[0.10.0] Eldritch Battery Ethereal Knives Shadow [Videos Included]

4/1/2013 - Its a new year and its a new guide!
5/1/2013 - Added a notable uniques section
6/1/2013 - Modified the End-game and End-end-game builds slightly
7/1/2013 - Added an EK Mechanics section + Early gameplay tips section
8/1/2013 - Added stats and gameplay videos
23/1/2013 - Open Beta!
6/3/2013 - Added a Physical reflect section

Level 69 Plateau Map Run - Blood Magic!
Level 67 Dark Forest Map Run - Turbo Oak!

It is a physical spell
What this means is that EK's DPS is affected by:
- %Cast speed nodes as well as %cast speed mods on gear
- %Spell damage nodes as well as %spell damage mods on gear
- %Projectile damage nodes
- %Spell critical chance/multiplier nodes + Global Critical Chance mods on gear
- %Increased Physical damage mods on non-weapon gear
- %Increased elemental damage nodes + %cold damage/%fire damage mods on gear (slightly)

It is NOT affected by:
- %Increased Physical Damage mods on Weapons
- Flat physical damage mods (+1-4, etc) on gear
- %Increased physical damage with one-handed weapons/daggers/etc. nodes
- %Increased melee physical damage
- Facebreaker's %increased unarmed physical damage
- %attack speed nodes/mods on gear
- %increased elemental damage with weapons nodes/mods

Notes regarding gear
Majority were obtained during the fresh economy of the 1 Week Race.
- Dagger cost 2 chaos
- Gloves cost 2 GCPs
- Amber Ammy cost 100 Alts
- 5L Chestpiece was borrowed from null
- Magnate Belt cost about 2 GCPs
- Annihilator Casque, Archon Kite Shield, and both rings were crafted
- Boots were found

Flasks
1 Granite, 2 HP Flasks, 2 Mana Flasks

Dagger: Bear Trap - Added Fire Damage, Culling Strike
Shield: Reduced Mana - Projectile Weakness, Discipline
Astral Plate: EK - Chain, Added Fire Damage, Mana Leech, Iron Will
Helm: Reduced Mana - Hatred, Vitality, Determination
Gloves: Frost Wall - Incr. Duration and Spell Totem - Summon Skeletons
Boots: Temporal Chains - Incr. Duration

The below screenshots were with Hatred, Determination, Discipline and Vitality Aura activated

Character Defense/Stats Screen


With 1 Granite of Iron Skin and Phase Run (no longer in game) activated


Bear Trap Damage (try not to trust the tooltip DPS too much as it's a lie)


Ethereal Knives Damage

Usage of Flasks
Granites to be used versus reflect physical mobs at ALL TIMES! as well as versus the usual physical damage mobs

Auras and Active Skills
Determination, Vitality, Hatred, Discipline, Grace.
Determination and Vitality for end-game survivability
Grace for early-game survivability --> can be used in end-game as well if you have enough mana
Hatred for adding DPS to your EK and Bear Traps
Discipline for early-game survivability and end-game mana pool (if you don't find it being very useful because it reserves alot of mana initially, drop it if you wish)

Curses
Projectile weakness will complement this build nicely because it enhances projectile damage (EK is a projectile) as well as increasing pierce and knockback chance, with knockback being useful as it can be a offensively defensive measure.

Versus Mobs
Ethereal Knives will be your main skill.

Some pointers to take note regarding EK
Best EK support combinations, in descending order
1. EK + Added Fire Damage + Chain/Fork + Faster Projectiles + Iron Will + Mana Leech/Reduced Mana
2. EK + Added Fire Damage + Chain/Fork + Faster Projectiles/Mana Leech + Iron Will
3. EK + Added Fire Damage + Fork + Faster Projectiles
4. EK + Fork + Faster Projectiles

Note: It is highly likely that Fork will outperform Chain for the first few levels of the Chain skill gem. I recommend you keep Chain in a swapped out weapon slot to level it first while you stick to Fork.

1v1 Bosses
Bear Trap. Useful because of its extremely high single-target DPS and the fact that it locks enemies in place, thus allowing you to EK them from afar without having to kite. Also immensely useful for taking out the reflect physical bosses as damage dealt by bear traps isn't reflected back to the user.

Interesting point: If you have multiple bear trap gems, you can spam them more often as the cool down is individual to each skill gem alone and not global, although that may change anytime when the devs see fit to change it

Nice Bear Trap support combinations
Bear Trap + Added Fire Damage + Culling Strike is basically your must have core. The fourth can be anything that adds damage, such as added lightning damage or added chaos damage although i'm leaning slightly more towards added chaos damage. Whatever support that adds damage will in turn be further amplified by bear trap's 150% damage effectiveness.

Survivability
Skelly Brotem. Yes, I call it brotem because its your best friend in the game, be it versus flicker mobs, kraityn, oak or even random smelly bears.
Frost Wall. Erects a barrier protecting you from advancing mobs/archers and allowing you to still hit them with EK because Fork and Chain bounces off the Frost Wall to hit them.

Physical reflect is the absolute killer for EK builds in general. In my opinion, it doesn't matter how tanky you build yourself with regards to armour. The non-linear scaling of damage reduction means that armour will offer less protection the higher your damage gets. This is not to say that you should not stack armour. You should still try and stack as much armour as you can. (get gear with more armour than what I had with my character) However, even if you have loads of armour, you should never presume to spam EK and tank entire physical reflect packs. The best way to deal with physical reflect mobs is to ensure you have a healthy amount of HP, and be alert/watch out for the physical reflect aura. Once you see that, aim your bear traps at the physical reflect rare. (Bear Traps do not reflect physical damage)

Besides that, there are still other techniques you can use:
1. Frost wall to wall off part of the pack and kill them bit by bit.
2. Freezing Pulse + LMP on the phys reflect mob instead of EK
3. Enduring Cry + Immortal Call and spam EK during Immortal Call duration

Early-Game Single Target DPS
Bear Trap doesn't really perform that well early on in the game. I usually just dual wield weapons and use Dual Strike for single-target DPS in normal Act1 + 2. (at this point it doesn't really matter, Normal tends to be simple enough that you can bum around and still get through adequately)

Early-Game AoE
EK can be used, but the problem with EK early on is that it's DPS scaling early on doesn't give it that much advantage over Freezing Pulse. Add to the fact that it has a slower cast time, I usually level the gem in a swapped out weapon's socket and use Freezing Pulse as my main AoE.

This holds true till Level 15

At this point, you should have already reached Cavern of Wrath and taken the Fork support gem.

From this point on, EK + Fork starts to get stronger and arguably better than FP. Use whichever you prefer.

After doing Weaver's Chambers, the support gem that you should pick at this point is Faster Projectiles.

From this point on, link EK with Fork and Faster Projectiles.

From level 26 or so onwards, EK linked with the above supports will start to outperform Freezing Pulse completely and I usually ditch Freezing Pulse at this point.

If you get the Added Fire Damage support, link it to Bear Trap for now. Linking it to EK will increase the mana cost too much without it being that much useful yet. (Even without Added Fire Damage support on EK you will still mostly be two/three-shotting mobs)

When do I start using Chain?
Chain is not a priority. You can do very well with Fork all the way till Merciless hence there's no need to trade for it early on.
However, when you finally do obtain Chain and want to use it, you are advised to swap out Fork for Chain and Faster Projectiles for Mana Leech on a 4L to ensure that you can sustain your EK in terms of mana.

Do you have mana problems? Go down the following checklist:
1. Change your 3 HP/2 Mana Flasks set to 2 HP/3 Mana Flasks
2. Stop spamming your mana flasks simultaneously. Doing that doesn't increase mana recovery!
3. Alternate between the three mana flasks so all three can recover charges simultaneously
4. Are you spamming EK at individual monsters? Round them up first as a pack then use EK.
5. Using Chain without Mana Leech support? Remove Chain and go back to Fork
6. Remove Added Fire Damage support. If your mana can't support it you don't need it yet!
7. Did you follow the skill tree progression properly?

Only one rule here, and that is when you have enough HP to not need that ES buffer. I'm afraid I can't really tell you the exact numbers as it is all based on experience and instinct for me, but in HC, I would generally only respec to EB after Merciless Vaal and when I entered maps, I had about 2.5k HP which served me quite well.

Priority 1: Stack Life
Priority 2: Stack ES/Mana for Survivability in early to mid-game and Mana pool for End-game
Priority 3: Stack Armour for protection against reflect
Priority 4: Get rings/ammys/shields/caster weapons for Increased cast speed, spell damage, critical chance for spells

Notable Uniques Compatible with the Build
- Blackheart Iron Ring (Early game only)
- The Magnate Studded Belt
- Deshret's Vise Steel Gauntlets
- Daresso's Courage Baroque Round Shield
- Rathpith Globe Titanium Spirit Shield
- Ezomyte Peak Rusted Casque
- Kaom's Heart + Quill Rain Short Bow + Broadstroke Heavy Quiver*

*my absolute favourite combination. Kaom's for the HP, and to make up for the loss of sockets, the usage of QR which being a dex item will allow you to get the socket colours that you need as well as providing a 100% projectile speed increase which will be absolutely awesome! Broadstroke Heavy Quiver will also help to increase EK's DPS and enable stunlocking of enemies. Can't wait to have someone try this out come OB when Kaom's Hearts get more common due to the increase in population

How do I get better gear?
Trading for better pieces of gear will be your main source. However, there will come a point when you realise that you can no longer get better gear through trading, and that is where crafting comes in, as explained in the next section.

http://bit.ly/craftpoe