Blood magic ethereal knives marauder?

Would this be a viable build? ive just started one up but since im pretty new to the game i dont know if im going in totally the wrong direction.

To be honest I simply can't tell you wether this is a viable build idea or not since I haven't tried any EK build myself.
Still the game allows a great diversity of builds and most of them if approached correctly end up being viable.

I've seen EK shadow builds working in end game content and I don't really see a reason why it shouldn't work with a marauder.

it would probably be really good. stack str for life and damage by using the iron will gem.
Faster projectiles,chain and life leech or life on hit :)
My only concern is how much life is it going to cost for ek with all those supports. your going to need alot of life and hope it leeches good. i am actually doing this build as a shadow. my chain is level 55 and i am at 44 so i cannot tell you if it leeches good enough.

feedback so far: ive just completed normal, and it was a bit of a struggle after level 20 or so. i think this was my own fault because i leveled EK up too much and so the mana cost started being a big problem. ive gone down to blood magic but not picked it up yet as i only have 800health and 12hp/sec which i dont think is enough. so far ive linked EK with added fire, ill try life leech or life on hit later to see how it does. im workig my way up to get the important life nodes from templar aswell.

any other suggestions would be welcome

Blood magic is something you should pick up in early/mid 30s anything earlier usually results in some suicidal moves.

/my 2 cents

I've tried EK on my sword duelist, and as mentioned before it does cost a hefty amount of mana. Also, since it's a spell it requires casting speed (not attack speed) to become better later on. Which makes the skill a lot more appropriate on a shadow or even witch rather than a marauder or duelist, imo.

Yeah, going south for Blood Magic so early was a bit of a mistake, IMO. I've been thinking about an EK mara build, and I'd go for this as the starting (~30) routes.



Stick with a gem for Blood Magic. You can get it as the quest reward for Merveil on Cruel (I think... wiki is down). This will let you run some auras that have % reserve with mana. If you don't want to respec, it's not a huge deal, but it means you've spent a lot of points early traversing the tree rather than picking up more life/regen nodes.

For later levels, I'm not sure where to go. There's good life/regen nodes south, but going northeast/center lets you pick up cast speed and spell damage nodes. Your call on taking passives for offense vs defense.

u can use faster casts and faster projectiles(with quality) for cast speed.
I grabbed the alchemist node and find that with my high damage reduction(60%) and five health potion spots i csn always hit a flask and have massive regen. If there is 20 or more monsters on me i drop my rejuv totem. you will need a good single target attack though. i have been using dual strike with a claw.

As far as i remember the great thing about EK is that it profits from both increased cast speed as well as increased attack speed.

I don't know wether this got changed in the past but it was pretty much the best thing about the skill.

ive now completed cruel and once you pickup blood magic gem the build is a breeze. i think my problem was going with EK during early levels, its too costly so i shouldve stuck to light strike/sweep until 30 and then switched to blood magic Ek, itd work fine with all the same nodes. ive picked up a lot of regen and health so with a shield and the armor aura im very tanky. slotting Ek with iron will and blood magic so far deals a lot of aoe dmg, next i plan on adding faster projectiles and added fire dmg/life leech. by 45 the build starts picking up cast speed, spell dmg and projectile dmg from the middle of the tree. the path also goes past a few more +30 str and 6 8% life.