Ethereal Knives

Seven pages and basically no positive posts..

Awesome skill design!

I used this as my aoe skill until I got Whirling Blades and realized how boring and useless it was.

Xapti, please show me a dagger with cast speed mod, because i have yet to see one.

Only real usefulness I found with this spell was to attach the Added Cold Damage support gem. And even then it was only minimally useful since Decoy Totem did a better job of keeping mobs off of me. I like this spell don't get me wrong. It just needs a little TLC to make it better and more useful. As is I am currently leveling a Marauder to get a totem to replace this, most likely shockwave totem but maybe rejuvenation totem.

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Headhorr wrote:

Xapti, please show me a dagger with cast speed mod, because i have yet to see one.

I'm not saying that you're wrong and that cast speed can spawn on daggers. I'm just saying I don't remember it being removed, or when it was removed.
Also, even if I have a faster casting dagger, I couldn't access it from the website because my stash only shows for 9 tabs/pages.

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evargnug wrote:

I used this as my aoe skill until I got Whirling Blades and realized how boring and useless it was.

Although whirling blades is terrible for damage too — especially if you're a dual wielder.

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Xapti wrote:

Although whirling blades is terrible for damage too — especially if you're a dual wielder.

The majority, if not all, of the new skills from 0.9.9 are horrible. Either pitiful damage, poor mechanics, or in the case of righteous fire a super-niche skill that maybe 5-10% of the people will use. Some of them may have cool ideas (and even that is arguable) but I haven't seen one yet that is actually well thought out, designed, and implemented appropriately.

Meh, I'm probably bitter about having wasted my money at this point.

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Xapti wrote:

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Headhorr wrote:

Although whirling blades is terrible for damage too — especially if you're a dual wielder.

With the exception that it can also physically proc criticals, along with your other default physical skills. You'll have to spend points in various spell nodes for a similar effect with EK.

I've actually had a few cast speed daggers, they were all garbage and vendored, I'll see if I can get another. Still not sure how that would make anything better for dagger wielders, it's not necessarely the cast speed that is the problem, and I would rather have a + x-x damage mod rather than cast speed no matter my spec

If you play without diamond flasks you'd want daggers with 80% implicit crit chance , 99 spell crit chance , spell/crit damage and cast speed.

They are perfect for most skills but this skill with the 5% base crit chance it still would be useless.

I've just deleted my first attempt at an EK-maining witch. She was level 10. I used dual strike with daggers as her single-target cleaner (right click) and EK as her main skill (left click).

I rushed for the mana per kill passives because I KNEW that +25 mana per kill would make the spell free.

And it did.

Unfortunately, EK hit like a feather against a rather apathetic brick wall.

My next attempt will forego the early mana issues and just bump spell damage -- conveniently very close to the Witch's starting position.

Some feedback so far, based on a raw test with no twinked items or high level play -- this is a level 4 skill and low level testing is of some value.

--This skill is not as far from done as people make out. The game was in positioning so that you'd get as many targets per throw as possible. That sort of strategic play compels me at times. I could down groups of mobs pretty quickly before hitting the prison, where I was stopped cold not by Chatters, but by a regenerating necromancer boss. That'd stop quite a few people, but I can always find a way to deal with them. Not so with the EK witch. That said, he was a toughass boss for anyone and if I'd switched skills, I could have killed him. My test, however, is EK. Not other skills. BUT other than him, EK was doing fairly well.

Yes, the animation is way too slow at both ends. I've yet to test it with very large cast speed increases, but this is a low level test, assuming you've just found the skill and want to use it. It was slow but not intolerable. You wouldn't choose it over any other spell, that's for sure.

Kuduku was one of those rare finds: once I'd swept around him and killed the mobs in my way, I stood JUST within range to throw the knives at him. This caused him to cast shock novas rather than spark. This made him pretty easy, oddly enough.

Things I'd suggest to make this skill viable:

1. Make the damage chaos rather than physical. If you're going to call them 'Ethereal Knives', then it makes no sense to have them be physical damage -- given that Ethereal literally means 'intangible'. I love that you guys made a physical damage spell, but Ethereal Knives shouldn't be. Make it chaos damage instead of physical and suddenly it's seriously 'ethereal'. It bypasses shields, for a start. (Thanks to Thronde for this suggestion.)

2. If that is not happening, change the skill name and allow the knives to apply bleeding. One of the biggest threats when it comes to thrown, sharp projectiles would have to be the wounds rather than the chance of immediate death. When I was using it, EK would deal just enough damage to require two or three throws to kill most mobs. Throw in bleeding and that will be reduced to one or two, which I think is much more acceptable at low level.

And that's it really. The slow cast time didn't really bother me. I was able to kite with EK. The cost is a bit high (15 mana at level 3) but not impossible to manage.

All it needs is a nudge or two. It'll never be an uber skill but I don't think it's meant to be. As long as it's viable as a main damage source IF a person is willing to build for it. I think that's okay.