Help needed on Phaseblade-sin

[Rane-]

Ok, I'm really bored and I am now insisting on making an Assassin that uses a Phaseblade to attack (ie, not a kicker/trapper holding a phaseblade.) That's the only restriction. Now I need help trying to make it viable in hell. So far I was thinking along the lines of the following skills;

20 BoS
20 Fade
20 Venom
20 Shadow Master
20 ...?

Gear-wise money is no object, so was thinking;

CoA (Poison Facet,Poison Facet)
Mara's
BotD Phaseblade
CoH Archon
- No idea on shield, dr not needed, max block and res' wanted... -
Ravenfrost
Ravenfrost
Trang Gloves
Verdungoes
Gorerider

I'm also thinking of using an act 2 Might merc, perhasp Holy Freeze, but I really need the damage boost. Any help at all is appreciated, other than 'make a trapper, noob.'

[Rane-]

Upon sleeping on it, perhaps the better idea would be to take the approach of a Frost Zealot, that is instead of raw damage aim for ~1.5k dmg attack coupled with HIGH Open Wounds and Crushing Blow?

So perhaps armour could be Duress? Gloves Dracs/Steelrends? Maybe Kingslayer/Fury/CresentMoon Phaseblade would do better than BotD...? I think it could be quite hard to make a viable 'Tanker' Sin whilst maintaining high OW+CB, but perhaps... what shield is really useful here? Maybe just UmUm Mossers Circle?

EDIT: Guillaume's Face of course ;)

EDIT AGAIN: Perhaps it MAY be even worth using a Passion Phaseblade for zeal? If I am able to attain a very high OW+CB then perhaps attacking twice as fast could be worth the damage trade off?

Also I'm beginning to worry about AR...

[Woahhhahhh]

i hjave a 6 socketed phase blade in case you need. account woahhhahhh

[pryzmatik2]

about your shield, sanctuary troll nest // tower shield can treat you handsomely. well atleast this is what i prefer for all of my builds.

[ilkori]

Eh, I suppose you could get just about anything to work, really. Personally I wouldn't try the build with anything but a kicker, but that's just me.

[theBlackKnight]

Tigerstrike can be done with weapons right? Charge it up with tiger strike and release with a dragon tail.

[Rane-]

I may use Tiger Strike and use normal attack to release the charge, but I really wanna stray from being a kicker. Looking at the amount of Crushing Blow and Open Wounds I can achieve this build is suddenly looking a LOT better. I think I will defininatly use a Sanctury Tower Shield (thanks pryzmatik2 ;), I forgot all about that,) as it grants large res and block allowing me to dedicate my other gear to OW+CB. So far my only worry is AR. My main problem is what runeword to use in the Phaseblade.

What do you guys think is the best for the character out of;
- Passion
Zeal. It's all about zeal. With HIGH OW+CB, how good is zeal? The damage isn't TOO bad, but it will definatly need to be all about the CB+OW, unfortunatly the sword itself grants neither. It does grant a bit of an AR bonus, but that's it. So how much is zeal worth?

- Kingslayer
Acceptable damage, 'Eth' effect on top of a 20% AR bonus PLUS a decent bit more damage and AR from Vengeance. Don't forget to throw in 33% CB, 50& OW, and Prevent Monster Heal, saving me getting it elsewhere. This is so far probably my favourite. Is the damage enough though when compared to BotD?

- Cresent Moon
This thing is probably the most slept on weapon in the game outside of Tesladins. Even if you take no advantage of the Lightning damage, then its still rocks. Granting ITD to saolve that AR problem, then also 25% OW, and most importantly the 7% chance to cast static field on striking. If I can get high OW+CB+SF then that's very very good. The only worry is the damage, at Passion-range. Is it enough to deal with the last 1/4 of monsters hp along with OW and Venom?

- BotD
Top damage. Has the 'Eth' effect to help AR. Has Prevent Monster Heal. Big problem is it doesn't grant any OW/CB/SF. If I can get enough elsewhere I guess this would be good, but it's pretty hard to get 95% OW AND CB without some off the weapon.

As for the other gear it will all depend on the the weapon chosen. The gear looks like this;

Guillaume's Face (Um/Ber)
Highlords/Cat's Eye/Atma's/Angelic
Duress
Sanctuary Tower Shield
Ravenfrost/Angelic/Natures Peace
Ravenfrost/Angelic
Blood Gloves/Draculs
Blood Belt/Verdungoes
Gore Rider/Goblin Toe

So yeh, if I could get some advice on the weapon, it would help greatly :D.