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

I can't say MoM is easy to use, no. You need quite a bit of Damage Reduction as well as Mana / Mana Regen. But, once you have enough of those, it helps a lot. :)

One of the nicer tricks is making a mana potion with +100% Armor while it's working and 15-20 Sec Duration - think of your mana potion as an additional Life Potion, because it is.

As for needing amazing gear, nah. You can see my gear - some of it's nice, but for an EB build, I have shitty gear. You can do a lot better fairly easily, especially if you don't look for high MF - there's the head/boots/gloves, and my shield has lowish ES. And with that gear, I still run maxed level AA, with no problem.

I was starting this up with full intentions of going EK playing on Dom, but decided instead that I was enjoying ST a bit too much, I'm not sure if I'll change my mind again and decide EK is a bit more fun later on, perhaps when I can get Faster Casting back on it or so (was using a Tabula, and just transitioned out of it until decent 4L)

My attempt at an ST version

I'd probably use 2hs or dagger and shield. Honestly I know I can get more dps out of another build, but I really enjoy how with your base build I was able to get nice dps so far (on both skills) while having great mana regen and auras. I haven't had a problem with reflect yet just using a carnage heart on my ST either. I'm currently level 57 just farming ledge, and both are fun, but ST seems to be a lot more fun and fast for the leveling, EK seems much stronger on the bosses I fight though.


Also, congrats on your 5L!

I decided to try MoM afterall. I've got about 7700 armor now and enough mana regen for lvl13 AA. But not quite enough mana to support MoM well. After 3 auras I'm left with about 180mana or something (-20 soon when I get clarity lvl17). Not really enough :(.

But I'll keep on trying it, I've bumped to the problem as well that my mana gets sucked dry very easy and then I cant cast = no lifeleech. But mostly I will be duoing so I shouldnt have to tank everything anyway.

Meanwhile I'm digging the Lightning Coil :). I tried going for 6 sockets and then spending my few fusings on it but I ran out of jewelrys while trying to get the 6s. Ended up going for the 5s and managed to link it :D.


DPS is now 3900. I feel like I have decent survivability (although could use more HP, got just about 2300). DPS feels fine alone or duo, but honestly in a group of 3+ it starts feeling that I'm not doing much dmg at all :P

Glad ST is working out for you. Since EK doesn't take all that many damage nodes, and Scion is so flexible, it is quite easy to switch with only a few Regrets. Which makes leveling with one or the other easy.

---

Lolpy, I'd like to talk to you more about MoM. I'd assume that with your armor and the coil, you'd be ok with MoM, but maybe the pool is too low? I'd aim for 300+, at the LEAST. Talk to me ingame, I wanna see what we can figure out - MoM isn't for everyone, but it should be usable with half-decent gear. As for Life, you'll get more with better gear and more nodes, so that's fine - you're still tankier than a 4000 ES character.

I'm beginning to suspect the Cloak of Defiance would make MoM far more viable, but at the same, I really like the Lightning Coil. If anyone wants to test out a 5L CoD vs. Coil, I'd appreciate it. And I can't stress strongly enough how much that ammy helps until you have good gear.

---

Not sure yet if I wanna go get another Aura or 2 by going into Templar right now. Sure, it can be a lot of stuff, but all that lost Life... Starting to feel that by running a million auras, I'm gimping myself in party-play, since lots of people run the same stuff. Level 85, I'll probably retrain to that.

Nemesis viable?

"

katjezz wrote:

Nemesis viable?

Yes, very, but I'd get more Life Nodes early on, maybe. Same build, but level in a slightly different order. I died the first time on Cruel Dominus, and I did that underleveled, undergeared and solo.

This build is VERY tanky.

"

Lolpy wrote:

I decided to try MoM afterall. I've got about 7700 armor now and enough mana regen for lvl13 AA. But not quite enough mana to support MoM well. After 3 auras I'm left with about 180mana or something (-20 soon when I get clarity lvl17). Not really enough :(.

But I'll keep on trying it, I've bumped to the problem as well that my mana gets sucked dry very easy and then I cant cast = no lifeleech. But mostly I will be duoing so I shouldnt have to tank everything anyway.

Meanwhile I'm digging the Lightning Coil :). I tried going for 6 sockets and then spending my few fusings on it but I ran out of jewelrys while trying to get the 6s. Ended up going for the 5s and managed to link it :D.

DPS is now 3900. I feel like I have decent survivability (although could use more HP, got just about 2300). DPS feels fine alone or duo, but honestly in a group of 3+ it starts feeling that I'm not doing much dmg at all :P

That's the issue with trying to run a lot of auras and MoM (and why I was alluding to the two builds being different a few pages back). 180 mana is no where near a big enough buffer to make MoM useful. 30% of dmg is applied to mana, so with a 180 pool, that means your mana will be sucked dry at 600 dmg. Might as well just get another life node with that skill point.

Without play testing, I would guess you should have around 800-1K minimum to get the benefit of MoM. 800 mana will actually give you survivability against big burst damage (drained at 2666 dmg hit) and numerous smaller hits because of the mana regen speed. Of course that means a lot less auras.

But *with* play testing ;D, I can tell you that even 300 is plenty even for 73 maps. If you're talking about 74+ maps, then you'll need more, but it's not like it's useless even if it can't take the full 30%. 180 isn't enough for real hard maps, though, that's true. Lemme remind you that the Coil, along with good armor, makes burst damage smaller by far - mostly the Coil's doing.

One more thing to remember, is that death doesn't have to come to one-shot mechanics - a lot of titty bitches are just as deadly. This helps against that kind FAR more, making you more or less immune to it.

180 is okay for Merciless Act 3, but not for high-end map Rares/Bosses.

Well I just did the first real test with it. Got 190 mana now. Went to lvl66 map map with 18% elemental reflect... Didnt work out too well. I ended up sucking my own mana dry by getting reflect damage from the fire and cold damage that EK does (with added fire and hatred).

I could see it working without reflect. But right there I dont think it would had mattered even if I had 300+ mana. Mana regen is 192/s

I'm still not quite sure if I should go EB MoM or the templar side? I assume the templar side would be less gear dependent? I'm playing nemesis, at 47 now, this is my second character so I don't have much currency at all. Do you think I would be able to support EB MoM once I get to it?