Ethereal Knives

This skill is cool but cost a lot of mana to cast

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xAntiHerox wrote:

This skill is cool but cost a lot of mana to cast

Yep had to stack 132 mana regen to spam.

It's a pretty great skill if you build for it. It's a boring curse -> press 1 button repeat build but does a lot of dps. I'm level 70 with 3.8k dps before projectile weakness. Still have terrible gear and basically no quality gems.

With my gear and projectile weakness its around 5k dps before damage reduction. From my spreadsheet, with good gear and high quality gems at least 6k screen dps should be possible (that's only level 17 gems. I don't know the base values for level 20). This would be about 8k dps with projectile weakness. Not bad for a skill everyone calls useless. Also this is only using 4L. Added chaos damage is worth about 400-600 screen dps depending on gear but is almost impossible to use without reduced mana cost. This makes 5L not very valuable from a dps standpoint; you really need 6L.

Fun skill but I wish it was faster to recover from.

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BlastMonkey wrote:

Fun skill but I wish it was faster to recover from.

This is exactly my biggest problem with this skill. It takes too long to be able to move or do anything else after the cast of this skill.

It's probably related to the fact that the animation related to the skill takes too long to finish.

It would be pretty good if the animation could be shortened or fastened, because it leaves me vulnerable for too long when i use this spell, as i can't dodge hits.

I hear ethereal knives has a base casting time that's really large?

If that's the case then I don't think the character sheet DPS numbers are correct for it, since it assumes a cast time of 1s normally I think (or maybe that's just a problem for attacks...)

Supposedly multiple projectiles from spells are able to hit the same target, and not-so with attacks, but I think this spell is an exception. I thought I remember hearing (as well as testing) that the skill will only hit 1 projectile per monster, no more.

If that's right, the game REALLY needs to clairify which skills can hit a target multiple times with multiple projectiles, and which can't — the fact that it varies between spell and attack is unintuitive/illogical enough as-is.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Xapti wrote:

I hear ethereal knives has a base casting time that's really large?

If that's the case then I don't think the character sheet DPS numbers are correct for it, since it assumes a cast time of 1s normally I think (or maybe that's just a problem for attacks...)

The character screen does not assume a 1 second cast time, it uses the cast time of the skill. For attacks it uses the weapon's base attack duration, which is correct for almost all attacks.

Yeah I should have perhaps specified— I was referring to attacks with attack periods such as leap slam, ground slam, sweep, and whirling blades, not any/all attacks.

Are there any other spells that don't have a 1s cast time aside from the obvious like lightning warp?

Regardless, I think spells that have non-standard cast periods should indicate on the spell "50% less cast speed" or such, so that it's clear to the player what the skill's frequency is before having to buy and equip the gem then look at their character sheet.

hey, i'm not sure if this is intended but: conc effect/inc Area support gems do not work for EK but passives aoe inc nodes show up in description and seem to work.. this is kinda confusing.

This skill scales nice indeed.. pretty sure its possible to have 5k on normal and something about 15k crit with EK (+all aoe nodes for 52% incease Area) with decent gear ofc.

mana regen should be 200% overall (about 150mana regen) with clarity to support 6L.