Frog of War(d) [Arena 500+ | Speed-Runner | Tank | High DPS | Monolith-Farmer]

Rogue
1
THE CONCEPT:

  • This build is about jumping around like a frog, doing massive (almost screenwide) damage while having about 4k ward constantly - that’s why i named it Frog of War(d). :wink:

  • The core concept is to utilize Shadow Daggers as your main damaging skill and be as tanky as possible - to not only be a pretty devastating classcanon, actually to also be a solid survivor.

  • There are similar builds out there that deal trumendously amounts of damage but sadly lack in defensive utility…

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY:

  • Good:

    • About 4k ward constantly (~200% ward retention)
    • Almost 8k armor
    • 100% crit avoidance
    • About 70% dodge
    • 100% blind chance
    • 100% frailty chance and uptime
    • Very mobile and quick (also 100% haste uptime)
    • Mid-range combat
    • 250k+ crits
    • Tons of armor shred
    • Straight forward to gear
    • “No-Brainer” playstyle (which is fun for me)

  • Bad / Ugly:

    • Can be mana starving if you have timing issues
    • Hard to get the “perfect” gear for Shadow Daggers breakpoints
    • LAGS! The numerous use of Synchronized Strike and Shift tends to literally freeze your character during the move from time to time - at least for me this is the case.
      This hinders you from generating ward, so you will drop low… and probably die.
      Shockingly this happens to me when i reach Arena 300+…
      It’s the only reason why i’m only ranked on 427 waves, and not 500+.
      THE ONLY REASON! I’m serious! :smiley:
      Well, maybe this is a personal hardware issue, but let’s be honest: overall performance could be better. Go for it, EHG! :stuck_out_tongue:
THE GAMEPLAY:

  • Preparation:

    • Before engaging combat, make sure that you have built up enough ward by using Synchronized Strike “in place”.
      I would recommend stacking up 2-3k (depending on Arena / Monolith level).

  • “Rotation”:

    • Ehmm… well… Spam Synch. Strike and Shift. GG. :wink:
      The other skills (Acid Flask & Shurikens) are built into Shift and trigger automatically.

  • Positioning:

    • Don’t try to enter close combat. Be on mid-range. Do some sort of “drive-by-shooting” with your Shadow Daggers. You will take way less damage that way and your 10 stacks of Perfection as well as your Concentration buff will be up for a longer time.
THE GEAR / PASSIVES / SKILLS / IDOLS:

  • Build Planner:

    • KRUCIOUS - FOG OF WAR(D)
      This Build Planner is relatively new (good work made by Dammitt).
      Controls behave like you were ingame:
      Press P to access Passives. Press S to access Skills.

  • Remarks:

    • Resistances and dodge chance shown incorrectly:
      Don’t be fooled on my poison resistance. It’s capped.
      Last Epoch Tools somehow doesn’t take the passive points from Guile into account.
      Same for dodge chance. Various passives, such as Meditation or Asuvon’s Pact, are not included either. Dodge chance is at 65% base, at about 70% in combat.

    • Armor:
      Shown unbuffed. Will come to this point in a few lines.

    • Crit Avoidance:
      If you can’t reach the 100% from 2x rings and your boots, put some points into Heightened Senses (Marksman Passives) till you got your well rolled affixes.

    • Filler Passive Points:
      Scarlet Stream and also Flash of Steel are more or less filler points to reach the top end. Spend them anywhere you want.

  • Shadow Daggers breakpoints:

    • According to the math we got, your most important goal should be to reach the 200% increased Shadow Dagger Effect. This can be done by having 4 Idols that sum up to +100%, and getting the other +100% from helmet and body armor.
      Therefore Tier 5 affixes on those is a must for best results.
SPECIAL SKILL INTERACTIONS:

  • Synchronized Strike and Shadow Cascade:

    • I assume you all know this absolutely amazing interaction.
      If not, there are so many good videos about it where you can easily inform yourself.
      (I recommend the ones from Boardman21)
      Short version: Synchronized Strike creates 4 Shadows, triggers Shadow Cascade (with all its skill tree nodes) and then consumes your Shadows to grant you ward.
      We spam the hell out of Synchronized Strike - for two reasons: survivability through ward and damage through Shadow Daggers from Shadow Cascade.

  • Shift and Shurikens:

    • This one could be new for you.
      When Shift is set up to throw Shurikens - and Shurikens themselves are set up to be spinning around you (via Blade Shield) - Shift will trigger this spinning.
      Normally Blade Shield doesn’t stack, BUT when using Shift to trigger it, it does!
      5 Shurikens are thrown via Shift + 2 additional Shurikens via the unique Li’Raka’s Claws = 7 Shurikens spinning around on one use.
      Each Shuriken that spins increases your armor by 30% (Bladed Armor).
      We increase the duration of Blade Shield by 60% - to 4.8 seconds (with Floating Blades). Assuming we have a 1.8 sec. CD on Shift, we can manage to have up to 3 stacks of Blade Shield. Math: 7 x 30% = 210% x 3 = 630% increased Armor.
      In reality, the increase is more like 500% - but still… this is huge, and the reason why we stack armor as suffixes!
POSSIBLE QUESTIONS:

  • Why two daggers?

    • I know, its a big damage loss wearing the unique dagger Smoke Weaver two times…
      But, damage is still fine (250k crits are totally ok :wink: ) and you gain so much defense from those daggers: up to 750 dodge (i don’t have any other dodge on my gear and end up at 70% dodge in combat) and a significantly shorter cooldown on shift, which makes the armor thing i just mentioned possible.

  • Why no Smoke Bomb?

    • As a frog… who wants to jump and cannot stand still, Smoke Bomb wouldn’t be something clever for this build. You would only benefit from its Shadows and the intitial burst of some Shroud stacks maybe. Instead i took Acid Flasks, which - with Shift - is fully passive, costs no mana and brings 100% Haste uptime, 100% Blind chance, 400% Armor Shred. I like this tradeoff a bit more. :wink:

  • Why so much additional defense when having 70% dodge?

    • 70% is not 100%. :expressionless: If you are on a bad luck streak and eat 2-3 hits in a row, things are getting serious (if not already dead) without additional defense.

  • How to cap resistances?

    • Set-Resistance-Affixes are the best choice. Simple. Efficient.
      You only need to get Void and Elemental Resistance once as a suffix on top of it.
      If crafting doesn’t bring shiny results for you, try to catch proper idols instead.
      The ones we use, the Large Idols and the Ornate or Grand Idol, can have resistances on it.
THANKS TO:

  • McFluffin for discussing and brainstorming the core build mechanics with me and bringing his Shadow Dagger build on the table.

  • Llama8 for doing incredibly maths, as always, and showing up breakpoints.

  • Boardman21 for releasing his videos on the Synchronized Strike / Shadow Cascade shell.

  • Everyone who made it to the end of my build. This was my first attempt on stuff like that.
    Hope you liked it. Feel free to blame me, if not. :smiley:

10 Likes
2

it sounds amazing!

1 Like
3

Let me know when you get a t6/7 Shadow Dagger effect chest then we can see if I’m right & @McFluffin is wrong about how much you need to hit 1 stack of Shadow Dagger for damage…

You can also use offensively by going down the Knives in the Dark (chance to apply Shadow Dagger):
https://imgur.com/QuNkprL
That would give you 6s of 1 Shadow Dagger stack & 4 armour shred stacks being applied every 0.5s as well as 1 shadow every second (to proc your Shadow Cascades) & if you took 5 points in Hooked Blades, those 4 stacks of armour shred would give you 500 armour reduction on the boss (compared to the usual 400).

1 Like
4

Absolutely, yes.
The only downside on Smoke Bomb for me is the “sitting duck” element of this skill.

5

Yes & no. If you don’t take the Dusk Shroud nodes or any of the player buff nodes then there’s not really any need to remain in it, so you dump it on the boss/champion/etc then carry on as usual. And if you’re using Shuriken’s Blade Shield node then you’ll be in close proximity to the boss anyway.

6

Good point, agreed!
Maybe worth trying to situational use Smoke Bomb in arena - on Golems, for example.
If using Smoke Bomb, gear needs to be altered, though. You will need mana efficiency on the amulet then - otherwise you will be running into a downward spiral manawise pretty fast and end up starving.

Blade Shield here is only taken for defensive purposes, btw. I never go into close combat.

7

Ah. You’ve got 2x Ballista’s prefixes, so Shurikens should be free, if you put some points into Sapping Strikes then use Shurikens & hit some mobs that would regain you mana.

8

The “hit some mobs” part is where this would counteract my playstyle.
I’m gonna stick with Acid Flask. Sure, Smoke Bomb would be a huge damage-CD on top, but the general damage is fine and i rather like to stay QoL and defense orientated. :slight_smile:

9

Thx for shareing，you are my saver
before your BD I was using the poison BD，sick of got sudden death 5,6 times a day
BTW，Shift mana recovery 3point i suppos is enough，Dancing Shadows might better
dueling the little monsters，just Shift and run. How you think？

1 Like
10

Thanks for feedback! Glad you like the build.

I have been testing Dancing Shadows quite a while…
The thing about Dancing Shadows is, that you create a shadow through Shift and right after that, it will use Shadow Cascade without any benefits from Shadow Infusion (the ward node from Synchronized Strike).
So basically, you will lose a chunk of ward generation when consuming Shadows outside of the Synchronized Strike interaction.
Yes, it may be nice for clearing little monsters… But that will only be an advantage for speed clearing stuff - and a disadvantage for survivability. :wink:

Three points in mana recovery could be enough, true… assuming you can play lag-free.
Personally i feel smoother with 4 points in it, but that’s an individual choice i guess.

11

Thanks for reply
I did failed at LV80 logon twice today. Didn’t notice that point might make me weaker.
I was thought I don’t have enough armor and class affix.
The most amazing thing about this BD is that we use 3 uniques,it’s really hard to make a good equip out.

1 Like
12

4 uniques - as far as i count :wink:
(2x Smoke Weaver, Strands of Souls, Li’Raka’s Claws)

Facetanking Lagon is not included in this build.
The reason here is, that Lagon’s Beam hits too often in a too short period of time. You can’t dodge all hits and your ward generation is mainly tied to a ~1 second cooldown (Synch. Strike).

13

It’s a DoT, you shouldn’t be able to dodge, block, glancing blow it at all. It’s almost like it’s a thing that should be avoided… :stuck_out_tongue:

14

2021-02-09T17:00:00Z

UPDATES:

SKILLS:
  • Managed to finally get rid of lags by altering the skill setup a bit:
    • Using Decoy instead of Acid Flask now. This leads to even more survivability.
      (I underestimated the Taunt of Decoy…)
    • Switched the skilltree nodes of Shift a bit.
      (No Flask throwing, more dodge)
GEAR:
  • Changed helmet prefixes. Now: 1x Set-Resistance, 1x Cooldown Recovery
    • (For more uptime on Decoy)
  • Changed boots prefixes. Now: 2x Set-Resistance
    • (The one Set-Resistance from helmet moved to boots)
PROOF OF CONCEPT:
  • Without those nasty lags, i was finally able to clear Arena 500+!
    • (Like i promised in my build description :smiley: )
  • Screenshots of some mentionend resistance stats see below.
    • (Taken in combat)

https://imgur.com/Ltz9RnP
https://imgur.com/a/EYOd5An

https://imgur.com/a/B2Sdu50

3 Likes
15

My Sentinels have less armour than that… :slight_smile:

2 Likes
16

Some weeks ago, players were discussing whether it’s a DoT or not…
Glad you clarified it for me now. :wink:
Same result though: this build can’t facetank the Beam.^^

17

I trid to make a pure meele BD rouge today,surrounding using shadows
without shadow dagger and synchronized strike
I choose dance strike, mirage strike,smoke, shadow cascade
that proves me a fool,can’t survive over one minute
Is there a possiblity shadow dancer exist?

18

Shadow Cascade without Synch. Strike is somehow wasted - the interaction of those both together is simply too strong to be ignored.

Without Synch. Strike, you wont be able to generate a good amount of ward, so you need to adjust you defenses: way more health, more health regen or life leech, save fall mechanism such as silver shrouds, things like that…

Also Dancing Strike isn’t worth the skill slot, in my opinion…

19

I suppose dancing strike is one of few skill make me feel like combating
and it can create shadow slowly
flurry is good but no shadows
ok,I give up for now.
Thanks for reply

2 Likes
20

@KissingAiur disagrees with you (though I do agree)…