Introduction
Doing a follow up on my Shadow Rend theorycraft thread found here:
After actually playing with the skill and using the new blade master tree I have drastically changed how the build is geared and functions. The main gameplay of stacking kismet and unloading it with chakrams has not changed, but how skills support themselves has.
A big thing I want to mention is how impactful the entire Doppelganger’s Set has been. At first I thought it would be another set bonus that was nice to have but easy to ignore. I was completely wrong. Once you get this set you are shadow generating factory. The helmet is invaluable for healing and dusk shroud stacking. The relic is currently bugged making is so shadow rend shadow attacks don’t benefit from the base critical strike affix, but still very good for shadow chakrams and shadow cascade. The chest is also good as a 1 point wonder from shards as you build a T7 chest out. All in all I have been very impressed.
Some pros of the build are:
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Super mobile making certain boss mechanics and most Omen encounters trivial as you zip around.
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Great Clear Speed. Once you are geared up everything just evaporates at high speed.
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Good power fantasy. I really feel like a ninja playing this build. Dashing around between shadows and smoke while setting up my time to strike feels good.
Some cons of the build include:
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Super mobile. That’s right the same thing that is a pro for the build is also a massive con. While zipping around can make some fights very easy it can make some fights almost impossible. T4 Julra is next to impossible to do with this build unless you use the no movement skill node or Tabi of Dusk and Dawn. I haven’t wiped so hard on Julra since early access Forge Guard when she would one shot all your minions and melee range was to short to hit her inside the beams. Harbingers can also be challenging as you can often dash into their attacks by accident.
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High actions per minute (APM). The core of the rotation is Smoke bomb > Shadow Rend > Shadow Rend > Shurikens. Use 2 more Shadow Rends for bosses. Add to this some impromptu Evades and you’ve got a lot going on. In practice it flows together great but I noticed some hand pain after extended play.
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Hard to gear. Your main weapons use weaver’s affixes. That means you are going to be living in Lostwood Folly echoes. Corruption helps quite a bit in making intermediate weapons, but its a lot less streamlined than LPing a unique. Your chase items are going to require T7 havoc rune swaps and defensive gearing is extremely fluid. Rogue defenses on the passive tree are so bad it feels impossible to nail down an exact way to gear defense.
My current gear looks like this on my journey up to corruption 300:
It flies through corruption 300 so far and can do all the T4 dungeon bosses. Will probably take it to abby and start bumping corruption soon.
With all the said lets get into the actual build.
Builds
At the start gear is fairly generic. Just get some okay swords, focus on getting the basic Doppleganger set and get all of your blessings so you know where the holes are in your defenses. You need to stack armor in this build so make sure you have something that functions without the 75% physical and 75% fire resist blessings.
Skill wise the initial choices are fairly safe. Leveling Shadow Rend as I have it setup should make the mana sustain trivial. Just make sure you are staying in your smoke bomb from time to time. Don’t forget to use Lethal mirage for it’s execute and invincibility.
Main changes from the starter include:
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Shadow Rend tree reworked to no longer use mana reducing nodes. Now focuses on more damage and shadow dagger spam. Your mana sustain will be kept up completely by shadow cascade at this point. Shadow daggers can deadly strike and this build procs them often ( they hit a little harder than a shadow rend shadow attack).
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Shadow Cascade reworked to be a full on throwing attack with no melee component. Lets the skill benefit from all of the extra throwing critical strike multi and flat added damage we have. Loses out on 4 extra melee skill points ( LE Tools doesn’t account for this so leave skill at 20 out of 24). Clear speed jumps significantly and single target does too as you are more likely to hit with all 6 shadows now.
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Shurikens -mana nodes removed and crit chance node reduced. Your rings make your shurikens cost 0 and kismet gives your shurikens +64% base crit chance. Instead we add 90% more damage.
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Lethal Mirage tree specced out of for explosive Umbral Blades. You can still use Lethal Mirage for invincibility but it no longer executes. Umbral Blades now deal several hundreds of thousands of damage per blade dropped adding up to millions per rotation. Good for bossing.
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Chest swapped out for T7 Ward Gained on Shadow Generation. This is what allows our health to be slightly lower than normal for end game as this affix alone produces about 1500 ward a second letting you sit at an extra 3k+ life. T5 or T6 works fine too just aim for as high as possible.
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Added Scissor of Atropos as our build around weapon to unload big shurikens. Affix priority %physical damage> critical strike multi > chance to shred armor.
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Added Truesight Glass for another damage boost. Works out to an average of 150% to 170% critical strike multi for a single slot. Affix priority %physical damage > health > critical strike multi > physical penetration.
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Added Li’raka’s Claws for an additional 100%+ critical strike multi for throwing attacks. Affix priority throwing damage > health.
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Gold rings changed out for Double critical strike copper rings. When the relic interaction is no longer bugged this is how you cap deadly strikes for Shadow Rend. Until then use Coral or Opal rings with critical strike chance instead.
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Exalted affixes added for the most important stat on each item.
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Armor Idol Alter added to help push armor to 50%+ hit reduction. You slam your face into a lot of things with this build so you need high hit reduction. 35% from glancing and 20% reduction from moving (passive tree) help adds more layers. You’ll also have around 50% to 70% dodge thanks to dusk shroud spam.
Main Changes for Chase Build:
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T7 Doppelganger Head for better defensive stats. Must be T7 to not have performance loss.
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T7 Doppelganger dice for better defensive stats. Must be T7 to not have performance loss.
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Trimmed 2 Grit and 3 Resilience passive point to add 5 points into Weapons of Choice to bring static glancing blow chance up to 50%. This fills in the gap left by swapping out the set helm.
Conclusion
Well that’s about it. Shadow Rend was a lot more challenging to figure out at the start but now I can’t get enough. I look forward to upgrading the build over the next few days.