[0.10.0] Low-Life/Pain Attunement Caster Shadow

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bbblame wrote:

I feel like I just must be doing something really wrong but this build feels incredibly squishy early on. Maybe it's the Shadow in general however, I've died more times in 16 levels over the past 2 days than I have in 2days played on my witch :| Any tips or advise? because honestly Minions are extremely week this early on and being so far away from the summoner nodes seems like I'm in for another 10+ levels of torture.

let me have a look at your gear and the spells u use :) i have a hunch the problem may lie with ur gear. get gear that is armour based and stack HP for now as the shadow needs those to survive early on. and its true that the minions are weak early on but as you level up the gem they get stronger so you won't have to worry about it.

also, try this tactic. when u use Freezing pulse on mobs, cast once, walk backwards, cast another time, walk backwards again so on so forth so they can't reach u as they're chilled/frozen. when eventually they do reach u, do this. cast freezing pulse, then use whirling blades and whirl through the mob. Don't use wands. daggers are best coz of the implicit crit chance mods.

hope that helps! do let me know if it did or didn't :)

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get gear that is armour based and stack HP for now as the shadow needs those to survive early on.

This is probably it; After posting the question I did some thinking and this was the obvious solution I came to. I'm going to give this a shot right now.

Thanks for answering!

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bbblame wrote:

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get gear that is armour based and stack HP for now as the shadow needs those to survive early on.

This is probably it; After posting the question I did some thinking and this was the obvious solution I came to. I'm going to give this a shot right now.

Thanks for answering!

yw! i used this build during last weekend's 3 hour HC race and soloed with it and got to level 20 by the end of the 3 hrs, 5th best shadow (hehe im being a show-off i know) so i think it's definitely viable. good luck mate! and keep us updated :)

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I dont really understand how u calculate the converted dmg in your 100 freezing pulse example.

where do u get that 147% from?

nice to know u've been reading and trying to understand the mechanics! yes 147% was from the previous build when I took the 3x5% spell damage nodes above the Lord of the Dead node. I have refined my build however to fit in the 3x6% projectile damage which deals a higher amt of damage as compared to the previous build but haven't updated that section of the mechanics yet. thanks for reminding me! :)

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Invalesco wrote:

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I dont really understand how u calculate the converted dmg in your 100 freezing pulse example.

where do u get that 147% from?

nice to know u've been reading and trying to understand the mechanics! yes 147% was from the previous build when I took the 3x5% spell damage nodes above the Lord of the Dead node. I have refined my build however to fit in the 3x6% projectile damage which deals a higher amt of damage as compared to the previous build but haven't updated that section of the mechanics yet. thanks for reminding me! :)

Okay so basicly what i do, is take all improvements to dmg, ea Spell Dmg, Projectile dmg etc EXCLUDING fire dmg (Lets say 150% without Fire, and 200% with fire dmg), and my base is 100,
then 60 dmg of 100 would be x 150%, so thats 90 DMG,
then 40 dmg would be calculated as 200 dmg, so the total dmg would then be 290. Is this assumption correct?

And how come one would assume the higher lvl the gem is, the more ice dmg gets converted to fire (is more total dmg?!).
I dont understand why it would end up as more dmg when u level up the gem. But perhaps im not looking/reading good enough, i dont know lol.

yes that assumption is correct.

also, u made a small mistake in ur calculation. 40 dmg would be calculated as 80 dmg, leading to a total dmg of 90 + 80 = 170

well as u said, u have 150% w/o fire, and 200% with fire. as u level up the gem, more cold damage is converted to fire damage. let's say u leveled it to a 60% conversion rate.

so out of the 100 base dmg, 40 (cold dmg) would be x 150% = 60 damage.

60 (fire dmg) would be x 200% = 120 dmg.

120 + 60 = 180 dmg which is an increase in the previous damage. this amt might not seem that much for now, but as you level and u get more spell dmg/fire/cold dmg/cast speed bonuses via items and FP gets levelled, it'll rise significantly

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Thank you very much for explaining.
I figured it out a bit myself as well after reading the topic of the Cold to Fire dmg support gem.

Still, thanks alot for taking the time to explain it.
I agree Coldfire critshadow is way to go with pulse.
This stuff is made to synergize like crazy together ;-)
The build i i have in mind is:

Ci Cold/fire Critpulse build

(This was before reading this topic in the first place).
Also, i figured these gems for future reference:

(2)Cold To Fire (Strength Gem) - Support
(3)Faster Projectiles (Dex Gem) - Support
(4)Multiple Projectiles (Dex Gem) - Support
(5)Faster Cast (INT Gem) - Support
(6) ????

For 6 im not sure yet. Crit Multiplier seems interesting, but is it worth it? What about IGNITE on hit or perhaps other stuff?

np ur welcome :) ur build is fine elementally offensively
but ur lacking defensively + u might find it difficult against elemental resistant mobs + bosses. personally i prefer the lord of the dead buff coz it's along the way from increased mana% and gives my minions a boost so they can tank longer for me, and whack down elemental resistant bosses quicker.

gem-wise i used to use faster projectiles as well, but with a quality freezing pulse, i think that's optional. in replacement of that, I would rather go for added lightning damage. (nothing like shocking your opponents to deal even more damage)

chance to ignite isn't necessary as you will already ignite mobs when you crit them. for the last blue option I would personally go for either increased crit chance or crit damage multiplier, although personally I feel that crit damage multiplier will be more useful as ur crit chance is already high enough as it is and u will already be crit-ting often. and since freeze and burning can't stack, no point crit-ing mobs more often. might as well just kill them outright quicker, so i would go for crit damage multiplier

Hey there,

being a shadow player myself I read your guides both for caster and melee shadow.
Recently I started a build similar to yours mentioned in the OP (I did not know about the cold-to-fire support at that time so I based it mainly on cold damage).
And I eventually came to the point where I wondered whether to take wand or dagger (some +% spell damage versus lots of +% critical chance). Even though I thought the dagger would clearly outclass the wand I did some damage calculations with it.

Now the surprise: In almost any scenario the worst wand (+8% spell damage) outdamages the standard dagger (+40% critical chance). Sometimes even the high-crit daggers with +80%.
And wands with the highest modifier (+20% spell damage) are basically always the weapon of choice when it comes to raw dps-increase. (The 80%-dagger only starts to shine once you reach +250% or more(!) crit damage increase - this is pushed further if you also add more sources of +x% critical chance)

I calculated this all based on an (imaginary) spell base damage of 100, base critical of 6% and base critical damage of 150%. Then I separately increased first base damage, then +% critical chance from other sources and finally +% critical damage and compared the average damage with +8%/+20% wand and +40%/+80% dagger to each other.
I can provide tables and/or graphs if someone is interested.

Of course my calculations do neither account for additional benefits of chosing one or the other weapon (ranged normal attack vs. possibility to use whirling blades!) nor do they include any thoughts on secondary effects of a high critical chance (freeze/burn/shock) but do only look at raw damage increase. So if that is what you're looking for, please equip a +20% wand and a +15% shield... :)