0.9.2 Rogue Bladedancer Guide - Cinder Strike/Shuriken - Ruby Fang and Zerrick Sets

Rogue
2

Hmm. I’m now level 86 doing the Reign of Dragons monolith. Normal monolith maps are a bit challenging but doable. But I just got to the Emperor of Corpses and I’m thinking this build may not be as comfortable for bossing as I thought it was.

My previous build used acid flasks and ballistas, and I didn’t have Blade Shield because it was bugged at the time. So I was able to stay further away from him while taking out his adds and letting my ballistas wear him down.

This build doesn’t have any kiting mechanism, and even after swapping my idols out to overcap necrotic resistance he’s hitting me hard enough to one-shot me every time (unlike Lagon whose attacks were easier to avoid). Granted, he’s level 85 and I’m “only” level 86, so maybe things will ease up when I get to level 90-95, but I guess we’ll see.

3

Tried him again at lvl 89 and it was acceptable. Trying to use Shift back to back for two of his attacks was tricky, but only took me two tries to beat him. Onto the lvl 90 monos now.

4

Just completed all three lvl 90 monos. Two of the bosses were done comfortably enough, but The Husk of Elder Gaspar was a bit harder. He always uses the same first two attacks, and both of those can one-shot this build, and this build’s move speed isn’t the greatest, so I died like 3x getting used to those, but once you get used to those his other attacks are survivable.

I’ve improved my idols and some of my gear, this is what it currently is. I’m not sure why, but the resistances aren’t showing properly there. They’re all above 75% except Cold, which is 75% exactly.

I’m now level 94 and not sure what would be the best use of the my last few skill points, so if anyone has any suggestions let me know. Right now I’m considering Lethal Cadence, Shadow Master, Hooked Blades, or Focus Fire (which is a Marksman skill, but could be interesting).

Edit: No longer considering All In, since it also reduces DoT, which this build stacks.

5

1.1k life Oo, that’s very low

6

Yes, but the build does a lot of leech, so it’s actually much tankier than you might think just by looking at that number. But (a) now that I’ve leveled up I’m going to go back through all the monos to the actual blessings I want, and (b) I plan to continue improving on my gear and idols to bring that up. I thought that website gave an Effective HP rating somewhere, but I can’t find it. Do you know where it is?

I think I’ll probably focus on other defensive mods on my rings and amulet though, and just look for increased health on idols, since idols can’t have things like crit avoidance, etc.

I am also considering using my last few skill points for defensive nodes though. Maybe Dodge and Parry or Shroud of Dusk, but honestly the build seems decently tanky (for my tastes), so I’m not sure I should spend points on defenses when I’m planning on upgrading items and blessings. I’d rather spend them on offensive nodes, and then if I decide it needs more defense after upgrading all my items and blessings the best I can, I can always respec some nodes.

7

Here’s the build at lvl 97.

I feel like the build plateaued around lvl 95, but I’m curious if anyone knows of any other set or unique pieces that would improve it, especially giving either more health or crit avoidance. Other than swapping for some other gear the only other things I can do are get better blessings and better idols, but I don’t have a lot of room to improve either of those.

The build’s relatively tanky for what little health it has, but I don’t think I could get enough health even if I swap out all my idols … not that I’d want to, since it would leave two of my resists too low.

If not, oh well. If nothing else, it’s a super-simple build to give a new player, to get them from lvl 35-90. That will give them a fair idea of the game’s content, and at that point they can farm their own gear for some other build.

1 Like
8

So this is interesting … I re-found where the Effective HP numbers are while looking at a build guide/planner for a different build that apparently can go up to 250 corruption. Comparing its numbers to mine, I see that my build’s EHP vs Hit is actually higher (2800+ versus 2200+), but my EHP vs 1-shot is lower (1700+ vs 2200+).

I’m too squishy for lvl 100 Echoes, so I don’t think getting another Crit Avoidance mod would get me up into the 250 Corruption areas, but I wonder how much farther it would let me push, or what else this build might be missing…

Also, I fixed the link in my post above, so the build planner should now take you to the lvl 97 version of the build.

9

I’m still trying to improve this build, but it’s hit a very hard cap. I don’t think it can go any further without a major increase in DPS. My character is currently lvl 97, and set up like this. The gear isn’t perfect (for example the catalyst has a spell affix on it), but if the DPS was where it would need to be everything else about the build should be reasonable. There’s nothing too crazy, no 3LP Legendaries, etc.

I’m not the best theorycrafter, but looking at the build’s stats it seems like it should be able to do empowered monos, but it can’t. Even though the EHP is amazing, the DPS is so low that I end up being killed by normal mobs because it just takes so freaking long to kill anything. Even doing lvl 90 monos can be a slog depending on what modifiers the echo gets, and the non-empowered timeline bosses are even more of a slog. I can’t even beat Julra II.

What’s strange is that the DPS stats I see on LE Tools don’t look that bad. 250% Crit Multi (only 11% chance though), 200%-300% DoT … 1300 Doom … I’d try to do something with that Doom, if I could beat Julra II and get some decent affixes on a Siphon of Anguish, but I can’t even beat her, so I’m not sure it’s really worth the effort to keep trying until EHG gives us a way to improve sets. Which is a bit of a shame, because I really do like how simple this build is.

I guess it’s still great for beginners in that it’s a 1/2-button build that’ll get you to non-empowered monos while only needing to filter/craft 4-5 items, but tbh when I played Sentinel I think I got to monos just by upgrading whatever junk rares I found in the campaign, so … maybe not as great as I feel like it could be. I guess if this build had enough DPS to get into 200 corruption (without changing anything else about it) then I guess it would be living up to the potential I feel this build has.

Either that, or there’s just something stupidly wrong about how I’m playing the build that isn’t allowing me to get the DPS out of it? I have to be careful about popping potions because of Marked for Death. I have noticed that it’s a tiny bit faster to alternate between Cinder Strike (to put on stacks of ignite) and do other attacks while the DPS does its thing. But even with both of these things my DPS numbers are 15-1500 (and usually less than 500), which is basically nothing.

10

I would love playing cinder strike but the damage of the skill is too low to be good enough, sadly.

11

Mainly I use Shurikens on this build. I think they do more damage because they pierce and the attacks are a bit faster, but even so, their damage on this build is really low too. Which is strange, because based on the numbers I’m seeing on the LE Tools site it looks like this character should be doing more damage, but it’s not. It feels like there’s some setting somewhere that I must’ve accidentally selected that I need to unselect.

12

I think at this late point of the build, you will probably have to drop one of the two sets, and lean harder into what it is providing while abandoning the other. I’m also not completely clear what your best damage skill is. I know you’ve mentioned using shurikens primarily, but also being disappointed with its output. Elecoe’s Abandon makes me think your focus is Acid Flask, but that would probably favour nodes like Cluster Bomb and Firebomb Cocktail instead of Caustic Concoction.

Right now your damage stats are split in a lot of different directions. The build is using melee and throwing attacks applying ailments, with damage types in physical fire poison and necrotic, and some amount of critical stats. It looks like a lot of your critical stats are conditional (low health, flow) so I’m having trouble determining if you’re getting much value out of them. Generally critical strikes & ailments don’t mix well, so you want one or the other.

Personally I think the build is too full already to make critical strikes work. As such I recommend dropping the Zerrick set and focusing more on poison / fire, and possibly ailments. You can replace a lot of the relevant stats from the set with throwing damage on belt, glove & rings, and maybe get block chance & effectiveness on the rings as well to boost that defensive layer. Having your own belt & boots would also allow for hybrid health on each of them. Without the Zerrick set, you won’t have much in the way of dodge but you could shift your defensive focus to glancing blows & dusk shroud.

There might be a DoT ailment build in there somewhere between Cinder Strike (oil coating, fire res shred) and Acid Flask (efficacious toxin) but I have very little experience with that style.

This is what comes to mind first, but as always it would require experimentation and depend on how much you’re willing to change the current setup.

13

I’m not sure what the common stats were back in 0.9.2f, but unfortunately today those stats are low. For example your DoT damage should be at least three times what you have now.
Doom is void damage, please don’t add another damage type into the mix :smiley: only use Doom if you choose to make a melee hit build.

Meaning you were not alternating before? :scream:
You should have been always alternating. I mean, you specced Cinder Strike into gaining a 4 seconds buff which stacks % increased fire damage and gives Fire Penetration when you reach enough stacks.

Yeah I see some big issues with your build. You’re using:

  • Acid Flask (throwing) converted to Fire which has decent % more damage passives, but cannot apply poison, only ignite. Shreds fire resistances.
  • Shift (movement) throws Acid Flasks, heals, gives mana and has a kill threshold.
  • Shuriken (throwing) which poisons, shreds physical and poison resists and deals physical hit damage.
  • Cinder Strike (melee) specced into Fire Penetration and converting poison into ignite. Also shreds fire resistances. Also procs 1 Burning Dagger (throwing).
  • Lethal Mirage (melee) with extra mirages and poison cloud.

So overall your damage is a mix of melee and throwing hits which are physical and fire, and also poison and fire DoTs.

Your class passives are specced into melee and crit (Tempo, Blood Dance, Death’s Door).

So basically you’re combining multiple damage paths, but not really focusing on either of them.

Acid Flask is converted to fire, so it cannot apply poison. You wasted 4 pts into poison chance, so you can fix that :slight_smile:

For the other stuff, you should first decide which way you want this build to work:

  • fire DoTs
  • poison DoTs
  • physical hit damage
  • fire hit damage
  • a hybrid way between two of those choices

And then we can give you some pointers.

The sets are very outdated and there are much better items available, but if you wish to stick to the sets, I agree with SoftOneiros, at least drop Zerrick’s set. Zerrick’s is just weird. Ruby Fang is weak, but in theory it should be useable in a melee hit build.

14

I have messed around with these two as well. No real synergy between them IMO as Zerrick’s is better for Crit or skills working off flat damage, While Ruby Fang is meant for poison/ignite ailments which don’t scale off flat damage.

To me Zerrick’s set SCREAMS shadow daggers since its flat damage and crit multi double dip for SD since it counts as a melee AND throwing skill and the flat damage in particular is amazing for its high damage effectiveness. I had tried a setup going for pure necrotic Shadow Daggers with the Soul Harvester axe (which has base flat necrotic damage) and the Grimoire unique for more flat damage using a potion. It worked fine but was pointless since there is no other support or synergy for Necrotic damage as a Rogue. Even the Shadow dagger effect modifiers have been changed to physical pen which further restricts variety. Another annoying thing is using a belt with cleanse does not overwrite the self mark for death when using a potion(with 2pc set). The set also blocks 3 item slots that typically contribute largely to health and has an additional resistance cost since you need to overcap your resists by 25% to counteract the mark for death. Its such a bad design in terms of benefit-drawback. Also there was no noticeable difference between regular shadow daggers other than additional potion management and a slight green tint on enemies when they die…

Ruby Fang lacks a solid Fire melee skill to work well with. Sentinel and Mage have no poison synergy and hence are bad options. Acolyte doesn’t have a fire melee skill, the only fire melee skill in Primalist is Earthquake which could work as a nuke but lacks a good fire melee autoattacker. This leaves Rogue and Cinder Strike, there’s actually room for synergy there since cinder strike can increase your fire res and convert poison chance to ignite streamlining your damage. An additional synergy is Acid flask which can use the fire res as fire penetration(Knowledge of Immunity) and can be automatically cast from Explosive trap(which can also be automatically cast from melee hits). However, Cinder strike is a garbage skill with barely any more multipliers in its skill tree so its ignites will do pathetic damage by empowered monos (I believe Dr3ad on youtube had made a different failed attempt with ignite cinder strike). There’s also no other fire melee skill to act as a spender for it.

Also I would highly recommend Falconer instead of Bladedancer for a Ruby Fang setup. Bladedancer has no synergy for 1h+shield while as a Falconer atleast the pathetically low block chance can be put to better use converted to a more reliable glancing blow chance.

EHG could fix this set by simply changing the Fire walker node in Cinder Strike from % increased fire damage over time to % more fire damage over time. Wouldn’t be the first time as well like they gave Coral Aegis and its chance to shock attackers an actual use by modifying a node in Storm Totem.

15

I’m not well versed in Rogue intricacies, but I looked up Shadow Dagger and it does sound interesting…
…until you realize that you can slap T6 + flat Throwing Damage affix on gloves and belt, beating the flat damage from setbonus + removing the need to chug potions and being Marked for Death + gaining the other affix slots :smiley: And if you include something like Li’raka’s Claws, you beat the crit multi aswell.

But the weapon also has poison penetration, which indicates you’re expected to be using poison, not ignite. So you need a (preferably) fire melee attack that applies poisons to fully utilize that set.

I agree. The one node that scales fire DoT damage with DEX that would make Cinder Strike DoT builds work is unfortunately an “increased” instead of a “more” node :man_facepalming: relegating Cinder Strike as a purely support skill for DoTs.

For a hit build however, I see some synergy between the Burning Dagger and the Coated Darts passive. Oil Coating stacks, and 25% increased fire and +5 flat throwing fire damage per stack sounds really good. Get very high attack speed, gain lots of coating stacks, plus every first strike you’re shotgunning with 6 daggers at once. Unless there’s a catch that I missed, that’s pretty good :slight_smile:

16

I’ve been treating Shurikens as my main skill, and was assuming my main damage type was Fire DoT. I alternate Shurikens with Cinder Strike any time I need to kill something faster, but because of its low damage I basically only use Cinder Strike to apply additional stacks of Ignite. I never manually throw flasks, but have specced into it to improve what it does when Shift drops them.

I could be wrong, but I thought that since all four of my skills either use poison, or convert to poison, or to fire, that the ones that were doing Poison damage were being converted to Ignite. And Poison Shred was being converted to Fire Shred, etc. If I’m wrong about that, I can see how that would be hurting the build. I haven’t been seeing any green, so I thought everything was being converted.

I know the build mixes Throwing (Shurikens) with Melee (Lethal Mirage) but I felt LM was the best option for a 3rd skill because (a) it heals, and (b) its damage can also be converted to Poison (which I thought was then being converted to Fire). I also like LM for Without a Trace. That and Consumed By Shadow on Shift allow me to immediately kill things (even bosses) at 18% and 16% respectively. Without those this build would be even slower killing things.

I’m aware Doom is Void damage and has no synergy, but based on what I was seeing in LE Tools it (sadly) looked like that would give me more damage than anything else the build is doing … which just goes to show how poorly it’s doing damage-wise. That’s why I was briefly looking at it in my last comment.

I’m aware Crit is useless with DoT. I tried to avoid it wherever I could, and took Tempo and Death’s Door for their other benefits, not the crit. I didn’t see anything that jumped out to me as being better nodes to take. I was aware Blood Dance would only help me heal when using LM, but same thing … nothing jumped out to me as being better to spend those points on.

Basically the way I was using the Zerrick set is that when coming up on a mob I was planning on engaging, I’d spin up Shurikens, hit a pot, then run in and use LM. If needed I’d keep using Shurikens/Cinder Strike, and if that wasn’t enough to finish them off I might be able to cull them by using Shift. If not, then LM might be ready for a second use, which could also cull.

If I was fighting something that could live through a second use of LM then following this pattern at least started the LM cooldown timer first, which allowed me to get an extra one of those in, and the first one was guaranteed to get me the extra buff the set gives at full health. In addition to its other buffs, of course.

Getting rid of the Zerrick set would also allow me to get Armor and Reduced Dmg from Crits, but honestly without significantly more DPS I don’t think Hybrid Health or Reduced Crit is going to be enough to make me want to try to take this build any further. It just takes too long to kill anything once you get to echoes.

As I saw it, by using Poison (also being converted to Fire) the Ruby Fang set was doubling down on what I wrote above.

I wasn’t aware of how Zerrick’s set would apply to Shadow Daggers, so speccing into Hidden Blades could be an option. To do so I’d have to remove points from other nodes. Which do you suggest I remove? I could also then spec into the Skiasynthesis passive.

Li’raka’s Claws would probably help if I wanted to lean towards throwing/crit damage, but there’s still so much Fire DoT in the build that I don’t think the extra crit would solve anything.

Re: Coated Darts … similar situation there … I can try that, but which nodes do you suggest I take points out of?

Thanks all for giving this some extra sets of eyes.

17

Fire DoT is only ever coming from your Cinder Strike, and then 1 stack from each Acid Flask. Majority of your damage seems to be a mix of Physical hit and Fire hit damage.

Conversion always only works on the thing specified in the description.

For example, in Acid Flask’s skill tree it only converts Acid Flask’s Physical damage to Fire damage, but it does nothing for Shuriken, Cinder Strike or Lethal Mirage.

I went through your current setup and noted down the numbers.
TLDR is that Cinder Strike is probably your strongest attack in your current setup. It also applies the most ignite stacks.

Your Shuriken
  • deals only physical hit damage
  • 0 fire hit damage
  • 0% chance to apply Ignite
  • 40% chance to apply Poison
  • 28% chance to apply Bleed

Shuriken is a Throwing skill, and you have very little Throwing damage, so it also deals very little damage.

Your Cinder Strike
  • deals about 1/4 Physical hit and 3/4 Fire hit damage
  • 316% ignite chance
  • 0% poison chance
  • 28% bleed chance

The skill splits hit damage 50/50 between Physical and Fire by default, and your weapon provides lots of + flat Fire melee damage, that’s why Fire hit is higher than the Physical part.

  • Poison chance is being converted to Ignite chance for Cinder Strike (but only for Cinder Strike).

Cinder Strike also throws a Burning Dagger. Afaik Burning Dagger is not a subskill, meaning it doesn’t inherit effects from Cinder Strike.

Your Burning Dagger
  • deals 2/3 Physical hit and 1/3 Fire hit damage
  • 100% ignite chance
  • 0% poison chance
  • 28% bleed chance

Damage of your Burning Dagger does not have Physical Penetration like your Shurikens do, so its damage is even lower than Shuriken.

Your Lethal Mirage
  • deals half Physical hit and half Fire hit damage (with Physical part being slightly stronger)
  • 0% ignite chance
  • 161% poison chance
  • 28% bleed chance

When Lethal Mirage ends, it creates poisonous smoke, which deals no hit damage, only has 200% poison chance.

Unfortunately no.
The Umbral Toxins passive only converts the smoke cloud into a poison cloud. LM still deals Physical damage and no ignite chance.

Yes, Culling is awesome. Even after we fix your damage, it’ll be very useful for rares and bosses.

However, LM and Shuriken are different attack types, so they don’t fit well together. As we’ve discussed above, Fire DoT from Cinder Strike is actually kinda bad.

So if you want to keep your current playstyle of spinning up Shurikens, going in with LM and then another skill, it might be best to switch into a Physical damage, change Acid Flask back into Physical type and exchange Cinder Strike with a different physical attack.

If you want to try the Oil Coating with Coated Darts instead, you’ll need a new weapon with Attack Speed bonus and gear with Throwing damage. Belt, Gloves, Rings, Amulet can all have Throwing Damage. The pros are…

  • Oil Coating and Throwing damage boosts Burning Daggers, Shurikens and Acid Flask, so there’s synergy.

But LM won’t exactly fit into this build, being a physical melee attack.

18

I created this using your previous planner as a template.

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oXEnOlgA

  • Swapped LM for Smoke Bomb, which will spawn shadows every second, this will heal you and the shadows will throw Burning Daggers when you do. Smoke bomb also gives you damage, gives you Silver Shroud and Dusk Shroud and slows enemies.

  • Moved around points in skills and passives.

  • Gave you HP Regen blessing and some HP regen on items, and I’ve removed 3/5 set items, kept the Zerrick for Dodge and dmg bonus for now.

  • I picked some unique items that can be bought on Bazaar. If you play offline/CoF and need to find them yourself, then only Pillager’s Gold is important because it procs Burning Daggers and gives Throwing damage.

Then you’ll have to find the gear with Throwing damage bonuses and dodge (or armor) that would replace the high dodge from Zerrick’s to keep your survivability.

Upgrade paths would include

  • more attack speed
  • going for 100% crit chance for throwing skills
  • more health

I don’t actually play a Rogue, I’m a Sentinel enjoyer, so if anything doesn’t make sense, tell me :slight_smile:

19

Yup also doom works on Shadow daggers since it is melee so Shattered chains belt as well. Adaptive damage defaults to phys on SD so it also benefits from the phys pen with SD affixes you can get on chest+helm also its wayyy easier to get phys shred on rogue than necrotic. So this necrotic SD I was playing was essentially just worse regular SD bladedancer.
But I can’t see any other use for Zerrick’s set really, Harvest doesn’t scale too well off flat damage and there’s no necrotic throwing skill.

Splitting between ignite and poison will most likely lead to failure as its pretty impossible to scale decent amounts of both at the same time. I think either convert poison chance to ignite (only possible with cinder strike afaik) or play it as poison (fantastical thinking but probably a tempest strike + earthquake aspect of viper beastmaster or totem fire res overcap shaman).

Could work, Burning daggers don’t shotgun afaik and would be fine for clear. But Ruby fang set would be useless here for hit damage even its poison chance is mostly melee only (Probably go Traitor’s tongue to get crit). Kelthan blasting Decoy would be perfect for single target here. I had an Ignite setup long back that actually worked like this and it could manage empowered though it was mediocre.

20

In terms of passives to spec out of:

  • Take Pursuit back to 5/8 points. The movement speed threshold makes for a great stopping point. Increased damage is okay, but rarely the top priority.
  • Argent Veil probably doesn’t need all 10 points. When it pops, the ward will start decaying very rapidly since you don’t appear to have any ward decay threshold or ward retention. You could probably scale this back to 5 or 6 without noticing much of a difference.
  • Cloaked Reaper seems ineffective. This may be a personal preference but I do not like life gain on kill when other recovery options (such as leech) are available.

Those are the ones I would start with almost no matter what you are building. I think you should also examine both Flow and Cadence (base Rogue) to determine if they fit the natural rotation of your build, but I can’t feel confident about recommending something without actively playing the build. Flow especially fits having Lethal Mirage as a big spender skill with 3 set-up contributors, while Cadence fits rapid-fire spam or a very tight 1-2-3 combo.

Edit: And to throw my 2 cents, I think there’s potential for ignite cinder strike, possibly even with this set as an intro because of the poison->ignite conversion and natural fire resist shred. I viewed Dr3ad’s video on the topic after it was mentioned elsewhere and was deeply unimpressed with their argument.

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