[0.10.0] Eldritch Battery Ethereal Knives Shadow [Videos Included]

What's the deal with Warlord's Mark and Ethereal Knives? Do they need to be explicit on the curse and say physical attack damage? I don't think this curse works with EK.

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carpola wrote:

What's the deal with Warlord's Mark and Ethereal Knives? Do they need to be explicit on the curse and say physical attack damage? I don't think this curse works with EK.

If you are referring to the leeching than you are right.

It says "Cursed enemies grant x% y leech to physical damage when attacked"

As always, casting a spell is not "attacking". You are not using attacks but spells. In this particular case it sounds especially weird because even when casting you can be attacking an enemy, but that is how it works in PoE. You do not attack, you cast and that's why you don't leech anything.

Basically your wording would really help in understanding it better. I like it! ^^

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whats base crit for ek and how important is it to go for crit nodes? my concerns are damage reflect maps

EK's base crit chance is 5%. To be honest, EK's flat damage is high so spell damage probably scales better with it as compared to crit nodes. But due to the nature of the cold damage portion of EK, it's advisable to take a reasonable amount of crit nodes as well so you can freeze enemies which can be important defensively.

Yup, I was concerned with damage reflect as well which was why I went with an armour based build. That really helps and I never did have any real problems with damage reflect.

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NIlium wrote:

To the person before me, I'm unsure as to the base crit of EK, but crit isn't that important IMO as you're already doing a large base damage with increases added upon that base (i.e. Added Fire / Hatred).

Alright, so I have a few questions of my own being that I've yet to play a mana based EK caster. Obviously mana is a large issue for EK, and thus the reason I played BM, but during end game is it possible to support EK with enough regen to spam in a group setting? I know it was mentioned at the start of this thread that was an issue, but I was curious if that became less of a concern later. If not, then what's the reasoning behind not spending the 4 points and grabbing 90% more ES from the equipped shield from the top templar/witch tree?

Thanks,
Nil

Unless you support EK with mana leech, I don't think it is possible to support it with just regen alone.

90% more ES from the equipped shield isn't really all that much if your spell shield doesn't have much ES, which mine does not have. 8% increased mana will probably be scale better in that situation. To be honest, I didn't want to spend too many points grabbing mana nodes. For me, I wanted to focus on survivability and DPS and as long as my mana was enough to sustain my EK, that was enough for me.

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carpola wrote:

What's the deal with Warlord's Mark and Ethereal Knives? Do they need to be explicit on the curse and say physical attack damage? I don't think this curse works with EK.

i don't think this curse works with EK either. Would be too OP otherwise. You could raise a suggestion to Mark if you think it's worth changing!

Alright, so is your use of EB more of just a preference? If EB + regen is unable to support the spamming of EK, then why not go BM + Iron Will where you're able to spam with no issue. "Well, Hatred is a 30% reserve." True, but with reduced mana + the reduced mana reserve nodes, Hatred is brought down to say ~12% or 700 HP at high HP levels. You lose determination but get IR and Grace, and throughout the "BM portion" of the skill tree we see a lot of nodes for +armor, +resist etc.. so in turn you really don't lose the auras since you get them through passives and then you get to focus on strength for pure life and spell power from Iron Will. Idk, am I missing something? I feel like BM is just more superior then trying to balance auras. BM as a shadow is definitely possible too.

If I were to support my EK like this:

Added Fire Damage
Iron Will
Faster Projectiles
Fork/Chain
Mana Leech

As well as gain the Iron Grip from the passive tree (Str bonus applies to projectile attacks as well as melee attacks, center of the tree) would the Iron Grip and Iron Will stack or would the Str bonus only be applied once?

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If I were to support my EK like this:

Added Fire Damage
Iron Will
Faster Projectiles
Fork/Chain
Mana Leech

As well as gain the Iron Grip from the passive tree (Str bonus applies to projectile attacks as well as melee attacks, center of the tree) would the Iron Grip and Iron Will stack or would the Str bonus only be applied once?

Iron Grip works upon projectile attacks which means it wouldn't apply towards spells. Lame, yes, but Iron Will works at least!

Also, there's debate upon if fork/chain are worth it for EK. I think chain makes a strong case as it's +quality gives projectile speed, but really for the mana cost is it worth it becomes the question.. I think it's not needed, but perhaps my opinion will change at higher levels / better stats after OB.

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NIlium wrote:

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If I were to support my EK like this:

Added Fire Damage
Iron Will
Faster Projectiles
Fork/Chain
Mana Leech

As well as gain the Iron Grip from the passive tree (Str bonus applies to projectile attacks as well as melee attacks, center of the tree) would the Iron Grip and Iron Will stack or would the Str bonus only be applied once?

Iron Grip works upon projectile attacks which means it wouldn't apply towards spells. Lame, yes, but Iron Will works at least!

Also, there's debate upon if fork/chain are worth it for EK. I think chain makes a strong case as it's +quality gives projectile speed, but really for the mana cost is it worth it becomes the question.. I think it's not needed, but perhaps my opinion will change at higher levels / better stats after OB.

Thank you for the response, I fell in love with EK in this 1 week race. My internet dropped at lvl 50 unfortunately, but I finished out the char in default and am really enjoying it, thank you for the great guide Invalesco.

I have been working on my own passive build for OB and was on the fence about chain anyway, what would the replacement be though? Possibly LMP? I enjoy Faster Casting as well, but it seems wasted when you 1-2 shot things, maybe Crit Multiplier or Pierce even?

Well, personally I don't think I'll run mana based EK; unless I missed a reason why mana is more beneficial endgame. If you read my post above it talks about using BM and IR which I feel is a smoother gameplay for EK. For BM I ran: Iron Will, Faster Casting, Added Fire and Life Leech. Honestly, after that it's up to the person I think for what they feel is needed (if anything), but being you can 1-2 shot a mob and you're shooting 10 projectiles (which can each only hit a target once mind you) I feel just having a quick spam of 2 EK'S is enough.

Thanks for posting this build Invalesco.

Used it in the 1 week race and ended up coming in 8th and had a ton of fun.

Spec:

Thoughts on the build in general is that the armor makes it so that 1 shotting yourself on a physical reflect pact is quite difficult but still possible if the pack/level of the mobs is large/high enough.

The largest difference I had between the standard build and mine was not using mana leech and supporting the build through clarity. Eventually I was at approximately 140 mana/s but I did have to pick up a 59% mana regen ring in order to acquire that. This allowed me not to run 2 mana potions and instead I had 2 instant healths, 1 granite, and 2 diamonds. With high projectile speed, soloing packs was extremely quick by just grouping them together and diamond EKing. Alternating diamonds lets you keep them up almost 100% and gives you insanely fast clearing which helped a ton when the group had to grind 60-62s due to unlucky map drop. Definitely thinking about using this build in the OB, but maybe a more melee focused one as I found careful positioning while playing this spec is the key efficiency difference in clearing.

With the nerf to Chain and Fork will EK still be as viable in OB?

EDIT: Also, will the nerfs to multiple auras have an impact on this build?