Ethereal Knives CI/Low Life Flask Based Build

would poachers be even better, or just not needed at all cause of the forever sustain already?
Cybil's is a fine weapon but it's not hard to get a wand or dagger that's better as they can also roll spell crit, multiplier, higher cast speed, and added fire/cold/lightning damage.

Poacher's Mark would be a much better choice for an attack based variant of the build. Warlord's Mark provides 2% life and mana leech which is really nice for spells.
Played since beta ....EK and Flicker are the only two skills I have never played.....think this can be done on the 1M? I.e. A budget to start?
Final build update.
Was thinking of trying something like this but with Static Strike. Could use Fortify too with a melee attack. Some questions:

1. Curse immune maps must be pretty shitty for both life and mana leech, or is Tempest Shield + mana leech and Atziri's Promise enough in those maps?

2. Are Power Charges remotely sustainable with PCoC on Tempest Shield or would you need some other means of generating them if you wanted to have them up most of the time?

3. Can you do without the flask mods on the belt? There aren't a lot of options for Rustics with WED, ES, Res and reduced flask charges.

4. Is 50-55% spell block enough, or are the last 20-25% too important to give up?

5. Have you tried Uber Atziri with this build?
Yeah, the damage is high enough for just the Atziri flask and Tempest Shield to provide enough leech.

Power charges are up when things have time to land a hit, and if they're dying before then do you really even need the charges?

If you're picking up the belt for the mods, may as well craft either the Leo "avenger's" flask charges on being crit or the Tora flask duration mod.

If you're stacking block, may as well stack it until it caps. Going from 50% to 75% spell block is quite literally doubling your effective life pool.

I tried uber, kind of difficult though. The build trivializes every boss in the game except uber atziri and core malachai and it's really only because those bosses spawn barely any trash so flasks are up for like 15 seconds, and then down for 30. On top of having way too many hit points those bosses also have invulnerability frames so there's tons of wasted flask uptime when malachai blows up one of his hearts or when atziri is changing phases. Double boss excavation (on solo HP values), high level double beyond, double boss courtyard, wasteland Voll (on solo HP values)... all the content is just trivial. Just not uber atziri and not core malachai. Literally the only things.
Which bandits did you take? I don't see anything useful for normal or merciless, but do I help Alira or Oak in cruel? Also, do you sustain mana with regeneration alone or do you manually cast Warlord's Mark often?
Last edited by Pengowen816 on Oct 16, 2015, 12:23:53 AM
I tried playing with Static Strike, but it's clearing is pretty terrible so I went with Reave instead. Not being full ele damage means I can get mana leech, which allowed me to drop Clarity for HoT-CoH-Assa Mark which pretty much caps me on crit. Hit lvl 93 and tried Uber.

Vaals were very easy, like expected. Killed the first one before it dove into the ground, took the other one to about half, and then facetanked it when it came back up. Noticed afterwards that I had forgotten to swap Inc Aoe for Conc Effect, so my dps was about 60% of what it could have been. I also don't really get much out of my 6 power charges since Herald of Thunder doesn't proc. With Power Charges, they would die in 2-3 seconds.

Was kinda worried about trio because I didn't have Immortal Call or even Enduring Charges. Went in with Vaal Haste and tried to burst the ranged one down. Got her to about 40% when I had to dash out and let ES regen. Dashed back in, brought her to 10%, dash back out and let ES regen back up again. Then go in for the last time to finish her off. The other 2 are easy, can be facetanked without dropping at all.
While Herald of Thunder doesn't work here again, the adds that spawn once 1 dies proc Tempest Shield-PCoC so I had full charges up after the first was dead.

Was also slightly worried about Atziri. Mainly because I don't have Molten Shell which basicly blocks a full spear. Don't have high str so can't run it with this setup. It went alright though, until I got a little too triggerhappy with the flasks and stood there in the 2nd split phase without any charges. That was not fun. Eventually died, but simply returned with full charges and finished her off. On the first split phase, I dropped the clone before she was able to flameblast. 2nd one was the struggle. 3rd one the clone dropped at about the same time the flameblast hit me. Took me to about 60%.

Overall it went alright. If she hadn't gone into stasis the second I entered the room, and had instead waited until after the first split phase, I think I could've done it deathless.
The bandit rewards don't really matter.

Normal either point, mana, or all res.
Cruel either point, physical damage, or cast speed.
Merciless either point or a charge depending on what you plan on being able to keep up.
Last edited by Freud88 on Nov 3, 2015, 8:33:46 AM

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