Shadow Temple thingy

I don't see what you wouldn't gain from having Sharpen daggers instead of WoP,
The bleeding could cover the dazed and blindness, if the next hit after temple strike was crit. Also most Sin skirmishes last about 15-20 AT THE MOST, so the 30sec duration hardly seems to make a difference.

The only problem would be that you wouldn't have a self heal, means you'll just have to know when to get out of the scrap

EDIT

I'm pretty sure the foes affected by Death blossom won't start bleeding, although (again) i may be wrong.

As with casting time on sharpen, I guess I could live with it =/

Sqube, Pingu; thanks for the tips! I got right to it and I've got the following numbers now:

Critical Strikes 11+2 (mask & minor)
Dagger Mastery 10+1 (minor)
Shadow Arts 10

with indeed 1 point left.
My attack skills now deal slightly less damage than before but it's negligible, really. TS' effects still last for 8 sec so no real damage was done. Upping Shadow to 10 gives me far more leeway on when to use Shadow of Haste! It lasts up to 30 sec (!) now and this makes the entire build a lot more forgiving (which is good ). Replaced Way of Perfection with Sharpen Daggers, and it indeed seems like it increased the pressure I can apply.

@Ares: I have Shadow Refuge...? Right about SD being a better choice though, but it doesn't seem like DB benefits from its effects (unfair ).

All in all, the Sin 'feels' a lot more comfortable now. Gotta love it when people are running away from you!

Sharpen Daggers shouldn't apply bleeding to Death Blossom peripheral targets as it doesn't target them directly.... as far as I can tell.
That is to say things like the warrior skill Cyclone Axe and the ranger skill Barrage will actually directly attack multiple enemies in the area.... but Death Blossom is just an AoE splash, essentially.

that is true. the aoe effect of death blossom is not actually caused by daggers. they are just pure damage. similarily, death blossom's aoe won't trigger splinter weapon. that would just be sick.

as for your build, i think shadow walk is a better choice instead of shadow of haste. it gives you a teleport in as well as a teleport out, using dash to cancel. that should solve your "warping out before the kill" problem.

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As for spreading dmg... [skill]Mark of Pain[/skill] was loads of fun to use.

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I just craft daggers or use collector ones, and buy the mods in a town for minimal amounts of money.
As for your attributes.. you should really be hitting 12 Dagger Mastery at least.
For your build I'd use:

12+1 Dagger
11+1 Critical
8 Shadow

12 in any weapon = 100% damage.

Sorry 'bout that. Just got Moebius Strike off that Boss - he's well hard. Guess it must be done... *sighs* Thx for the tip!

@ Jesh: yeah DM at 13 would've been nice. However, I really wanted CS at 13 for the energy boost - I've weighed my options and that turned out to be the most attractive one. BTW, the other option was to drop CS all the way to to 8 (the lower threshhold - IMO there's not much difference between CS at 8 or 12). And I've been really happy with the high SA rating... it makes SoH last a long time and I love it. In time, however, I might drop points of SA to raise my DM to 13. I'd have to have a bit more experience to feel confident with that.

Oops. Switch DM and CS. Makes more sense, huh?

Critical Strikes should be at 13 if you intend to use it for energy management... at all.

But assuming you're using a mask to up Dagger Mastery, there is no reason not to use at least two Minor runes for DM and CS. If, even with the +2 to DM and +1 to CS, you keep Dagger Mastery at 12... you should have the points left over to keep Shadow Arts up reasonably.

Personally, I use two Major Runes so I have more points to throw around.
I'm quite aware that it ends up more effective to use one Superior and one Minor now, but I wasn't when I kitted out my 15k Kurzick armour.
When I bother using Critical Strikes now, I keep it at 14 so as not to lose my energy management under Weakness..... though since I use Assassin's Promise, I don't make heavy use of CS for energy management most of the time (the extra points in it do come in handy though).

The easiest way to go about that is to replace my minor DM with a superior one. -35HP is a steep price to pay though...

OK I'm gonna sound real nerdy now. The extra point in DM would aid me some by:
- increasing damage on attack skills. Not taking into account splash damage from DB (ie, against a single target) an ideal chain would add +10 base damage and lengthen the cripple effect from 18 to 19 seconds.
- increasing crit prob from 28.6% to 30% (sauce: wiki)
- increase double strike prob from 24% to 26% (sauce: wiki)

It does not, however, increase the duration of Temple Strike's effects. Nor should the double strike bonus be relevant if I could help it (since it doesn't apply on dagger Skills). The increased crit prob, however, is very attractive - especially combined with the high CS rating.

But again I must ask: is it worth the loss of -35HP?

You can still run 8 Shadow Arts with 12 DM and 13 CS. If that's not enough, just try using the major rune. I assume that's what you mean, as a superior will set you back 75hp.

People have different preferences on these things. If you miss the HP, switch back. Pretty simple.

I figured; if I'm gonna go down this road I might as well do it right. I swapped my minor DM for a major one (indeed that's what I meant) and cut SA down to 8 - so I now have CS 13, DM 13, and SA 8. The main reasons for going overboard on DM (even sacrificing 35HP for it) are of course the increased damage potential, but also because 13's a threshhold for Temple Strike (9 sec effects).

wielding Darkroot's Daggers (zealous, +30hp, +15%/enchanted)

[skill]Sharpen Daggers[/skill][skill]Leaping Mantis Sting[/skill][skill]Temple Strike[/skill][skill]Death Blossom[/skill][skill]Golden Phoenix Strike[/skill][skill]Shadow Refuge[/skill][skill]Shadow of Haste[/skill][skill]Dash[/skill]

First runs have seen me use SoH far more judiciously and breaking from combat earlier than is absolutely necessary; it'll be some time before I get to grips with the increased fragility.

Attacking power is tremendous though! If I can get the jump on an isolated enemy, I can now usually kill him (though, as I said, I sometimes lack the guts to push through). It's strange, but I consider the build to consist of 2 small chains:

LMS-TS-DB
and
Shadow Refuge-GPS-DB

Haven't been able to secure those Chakrams yet. What's the going rate for them?

Thx again so far for all of your comments, it's really been helping!

Everthorn's Chakrams?

I've got a pair that I'll sell to you cheap if you like (my assassin already has Zealous Steel Daggers of Fortitude that look much nicer).
The only additional cost is that you'll need to track me down in game.

By the way... I happened to get them by pure fluke while I was going to farm Jayne Forestlight with my necro and got lost.