Ethereal Knives

Personally I use this skill along with added cold damage and chance to flee. I'm a dw ranger and lack any serious aoe so this acts as a sudo aoe and also allows me to more easily line up targets one by one.

Also bit of a bug to report. skill tooltip shows 10 projectiles despite my current level only providing 9

"

sadeiko wrote:

Unavailable

Personally I use this skill along with added cold damage and chance to flee. I'm a dw ranger and lack any serious aoe so this acts as a sudo aoe and also allows me to more easily line up targets one by one.

Also bit of a bug to report. skill tooltip shows 10 projectiles despite my current level only providing 9

9 Additional projectiles=1+9=10

This skill seems interesting - but since they're shooting "knives" - why not give is a small boost? It has no innate effect, so giving it a base crit of 6% like spark seems more fair than its current 5%. And it fits the whole knives are for critting theme.

I actually kinda agree as increased element damages synergise well with it.

i think this ability is stronger than people give it credit. the biggest problem it has is being so mana hungry. i'm level 55 right now on my EK shadow and i have 1430 DPS without an added fire damage gem on it. it 2-shots groups of normals and i've gotten it down to an 0.6 second cast (faster than default freezing pulse). the trick to using it is to abuse the fact that it already has very good scaling and that this scaling is turned to ridiculous levels combined with the two percentage + elemental damage abilities (hatred and added fire damage, basically giving the spell +50% dps and wrecking magic/rare mobs on crits).

very good scaling on this spell. like other multiple projectile abilities, it also sends most of its projectiles through frost walls which creates a 1-way filter for incoming projectile damage (unless they have multiple projectiles mod, then you might be hosed in this regard).


if i would change anything with it though, it would be to lower everything on it:

-Lower cast time
-Lower mana cost
-Lower damage

this is supposed to be the spell of a quick, shadowy assassin. giving it this ridiculously huge cast time just doesn't give off that feeling. plus, shadow tree has a lot of stuff relating to crits and the more casts you get, the more crits. since it scales so well with hatred and + fire damage, i think these changes should be made so that the spell feels right.

i'm going to continue leveling him though, maybe post a video and build. pretty fun but simple.

Since Ethereal Knives are projectiles, would Iron Grip or Point Blank shot work with them?
Both say they work with ranged weapons/attacks. Am I foolish to hope?!

Iron Will should work with this.

"

Torin wrote:

Since Ethereal Knives are projectiles, would Iron Grip or Point Blank shot work with them?
Both say they work with ranged weapons/attacks. Am I foolish to hope?!

Iron Will should work with this.

A ranged weapon/attack requires a ranged weapon, and you have to actually attack with it. Since EK isn't based on your weapon damage, it's safe to assume that it is NOT a ranged weapon attack, and thus will not work with Iron Grip or Point Blank. You're right about Iron Will working with it, however.

"

UristMcDwarfy wrote:

"

Torin wrote:

Since Ethereal Knives are projectiles, would Iron Grip or Point Blank shot work with them?
Both say they work with ranged weapons/attacks. Am I foolish to hope?!

Iron Will should work with this.

A ranged weapon/attack requires a ranged weapon, and you have to actually attack with it. Since EK isn't based on your weapon damage, it's safe to assume that it is NOT a ranged weapon attack, and thus will not work with Iron Grip or Point Blank. You're right about Iron Will working with it, however.

Well I was theorycrafting "out loud" if it is possible to make a tanky EK build with lots of Strength and maybe even blood magic.

BTW to GGG, my character just froze using this skill to destroy some pots. I had it set on left click and shift+click in Vaal ruins to try to destroy pots. I did but could not move after that.

BTW this skill is crazy. My witch is firebased, I took all fireskills I could get, faster cast rate and using fireball as main skill.

This is my fireball set up:


This is my EK set up:


I outdps fireball with EK by a fair amount at lvl 39 char:
EK: 437 dps
Fireball: 361 dps


Yes I know fireball is usually linked with LMP but I wanted to make a max AoE fireball as this fireball is nothing but a firebolt and I want a real fireball spell :D

after playing up to level 50 using EKs, i can say the mana cost definatly needs to be lowered a bit on these.