Ethereal Knives Low-HP High DPS build - Easy to Understand for New Players!(In-Depth)(VIDEO)(Fun SC)

Hi! My name is Jack and I run a youtube channel/website dedicated to helping gamers become more fit/healthy/confident.

I am not your typical forum spammy guy pushing his own content. My intent is to build the best and most useful guides and will only share the most relevant content with you here!

With that said let's get into this build :D

Description

Looking for a high AOE DPS build for your shadow? This Ethereal Knives shadow uses a combination of unique items and support gems to turn himself into a low-life killing machine. You’ll find yourself screaming “GET OVER HERE” as you eviscerate enemies with your fan of throwing knives. This build was submitted by “Dr. Bubbles” and is the first build featured in the Battle of the Builds contest.

Rather watch a video? Want to see the build in action? This entire guide is summed up in video format here!

Theorycrafting the Shadow Ethereal Knives Build

Ethereal Knives is a spell skill, thus it is unaffected by the wrath and anger auras which greatly increase the damage of attack skills. And since Ethereal Knives deals its damage as physical damage it is also unaffected by +elemental damage passives.

Therefore in order to optimize the damage of the build we will pick up the pain attunement keystone passive. Pain attunement is a keystone that increases your spell damage by 30% when you are low on life. The low life condition is applied to your character whenever your hitpoint drops below 35%.

In addition to pain attunement the unique sword Redbeak is vital to increasing the damage output of this Shadow. By keeping our life below 35% we gain the 100% increased damage bonus from Redbeak. 100%! Yeah, that makes my man parts tingle.


The unique chain coif Honourhome also has great bonuses when you are low on life. This helm will give your character +40% to all elemental resists and a -20% mana cost on all spells while low on life(except for auras).

Another useful unique are Wondertrap boots. These boots grant +100% item quality while you are low on life, and since this build calls for you being low on life 24/7 you will get +100% item quality from ONE item. Amazing. These boots should be used while farming and swapped out for boots with high energy shield when facing more difficult encounters.

And finally we will use Hrimsorrow gloves. These gloves convert 25% of physical damage to cold damage. Because the build has a 20% crit chance and attacks very fast this allows you to freeze enemies often, greatly reducing the amount of incoming damage that you and your party takes.

Using all of these unique items does reduce the build’s survivability because you are losing a high amount of energy shield. Wearing rares with high + energy shield would make the build much more defensive thus you should keep an eye out for these types of items as you level.

Congratulations, You're a Low Life!

To achieve the “low life” status your HP must fall below 35%. This is achieved through running the aura hatred with the support gem blood magic leveled up to level 11. Using blood magic on hatred increases the mana reserved to 65%, and that blood magic support gem then changes the mana reserved into health reserved, thus putting you below 35% hp at all times, letting you receive the benefit of all of these “low life” bonuses from skills and items.

Skills and Support Gems

Bear Trap – High single target DPS and also causes immobilization. At level 55 Dr. Bubbles does 6,300 DPS with his Bear Trap. This skill is unsupported with any gems.
- from user Soulscourge

Ethereal Knives – AOE fan of knives. Socketed in a 5 link with support gems: increased critical strikes, increased critical damage, faster casting, and faster projectiles. Dr. Bubbles has tried experimenting with Chain on Ethereal Knives but found that mana costs too prohibitive especially since Ethereal Knives already has ten projectiles by default.

- from user Soulscourge

Hatred - with the support gem blood magic leveled up to level 11(level blood magic to 11) - If someone could link Hatred here that'd be great, I can't find a link anywhere.

Haste – increases your attack speed, cast speed, and movement speed. Fantastic for farming. Support gem information to come.

Equipment

We’ve already touched on many of the equipment that really make this build effective. This would make a really good twink character as the uniques all have low level requirements, especially since you can get the Redbeak sword with 15 points by participating in the hardcore race events.

Focus on energy shield as your primary defensive stat. +Life is useless for this shadow. Build up your resists- especially chaos resist because your health pool is so low and energy shield does not stop chaos damage. Look for increased cast speed on items as well to increase your DPS.

For farming wear gear that gives +item rarity and +item quantity. Dr. Bubbles says he is farming The Ledge with this loadout until level 70.

The Build

Link to the build – Updates to this will come as I get them from Dr. Bubbles

Plan to pick up energy shield and crit chance as you level beyond these points.

I'll get Dr. Bubbles in here to answer your questions. We welcome any modifications/suggestions/changes, just post them in this thread please and I will update the OP accordingly.

Link to essentially the same writeup on my website.

I hope you enjoyed the first installment of the Battle of the Builds. If you enjoy this kind of content be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel, I'll be putting out one of these every three to five days until the world ends :D

The first question I have as a new player...

How would one go about leveling a character like this up?

What level does this become effective? etc etc

Bear trap should be support with added fire and culling strike

Etheral Knives has way better 5L combinations

"

twapper wrote:

Bear trap should be support with added fire and culling strike

Etheral Knives has way better 5L combinations

What would you recommend supporting Ethereal Knives with then?

Apart from stating the obvious that you will one shot yourself with this build on even the lowest reflect mobs, EK links with added fire, faster casting, iron will as a base 4links and then projectile speed or chain or fork with more. Life leech is a good choice too.

I have a 5L , and I run whats linked. I also have enough mana to support Purity/Hatred/Clarity/Discipline. EK does 850 DPS at lvl 47, and only going to go up more as Fork and Iron Will level up to reduce their negatives. I have a chain that Im leveling but dont think its going to be worth it til a bit later.

Oh and also,

for bear trap. 3905 dps at the moment. Changing to

later.

Great post Jack, lots of effort.

Interesting build too, I'm a fan of low life builds as it is but I like how this one works it into an EK build. It might have some serious issues in HC but could be great fun in SC!

"

Soulscourge wrote:

I have a 5L , and I run whats linked. I also have enough mana to support Purity/Hatred/Clarity/Discipline. EK does 850 DPS at lvl 47, and only going to go up more as Fork and Iron Will level up to reduce their negatives. I have a chain that Im leveling but dont think its going to be worth it til a bit later.

Oh and also,

for bear trap. 3905 dps at the moment. Changing to

later.

Good stuff, threw those in the OP.

what do you use on the offhand? does dual rusted sword work?

"

Blisdon wrote:

what do you use on the offhand? does dual rusted sword work?

I was curious of that too, but I know you can use a E-shield for ES, or a Kite Shield for resists would be good for HC/Cruel-Merc.

I am trying to save up (plus get other items to cover the lack of defensive stats) for a 4-5l Quill Rain with 100% Proj Speed and a Broadstroke with 30% Stun on it. Because that sounds epic.


Edit: The dps numbers in my previous post is -not- following a low-life build, so factor that how you will, with a Redbeak or something. add 100% damage to those.