Ethereal Knives

What Support Gem is better for EK? Faster Projectiles or Fork?

why stop with just one support? fork is better if you only use it on groups (and larger the group the better). added fire is good for anytime use and faster projectiles is good for putting more distance (and some extra damage) to the skill.

Faster Projectiles is nearly required, but early on, if you have only one slot, fork it is. Just mows down groups.
Later on, FP, Added Fire, Chain.

I actually just use the skill with increased critical damage, otherwise the mana cost gets too high, and it's my main attack skill.

If it's your main attack skill, you really ought to get at least a 4 Link.
You can use two of the ones mentioned above and supplement it with either reduced mana or mana leech, thereby getting your cost back in.
Or both, resulting in a higher effective cast rate.

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UnDeaD_CyBorG wrote:

If it's your main attack skill, you really ought to get at least a 4 Link.
You can use two of the ones mentioned above and supplement it with either reduced mana or mana leech, thereby getting your cost back in.
Or both, resulting in a higher effective cast rate.

Well with clarity and the fact that I'm usually moving, I usually get that mana cost back pretty quickly. This character is still fairly low level though so I don't have alot of support yet, but reduced mana is on my list of supports to get.

I use this with Added Chaos Damage, Faster Projectiles, and Added Fire Damage (did use fork but Fire Damage gives more dps and if I can get a 5 Link I will put it back in). Costs me just over 100 mana per cast and it is pretty much the only ability I use (sometimes I use Viper Strike for high HP mobs and when I need to move a bunch). Mana cost is easy to offset with mana and mana regen nodes coupled with clarity. I currently can only fire off 3 EK's per mana globe with the 3 auras I run up but I regen enough to let it not impede my game play too much.

How do you know you get "more dps"?
I mean, sure, if you know the average amount of forks you get, but I always found that a bit hard to calculate.

Added Fire will of course seem better on tooltip compared to Fork/Chain, but versus a tight pack I don't think there are any arguments.

Added Fire, Chain/Fork and Faster Projectiles all together is pretty much a given for me though, but I like EB builds or high mana regen builds in general. Personally I'd like to run Crit Multiplier as well, but sadly don't have the links/slots for it.

No doubt that for groups Fork/Chain would be better overall and I am currently in search of a good 5l to be able to put it back in. But since I do not always use it on "tight groups" of mobs fire support will yield more dps on single target or smaller more spread groups where fork would be less effective.

5l I would add fork back in
6l I would add mana leech