User:Feather/Death Dancer

The Death Dancer uses a wide variety of teleportaion/shadow-stepping skills to get away from harm, while in return, inflicting poison and disease. The main damage dealer is Rising Bile, which, if left active for its full 30 seconds, it can inflict ~120 damage to an area of foes. The Poison and Disease are otherwise there to soften them up--while you dance away from harm.

Equipment

 * Tormentor's armor should be used for the +armor overall
 * Any Axe/Sword/Spear with Poisonous prefix, and of Defense suffix.
 * Any Focus item with +Defense, or a Peppermint Shield.

Usage
(I have not made or tried this build, so what happens in combat is pure speculation. When I make Cerist's secondary Assassin, we'll see how it goes!) This build primarily relies on getting hit to--in turn--heal, inflict poison and disease (melee only), and otherwise shadow step away. The character using this build must also be alone. In combat, the general strategy would be to:
 * Cast Tainted Flesh on yourself.
 * Cast Rising Bile on a foe whom might be staying in the middle of a particular group. (Such as any profession asides from Assassin/Warrior unless every foe you're fighting is melee.)
 * When they close in, take the damage until each melee foe is diseased.
 * While you are waiting for each melee foe to become diseased, choose a melee target--use Shameful Fear and Enduring Toxin, in that order--when they are close in melee range. If there are no melee targets, choose a ranged instead, hopefully a Ranger.
 * Activate Heart of Shadow to shadow step away. Depending where you are, try to kite until this skill almost recharges, and then stop and wait for them to come to you.
 * In this time, re-activate Tainted Flesh.
 * In this time, you might see Rising Bile trigger and deal its AoE damage. Recast it onto the same target, or similar.
 * Shameful Fear should have also ended by now, so again choose the same target as you did last time and also reapply Enduring Toxin.
 * Again, wait for Tainted Flesh to do its work on the melee foes.
 * Immediately afterwards, activate Viper's Defense to shadow step away.
 * Kite away for about 5 seconds, and then cast Heart of Shadow to shadow step away once struck.
 * Stand still and/or wait for them to come to you again, and activate Viper's Defense.
 * Depending how long it’s been, Rising Bile may again trigger, dealing its 120 AoE damage.
 * If any foes die at all, cast Consume Corpse if you need to be healed and/or Necrotic Traversal to poison foes--followed up by shadow stepping out with either Heart of Shadow or Viper's Defense--depending what you want.

Counters

 * Spikes = Death
 * You're squishy, so pretty much any damage is a worry.

Variants

 * If you could cut one of the weaker attributes of this build, such as Deadly Arts, and instead invest into Soul Reaping, and use Icy Veins in place of Tainted Flesh.
 * With 2 extra skill slots, Deathly Swarm, Putrid Explosion are viable.