Dual wield/Mitigation Shadow: Beat Dominus @ L65 WITH VIDS of Dom and sick Precinct!!

Hello guys,

this is my first guide here, I am giving it a try cause I find my build is really fun to play and yet challenging.

The reason for this is the chosen relation of offense and defense. This build is quite offensive and personal. You whirl in, smash everything, and whirl on. As you may guess, Whirling Blades is one of the used gems.

So let's go!

Purpose of the Build

The purpose of this build was to get my Shadow safely from L65 to the higher levels, with as much fun and as fast as possible. It was NOT intended to solo the most challenging endgame content. Yet it is possible, depending on your skills. I just wanted to have a high lvl Shadow when the next reset hits, and now I find myself accomplishing this damn fast.
Why Level 65? Cause then you can equip all the nice gear!

Build idea

OFFENSE
There was no certain idea behind it, I just got lucky with a few drops and once (first time ever since...almost 2 years!) got a 6L item, a Lightning Coil. Together with the dropped Bino's Kitchen Knife and Soul Taker, I wanted to do some dual wielding crit Shadow.

Since Soul Taker is not really critty, I use it OFF HAND. Meaning it just gives me the option to drain 100% of my mana on auras. Not the most efficient idea but definately fun!

So, since I only want to hit with Bino's I had very few skills to choose from. Basically this build can work with a Quality Frenzy, with Reave, but what I had in mind was Double Strike. Since Double strike only uses the MAIN HAND WEAPON, we have the desired high crit!
Now, as you can see in the Wiki, the Crit Roll is just rolled ONCE for both Double Strike and the Multistrike which we use as support. So you better crit, or you do mediocre damage.

However with a well rolled Bino's this is no problem at all, and we use Power Charges as well!

DEFENSE

The defense is something I had to work on really hard, and my idea right from the start was using a Rumi's Concoction. Everything else basically followed, in the end I decided to use:

- Dodge
- Evasion
- Block
- Spellblock and Spelldodge, relying on items and Gems
- Regeneration from Bino's in combination with Adder's Touch notable.
- and finally, though very rarely seen with Dodge: Armour.
- NEW: CWDT setup

This leads to: MULTILAYER MITIGATION MADNESS!!! :D

(Also note that Purity of Lightning and Topaz Flask help to counter a lot of damage via Lightning Coil)

You may now say: Uh, that guy's stupid, his Acrobatics halves the Armour rating!
I say: Yes, it does, but why would we really NEED armour? We have some serious offense, melt packs in few seconds, and when it comes down to big bosses, you can get one-shotted with any character.

However, this is not entirely solving the problem, as you may encounter various hard hitters in endgame and you just cannot rely on Dodging/killing them first every time.
So, I took a combination of Flasks, and of course the Lightning Coil. Which brings me to...

The Gear


Thoughts:

The Lightning Coil gives us some insane mitigation, which this build need due to its relatively low life pool. Soul Taker is required, while Bino's can technically be replaced, but I just LOVE the regen it can offer.
Alpha's Howl boosts the Auras we use, and most importantly we cannot be frozen!
With the Granite Flask only I have 28% average (important!) damage reduction in a L72 map iirc, when I pop Rumi's before I should get a LOT more.

The rest of my gear is as follows:

No need to actually use legacy Maligaros, but hell, I had one from back then^^.
It makes absolutely no sense to have those colours on boots and Maligaros, you can just switch them. It was a coincedence when i wanted BBGG on Maligaros and got this instead. So I implemented the CWDT setup ^^

Screenshots:

At L65:



in town: 23 K DPS, without charges

L84:


I am not sure how this tooltip calculates DPS, BUT:
We do have 6 hits (2 from first DS, and 4 from Multistrike repetition), and this builds clears FAST. Also it is just plain fun to watch whole packs of monsters go instantly "plop" at such low charcter levels!

I read the tooltip would calculate per hit, but I cannot tell if this is true.

If it it, we would have: 6* 30 K Dps = 180 K DPS !!!
Anyways it feels really good, you can see the damage output in the videos.

Maybe some can enlighten me how to calculate this more accurately.

GAMEPLAY


Pros and Cons

PRO:

- slice your way from the mid 60s to mid 80s in no time!
- fun gameplay
- yet challenging when you encounter strong bosses: Manually dodging attacks like Touch of God is a MUST! (but easy)
- unique build, requires some expensive items, but is overall not overly pricey.
- you can still tweak it! I also considered going for that Flask Effect Duration node near Ondar's Guile, which would make Rumi's a lot better. However, even most bosses don't last that long!

CONS:

- not explicitly designed to handle the highest maps or even Atziri. Can be achieved with some upgrading/tweaking however!
- cannot run the following map mods: Blood magic
- has problems with: physical reflect, no regen. (Reflect can be handled via CWDT setup, for no regen you need to drink if you get hit^^)

Gem discussion


Finally, the skilltree:
Critical Strikes, Crit multi, a bit of Life,and Acrobatics.

L 65 tree (base):



L 84 tree (current):



BANDIT choices being:

Normal: + 40 Life
Cruel: Skill point
Merciless: +1 power charge

Thoughts of the tree:

The "Twin terrors" wheel in the duelist area provides 125% Inc. Crit Chance while dual wielding, for the ridiculous price of 3 points. However I did not find that nevessary so I skipped it.

Further progression: just take more Block passives!
I took an INT passive for better Purity of Lightning, but you should be able to get that on your jewelry.

Example:



Videos




Budget Version

When I find the time, I can put up a Budget version of this build, which will only utilize a 5-linked Lightning Coil. We have to say goodbye to dual wielding then, but the mitigation techniques will remain intact!


Any thoughts on this build and constructive criticism is appreciated, any improvements as well. Please note that the easiest way to improve the build I currently have is to improve the gear, but since it is doing fine so far, I will wait.

Reserved

Now updated with new gem setup and video of Precinct map!!