Once upon a time, before poison was nerfed hard and before Shadow Daggers Umbral Blades came onto the scene, there was a fast and smooth starter build for Rogue based on poison Shurikens. The idea was to use Shift off cooldown both to trigger Shurikens in Blade Shield form and drop Acid Flask pools at the beginning and end of the Shift. It pretty much disappeared by the time version 1.0 of the game came around.
I think changes in season 4 will potentially make this build very strong again and it looks like it will perform pretty well without hard-to-get gear. The key season 4 changes are:
Blade Shield Shurikens can hit the same enemy multiple times
Blade Shield Shurikens can stack
My understanding is that the above changes mean you can have 10s of Shurikens spinning around you, each one hitting each enemy multiple times [Edit: Each Shuriken can only hit a given target once - I misunderstood the patch notes] until the enemy dies or the Shuriken duration runs out. Thatâs a lot of hits.
Iâve created a proof of concept on Last Epoch Tools if youâre interested. One thing youâll probably notice is that Dancing Strikes is on the skill bar. This is partly because I want to see how it feels with the season 4 changes to it, but it does bring a lot of strengths to the build:
Triggers Shurikens on 2nd and 4th strikes of the combo
It shreds poison resistance, so we donât need the blessing or Shurikens node for it
Trickling Cuts: 6% more global damage over time per recent skill use
Rhythm: 8% (I think) more global damage per stack
Extra Dodge and less damage over time taken for 1s after using it (important for dancing through dense packs of dangerous enemies)
Generates Dusk Shroud stacks
Better control over Flow stacks
That last one is important because if Flow works as I think it does, manually casting Shurikens to consume the Flow stacks will grant those Shurikens triplequadruple damage for DoTs until those Shurikens expire. Iâm assuming the damage bonus from consuming Flow is locked in for that particular cast of the skill.
One thing to bear in mind is that this is very much a melee-range build, despite using a throwing skill. Plus itâs dual-wielding. Both of those factors make it pretty vulnerable, so I donât know how survivable it will be. Thatâs why I think you need to invest quite a bit into Glancing Blow, armor, health and any âless damage takenâ you can get your hands on.
With the nodes youâve chosen, consuming flow would give you 2 lots of 100% more (one from base flow effect & another from the Pulse node though this only affects DoT damage) and one lot of 30% increased from the Rhythm node) which would give you quadruple damage for dots & double damage for hits.
Iâm curious how Dancing Strikes feels with lots of attack speed now, but that & lots of dusk shrouds should make it feel safe?
I was thinking of going with DS (proccing Shadow Daggers as well as Shadow Cascade & Shurikens), Shadow Cascade (procâd by DS), Shurikens with the Chakram node (procâd by DS & Blade Storm) & Blade Storm. But I do like the idea of lots of Shuriken applying DoTs, Iâd not read the patch notes so I wasnât aware that theyâd reverted the original change to Blade Shield only hitting mobs once.
I was working on a build planner but fat fingered the back arrow & my phone ate itâŚ
I havenât tried to touch poison in rogue since 1.2 with acid flask due to it getting the nerf you mentioned - I am keen to follow you both and feel free to link planners as you progress with the builds and mention how theyâre going. I never tried it with flow etc and wasnât aware of that hefty dot dmg increase from the first node, nice!
If what you mean by âpoison shurikensâ is doing poison damage with shurikens, then no. Poison still has terrible scaling options outside of acolyte, acid flask, and serpent venom (not necessarily poison depending on who you ask). If you want to do ailment shurikens, go bleed.
Lol flask is terrible too I tried it with 777 slams on really good items, daggers/staffs all sorts. These EHG guys like super nuke nerfs for some reason rather than slow to start and increase if needed D:
While Rogue is probably the least worst class to do poison with otherwise as it does have quite a bit of support for it, it also has a lot of support for bleed & DoTs in general & bleed has nearly double the base damage.
In an entirely un-related question, does Gladiatorâs Oathâs last affix (100% melee crit while in a DS arena) actually give flat crit 'cause thatâs how itâs worded.
One thing I didnât notice from the patch notes is that the Bladedancer passives that grant a chance to gain a Dusk Shroud on melee attack also now work for throwing attacks. Iâm assuming these passives only work for direct uses of skills, but it should still have a significant impact on this build (as well as other throwing-based ones).
Does bleed make the enemies turn green? No, so itâs clearly the inferior option
In all seriousness, Iâm assuming âterrible scaling optionsâ means lack of duration increases compared to bleed? Those are definitely more prevalent for bleed, although other classes have more availability than rogues. While a more bleed-focused build is likely better than poison on bosses, I think the reverse is likely true for clear in this case, at least before you get a whole bunch of penetration and resistance shred.
At 20+ stacks, poison does more damage over 3s than bleed (all other things being equal). Will enemies last longer than 3s when clearing monos? I hope not and Iâm expecting to apply more than 30 stacks of poison in a fraction of a second. Penetration and resistance shred do change the point at which poison does more DPS than bleed, but I havenât done the calculation for that yet.
To be honest, I think poison comes online faster than bleed for this build, but youâre probably right that bleed scales better for bosses. I do find it curious that EHG have made bleed seemingly so much better than poison with a combination of its high base damage and lots of access to large increases to bleed duration. It would be nice if poison got a bit of love, maybe by increasing the number of maximum stacks of inherent âdecreased poison resistanceâ.
Itâs all about the ailments in this case, with Shurikens doing the vast majority of damage. I donât really worry about DS damage or throwing damage. That may change as I experiment with it.
Bleed might be better then, you cpuld either use a Taste of Blood for doubled bleed dps or an Undisputed for additional % increased phys & an offhand sword, probably Nagasa Scimitar base.
Personally Iâm conflicted as to whether to do a DoT build like the OP or a hit build.
Itâs not just the lack of duration increases, itâs the fact that penetration is additive with the bonus for having 30+ stacks of poison on the target, so as you get more penetration other ailments become better in comparison, on top of the fact that poison needs those 30 stacks to be comparable to bleed or ignite to begin with.
Ya, while leaving acid flask as poison is comparable in power to converting to frostbite due to the pen per poison res node, itâs still hot garbage now that they deleted the explosive trap node (yes, deleted, 10% is a joke, youâre doing most of your damage with explosive trap at that point, so why even bother speccing acid flask, and then you have no reason to take the node).
I donât know axes would really benefit the build, since you lose some ailment chance from Bladedancerâs Blood Serpentâs Blades (which is +% ailment chance for each dagger/sword). You also lose some of the benefit of idols and armour with âper dagger/swordâ affixes.
Iâm also curious if you really think those specific axes would help. The double DPS would help with clear I think, but doesnât do anything for enemies on which you can cap your ailment stacks, right? You just end up with half the max stacks. And I donât think this build would generate enough melee hits on bosses for Undisputed to do much. They both seem geared towards better clear with bleed, but not better damage overall. Am I missing something?
Ultimately I donât know how the build will fair before trying it, so I wouldnât be surprised if I pivot away from poison at some point.
You could do DoT into hit-based I imagine poison/bleed is easier to get going, but probably doesnât scale as well.
But you get 160% bleed chance from the Weapon of Choice passive.
Itâs a dps increase but not a total damage increase, since the bleed damage happens twice as fast. For a short fight where the target dies within the duration of the bleed stacks then itâd double your dps, for a longer fight it would have negligible impact.
I noticed what else they did last night no ones caught - the weaver 2x1 idols with fire rest now max at 12 not 23. Nerfed that over capped resistance right in the butt. This was how most of the fire builds overcapped + a few slams on their items. They really donât like it yet theyâve buffed umbrals and itâs once again going to be a sub 20 second uber kill skill, currently, well yesterday my friend respecâd to the new UB and beat his season best killing uber in 36 seconds. With new setup and buffs itâs going to be quicker. Flask RIP.
I made it to Liathâs Tower to complete my idol slots and passive points (is it my imagination, or has the campaign lost one of each of these?) and then did a few echoes in the starter monolith timeline.
Overall, the build met my expectations on both damage (great!) and survivability (not so great!), even with average gear. It feels really comfortable once you switch to daggers and Dancing Strikes and if you can hit the Flow timings, enemies just melt. The damage is really good even without the boost from Flow. I do think itâs a fairly high-skill build, particularly as you need good positioning to get the most damage from the Shurikens. Easy on big enemies and packs, more difficult with smaller, tanky rares and bosses.
One thing to note is that I tried Shadow Rend as a traversal skill instead of Shift. When I was using a bow with Puncture this felt really clunky and unsafe, but once I switched to daggers it felt a lot smoother. The key advantage over Shift is that it triggers Shurikens using your whole tree, meaning it throws more Shurikens and for far fewer skill points.
The survivability issue means that I think it would be better to hold off switching daggers until oneâs defence is up to par. I would consider using bow Puncture + Bladestorm with Shurikens when Bladestorm becomes available. Something Iâll probably try at a later date.
If itâs 8 idol quests and 15 passive quests, thatâs what it always was (I havenât started playing this season yet and probably wonât until week 2 or 3 due to work).
I only had 7 of 8 idols slots and 14 of 15 passive points before Deep Harbor when I used to have everything by then. I was wondering whether something had change or if Iâd missed a quest. It seemed like one of the NPCs at Heoborea gave one fewer idol slot, but I may be wrong.
I was wrong. The patch note just clarifies that each of the Shurikens from one skill use can hit the same enemy, not that each Shuriken can hit a target multiple times. So single target isnât as busted as I hoped. In fact, I think the change to Blade Shield Shurikens stacking helps clear far more than it helps single target.
Iâll keep playing, but I suspect it wonât do enough single target later on to be good for very late game.
Youâre right, my mistake. Nice to be wrong understating the case, though 
