Speed scaling Cascade Dancer - huge guide

Bug fixed!!!

Yeah!!! I tried it out right now. You can play dancing strikes properly again, also you can shift out of sync strike, it no longer stuck in place. The build is playable on MP.

Still, shift has a weird fraction of a second in place, and attack speed from weapons don’t scale, so we lose some damage.

Updated the MP part at the end of the guide, no longer holds the “not recommended in MP”, at least is playable.

So did you end up making a loot filter?

@Ninakoru , do you think there’s any way to make this viable with only dancing strikes? Wondering how much damage you can actually do with dancing strikes itself on its own, or if it just scales too badly and needs shadow dagger to work.

A bit bored of every build having shadow dagger, so trying to find a different playstyle instead of shadow daggers.

I didn’t go full damage with dancing strikes, the thing is the skill damage is low, you can’t scale speed to make up for it, on top of that, there’s no crit support in the skill itself.

It has a nice deal of more multipliers here and there, but everything has a downside, sometimes quite annoying.

Here’s a build concept, this must be tested but should largely work:

I changed the dancing strikes for that more damage. You need some reliable source of poison and bleed, ideally you want to do 1 stack of each with each hit for consistency. I left the arena as you will be focusing on dancing strikes, is quite helpful. went for the 30% of Shurikens, you may not need to use shift to regain the blade shield.

You also need to retool your other skills if you plan on going dancing strikes, i got smoke bomb and lethal mirage. Gone with more strikes, dodge buff and haste, and kill threshold on lethal mirage, smoke bomb for dusk shroud, some shred, silver shroud and lots of damage, also added crimson shroud and more increased crit on the passives in exchange of the shadow clone stuff. Also some bleed chance after shift in exchange of the clone + cascade. Also adjusted the ideal equipment, added some poison in one of the katanas instead of chill, crit per sword in chest, and the proper + skills.

@Ninakoru Cheers, that’s the feeling I’ve been getting as well with the skill, been trying to make it work in any way possible, but it seems that it’s always 100% relegated to a “supporting” skill, even though it’s the baseline skill for bladedancer, this makes me a bit sad.

Created this feedback topic on the issue(s) of Dancing Strikes (Dancing Strikes as a stand-alone skill feels lackluster), if you feel like dropping your 2 cents in there, would be appreciated.

Guess thats a no

Sorry, I didn’t get into it.
What about of the one that makes for you automatically the tools planner?

It gets the prioritize in some builds completely wrong, like im pretty sure itd put chance to chill on hit as a “you want that” mod on swords, while it looks like a pretty optional mod for me

Yeah, is a nice to have more than anything. Lately I feel stun chance is quite OP. ^^

I will try to do one in detail this afternoon.

Added the Endgame Filter, just after the planner on the guide.

Awesome, Thank you so much <3

Greetings! This is my first LE build that I’m trying and I wanted to thank you for being so very detailed with it. I have a few questions however. I’m playing the build with a friend as we go through the game right now, and I am experiencing the slight glitch that has me standing in place sometimes but it doesn’t seem to be that troublesome for me right now. I’m only at lvl 50 so likely I havent experienced nearly the hard parts of the game but do you still believe this build is somewhat viable in multiplayer? My buddy is playing a necromancer build rn, and it seems to be working out.

Second question, I was looking at the tree and my current combo that I came up with for flow is Synch strike (up to twice, cuz the shadows stack and its not unique for flow) - cascade - shuriken - dancing blades. I noticed the tree had node “wave of darkness” at the bottom right, would that fit into the build at all? I feel like that could work out if we lessen some of the points invested in “art of the blade” especially since i tend to use the synch strike to cascade combo more.

Thanks so much for reading this far!

First of all, yes, there’s something clunky on this build gameplay right now. Sync strike is not smooth as it should, shift has that small root in place by default… But seems some other builds have some minor wonkyness problems as well (but others just not).

The thing with Rhythm stacks, sync strike counts as a unique skill, shift as another one, and Dancing strikes has four different attacks and all are counted in as unique skills for Rhythm, I am able to pull out up to 8 stacks of Rhythm using sync strike into shift and dancing strikes until your shift is nearly ready to do again the sync strike into shift. Realistically you are able to maintain 3-6 stacks most of the time.

Is just better to not cast shurikens manually and use shift to keep up the blade shield.

I tried Wave of darkness, it just doesn’t fit well into any rotation. What it does is, as you sync strike any shadow that exists cast shadow cascade, then creates two shadows, so you need to cast it twice so the the two shadows from the previous sync strike use cascade. Also you need to take out two points from other places. I just recommend dancing strikes while waiting for shift cooldown, is much better that way, in my opinion, but you can try it out yourself, why not, respeccing is not that punishing in this game.

Thank you for your rapid reply, I really appreciate it! Reason I was pushing for wave of darkness is because I’d like to use shift more as a movement and support skill rather than have it be part of the main combo rotation. In the gameplay I experienced so far I really like setting up the shadows and causing a massive stacking cascade, so I end up casting synch strike twice before cascading anyway. I’ll definitely give it a go, I’d like to see if i can work out a combo with it.

I’ll take your advice on letting shift cast the shurikens tho it did feel a little redundant to cast it myself. Thanks again for the reply!

Hey all, reached level 82 with this build and was wondering 2 things:

1: What are the best ways I can lower Shift’s CD? Dancing blades is fine between rotations but sometimes I wish Shift cd was a second lower.

2: Is the increased damage w/ shadow cascade on shadows affix bugged rn? I can’t remember but somebody in general chat mentioned there was a bug making a shadow cascade synergy affix do nothing.

Love the build so far. I feel like I’m cosplaying as URF Zed.

Cooldown recovery on boots and belt. Not worth going beyond about 37-38%, that are decent rolls on T5 belt + T5 shoes, that is a sweet spot, shift I think was 2.3, and dancing strikes go down to 0.5. Going further is not worth, adding a cooldown ring or the head for example, would give shift 2.2 instead of 2.3 and no further effect on dancing strikes.

Increased damage per shadow with shadow cascade doesn’t work at all. Increased armor duration doesn’t work on idols (but works on helmet/chest), beware of those two. I reported both to EHG on several occasions, but seems affixes working is not a priority.

Been trying your build since i failed at making a dancing strikes build and this was a lot better… i do have one question though… in sync strikes wouldn’t the 80% shadow damage from foreshadowing and 2 extra shadows from dark allies do more damage than 15% attack speed from art of the blade? i know cascade scales on attack speed but that’s only 10% multiplicative vs 80% shadow damage and 2 more shadows exceeding your cap casting cascade as well.

I don’t know if there are other decisions that could be better like this, but this is the most glaring one to me that caught my eye, unless I am completely mistaken because it feels impossible to test dps in this game and the character sheet is not helpful at all in this regard. Curious to hear your take.

Yeah, that’s a beefy node at first, trust me is tested it a lot, but comes with 100% extra mana cost, and sync strike is not cheap. You can of course remove the shadows inwards (-10 mana cost), but making focus, is a lot harder that way, still there’s the mana problem. You also need to trade 3 points elsewhere, probably the ones that gives the buff for less damage against dots, but beware DoTs can get very scary and there’s no protection outside that effect and a amulet base.

You get 4 +1 from shift with it, without it, you get 2+1, and 4 anyways if a second rotation is needed, thanks to the extra shadow from dancing strikes.

You can fix it, with more mana regen, and some sync strike efficiency, and maybe some extra area to get an easier time hitting with the 5 shadows if you remove shadow inwards. but usually is not worth the trouble, in bosses is just an extra shadow, and with passives alone you even don’t need mana regen.

To me is not worth the trouble for an extra shadow when really matters, unless you get good gear with that efficiency on sync strike, and lots of mana regen in items you have for other affixes (usually the suffixes).

Just curious, would the unique sword gladiator’s oath be viable in any way for this build? The 100% crit strike chance allows you to stack crit multiplier and not have to worry about crit chance in the build anymore. Though I haven’t played with this build yet, so I’m probably wrong, would love your feedback