Shadow Daggers & Puncture via a Bow

Quick one, I am theory crafting trying to use Shadow daggers procced via the node in puncture through a high speed bow build.

@TriKster @Llama8 @neme1980 - Just wanted to ask if the sdaggers proccing problem with puncture via a bow had been solved from the bug report a while ago - my testing seems to indicate that it has been fixed and is working - before I put hours into seeing if the idea has merit, could you confirm?

From my rough lastepochtools planner messing around, it does look like the concept could work to some degree. Not sure if I can make it tick high enough tho.

Has anyone tried it since the problem was fixed?

Any ideas?

Can you tell me what exact problem you are addressing?
I tested SD Puncture with bow in 0.9 and SD proc is working as intended. This time i also tried it out with Penumbral Ambush for 2 additional projectiles. I was pretty sure it didnt work before but suddenly i realized you can shotgun with the node applying 3 stacks at the same time on monsters with a big hitbox giving it decent single target dmg potential.
At around 22 mana regen on char sheet i could sustain it on Drelkors.
Gathering Fury could be interesting aswell!

Just the old bug post you replied to a few years back where sd wasnt working with a bow unless you were in melee range.

I am pretty sure it is working now thoā€¦ just wanted to check with you guys who replied in the bug.

Thanks for those ideas.

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Oh yes, i remember. That bug report was a long time ago :slight_smile:
But from 0.9/9.1 testing i can tell you that it works!
Had quite some fun playing around it. Dont expect the highest dmg though.

Yeah. My gut is saying that its likely to hit a plateau a little too quickly but heyā€¦ Loved messing with drelkors and am bored with the bowmage builds so the proverbial drawing board is fun when the monoliths are boring. :wink:

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Yeah, youā€™ll bevlacking quite a lot of flat damage given Shadow Daggers doesnā€™t have the bow tag.

Yeahā€¦ got an idea to treat it like Manifest Armour builds where you focus not on the gear for your char but for the MA - i.e. in this instance ignore the bow damage - just focus on speed and stack everything damage wise for shadow daggers. I wanna try the flat throwing affixes and see how well it could work. Got a lot of gear lying around from all my shield throw attempts so I think I can compensate.

but hey, the fun is trying it out, not that bothered if it doesnt work in the end.

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Mourningfrost works for both bows and throwing attacks(but is one of the only such items in the game). Maybe could add in cold decoy(or just fire+cold) for some single target dmg. Issue is damage is gonna be all over the place: cold, fire, phys making crit your main scaling since you canā€™t rely on res shred/pen/inc dmg(my biggest turn-off from the game).

Side note has anyone tried Zerrickā€™s set shadow daggers? could be pretty spikey dmg.

I always felt like Zerrick set has too many defensive downsides. You miss 3 hybrid health slots on belt/boots/gloves + healing potential with potions.
The dmg is already good on SD. And the itemization currently in LE is more towards a defensive meta for endgame content.

Mourningfrost are definitely on the list of possible enablers of this kinda build but they are such a common choice that I am gonna see if I can make it work without resorting to them for that flat dex based damage.

and yeah, all the different ele damage options tend to be all over the place - like the Longshot unique bow which is supposed to be Puncture focussed but has the added elemental flat damage. I dont like it when they do things like that - it messes with my OCD and you spend half your time trying to figure out if its worth taking advantage of the odd affixes or if its just a red herring.

Yeah that bow is a scam its total flat dmg is almost equal to a dreadthorn with 2 flat dmg affixes(but worse since no crit and support ailment suffixes) and the damage at max range is impossible in many bosses.
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/charged-puncture-marksman-build-failed-build-and-a-few-thoughts/58098/3

Definitely.

Things like that annoy me - in most instances I give the devs the benefit of the doubt and assume that I have missed some niche interaction that I simply havent figured out yet but quite often you realise that something that is supposed to be ā€œwow its a unique so it should be greatā€ is actually worse than just getting lucky with a normal item craft. I dont like being taken for a fool like that.

Its like enjoying the spare rib special and then spending the next day screaming into the porcelain telephone.

Ok. For all the hours I have put into this game, I am late to the party. Everything I am messing with lately, you have found a problem with a game mechanic that applies. First the Drelkors range issue now this :crazy_face: :crazy_face: :scream:

I am haivng zero problems with the Puncture proccing Shadow Daggers - in fact, its doing pretty well with rubbish gear in normal monolithsā€¦

BUT.

I have stumbled on another of your ā€œbugā€ reports. This time its the Aim Assist.

OMG I feel like I have had a stroke and need a medical evaluation - either that or my gaming hardware is broken. Its a nightmare using something like Puncture with its narrow targetting vs other bow skills that have a more general wider AoE effect. I aim at one mob and it hits another. It really feels like I am going bonkers.

Its destroying the playability of the build - the number of boss situations where some stupid irrelevant mob moves into aim assist range and takes my Puncture hits is crazy. It prevents me stacking the shadow daggers on a target of my choosing to the point where there is a VERY obvious decrease in damage. It ruins temporary attack speed buffs because you could otherwise stack multiple procs of shadow daggers on a single target but now its being ā€œspreadā€ across or ā€œinterceptedā€ by irrelevant mobs.

I honestly had never experienced this before in any of my other builds and never realised how bad it actually was.

Have asked on Discord to see if Mike and co have an update on the issue.

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This has been my one really big issue with the aim assist. Itā€™s nice when it works right, but most of the time it just frustrates you by causing you to not be able to target what you really want to hit.

Yep, that was the main reason why i stopped playing recently. Iā€™m mostly doing rogue stuff so in 0.9 i went more into BD, but Marksman simply doesnt feel good anymore.
The only build that still feels good as before is HoA which was not affected by aim assist/crit nerf.

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Have you tried targetting a mobā€™s model but itā€™s a big mob so the cursor isnā€™t within the base of the mobā€™s model? Thatā€™s fun! Every arrow will miss.

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Mike responded to a question regarding Aim Assist esp. re Puncture:

Iā€™m sorry, I canā€™t remember what we did about it but when that issue came up in April, we did address it in a meeting as something to fix. Iā€™ll look into it though.

Puncture had its auto-aim turned down at least, Iā€™m not sure if weā€™ve added a player setting or not.

I responded that its still a problem as of 0.9.1d3 and he replied:

Sorry, wasnā€™t clear enough, meant that it has been turned down internally since the last patch went out and will be different in 0.9.2.

So imo thats good news.

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