Hi Shalash thanks for checking out the build! To answer your questions one at a time…
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The “wave of darkness” (gonna abbreviate this as WOD) doesn’t really help us. WOD causes all existing shadows to use shadow cascade, with 15% increased area and we receive 25 ward per shadow consumed this way, however we lose 5 mana for each shadow consumed this way. The major issues with this node is that the ward gained will be gone after a couple seconds, and the biggest downside of this node is the mana cost. Without this node allocated whenever we use shadow cascade the Onslaught and Fight in the Shadows nodes on the shadow cascade tree will allow us to keep our mana pretty much full at all times except for some tanky bosses, allowing us to constantly use our Synchronized Strikes, Smoke Bomb, and Decoy without having to worry about our mana reaching zero. The only difference in actual gameplay feel between having WOD, and not having it is that after using Synchronized Strikes without WOD, we need to either use Shift or manually cast Shadow Cascade in order to consume our Shadows. So in short - WOD causes mana problems that can be otherwise avoided.
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Dancing Strikes isn’t a skill that is needed in this build, through the Onslaught and Fight in the Shadows nodes that I talked about above you will hardly ever have mana problems unless you are fighting against a timeline boss, or occasionally against Spymaster Zerrick and his block passive. If you follow my build and find that you are constantly running out of mana…
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Use synchronized strikes before you cast shadow cascade
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Shift activates your Shadow Cascades and also restores mana.
So in short - Dancing strikes not needed cause of mana sustain.
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My answer to your 3rd and 5th question are pretty similar, since I mainly play Hardcore most of my build are oriented on defenses, I would rather have my character do less damage, sacrificing clear speed for echoes, but gain the safety of extra defense. When it comes to all of my builds and build making in general my best tip would be to try and layer your defenses. What I mean by this is you need more than just one form of defense, dodge, hp, armor, etc. Because when you come across an enemy that has some counter or way to penetrate your one layer of defense you need to supplement with another layer if that makes sense. Taking a defensive skill is just reinforcing the idea of layered defense in order to stay alive longer. Now this doesn’t mean that I avoid all damage and just build a beat stick that can’t kill anything. In my opinion it’s a a lot about finding the right balance between offense and defense and for everyone that can be different, what works for me might not work for you, which is why experimentation and testing things is part of the process. The best way to get better at making builds is to just try out some ideas you have and see what works best. Dying is part of the process and while it sucks, dying is a really good way to evaluate what you need to differently both with how you pilot your character and what you build into. As for choosing passives, I usually try and invest my points into whatever defensive options I want to layer and then dump the rest into some damage nodes. Shifting passives around all the time is super fine and easy to do because of the respec system in this game.
In short - Experiment and see what works for you - Every build can be improved and modified in a way that you like. -
This build has many different ways to generate shadows, 4 out of our 5 skills can be used for shadow generation. None of the ways we make shadows are particularly complicated so we can go through all of them.
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Synchronized Strike - Activating this skill will give us 2 shadows, one on our left and right. This will also grant us 200% damage on all shadows we make in the next 4 seconds from the Foreshadowing node, and cause us to gain 200 additional hp for each shadow we create in the next 4 seconds from the Shadow Rush node, this effect is not limited to shadows made from synchronized strikes.
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Our smoke bomb also causes us to create a shadow inside the smoke bomb once every second through the Umbral Assault node. It is important to note that while you do gain lots of buffs from fighting inside your smoke bomb, it is important to remember that sometimes you need to exit your smoke bomb so you do not “cage” yourself inside and die.
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Shift causes us to create a shadow at the place we leave via the Lasting Presence node, however this shadow is instantly consumed at the end of our shift movement due to the Dancing Shadows node. The Dancing Shadows node causes all shadows that you have up to use Shadow Cascade , not just the one created through the Lasting Presence node.
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Shadow Cascade also causes us to generate Shadows, however the creation is indirect, meaning we have no direct control over it. The Gloomstalker node on the Shadow Cascade tree gives us a 40% chance to create a shadow on kill with Shadow Cascade. We kill 99% of our enemies with Shadow Cascade due to the high damage output of the build. While we have an execute on Shift, it is mainly used for finishing bosses, smaller enemies will be mopped up very quickly from Shadow Cascade, and the damage of the actual Synchronized Strikes skill is very very low so the your chances of killing something with this skill are next to none.
In short - we have lots of shadow creation from many sources.
I hope this answered your questions, this info is useful for anyone using this build so don’t be afraid to read it all. If you have any more questions feel free to ask away. If you haven’t joined the discord I would recommend it, or stop by a stream to see the build or something similar in action. Thanks again for your interest in my build, I hope these answers were satisfactory to what you were looking for. Have a good one -Donut 