Ethereal Knives

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UnDeaD_CyBorG wrote:

Well, there are some:

• Mobs on average have less armor than elemental resistance
• Physical Damage profits from added the Fire Damage support and the Hatred Aura
• The spell can be used by casters to kill Elemental Reflect Mobs

Also, Ethereal Knives scale pretty steep with levels, their base damage is quite good.

Interesting about the armor, and good point about the reflect. Don't Hatred and Added Fire basically work like additive %dmg, so Hatred is like having a +24% dmg item? That's how I modeled it in the spreadsheet, and under those circumstances Added fire performs about the same as Crit Chance or Added Chaos.

In my modeling EK ends up with very similar paper DPS to FP using an EK build (all general spelldmg, ias and crit nodes, no elemental nodes), but the physical thing and no dmg falloff puts its actual DPS higher (for a much higher mana cost). The advantage of FP seems to be that it works equally well against groups or single target: vs. single target EK's DPS tanks since it can't shotgun off Chain anymore.

The other thing I worry about...if you cast projectile weakness on stuff, the knives won't chain if they pierce...potentially lowering your DPS?

Potentially, yes.
Though you normally have enough Knives that some will chain; and the projectile weakness damage buff is rather large.
You can also use Vulnerability, granting a 10% chance to stun with every hit.
If you use Inner force, you can get Hatred up to 30% cold damage.

This skill needs a buff in some way.
Lets compare it to freezing pulse.

EK dps on lvl 16:
350

FP dps on lvl 16:
231

Now lets add the first support gem (lvl 16).

EK dps with Added Fire Damge:
350 * 1.35 = 472

FP dps with LMP:
231 * 3 = 963

Lets add faster projectiles:

EK dps with Added Fire Dmage & Faster Projectiles:
552

FP dps with LMP & Faster Projectiles:
1125

We can add Hatred Aura:

EK dps with added fire damage and hatred:
686

So FP clearly has higher damage.
FP also has 6% crit chance vs 5% of EK.
But most importantly, there are tonnes of increased cold damage and elemental damage nodes in the skill tree.
You can also add Cold penetration to FP for even more damage.

The only reason one would use EK is as a secondary skill to kill elemental reflect mobs.

If point blank worked with EK there could be a case where EK would rival FP in dps.

Let's fix a few points in that calculation:

1. Lmp comes with a 30% damage penalty, so it's really 231*2.1 = 485.1.
... 231*3 isn't 963 either, btw.

2. Freezing Pulse damage drops over distance, so the actual dps will be lower. Faster Projectiles are thus a dps boost beyond the shown amount.

Given that you assume Faster Projectiles to be 17%, which is reasonable, and ignoring the damage dropoff of FP as the support will decrease it noteably, that leaves us with:

Etheral Knives:
552.4

Freezing Pulse:
567.6

Not including Hatred.
Yes, there's plenty of elemental damage nodes, but the sahdow area, which is quite fitting for this spell, also has +19% spell damage and +24% projectile damage.

Lastly:

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You can also add Cold penetration to FP for even more damage

Cold Penetration doesn't raise the damage, only lower target resistances, thus resulting in more damage.
Given that there's very few enemies that are actually resistant to physical, one can argue that EK already comes with that bonus included, if weaker.

The result might still be that FP has a higher damage output at short range, and probably costs less mana as well.
Still, it's not as clear as you make it out to be.

Very importantly, Krabb you're forgetting Chain.

FP has LMP or GMP, which are 2.1 and 2.5 multipliers respectively.

EK has Chain, which is a 2.4 multiplier. 60% damage, but every target is hit 4 times (unless there are more targets than projectiles, an extremely rare occurrence for EK).

Chain is what puts EK on par with FP from a DPS standpoint, and then due to the lack of falloff and huge hits bypassing enemy armor, it's practical DPS is likely significantly higher.

If you're analyzing single target only, then yes FP kills EK. But EK is not a single target skill.

One has to also factor in that Hatred, addef fire damage, and all items that raise physical damage, also work just as well with Bear Trap, so there's your single target skill.

Really, it's just strong enough to be usable for it's physical damage.

Currently at the end of Ruthless on my EK shadow. Build. So far so good. Using double daggers with spell power mods on them. I do have the unique Iron Ring on for a little boost. Everything else is just some meh gear with good resists at the moment. Using Blood Rage and have Ethereal Knives linked with Added Chaos Damage and a quality Faster Projectiles gem and doing over 1600 dps. My only problem is with the mana cost of EK which I am hoping will be alleviated some once I get to the 3 mana nodes and get the 2 mana regen nodes near the middle on the shadow side of the tree.

Rather fun to get a group of mobs and just shatter them all with one hit. The high burst can easily offset the mana cost at the moment. I even find myself using it on single target and then I also use Viper Strike as well when I have single target to take care of or don't feel like spending the mana.

I recently tried putting this spell on a totem, now I want to make a build around it. There is an advantage for a physical damage spell :)

Yeah before they played around with the skill I had put it on remote mine just to tinker with but it was lackluster back then so I scrapped it.