providing various buffs or debuffing enemies. You can recruit this Mercenary from Greiz in Lut Gholein.

When it comes to selecting an Aura, you’ll want to select the Prayer Mercenary found on Normal difficulty. The Prayer Aura provides heal regeneration allowing you to survive longer without using Potions. Once you reach Nightmare difficulty, you can hire a Holy Freeze Aura Mercenary, which slows enemies around you providing great crowd control.

You won’t have a lot of spare equipment during the beginning of Diablo 2 Resurrected, but you can equip him with any extra equipment you have or buy him a Polearm from a merchant. If you happen to spare some Runes, make sure to craft an Insight (Runeword) on a Polearm, as this Weapon provides you with the meditation aura greatly increasing your mana regeneration, as well as increasing your Mercenaries’ combat capabilities.

Final Tips

Doing a couple of Countess Runs will give you a lot of Runes that will not only be useful for this Build, but for any other character that you might make. Make sure to save all Runes that you find inside your Stash.

If you are having trouble finding a base for your Runewords, make sure to periodically check on merchants as they usually have good bases.

The Assassin is the only character that can open chests without keys, so you won’t have to worry about carrying keys when playing as one.

If you happen to find a good Unique or Set item that you like don’t hesitate to swap it with your current gear. I excluded all unique and Set items from this guide because there’s no reliable way of acquiring them early on.

I personally like to run my belt with 2x Healing Potions columns and 2x Mana Potion columns, but you can also add Antidote Potions or Thawing Potions. Using these potions will not only cure their respective status effect, but also provide a +50 resistance to their corresponding elemental resistance.

Once you equip an Insight Runeword on your Mercenary he will be your main way to recover mana, so make sure to keep him alive by using potions on him. To do this, press and hold shift and then right click on the potion you wish to use. If you’re playing on controller, hold down the left trigger and press the appropriate button on the D-Pad.

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Stay tuned for more Diablo 2 Build Guides, and be sure to check out our Diablo 2 Resurrected Wiki for more information about the game!