Ethereal Knives Build Questions

I decided to make an ethereal knives marauder for onslaught. I wanted to give ethereal knives a try after never having used it, and I wanted a tanky character for my first hardcore character. I know ethereal knives was nerfed in the last patch, but it seems like the buffs to physical damage were sufficient to compensate for the nerf. I'm currently wearing a 24% rustic sash.

The problem is, ethereal knives takes so much mana that I can only case it about 4 or 5 times before my mana is gone. At the same time, it does not do very much damage. I am using it linked to faster projectiles at the moment. Is there something I am doing wrong?

At level 36, my build looks like this: http://bit.ly/17yobv1. I was not planning on taking the blood magic passive because I want to run hatred, purity, and possibly determination or grace. There are a few errors (like Iron Grip and that melee physical node) that I will take care of with my next free respec points in cruel acts 1 and 2. I don't know if I will spec out of prestidigitation and the reduced mana passive yet, since I took them to help deal with ethereal knives' insane mana cost.

Well first of all you need shit tons of spell damage increase passives for the spell to do any damage at all. playing a ethereal knives shadow on anarchy right now. level 50 soon. And my damage isnt amazing. Only when im up against really big packs i one shot them thanks to fork. But as i said. you need to either change ur spell damage to elemental and go for elemental damage. or specc in shit tons of spell damage increase passives. Also fork helps ALOT for dmg vs big packs. Ethereal knives isnt really viable single target until late late game.

If you somehow could convert the damage into bit more elemental it wouldnt take many passives to make the damage go through the roof. Etheral knives is more then viable. its really strong if you ask me. just need to know how to build around it. For me fork is a must when playing with ethereal knives, makes the damage insane at times. I would recommend going for Battery with ethereal knives. You need the extra mana for auras. Then just stack hp and spell damage passives together with a few cast speed passives. Try to get to battery and take convinient path through few spell damage nodes.

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CyanideNow wrote:

At level 36, my build looks like this:

thats what you are doing wrong
you pick elecleave and about level 60 you re-spec into EK

also you need to rush towards blood magic