The best build to start season 3 on Diablo 2 Resurrected with the assassin! The power of hybrid traps!

Principle of the build

Here is how the build works:

• you have fire and lightning and physical damage to deal with immunes
• you don't need a lot of gear to farm in Hell from the start of the season
• you use Fire Blast for non-fire immune damage, 4 Lightning Sentinels for lightning damage, and 1 Deadly Sentinel for Morbid Blast
• you will have no trouble farming terror zones right after the opening of season 3
• this version is more powerful than the one where you put points in the Fire Sentinels

Statistics

Throughout the entire guide, here are the stats:

• Strength: what to wear your equipment
• Dexterity: what to wear your equipment
• Vitality: everything else
• Energy: nothing

Order of skills for leveling up

Take skills in this order:

• generally speaking, as soon as possible a point in each shadow discipline, you can also play Transparency instead of Swiftness if you do not have enough resistance while waiting for the indicated equipment
• put the rest of the points in Discharge of Fire while waiting for level 6
• use and put points on Electric Field up to level 23
• then max Lightning Sentinel, with only one point in Deadly Sentinel
• max out in this order Electric Field, Electric Discharge, Electric Sentinel
• you can put the remaining points into Shadow Master or a Fire Discharge synergy

Final skills

Here are your skills after leveling is complete:

• 20 points Fire Discharge, Electric Field, Electric Sentinel, Lightning Sentinel
• 1 point in Deadly Sentinel and each passive
• the rest in Shadow Master or Fire Discharge synergy
• you can also consider Mental Attack (PvP) and Dragon Strike (mobility)

Level 90 Skills

Equipment

Here are the equipment to aim for at the start of the season:

• Helmet, Lore then a rare circlet then shako (or better circlet)
• Weapons, two Bartucs then two claws +5 Lightning Sentinel
• Armor, Stealth, Smoke then Vipermagi (then Enigma)
• Rings, two rare then two Bul Khatos
• Belt, a rare or set then Arach
• Boots, rare then Sandstorm
• Gloves, rare then Trang Oul when you have Enigma
• Amulet, a rare then Mara

Don't forget to reach 65% fast spell casting speed with Enigma!

Mercenary

You will use the Act 2 Mercenary in order to take advantage of Insight (then Infinity). You can take frost or power aura to boost its damage:

• Insight or a weapon that hits hard then Infinity
• Treachery then Fortitude
• stolen life helmet then Face of Andariel

In what order should I get the items at the start of the season?

Some items will be crucial to pick up quickly and are easy to trade. This is the advantage of having a "little played" class compared to sorcerers for example. Collect items in the following order:

• the two Bartucs, around Pul (start of season)
• an assassin's torch (regardless of stats), about Um
• stolen life helmet, about Pul
• insight, about Um
• vipermagi, about Um
• a CTA 1 (take as low as possible), from 4 to 5 Ists

Remember to consult our exchange guide on D2R!

Gameplay

For the gameplay, I voluntarily took a very little optimized equipment to simulate a rather difficult instance at the beginning of the season, the chaosrun in Hell Terrorized Zone. You will see that it is very simple to do this farm, you can also orient yourself in cow runs, other terrorized areas or Baalruns as a team.

By Alchemists, February 2023