[3.28] Help me step-exile, I'm stuck

Hello everyone, so..

I got this char called MiauHami for kingsmarch league, went pretty well, casual caustic arrow build, about to finish uber elder and t17 maps.. then life happened.

After a few months 3.28 came, and I tried to do something similar but different: Shadow with Cobra Lash build (char: Báttya), stacking poison, perfect agony. But I am stuck as .. those girls on the videos. And I really need a step exile to help me out :') Where shall I change and what? What about my gear? Rare items (beside the rings and amulet) feel pretty maxed out.

I am dying. I do not melt anything around t9. I feel sh1t. Please help me out where to go. (Mana also a problem, but trying to manage)

edit:

Now I have equipped two claws, but in the off-hand I usually go with an evasion shield with some atk speed, fire and chaos resist, etc.

Hi, try Mamba Assassin. If you can farm maps, farm a stacked deck on the Divination Scarabs of the Cloister. Farmed like 15-20 Div and spec on Mamba.

Cobra Lash got 2 indirect nerfs.

1st from the Follow-Through medium cluster notable, used to give inc damage per remaining chain, with no cap, this meant we could stack a bunch of medium clusters with Follow-Through and get a ton of inc damage. With the introduction of the 100% inc damage cap, only 1 is useful (still worth getting 1).

2nd from the removal of Awakened support gems, Cobra Lash benefited a lot from Awakened support gems.

Still, there are some changes you could make to improve.

Remove Infused Toxins, you have 0 elemental dmg, so Infused Toxins is doing nothing. Aim for Assassination Style and Opportunistic.

In Assassination Style, you can use either passive and get the other through Forbidden Flame/Flesh. So, For The Jugular on the tree, and Forbidden Flame/Flesh to get Knife in The Back (or vice versa, whatever Forbidden is cheaper). This will give you 100% more crit chance/+100% crit multi regardless if mobs are Not in Low Life or in Low Life, so you can also remove Unstable Infusion and put Opportunistic instead.

Put Hits cannot be Evaded (crafting bench) in your claws, so you don't have to worry about accuracy. With this change you can move whatever accuracy points you have on the tree to something else (aspd, crit chance, crit multi, whatever).

12p inc dmg with Hits and Ailments Cluster Jewels, it'll be a good source of damage.

Wither sources, Withered stacks help A LOT, Withering Step for bosses (I'd remove the stuff you have on Boots and put Withering Step+Empowered+Enhanced+More Duration), or you can do Wither+Spell Totem combo. Withering Touch (gem) or Eternal Suffering (Inc Chaos DoT medium cluster jewel notable) for mapping, I'd go for Eternal Suffering since, like I wrote previously, Cobra Lash depends a lot on Support Gems for damage (Eternal Suffering gives 50% chance to apply Wither stacks on hit if mob has less than 5 stacks, 2x Eternal Suffering stack, which guarantee wither stack on hit).

REMINDER: When using Perfect Agony, the only MULTIPLIER that'll benefit you is Crit Multiplier (you have some DoT multiplier passives allocated in your poison mastery (Where Fatal Toxins is), those points are being wasted).

Invest in Curses, Despair for dmg taken, temporal chains for poison duration.

For Mana, non channeling skills have -x to total mana cost on ring and/or amulet. You can also get it on Armor (Warlord Influence) Socketed Attacks have -15 to Total Mana Cost.

You might want to change the build from Life to Ward, it'll benefit a lot from Nightgrip's, take a look at PoE Ninja and see what most are doing https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/mirage/?class=Assassin&skills=Cobra+Lash