Suggestions on skill points for bosses?

[dontknow]

Using an Immobilizer build (Blades of Ice/Dragon Talon) and need suggestions on what would be the best balance of skills for bosses. Planning to max:

Blades of Ice
Dragon Tail
Phoenix Strike

Undecided on:

Tiger Strike
Dragon Talon
Dragon Claw
Claw Mastery
Claws of Thunder

The build is pretty fun and aoe damage is nice, but kind of lacking vs bosses. Obviously I need a good single target dps skill setup, but what would my best options be? No PvP is going to be done on this char, it will be my PvE char for things like MFing/rushing and need this to be all around good build for generally everything in Hell.

I've read many of the guides but still have some unanswered questions. Haven't played in a long time (quit back in 1.09 and went into an mmorpg streak) so my previous accounts are dead due to inactivity, that's why this new first character is mostly being made for PvE to gear up/support my other characters.

How does Dragon Talon compare to Dragon Claw in terms of single target DPS? Almost every guide recommends Talon for bosses, has this been researched and proven to be better? There's been lots of changes to skills and additions of synergy etc. Is Tiger Strike worth maxing, some people say it does increasingly more +% dmg past level 20? Is Claws of Thunder necessary to max, or are there not enough Fire + Cold immunes in Hell to warrant it? What about Claw Mastery, does it make Dragon Claw do higher dps when both are maxed, as opposed to Dragon Talon?

Hoping someone will answer these questions eventually. For now I'll probably keep ~10-20 skill points unspent after maxing my core skills until I'm sure to know what I'm doing.

Edit: a few more questions... does Tiger Strike apply to all hits from Dragon Talon, when released? Or only the first hit? Same for Dragon Claw; does it apply to both hits, or only main hand?

[Kalkanor]

tiger strike is only applied to first hit

[dontknow]

tiger strike is only applied to first hit

Thanks.

I've done some testing and found the answers to most of my questions. Strangely, Dragon Tail is the best to use for single target DPS. Dragon Talon, even at lvl 32, doesn't do nearly as much when charged up with Tiger Strike, but without charges and if all the hits actually connect, it does a little bit more over time. But Talon is just too buggy/desyncs too much and often plays the animation but doesn't hit, then you have to wait a bit for the full animation sequence to end before trying again and hoping for it to work properly. Tail also does this but it seems to be less often, and you can retry it much faster since it's one hit (albeit a little slower than the initial 1st Talon hit, but not nearly as slow as its full animation) so you're losing a lot less dps.

But all that is without any charges. It's much more effective to charge TS x3 for bosses, and that's where Dragon Tail really destroys Dragon Talon by a huge margin. Mostly because it's the only skill with multiplicative damage from TS in a huge damage single hit, while Talon is additive and TS only applies to its first hit. It's pretty easy to reach 7 fpa with BoS and only 20% ias on gear, so the way many people just spam dragon talon on bosses makes no sense to me. It's to proc crushing blow faster, but then again when I compared both with that factor, it still wasn't nearly as much dps as 3x TS - Tail combo.

Dragon Claw with max Claw Mastery does a little less dmg than Talon when both hit every time, but that isn't often. Claw hits more reliably and Talon desyncs too much so it's hard to tell which is better. But anyway Tail beats both by far. The only thing I need to decide now is between maxing Claws of Thunder or Tiger Strike.

[BAMFSpecialOps]

Dtalon are used for boss killing when you have 50%+ CB and high damage boots. This way you attack one target with 3-5 or so kicks applying CB the whole time to take huge chucks of life away. Dtail is nice for the AoE damage but it will start to fall flat when you enter hell with all of the fire immunes/high fire resist on almost ever monster you run across. When you have Tiger Strike charged up it will only apply to the first kick, if you connect. Dtalon like Fury/Zeal has a bug where if you miss the first hit(or kick in this case) than you will miss the following hits/kicks of that series. If your missing a lot with Dtalon, then it's usually 1 of 2 things going wrong, you have too low AR, or your weapon has a smaller range than your trying to kick with.

[dontknow]

Dtalon are used for boss killing when you have 50%+ CB and high damage boots. This way you attack one target with 3-5 or so kicks applying CB the whole time to take huge chucks of life away. Dtail is nice for the AoE damage but it will start to fall flat when you enter hell with all of the fire immunes/high fire resist on almost ever monster you run across. When you have Tiger Strike charged up it will only apply to the first kick, if you connect. Dtalon like Fury/Zeal has a bug where if you miss the first hit(or kick in this case) than you will miss the following hits/kicks of that series. If your missing a lot with Dtalon, then it's usually 1 of 2 things going wrong, you have too low AR, or your weapon has a smaller range than your trying to kick with.

Yes, that bug with the first hit missing making all the rest miss has been there since the game came out. It affects all multi-hit melee skills. I recently came back into D2, after quitting back in 1.09 ... and they still haven't fixed this bug.

About DTail becoming less useful in Hell... tried it out and doesn't seem to suffer much. On fire immunes it still does the initial physical damage (which is where the multiplier from TS goes... and then that's where the fire aoe dmg is calculated out of) and does the aoe knockback, while also doing whatever you charged up (Blades of Ice or Claws of Thunder etc). Releasing Dtalon instead does less to that one target, and doesn't do the aoe knockback. But for bosses, the ubers especially I can see how Talon procing crushing blow more often would be better. Need to do more extensive testing on that. I have only compared these skills on the non-uber bosses, and in single player Hell, so the results probably weren't as accurate since they died too fast.