Help with build - Shadow 37LVL

Hello everyone, im kinda new to the game and i have some questions about my character

i chose shadow char and now im 37lvl in 4th act.
i have chose shadow cause i like using daggers and claws type of weapons
but in my experience i havent get a good drop of claws or daggers and i was using till this day dual wielded rapiers, i have now dropped one good claw so im right now in combination of claw and rapier.

i think i have a pretty good dps around 500.
and i havent spend 7 passive points because as i mentioned i want to use daggers of claws,
but i dont have a good ones so i dont know if i should spend my points for dagger/claw masteries if im not really using them.


this is my character and passive skill tree:


so im wondering how to spend my passive points and what weapons should i use or how to get to use daggers or should i use what i have.

and also my armor is build only for evasion. is that good or what should i use?
thanks for every help

"

Deadpeng wrote:

wooow dude. You have a lot to learn it seems. Go to the build section under the forums and check out shadow build guides.

Some misconceptions I have to clear for you though

1) Once you get familiar with this game, level 1 to level 70 takes only 3 days, so it does not matter how well you play these content, only the end product matters.

2) Take a good look at the skilltree, notice how at late game every character can have about the same skilltree since everything is connected? In this game, all the 7 characters are actually about the same, no such thing as daggers or whatever being more suited for shadow.

2 is not entirely true. While you can certainly make a Dagger/Claw Templar (for example), daggers and claws are intended for use with Dex characters and as such there are no dagger/claw nodes near the Templar. You could do it if you wanted, but you wouldn't be getting any dagger/claw nodes until very late-game and a lot of your early skill points would be useless nodes and excessive travel nodes.

Daggers and Claws ARE more suited to the Shadow. That doesn't mean other classes can't use them (and many Caster variants of Scion and Witch absolutely will use caster daggers to allow access to Whirling Blades, caster daggers are better than caster wands in many cases for that reason alone), it DOES mean it's easiest to build a Dagger/Claw Shadow.

To the OP:

First, Life above everything else. Everything, even your DPS. Life is the single most important stat in PoE.

Second, pick a primary skill to focus on. Since you want to go Dagger/Claw (pick one, don't try to do both, I personally recommend Dagger and so this advice will be focused on that). Reave is a good option. There are others, but you absolutely need a form of AoE (single target doesn't cut it in this game except against bosses and then only if needed because of your other skills). If you aren't using an AoE skill, you need to be using something to allow it to hit multiple targets. Melee Splash, or Chain/Pierce for projectile skills.

So let's say you decide to go Reave Daggers. Since you're using daggers, which have inherent Crit bonuses, you should be going Crit. This means you want to focus on Life, Crit Multiplier, Crit Chance, Physical damage and Dagger nodes from the tree. Note that Reave is an attack as well, so Attack Speed will help its DPS. It's fine on AoE because of Reave's self-stacking mechanic. So that's the offensive end of your tree covered.

And if you want to go pure Evade, that's fine, but Evade alone is too RNG-dependent to be reliable so you need to increase your chances through other means. This is part of why you want a lot of Life, since with Evade you have no phys reduction. Anything that hits you is going to hurt, so you better be sure when it does hit you'll be okay. And like I said, you want other means of increasing your chances, so you'll probably want to grab both Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics (NOT Arrow Dancing, Reave is in melee range too much for that to be helpful). Those two alone are great defensive mechanics for Evade especially (since Acrobatics cuts your Armor and ES in half). You also probably won't want a shield, since it reduces your block chance too, but that's fine. Dual daggers gives you some really nice Crit chance anyway, and that helps alongside a huge crit multiplier as far as damage goes. To round out your defense, you want some form of life regen. This could be flat regen, life gain on hit, life leech or any combination of those.

Now you need to decide if you want to use charges or not. As a Shadow you have two fairly convenient options, Power and Frenzy charges. it's kinda an easy choice since for an attack-based character like a Reaver, Frenzy charges are absolutely broken. You don't HAVE to, but Frenzy charges are pretty damn good and you really, really want to use them. So you should strongly consider picking up the extra frenzy charges from the tree (you can get 3 more for a max of six) plus help Kraityn in Merciless for another (7 max). If you can get a Blood Dance (Unique boots), that will give some really strong buffs while you have some and make it really easy to keep them up. Until you get Blood Dance though, you can run Blood Rage (skill gem) to keep your charges up. It damages you over time, but it also gives a 25% chance to gain a Frenzy charge on kill and gives you a lot of life leech (which offsets the degen nicely if you can hit enough with it), or you could use the Frenzy skill to generate charges manually. Or you can use Assassin's Mark supported by Blasphemy (I'd recommend this, it's really easy and REALLY low-maintenance). Or you can just not use charges until you get a Blood Dance. But you really want these charges, they're nuts.

So at this point you want (in order of priority, my opinion):
1. Life
2. Acro/Phase Acro
3. Evasion
4. Crit Chance/Crit Multi
5. Physical damage

And +3 Frenzy charges (they're really convenient for Shadow, which is why they weren't on the priority list, you will not have a problem reaching them).

Skills alone are nothing, they need support gems. You will want a 4 link by the end of A1 Cruel (but really, you should have one by the end of normal, I typically have one pretty much as soon as they can drop). This can be your chestpiece, boots, gloves or helmet. Daggers are limited to 3 sockets, so you'll want to use auras and a golem in them or something. Also a movement skill in one (use Whirling Blades + Faster Attacks + Fortify, best combination right now). If you do decide to use Reave, good links for it are:

4L: Reave-Multistrike-Melee Phys-Added Fire
5L: Reave-Multistrike-Melee Phys-Added Fire-Faster Attacks
6L: Reave-Multistrike-Melee Phys-Added Fire-Faster Attacks-Conc Effect

Note that you can sub any Added Fire/FA/Conc in the last socket of the 4l, Multistrike is the REALLY important one. Also, you probably won't get a 5L until maps at least, you won't really need one until then anyway. I have a lv82 char still using a 4l just fine and a lv69 Ranger capable of clearing T5 maps with little trouble and only a 4l. 4l can work, but don't settle for one. You want a 5l and eventually a 6l. RNGesus just hates me and doesn't want to give me one.

Most important stats on gear for you:
1. Life
2. Elemental Resists (have these capped. 75% in normal, 95% in cruel, 135% in merciless. It's not too hard to do, but do not neglect it.)
3. Global crit chance/Global crit multi
4. Chaos resist (trust me, -60% hurts a lot in Merc)

Flat evade and +% evade on your chest, gloves, helmet, boots.

Movespeed on your boots.

Note that this is ideal, you won't really have it in a lot of cases. That's fine. If your resists are capped and you have decent life, you'll be okay. Just focus on what stats you need past that, and remember you can always craft stats onto your gear. As far as crafting goes, I craft Life on EVERYTHING that doesn't have it unless I need to get a resist up. If I DO need to get a resist up I craft that resist on things that already have Life if at all possible. If you can't put life on something (either it has it or it can't have it because it already has 3 prefixes/suffixes), I'd suggest crafting crit chance/crit multi.

And if your boots don't have movespeed, craft it on. It's really nice to have. You don't NEED it per se, but... you really want it.

Note that I'm not TOO experienced with Reave, so take this with a grain of salt, but it should be more than enough to get you going until you start to figure things out yourself.