Bat Lady Guide (SSF, Summoner, VIT assassin)

[CircaG]

i've tried the new clawsin , there is some improvement on this patch , but it's still many miles away from where the build used to be 10-12 years ago . lacks specific gearing options , cannot be accessed until mid Nightmare , the bats don't last long enough , their damage/tankyness is still lacking in end game , the charges are still shitty to release when you attack super fast and you want a specific charge at a specific moment, the procs are murdered down to about 20% or less of what we had in the Laz days and the fun is no longer there .

my 2 cents

I agree with a lot of this. I do think their damage is massive though tbh. I have never had an easier time with 105-120 ubers on any other build. You literally blink onto the boss and they're dead in 1-2 seconds. That being said. I've done about half the 125 ubers, so idk anything about end game with 125+

[Marcel]

The bats are great for midgame charms, but they really suffer in the 130+ charms and zones. I've been playing the build and it's just clunky (and largely unfun). It has the best damage of any assassin build I've found, but is slow, unintuitive, and just doesn't play well. The really sad thing is that Clawsin has amazing passives for Scosglen and it feels like there should be a sweet ele claw build around ways...but they just feel really lacking outside of the bats.

[Neyhanis]

Alright, I made a short video to showcase it For level 130+ content I'll admit I'm not there yet, but I doubt it would be that bad? Considering my bats litterally oneshot monsters in fauzt, it can't be that terrible right? Anyways once i'm done fiddling with second char and killing ubers for fun on this one i'll actually level a bit haha

Will make more videos too and perhaps some kind of farm or uber montage, but for now this was also testing video editing for myself, so its only a brief showcase of hell baal.
I enter the room with no bats or charges, the fight lasts roughly 14seconds, with 12sec of the bats hitting Baal

[Marcel]

A couple of quick comments.

1) Vit stacking is pretty bad on this build. You suffer really heavily from lack of attack rating in higher end zones and bosses. Dex stacking solves this issue, at a very low life cost (assassin vit scaling is horrid). I still have 8.9k life with a full dex dump, but also have 50k+ attack rating. Missing when you're trying to stack charges is a real killer.

2) There are not a lot of ways to scale bat damage. +skills is really the main one, so maximum +skills is a good target. I highly suggest starting with the trap set, as it gives +4 on each claw, and +8 for the set bonus (plus a bunch of tank stats). I am currently using 2x sagitarius (14 skills), Rathma's helm (3 skills, minion), Goetia Plate (+4 nat can beat it, but has to be god roll), and Kali (+2 all skills, obv lorekeepers are slightly better, but MO space is nice). All of this only beats the trap set by 6 all skills (12 levels for your bats).

3) 1 point in bat strike is plenty, if your bats are dying, it's because you don't have minion life in the build. The new Rathma's helm can roll +3 and minion stats. Goetia plate is excellent (my bats have 20k+ hp with 1 point investment). Also, be sure you have 75% minion res. Some nice +2 assassin minion res crafted boots are great here.

4) This build is really slow for farming in the endgame, but it does work. Also, many of the later bosses are just annoying because of minion targeting (e.g. Astroga, Xazax).

[Status_]

Assuming "1 point in bat strike is plenty" would you consider putting 25 points in spider way?

[Artas28]

- items with - fire/lightnen res work with familiars?

[Neyhanis]

- items with - fire/lightnen res work with familiars?

nope, this would only work for you

A couple of quick comments.

1) Vit stacking is pretty bad on this build. You suffer really heavily from lack of attack rating in higher end zones and bosses. Dex stacking solves this issue, at a very low life cost (assassin vit scaling is horrid). I still have 8.9k life with a full dex dump, but also have 50k+ attack rating. Missing when you're trying to stack charges is a real killer.

2) There are not a lot of ways to scale bat damage. +skills is really the main one, so maximum +skills is a good target. I highly suggest starting with the trap set, as it gives +4 on each claw, and +8 for the set bonus (plus a bunch of tank stats). I am currently using 2x sagitarius (14 skills), Rathma's helm (3 skills, minion), Goetia Plate (+4 nat can beat it, but has to be god roll), and Kali (+2 all skills, obv lorekeepers are slightly better, but MO space is nice). All of this only beats the trap set by 6 all skills (12 levels for your bats).

3) 1 point in bat strike is plenty, if your bats are dying, it's because you don't have minion life in the build. The new Rathma's helm can roll +3 and minion stats. Goetia plate is excellent (my bats have 20k+ hp with 1 point investment). Also, be sure you have 75% minion res. Some nice +2 assassin minion res crafted boots are great here.

4) This build is really slow for farming in the endgame, but it does work. Also, many of the later bosses are just annoying because of minion targeting (e.g. Astroga, Xazax).

1) Personally I'd still stick with vit. With both MO's and perfect amethysts in the main hand weapon, I still reach decent AR and have no trouble hitting, and also +3k life felt pretty good. Perhaps once i hit 135 content and/or lab I'll feel differently, havent been there yet
2) sounds like great suggestions, I'll add the trapset in the suggested starting/early gear, thanks
3) my bats arent dying much, its only on stuff like astro, xazax, etc. They arent maxed out either but I'd still put more then a point though
4) yeah the late game farming is definitely a bit slow, damage feels enough to me but few minions and aoe are annoying.
Did you get any minion +%AR? I felt getting at least 150/200%ish helped a lot and made clear a ton better late game though

Overall thanks for the input !

[Marcel]

1) You really need about 45,000 ar to reliably hit in Scosglen. Swinging and missing mobs causes a lot of deaths. This also opens up a tankier build option (which I'm using) with a +5 Zayl's Temptation and max block.
3) Hard points in bats are pretty useless. They have 20,000 life with soft points + goetia plate. They rarely die except against bosses or masses of mobs. The biggest issue in late game is that they just don't kill packs fast enough.
4) I found that I needed 300-400% for Scosglen or they missed quite a bit.

This is my current (fairly endgame) setup. It focuses on bat damage and tankyness for myself.

Helm: Rathma's Blessing (+3 skills) note: would like to find a way to switch to Indigo for +2 max res, but getting minion resists is a pain
Weapon1: Sagittarius (+7 skills) w 3 perf amethyst for attack rating
Offhand: Zayl's Temptation (+5 skills) note: we're giving up +2skills here for block chance, regen, and max res
Body armor: Goetia Plate (+3 skills) note: a +4 nats with max res could be better, but the minion life is super helpful.
Gloves: Lorekeeper (+3 skills) and firedance is a 90%+ ele damage buff.
Belt: Honestly I use lilith's...but that's because I usually have 350-400% mf on this build. You can use +skills here or a minion res piece to open up Indigo if you want to.
Boots: Minion res crafted with +2 assassin skills and reasonable movement speed.
Amulet: Deathward (+3 skills...could get a lucky for +4 someday)
Rings: Seal of the Nephalim Kings x 2 (+2 skills each, could get a lucky +3 someday)

Total skills from gear: 30
Skills from Pinnacle: 4
Skills from charms: As many as you have

Currently I have ways around level 164 for farming with bats (that's 164 pen for fire and lightning).

Overall the damage is great, but the bats are a just a bit too slow and lack AOE for endgame farming zones. You're about 1/3 the clear speed of a normal endgame build and 1/5 the speed of a top tier meta build. They're really really great for some bosses (e.g. you can farm the Invasion 1,2, and 3 riftwalkers if you want) and really terrible for some bosses (e.g. Xazix where they just hit his minions). It's close to being a build, but desperately needs support from one or two uniques (2x max bats at 1/2 damage would be amazing) and some QoL love (summon bats with 3 charges please).

[Marcel]

For points, this is (imho) the best setup:

Ninja
Blink: 1 point
Shadow Refuge: 1 point
Perfect Being: Max

Throwing:
None (could toss 1 point into way of the spider, but wasn't really noticeable to me)

Claw:
Way of the Gryphon: Max
Noctule: 1 point
Bat Strike: 1 point
Elemental Fangs: Max
Ambush: Max
Winged Calamity: Max
Anathema: 1 point

Naginata:
Way of the Phoenix: Max

Traps:
None

Psionic (don't worry about this tree until you're level 130+ and don't have any utility points you want)
1 point in all prerequisites for Pinnacle
Pinnacle: Points in multiples of 6 as you level.

Mastery:
Purity: Max
Melee Devotion: Max

Reward:
Prismatic Cloak: Max
Beacon: 1 point

[Neyhanis]

Thanks for sharing, I'll admit i'm not farming scosglen and it seems a lot more is needed to be comfortable there.

but desperately needs support from one or two uniques (2x max bats at 1/2 damage would be amazing) and some QoL love (summon bats with 3 charges please).

Absolutely agree, they have a ton of dmg and losing some wouldnt be a problem, but could use some QoL one way or another and especially more clear