Questions about dancing strike, shadow daggers and their interactions

[Keyen]

Hi, started playing recently, and I have trouble getting around some mechanics. I’m a veteran of PoE, so I’m fine with more/less/increased/reduced/hits/ailments just fine, but some stuff just feel weird.

First, let’s start by saying I saw and read this topic about shadow daggers:

Dr Strangellama, or how I learned to stop worrying & love the DW-Void-y Rogue

This isn’t a build guide per se, but it is a guide to Shadow Daggers. It was also going to showcase how much better a staff would be for it, but, erm, no. DW Blade of the Forgotten Knight & the Amulet is awesome, much higher attack speed, lots of damage & since you’re dual wielding you get much better support from the Bladedancer passive tree. If you want to go balls-to-the-wall on added damage for Shadow Daggers, it’ll be DW Blade of the Forgotten Knight (+53 melee phys damage, +15-25 melee voi…

While it answered some questions I had about it, it raised some more.

1. Is Shadow dagger really an ailment?

2. Why are the breakpoints at applying stacks at 50/150/250%? If I was logical about it, I would say it would be 33%, 100% and 300% (400/3, 400/2, 400/1, basically), but it doesn’t look like it. I don’t see the logic behind these figures at all.

3. In the tooltip, Shadow dagger has a manacost. Why, and why I never spend it?

4. If I use passive increasing the manacost for some effects (like Coated Blades), does it apply?

5. Given it looks like a skill is used (after appliying 4 stacks of ailment?), does it procs flow?

6. On another topic, when I asked about ailments and more damage on skills, people told me that more damage on a skill overall (compared to hits) is also applied to ailments. For instance, people gave me the example of Timing on Puncture which properly increases the bleed damage done. Does it apply to Shadow dagger as well, if the skill applying it has more damage on it? For instance, if i’m applyng shadow dagger with puncture, will timing increase its damage?

7. Can Shadow dagger apply ailments like bleed and poison? I guess it does, since it’s a hit, but again, it looks like it’s an ailment as well, and i’m not sure an ailment can apply another ailment somehow.

8. Are the tags enough for it to apply related effects, or it’s only to make it scale with damage? Is shadow dagger going to proc everything which is supposed to proc on melee AND on throwing attacks, for instance, or is it just a way to say “melee and throwing increased damage apply to it, and that’s all”?

On another topic, I have some question about dancing strikes. I get what conversion does, no problem. However, I’m not sure about a specific interaction, and I would like o be sure (as it would be pretty significant):

1. I have 5 points in disembowel. I have dancing strike, and I have Contaminate, converting all my bleed chance to poison. However, Disembowel is NOT bleed chance. Is it correct to assume that it becomes the only way for dancing strike to apply bleed after taking Contaminate? Or, somehow, it’s also converted to poison, just because?

2. How does Snake bit is calculated exactly? If the target is both bleeding and poisoned, do I get (1 + 0,3 + 0,3) = 1.6 = 60% more damage? Or they are multiplicative and I actually get 1,3 * 1,3 = 1.69 = 69% more damage?

Finally, a last question, are so much tooltips supposed to be missing? It’s hard to understand how it apply. For instance, Hooked blade grants armor shred chance and armor shred effect. Is the armor shred effect applied on every armor shred you apply, even if it’s not melee? What about the ballista, will it benefit from the armor shred effect as well?

Sorry for the long topic of questions, but it’s a bit confusing

Thank you for reading up to here, and thanks in advance for your answers! I know that some of it can probably be tested IG, but my current character being lvl 35, my minimum skill level is 5 and it would take a lot of time to level up the skills up to a relevant level.

[Llama8]

@Keyen

1. Is Shadow dagger really an ailment?

Yes. Not all ailments are DoTs, the Void Knight’s Future Strikes is another non-DoT ailment.

2. Why are the breakpoints at applying stacks at 50/150/250%? If I was logical about it, I would say it would be 33%, 100% and 300% (400/3, 400/2, 400/1, basically), but it doesn’t look like it. I don’t see the logic behind these figures at all.

I agree, but the breakpoints are what they are.

3. In the tooltip, Shadow dagger has a manacost. Why, and why I never spend it?

Presumably because it’s proc’d rather than a skill in it’s own right.

4. If I use passive increasing the manacost for some effects (like Coated Blades), does it apply?

Not sure, good question. I’d probably be inclined to say no since it’s not consuming mana.

5. Given it looks like a skill is used (after appliying 4 stacks of ailment?), does it procs flow?

No, only actively used skills proc flow. Procs, such as Shadow Cascade proc’d by Shift, don’t grant or consume stacks of flow but if the hit that procs the damage from Shadow Daggers also consumes your Flow stacks, that damage buff from Flow should be inherited by Shadow Daggers.

4. On another topic, when I asked about ailments and more damage on skills, people told me that more damage on a skill overall (compared to hits) is also applied to ailments. For instance, people gave me the example of Timing on Puncture which properly increases the bleed damage done. Does it apply to Shadow dagger as well, if the skill applying it has more damage on it? For instance, if i’m applyng shadow dagger with puncture, will timing increase its damage?

If it can, yes. I was going to say that as long as the more damage modifier doesn’t specify hits, but Shadow Daggers isn’t a DoT so that shouldn’t be an issue. But as long as the damage element (fire, physical, etc) from the more modifier is appropriate to the damage elements that Shadow Daggers (phys by default, plus any flat melee & throwing damage) does it should be inherited.

For example. If you had a +% more physical damage modifier & your Shadow Daggers had flat added phys & flat added void damage, the % more multiplier would affect all of the phys damage that Shadow Daggers is doing but not the void.

5. Can Shadow dagger apply ailments like bleed and poison? I guess it does, since it’s a hit, but again, it looks like it’s an ailment as well, and i’m not sure an ailment can apply another ailment somehow.

No, ailments can’t apply ailments.

6. Are the tags enough for it to apply related effects, or it’s only to make it scale with damage? Is shadow dagger going to proc everything which is supposed to proc on melee AND on throwing attacks, for instance, or is it just a way to say “melee and throwing increased damage apply to it, and that’s all”?

It should be able to “do” anything that a melee/throwing ailment hit can take advantage of. So I’d assume that it can proc “life on melee hit”, since it has the melee tag, but not proc chill or frailty on hit since Shadow Daggers is an ailment & so are chill & frailty. Most procs are ailment related though, such as poison, frailty, bleed, stun, etc so those would be out.

1. I have 5 points in disembowel. I have dancing strike, and I have Contaminate, converting all my bleed chance to poison. However, Disembowel is NOT bleed chance. Is it correct to assume that it becomes the only way for dancing strike to apply bleed after taking Contaminate? Or, somehow, it’s also converted to poison, just because?

Disembowl is +100% bleed chance per point so Contaminate would convert that to poison for Dancing Strikes.

2. How does Snake bit is calculated exactly? If the target is both bleeding and poisoned, do I get (1 + 0,3 + 0,3) = 1.6 = 60% more damage? Or they are multiplicative and I actually get 1,3 * 1,3 = 1.69 = 69% more damage?

They’re 2 sets of multiplicative bonuses so it’d be 69% more.

Finally, a last question, are so much tooltips supposed to be missing? It’s hard to understand how it apply.

For non-minions, the tooltips are all in, though they may not work quite right yet.

For instance, Hooked blade grants armor shred chance and armor shred effect. Is the armor shred effect applied on every armor shred you apply, even if it’s not melee? What about the ballista, will it benefit from the armor shred effect as well?

Hooked Blades grants the player (not minions such as Ballista, though it might gain some benefit from Hooked Blades if you take the Contaminating Shots node since armour shred is an ailment) two separate bonuses,

• melee armour shred
• increased armour shred effectiveness

The first will only be applied to melee hits & the second is applied to all instances of the player’s armour shred.

[Keyen]

I see, thank you for all the answers.

If it can, yes. I was going to say that as long as the more damage modifier doesn’t specify hits, but Shadow Daggers isn’t a DoT so that shouldn’t be an issue. But as long as the damage element (fire, physical, etc) from the more modifier is appropriate to the damage elements that Shadow Daggers (phys by default, plus any flat melee & throwing damage) does it should be inherited.

For example. If you had a +% more physical damage modifier & your Shadow Daggers had flat added phys & flat added void damage, the % more multiplier would affect all of the phys damage that Shadow Daggers is doing but not the void.

That’s really interesting. So, if I understand you properly. Let’s say I’m using dancing strike with the following:

• 4 pts in slicing (does it apply to shadow dagger, btw? Forgot to ask)
• 1 pt in dark blade for shadow dagger procs
• 2 pts in grievious wounds
• 3 points in snake bites (for 69% more damage with hits if I manage to bleed and poison my target)
• 1 point in trickling cut
• 1 pt in contaminate
• 2 pts in majasa’s dagger (for 120% more melee damage if I manage to poison my target 20 times)
• 1 pt in eluding steps
• 1 pt in nimble
• 4 pts in underdog (60% more damage against a rare or boss enemy)
• 60% increased attack speed overall in the passive, gear, etc for another 20% more damage overall.

I don’t think I saw anything related to physical in it, so I guess everything apply to shadow daggers, meaning I would get a whopping 7.14 multiplier over the regular shadow dagger damage? It’s insane, and make other shadow dagger procs nearly irrelevant (like the one on smoke bomb, which sounded pretty good given it applied on stack every 0,5s).

[Llama8]

Yes, the phys pen from Slicing should be inherited by Shadow Daggers (for any physical damage).

[Heavy]

@Llama8

3. In the tooltip, Shadow dagger has a manacost. Why, and why I never spend it?

Presumably because it’s proc’d rather than a skill in it’s own right.

Not really an answer, but just an additional information.

Most skills that are procced or on Items etc. do have a “mana cost”.

Maybe that’s just something that the new tooltip dps brigns with it, even thought it’s not relevant or true.

[Llama8]

Not all do though, and no ailments. Plus it’s an ailment rather than a skill.