ZiggyD's Etheral Knives Mana Shield Scion/Shadow Build Guide - Hardcore (Updated for 1.1)

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Strongtoni wrote:

Btw: What do you think about Dream Fragments, how good would it be for this build?

I think it's just meh, and it's a waste of a slot if you use Alpha's Howl. Better to use a rare ring with life, mana regen, and cast speed.

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Strongtoni wrote:

Empower is rly strong when you have lvl 20 EK, so when everything is at lvl 20 Empower should be stronger then IW..

Sorry I should have specified. My EK is lvl 20, with 10% quality. My supports are all still 17-18, though. Empower is definitely better than IW, but not by as much as I had anticipated.

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Tempada wrote:

I can't speak to CoC builds, but a Spectral Throw aura build (like the Elemental Buzzsaw) can become way more powerful than an Ethereal Knives build. Ethereal Knives, under most circumstances, is weak. I kind of hope it gets a buff.

On the other hand, this build is way tankier than the Elemental Buzzsaw when it comes to physical damage... except that physical damage is easy enough to mitigate. It's elemental damage that's a problem, and Elemental Buzzsaw has that covered because it runs both Purity of Lightning and Purity of Fire. Mind over Matter is awesome but it doesn't compare to having higher maximum elemental resists.

Essentially, you can do far better than this build in most departments. That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't worth trying, though. You can afk a lot of enemies with Artic Armour and Mind over Matter, Ethereal Knives shines against mobs, movement speed is high, and basic gearing isn't expensive. Also, crazy mana regen is sexy.

I can't help but to disagree pretty vigorously here, specifically on the discussion of elemental resists.

Now, this is assuming that you have max resists at end game from gear. Most of the time that's not hard to do at all. If you don't, then obviously Purity auras are going to be stronger for you, but I'd suggest focusing on gearing rather than on auras.

What that means is that at endgame, those Purity auras will give you 81/77/81 (assuming Elemental Adaptation like in this build). This build has 77/77/77 instead. There's a difference, but not a huge one.

But when you add the 30% reduction from MoM to that, this build's effective elemental resists are 84/84/84, assuming you have the mana available (hint: you will). But it gets better: because of this build's pretty unique ability to run max-level Arctic Armour, that fire resist is actually anywhere between 84% and 100%, depending on the size of the hit. Then there's physical...my 50% physical reduction from armor turns into anywhere from 65% to 100% depending on the size of the hit, and my 33% chaos resistance turns into 53%.

Don't get me wrong: I really like the elemental buzzsaw build. It certainly beats this one hands down in offensive power, since this one invests so much in defense and has no room for offense...but for that reason the buzzsaw build just can't compare to the defensive power of AA/EB/MoM.

I always found physical damage a much bigger problem. I have no problem running maps full of various skeletal mages and other spellcasters even with -max resistance mods.

The moment there's Vulnerability and / or something to boost mobs' physical damage, the shit hits the fan.

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Barandis wrote:

I can't help but to disagree pretty vigorously here, specifically on the discussion of elemental resists.

I get what you're saying, but... I just never had trouble with additional elemental damage mods on the elemental buzzsaw. With this build I avoid high rolls like the plague because I've (surprisingly) been downed by them a couple of times, even though I'm using Cloak of Defiance!

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my 50% physical reduction from armor turns into anywhere from 65% to 100% depending on the size of the hit, and my 33% chaos resistance turns into 53%.

How do you have 50% reduction from armour? Are you using an evasion/armour chest? I don't even hit that level when using Grace.

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Tempada wrote:

I get what you're saying, but... I just never had trouble with additional elemental damage mods on the elemental buzzsaw. With this build I avoid high rolls like the plague because I've (surprisingly) been downed by them a couple of times, even though I'm using Cloak of Defiance!

I'm sure you probably don't have a lot of trouble with them. Like I said, I really like the elemental buzzsaw. In fact, after thinking about it, I've decided on my next course of action...I'm leveling a shadow to take over for my scion for this EK build, and when it's ready, I'm going to switch the scion to a buzzsaw build. I'm looking very forward to it.

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Tempada wrote:

How do you have 50% reduction from armour? Are you using an evasion/armour chest? I don't even hit that level when using Grace.

Well, I run Grace all the time, so I counted it in that number.

Here's the gear that I'm running right now. The upshot is that my chest is AR/ES, but it has a decent amount of armor (728). The helmet that gives me 755 Evasion and makes my Grace gem level 22 also helps. It's enough that I can run pure ES boots/shield, which gives me enough mana even through the ES reduction from Ming's Heart to be able to run four auras. Which in turn helps my armor, of course, because I can run Grace all the time. It's all really finely balanced, enough to make me nervous about changing anything (including adding life, which I'm really lacking in).

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Barandis wrote:

Here's the gear that I'm running right now. The upshot is that my chest is AR/ES, but it has a decent amount of armor (728). The helmet that gives me 755 Evasion and makes my Grace gem level 22 also helps. It's enough that I can run pure ES boots/shield, which gives me enough mana even through the ES reduction from Ming's Heart to be able to run four auras. Which in turn helps my armor, of course, because I can run Grace all the time.

Thanks for sharing. Yeah, my chest gives me 588 armour and I don't usually run Grace (although I should since I can manage without either Clarity or Discipline). My setup with Grace gives about 45% reduction.

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It's all really finely balanced, enough to make me nervous about changing anything (including adding life, which I'm really lacking in).

Yes! That's one of the tricky things about this build; it's a balancing act. I'm playing in Standard so I've sacrificed life for dps, but at this point I could really use more life (it's less than 2600 with Ming's Heart). I recently switched from here:



to here:



in order to eventually pick up more life nodes, but I don't think I'll keep it. The extra 50% evasion from the first tree synergizes well with evasion gear and Grace.

Here's where I'd like to be at level 89 (like that'll ever happen):



I run a skeleton totem, so Lord of the Dead isn't a wasted node, and I use Cloak of Defiance, which saves three skill points since I don't need to grab Mind over Matter.

If I could afford a 6L Cloak of Defiance I'd do it in a heartbeat. It's a fairly big hit for me from an ES standpoint, but at worst all I'd have to do is put a couple of nodes I saved from not having to take MoM into the pair of 4% reduced mana reserved nodes that I don't have. (I originally dropped them because I just didn't need 1800 unreserved mana.) It doesn't have any life, which I know is a turn-off to a lot of people. But my current chest was originally purchased for a CI character, so it doesn't have any either, and I'm managing.

Anyway, part of my solution to dealing with the low life is to use a Shadow instead. In maybe a week I'll have a level 80 scion and a level 80 shadow both with this spec, able to swap gear between them, and I'll be interested to see how much of a difference there is.

So I just tried out a 20% Increased Damage Le Heup of All Iron Ring... which puts out less damage than Ming's Heart, in case anyone's wondering. It's a nice substitute (for damage) if you can't afford Ming's Heart.

Hey, im level 81 atm Invasion League (cant believe i made it so far)

Skill Tree:



Gear:



HP: 4789
DPS: 6200 with Hatred On
Armour: 1818 with out grace, 5637 with grace
Mana: 3705, 1040 unreserved (with Discipline)
Mana Regen: 277

I have the money to buy Alphas Howl or Mings Heart but not both. I was wondering wich of those should i buy? I need a DPS boost it feels very low atm but with alphas i might be able to run another aura perhaps use Grace always instead of changing it for Hatred aura during hard maps. Can anyone tell me by how much my dps would boost with Mings Heart and / or if i could run 4 auras with Alphas Howl?

In case i want to use both, i would have to change my shield for one with about the same spell damage, same ES but 70+ HP because losing that 90HP from my Helm and the 15% HP reduction from mings would drop my HP to around 4.3k and you just can do that in Invasion.

Also i used a Vaal Orb on this ammy:



Its a big dps boost, shame it has no life on it. Should i aim for a better one or that one is pretty good?

Thanks