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

I am newbie kinda to this game, played a little during "beta", went ahead and went with this build to start my main and I am liking it a lot. Level 65 and I don't have much trouble so far. I have not done any maps in this game yet but I just had a unique drop
I was wondering if you could give me advice on gear to prepare for map play. I had a exalted orb drop yesterday so I can afford some good gear, I just don't know what would be the smartest use of it-

I know the gloves are awful but haven't had luck finding a pair with 4link colors I need.

Well, you'll need upgrades for most of it, though the boots/rings/ammy are kinda cute, and you DO have a 5L :D

Not sure why you're not using that 5L for EK, however. If you asked me what you need most, I'd say a good Wand + Spell Shield (you really need more Damage/Cast Speed/Crit Chance), but you can get those with a lot less - what I'd do with that Ex is try to buy one of the 5L unique chests I recommended (probably a bit more, but not a LOT more).

In general, you need gear like what you already have, just better (and tbh, if you're careful, you can do maps with that gear). Look at the gear I'm using on the first post, that's more or less what you want (and I still have a lot to improve).

Awesome, thanks for the reply! I guess with the 5L I kind of loathe to lose any IPS.

great guide. do you keep links etc updated on page 1?
thx!

Just curious as I've run into a large problem right now with this, how do you deal with chaos damage when it comes up, do you ignore it? Or should I build resists for it in armor? Cause I'm currently somewhere around -60% ~ -40% and those things hurt, they don't kill me, but they really hurt.

Hmm, nevermind I actually seemed to have figured this out myself and worked around it. Going great with the build so far, here's my current gear that's working out well for me, just switched to EK, but I have a more ST based build which I plan on removing the few things I don't need in order to fix in the next 2 levels:



Loving your guide, just looking to upgrade my gear and keep moving on so I can hopefully do maps soon, as I'm not sure my gear is good enough to do so.

Was considering going for the CoD instead of the Coil, but I already have MoM and I think retraining so many points might not be worth the benefits.

Also was wondering in neither of the builds do I see you grab the 8% projectile damages next to Ballistic Mastery, is it just not worth it compared to getting to other big nodes? they seemed pretty good, but I figure they don't compare to getting 8% life nodes.

could u plz add a 10-20 20-30 30-40 and so on skill tree for us noobs that love this build.

also a bit more deital on what kind of gear we need to get armor/es armor/ev

thanks mate

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dirtydevil87 wrote:

could u plz add a 10-20 20-30 30-40 and so on skill tree for us noobs that love this build.

also a bit more deital on what kind of gear we need to get armor/es armor/ev

thanks mate

Sure, I can do that. But frankly, the order shouldn't be set in stone, it's supposed to be flexible. I'll do it later.

As for gear, if you have +% Evasion nodes, like me, you should get EV/ES as much as possible. EV is just BETTER than Armor for you, and it's affected by potions/nodes that affect both (assuming you have Iron Reflexes, of course). You really need EV/ES or some pure ES gear if you take EB.

If you mean in a more general sense: Life/Evasion/ES/Mana/Mana Regen/Resist is what you NEED. IIR is what you might WANT. And of course Spell Damage / Cast Speed.
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Chaos Damage hurts, I agree. But I'm not about to build around that one damage type - just get more Life, more Leech, more Regen, MoM helps, and kill them as fast as you can. Shouldn't really be a problem, since most things don't do PURE Chaos damage, and the rest you're very resilient to.

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Don't know what you mean by keeping the links updated, but yes, I do update it almost daily.
EDIT: Just updated it :)

Just a quick note on MoM, after testing it out some more. You REALLY need good gear, at least for Mana/ES and a LOT of Mana Regen to make it work well against tough mobs (At least end-game).

But! If you do, it works wonderfully well.

I can't stress strongly enough how large of a defence this is, especially vs. Chaos or Elemental Damage.
My gear could use more Mana spare to take hits (only have 330 or so) and it still is enough for anything but the worst of the worst. I have 281% better Mana Regen (yes, a lot, I know), and about 1600 mana total, and it's about enough for me.

So I got lightning coil yesterday for fairly cheap, it just had 1 socket. About 15 jewelers and 40ish links I guess now I could use that exalt for a gg wand.

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CephalicKarnage wrote:

So I got lightning coil yesterday for fairly cheap, it just had 1 socket. About 15 jewelers and 40ish links

I guess now I could use that exalt for a gg wand.

Dang. Gimme! :D