I Cast Magic Missile! - Cantrip's guide to Ethereal Knives 2.0

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CantripN wrote:

@RXXQ - Glad you're also happy with Acro! Now, get Life on Gear. You have some really sweet pieces, but no Life on so much of it. You can probably double your Life pool with getting 70+ Life per piece on all your gear.

Yeah I've thought about that, mostly because with the tree change on acrobatics I went from 3.8k hp to 3.3k but it's ok since I barely get hit, I actually just survived a Zana map with full pty and elemental weakness vs the storm call exile, it was good! haha

Also I mistakenly bought this pendant from Catarina, thinking I could use it for a chaos recipe, but ended up being rather awesome:



With the craft I managed to replace my Atziri's Foible with it and now I can still run lvl 19 AA and my DPS went from 15.6k to 17.8k!

Hi guys! questions time:

1.- About replacing Geofri's Crest with Alpha's Howl AND Belly with Tabula.
Would this be a good idea? I know I'd lose a lot of the hp plus no more fast flask refilling. But I'd be able to modify my tree and get about 12 passive points back to improve my health back plus other things, not to mention with Acrobatics, stats on armor are kind of useless, no?

Also at lvl 85 I've been sitting on only 3.3k hp and I've died only once in the last 3 levels (and it was because I was being an idiot and yeah I NEED hp on my equips).


2.- Anyone done Atziri with this build? is it even possible at all?


3.- All gems at 0%, all about half-way to 20. Any I should turn into 20% and re-level? and which ones should I just keep at lvl 20?

1:

Belly / Lightning Coil + Geofri's / Alpha's = Viable.
Tabula = Great DPS, but you'll be dying a LOT more. I get the temptation, especially for a +1 to Gems one, but it's borderline suicidal.

One thing to consider, is that the DPS from a 6L vs 4L GC is not a HUGE difference, and the loss to HP and resists is much larger. Try it, you may like it, but it's not my thing, giving up defence for offense.

2:
Done Atziri last league with a build like this (had MoM + Lightning Coil + IR, though), it wasn't easy, but it's doable. Not enough DPS to do it easily (you need a LOT), but it's doable.

3:
Faster Casting for sure, the rest either use GCPs on, or just leave at 20.

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In other news, I switched from Added Fire 19/20 to Empower 2, and the DPS is almost the same (lost 300 DPS), but more Physical vs. Elemental. Worth it.

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RXXQ wrote:

1.- About replacing Geofri's Crest with Alpha's Howl AND Belly with Tabula.
Would this be a good idea?

As Cantrip said, this would be suicide. It's hard to get your life up with this build (as I think you've noticed), so you really need a chest that's going to help your defenses. Belly of the Beast, if you can run it with Acrobatics, is probably your best bet. Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance work too (although Cloak is REALLY hard to use with Acrobatics).

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with Acrobatics, stats on armor are kind of useless, no?

On the contrary, it's a good idea to have lots of evasion on your gear to increase your chances of evading attacks.

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All gems at 0%, all about half-way to 20. Any I should turn into 20% and re-level? and which ones should I just keep at lvl 20?

All the gems! I kid, sort of. The important ones are EK (start leveling a second EK so you can get quality on it), Faster Casting, and Life Leech (if you use it). Faster Projectiles and Added Fire Damage are nice too. And Spell Echo, but I didn't notice a huge difference with that. Arctic Armour is good for the movement speed.

TY for the replies.

So, just wondering, would it be a good idea to swap the Crest for Alpha's Howl? and modify my build like Tempada's?

Would I suffer too much dps loss because of all gems going to -1 lvl? but would Alpha's make up for it? plus the other dps passives?

Also random idea:
Doedre's Damning with Curse on Hit + Elemental Weakness + Warlord's Mark?
Wouldn't that basically improve your DPS by 30% (at lvl20) and give you 6.9% life leech (at lvl 20) without wasting time on casting?

Thus taking damage and survivability to another level?

You can *maybe* swap the Crest for an Alpha once you get a 5L chest. Before, that's just silly.
As for the tree, feel free to try - I don't think it's better, but it's not a huge difference.

Giving up one ring (lose quite a bit of life/res/mana regen), and taking the time to apply curses manually, ends up slowing you down. I just use CwDT with Warlord's Mark (so I have Leech when I take damage) and Projectile Weakness self-cast.

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CantripN wrote:

Giving up one ring (lose quite a bit of life/res/mana regen), and taking the time to apply curses manually, ends up slowing you down. I just use CwDT with Warlord's Mark (so I have Leech when I take damage) and Projectile Weakness self-cast.

Right nvm, I thought Curses would work as we used EK, not that we needed to link EK to it <_<;;

So, would this be the best plan to improve passives without losing dps:

Geofri's Crest + 4 Link Belly turned into: Alpha's Howl + 5 Link Belly with Empower lvl 2?

Also, how do we feel about Pledge of Hands? yes? no?

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RXXQ wrote:

So, would this be the best plan to improve passives without losing dps:

Geofri's Crest + 4 Link Belly turned into: Alpha's Howl + 5 Link Belly with Empower lvl 2?

Also, how do we feel about Pledge of Hands? yes? no?

You can try it if you want. I'm not sure it's really that much better overall, but certainly more expensive in mana and currency. As for Pledge of Hands, if you have one, sure, but otherwise don't bother getting one.

I think that's my only "concern" with this build. It's so fucking good with the cheapest things you can buy or even find, that improving it takes a bit of cash and the improvement is so minimal because the build doesn't really need any fancy crap haha.

Anyway, my gems are finally hitting 20, dps went off the roof at 22k dps. I didn't level any to use if I wanted to 20% them all. I'll prob do it soon anyway, it'll mean that I get more dps eventually right?