Salvaging/Transitioning a Dual Dagger Dual Strike CI Shadow

So, I've been inactive for quite a while. I think the last time I played was shortly after release and I kinda stopped playing because I didn't want to have to deal with this question.

But now that I've come back, I want to salvage my strongest character (or, to be more precise, his equipment, because it cost me a fortune [essentially everything worthwhile that ever dropped for me]).


Before release, I followed THIS BUILD, so my entire equipment is designed to:

1) Add ES and Elemental Resistance (duh),
2) Increase Critical Strike Damage and Chances,
3) Increase Raw Damage (primarily physical damage, with a little elemental damage for good measure) and
4) Make up for missing Stats.

At the time, Vaal Pact had obviously not been nerfed yet, so I could relatively easily achieve some sort of equilibrium (though my damage never quite got to the point where I could oneshot Kole, so he pretty much kicked my ass whenever I wasn't fast enough).



So, my primary goal here is to transition this character into a build that is endgame viable on Merciless, incorporates most (if not all) of these items (or requires only very limited funds to acquire what's missing, cause I don't even have 2 Exalted Orbs to rub together) and ideally also makes use of the majority (or entirety) of these gems.
I've got 98 skill points to work with right now.




This is by no means amazing equipment, and I know it, but it's all I've got right now and it would be great if somebody could point me in the right direction (even if there isn't a build that does exactly what I'm looking for). Or maybe I'm overreacting and the original build is still viable (even if the skill trees are all obsolete and I'd have to build my own).
Either way, any and all help is greatly appreciated.

This is totally salvageable. A few thoughts...

1. You can get a 300-400ES shield for a couple ex, if you get a 300+ ES shield with resists almost any dagger CI setup is viable.

2. Your daggers are decent but I would mostly prioritize getting better crit. A dagger with 200 pdps and 8.5+ crit should not be that expensive

That's gear, your chest is great IMO. Your rainbow strides are perfect, but one thing you could do if you don't really need the mana is sell them and buy the new ones (more ES same resists). That should give you some cash to work with.

From here you have to pick a skill: best options IMO are flicker and reave... You could respec to claws as well but daggers will work great.

There are guides for both of those skills that have been updated

You could probably tweak invalescos build too OFC... That would work :)

Well it's been a while since i was around, i returned lately and trying out ambush.
But i did loaded my old shadow (it's my build you mentioned you followed) and reconstructed passive tree. The biggest drawback was inability to run Grace+Hatred+Purity+Discipline because they all now 60% auras. So i settled with only Grace+Hatred. You can switch the auras based on Map mods needs. Because i left purity out i was forced to spend 3 points into resits nodes, but if your gear allows you to have cap without it, better spend them into some more damage nodes.

I totally raped Dominus and some random lvl 70 rare maps so the build is still very strong. I still have no idea what happened in the Dominus fight and whats the strategy should be as i just was pointing on bosses and holding LMB until loot.
It's nice to see someone still remember my build after a year, maybe i should revive the thread and update it.

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reaperpi wrote:

That's gear, your chest is great IMO.

Thank you, I rarely get compliments regarding my chest. :P

I really appreciate the input and the pointers. :)

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Xavyer wrote:

It's nice to see someone still remember my build after a year, maybe i should revive the thread and update it.

I think you should. At least back in Open Beta, I found it extremely fun to level (and very easy, in my opinion, until I hit the point where I needed a 5L armor and the build got really gear-heavy) and I haven't seen any dagger dual strike builds lately.
And your thread was the first one I checked after I came out of hybernation, so I know that somebody posted there and asked about the old skill trees just a few days ago.

At any rate, thank you very much for the skill tree and advice. :)

"

Xavyer wrote:

....

I totally raped Dominus and some random lvl 70 rare maps so the build is still very strong. I still have no idea what happened in the Dominus fight and whats the strategy should be as i just was pointing on bosses and holding LKM until loot.

....

By the way, What does LKM mean?

I'm doing this build, based on your build:

Is this build viable? skill point?

Thanks :)