Ethereal Knives

Well you could use it as a nice shotgun on a caster. It has 10 projectiles which basically guarantees it hits each enemy and they can each get added damage.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

The interesting part is that physical leech mechanics should work on it, in theory. But physical leech shouldn't apply to any elemental damage that is added to the skill (which will probably be the majority of the damage for people who continue using this skill).

The stats you're thinking of are, in fact, %1%%% of Physical Damage from Attacks Leeched back as Life - note that it specifies "attacks". They do not apply to physical damage from spells.

My bad. I remembered it as just "Life Leech From Physical Damage". BTW, the prefix list on the site lists it as quoted above and not the more accurate wording.

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IrishKigoi wrote:

Ok "folks that have this spell", I have a question for you. Given the cast speed, dmg, and behavior of this spell. In what scenarios do you see it being legitimately beneficial, even preferable?

As a ranger dual wielding swords, I see no benefit to it. As someone mentioned previously, dual wielding Daggers/Wands/Scepters that have bonus spell damage on it would probably be ideal. Also getting an increased cast speed would probably help a lot since it seems to have a slow-ish base cast speed.

slow cast, mana costly, short range, only one hit per mobs, nothing add except spell damages...
and as it's a "spell" need faster cast, i suppose?

even with good supports I absolutely don't see any use for that skill...
I've tried it a little and don't really want to test it more, maybe I'm wrong but as it is, just the slow cast don't give me the incentive to use it and when you see the other drawbacks....

Added Cold/Fire/Shock Damage with Elemental Proliferation and some Passive Nods for Increased chance to take effect sounds like a lot of fun for dealing with large groups.:>

I should clarify my request. As opposed to the other options that exist that have greater scaling potential (Fireball with multi projectiles, or ice spear or Freezing Blast for that matter) or Cold snap...

Ya know, abilities that scale much better from the skill tree.

EDIT I realize that that many of the projectile spells would need multi-projectiles to be similar..but in many regards with multi-projectiles they would far surpass this spell. It just seems like such a niche spell that would be hard to buff with passives.


EDIT EDIT FOR GGG: Would suggestions for improvement or alterations to gems belong in the corresponding gem thread or should they be placed in the Suggestions forum?

This skill seems to have an identity crisis.

On the one hand it looks like a weapon skill (the effect), it sounds like a weapon skill and it feels like a weapon skill in regards to skill theme...

But on the other hand, well, it isn't a weapon skill. It's a spell, yet it deals physical damage and doesn't look like magic in the pure sense of the word.

Gameplay wise it's very hard to increase the effectiveness of this spell through the passive skill tree. If you're going to go for spell damage nodes, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot by not just taking all the other elemental damage goodies that are nearby and forsaking this spell altogether for the traditional spells.

At first I thought this spell was MEANT to be used shotgun style, in which case it made sense that it was hard to increase in effectiveness, sort of like poison arrow and explosive arrow (though the latter one is easier). But with that design out the window, there's just no way I'd pick this over ice spear, fireball or even spark.

I assume since this skill gem is green that it was meant to give the Shadow some reliable AoE damage component, which it lacks unless you rely on gems. This would make sense, again, if it was a skill and not a spell. Going hybrid physical/spell damage just isn't possible the way the passive tree is set up and will almost always lead to disappointing results. Add to this the elemental damage nodes close to the Shadow's start position and things start making even less sense.

My suggestion would be to either reintegrate the shotgun effect and leave the skill as is or turn it into a weapon skill. It's not a disaster that dagger/claw builds would have an AoE skill is it?

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Ragura wrote:

My suggestion would be to either reintegrate the shotgun effect and leave the skill as is or turn it into a weapon skill. It's not a disaster that dagger/claw builds would have an AoE skill is it?

Now I can't comment on how it currently performs as I have not had the opportunity to use it yet. But I can say that if this were to use "Shotgun" mode it couple be way to powerful. The number of projectiles from the beginning would make some intense up-close low level damage. If they were thinking shotgun style I would think you wouldneed to dial the number of projectiles down to the 3-5 range.

No, the base damage could just be lower. Or there could be a percentage reduction to overall damage. The interesting part would be how it could work together with some support runes. Balance is mostly numbers, that could be tweaked. But currently it lacks purpose and that's worse :)