Question regarding to Mosaic base, or claw like base in general.

Hi, recently I started my first ever char on ladder, and trying to get some ladder only runewords. and when ladder resets, I would get them for my non-ladder chars.

I am not an Assassin player, so I dont know much about claw bases. But I do get them a lot when farming anything. So, this time, I will be trying to forge some Mosaic runewords, then trade them with others.

My questions is, when forge Mosaic, what skill mods are most useful?

Phoenix Strike?

Dragon Flight?

So far, I have 2 ladder chars, and the storage space is bit tight. I only have one claw kept so far, a

Greater Talons [+2 Dragon Flight, +2 Dragon Tail, +2 Blade Shield], is this claw a good base for Mosaic?

Many thanks. ❤

Greater Talons is probably the optimal base (opinions might vary) - it has the fastest speed (along with

Runic Talons) among all claws and it has decent str/dex requirements (

Runic Talons has higher requirements, being elite).

When it comes to +skills - there are two main things to consider.

1. Damage (

Phoenix Strike,

Claws of Thunder,

Blades of Ice)
- these will give you higher damage output

2. Utility (

Dragon Flight,

Mind Blast,

Cloak of Shadows,

Weapon Block,

Shadow Warrior,

Shadow Master,

Fade)
- these will save you skill points (provided you even want/need the respective skills)

Ultimately, it's not going to matter much unless you mainly play with high player counts.

- A few + to damage skills will give you higher damage output, sure, but seeing as you melt stuff anyway with plain claws, you don't really need it.
- You don't really need to save skill points, as maxing

Phoenix Strike,

Blades of Ice and

Claws of Thunder only takes 60 points (not counting prereqs and auxiliary skills) so you have plenty of points to spare. 80 if you also max

Dragon Talon.

tl;dr, any claws will suffice.

If you really want to optimize damage,

Greater Talons with +3 to

Phoenix Strike, 3 to

Claws of Thunder and +3

Blades of Ice are best for damage. You will (probably) never find that though, nor be able to afford to trade for it (probably).

Greater Talons with +X to

Cloak of Shadows, +X to

Mind Blast, +X to

Weapon Block, +X to

Fade, +X to

Shadow Master, +X to

Dragon Flight (whatever combo accross both claws) will save you a total of 10-12 skill points (depending on whether you want

Claw Mastery and

Burst of Speed). Where to place them instead though?

I have just made a Mosaic using a base with +2

Phoenix Strike & +1

Blades of Ice.

Rolls are not great, 224 ED + 14 Cold, 14 Lightning, + 8 Fire

I guess I will make more! thanks for the reply

EDIT: reading your guide makes me feel I am a noob again. haha, I really do not have much experience on ass. have to check out each skill you mentioned. it is fun, thanks again.

I am far from an expert, but in my estimation this roll is not so bad. Fire is min. but Cold and Lightning are nearly max and I think Lightning is the most important value.

A few days ago I bought two

Claws (

Greater Talons) for my son with 2

Phoenix Strike and a the following roll (15l/10c/13f and 13l/11c/14f).
As far as I know, phys. dmg is negligible.

On my side, I am super happy to get

Blade Shield there, as it saves 3 points to reach there for physical traps I don't use.

As for extra points, more points in Venom, ,

Weapon Block /

Claw Mastery,

Fade or Speed (whichever you use) and

Shadow Master never hurt, so saving some is quite nice.

Realistically, the last thing a decently built Mosaic sin needs is more damage. Pretty much everything you'll ever encounter will die within one "kick rotation lockout" anyways. Or largely on the opening

Dragon Flight for that matter. The handful of exceptions to that (basically just ubers/high-life bosses) still die so fast that you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference from a few more skill points on your dmg skills. Even more so because say 5% more damage doesn't actually mean stuff dies 5% faster, seeing how your dmg merely comes in spikes for each kick. So unless you're saving an entire kick, the difference is effectively 0. And even if you are saving a kick, if that kick isn't the very first kick of a new rotation, it still doesn't make a difference because you're locked into the kick rotation anyways.
So even on bosses/ubers, the odds of a handful more skills on your dmg dealers making an actual difference is pretty darn low.

What you will notice however is that - depending on your exact build - Mosaic sins are something that can actually run out of skill points and subsequently fall short of your ideal target build.

Because of that, you do gain quite a bit from item-based access to your desired 1-pt wonders, esp those that save you not only that 1 pt but ideally also extra points otherwise only needed to open up access to it.

Dragon Flight is a perfect example here, as are things like

Fade,

Blade Shield or even Venom (which does still hold a situational purpose).

Alternatively, depending on your target loadout and overall build, you may also end up with skills that actually do still benefit noticeably from another few skill points.

Weapon Block for example may easily fall into that category. As would

Shadow Master if you're going that route.

Thanks for all the replies above, great advice.

Since last post, I managed to get 6 Mosaic bases and have them all made. Most of them are

Greater Talons with

Phoenix Strike skill mod. Now that I have 4 spare

Gul runes for rerolling these Mosaic

Claws. I want to know which is bad and which is acceptable.

I came up with this formula to weigh Fire, Ice and Lightning importance.

make Fire's importance = 1, then Ice = 0.8, Lighting = 1.2

I have one rolled with fire=8, Ice=9, lightning=13, then total weighted importance is 30.8

I draw a line that total score below 35 (45 max) is kinda bad, then I should reroll it. And lightning below 12 is also bad.

Does my formula make sense? how much weight would you assign to each element?

Many thanks ❤

seansixsixsix wrote: 2 days ago

Thanks for all the replies above, great advice.

Since last post, I managed to get 6 Mosaic bases and have them all made. Most of them are

Greater Talons with

Phoenix Strike skill mod. Now that I have 4 spare

Gul runes for rerolling these Mosaic

Claws. I want to know which is bad and which is acceptable.

I came up with this formula to weigh Fire, Ice and Lightning importance.

make Fire's importance = 1, then Ice = 0.8, Lighting = 1.2

I have one rolled with fire=8, Ice=9, lightning=13, then total weighted importance is 30.8

I draw a line that total score below 35 (45 max) is kinda bad, then I should reroll it. And lightning below 12 is also bad.

Does my formula make sense? how much weight would you assign to each element?

Many thanks ❤

You might want to change the Fire's importance from 1 to 0.8 or completely ignore the fire damage. Fire damage is not that important, cause there is no monster with 3 immunity, if I am right. Anyway, with ice, lightning and kick-physical damage, you will be able to kill anything.
My Mosaic sin has only 1 hard point in

Fists of Fire. The reason behind this is I use

Cobra Strike to do the life and mana steal, if I use

Fists of Fire, then

Dragon Talon's kick damage would be converted to fire damage, losing life and mana steal ability.

My take would always be utility base with PS.

Fade,

Burst of Speed, if you want

Shadow Master and

Dragon Flight if you don't have Enigma.

seansixsixsix wrote: 2 days ago

[..]
I want to know which is bad and which is acceptable.
[..]

Simple rule of thumb, any and all Mosaic

Claws are "acceptable" because any and all of them result in a completely overkill build.
Attack speed (i.e. base claw type) is a valid consideration but the actual roll on it makes close to no real difference.

Flyhorse wrote: 2 days ago

[..]
My Mosaic sin has only 1 hard point in

Fists of Fire. The reason behind this is I use

Cobra Strike to do the life and mana steal, if I use

Fists of Fire, then

Dragon Talon's kick damage would be converted to fire damage, losing life and mana steal ability.

Fully agreed with this though. Full fire = bad juju as it effectively kills the inherent immortality of a charged up Mosaic sin due to essentially turning off your leech. And it really isn't needed at all from a dmg perspective.

Schnorki wrote: 2 days ago

Simple rule of thumb, any and all Mosaic

Claws are "acceptable" because any and all of them result in a completely overkill build.
Attack speed (i.e. base claw type) is a valid consideration but the actual roll on it makes close to no real difference.

then, I should forget about reroll them, and just to make more?

based on your previous advice, I only sourced and kept

Greater Talons as my Mosaic base.

seansixsixsix wrote: 1 day ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 days ago

Simple rule of thumb, any and all Mosaic

Claws are "acceptable" because any and all of them result in a completely overkill build.
Attack speed (i.e. base claw type) is a valid consideration but the actual roll on it makes close to no real difference.

then, I should forget about reroll them, and just to make more?

based on your previous advice, I only sourced and kept

Greater Talons as my Mosaic base.

Depends.

If all you want is for your sin to steamroll through everything with 0 issues then yeah, forget about rerolling them and be happy with whatever first 2 you build.

If you want to truly optimize and spreadsheet mainly for the sake of theoretically maximizing things with little to no real noticeable gameplay impact then by all means, keep rerolling. Just be aware that you're basically just taking "crazy OP" and turning it into "crazy OP but like a wee bit more so".

On the plus side, rerolling mosaics (in new bases that is) is never a waste in terms of an investment, assuming you're online and also play NL. Once your rerolls are rolled down from L to NL, they sell like hotcakes and you'll be making quite a few NL-only folks quite happy with your rerolls.


Side note:
The GT suggestion was ShadowHeart, not me.

Greater Talons is certainly the best base, but not the only one possible.

Runic Talons,

Feral Claws and

Greater Claws are also quick and efficient.
And others... work too !