[2.6] - Nova Ethereal Knives Pathfinder - Budget As Possible!

To start, I will first list the required gear uniques for this build:

The Eye of Chayula is so that we never get stunned. Stun mechanics are based on your Life pool, that is the theoretical Life pool you have without CI, which we have very little of. This means we will be getting stunned all the time, especially when running into packs of monsters.

Brinerot Whalers (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Brinerot_Whalers) are best in slot boots, and are recommended. If not you can get some rare boots, as shown in the next section.


As mentioned in the Leveling portion, I recommend using The Gull for your helmet, as the power it provides your character is insane.

Optional
You can instead opt for a Valyrium ring, which bases your stun threshold on your Energy Shield rather than Life. This means you can still get stunned, but much less frequently. This may be a good option if you can balance out your resistances, and then use a Karui Charge or a Victario's Acuity amulet.


The Victario’s would allow you to generate Power and Frenzy Charges while killing monsters with buffs to your projectiles, the the Karui Charge would allow for more pure Projectile Damage and Projectile Speed.

Shadows and Dust http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shadows_and_Dust are a good pair of alternative gloves for the Critical Strike bonuses, Rampage and Unholy Might for more Poison Scaling Damage. You will want to make sure to get Attack Speed on your weapon if you choose these gloves.

Now for the Rare gear.

Gloves

There is only one piece of rare gear you will need to specifically get, and that is Sorcerer Gloves that are crafted with an Essence of Insanity. This essence provides the affix of “Socketed gems have 16% more Attack Speed”. This is invaluable for our movement skill which we use to traverse the map and makes it much faster. Since the rest of our gear is Rare gear, we can easily fill out our resistances there, so you only have to look for a cheap pair of these gloves on PoE trade with some decent Energy Shield, at or above 130 Energy Shield.

Chest

For a chest, you will be wanting to look for something over 700 ES with an Elemental Resistance or two. You can either buy a 5L or try and link your own, this is up to your financial status.

Boots

For boots, you will want at least 25% Movement Speed, and some Elemental Resistances. Boots with more than 130 ES will be sufficient. You will also want to get the enchant ‘% Damage leeched as Life and Mana’ on your boots. You can get this enchant from Cruel or Merciless lab easily yourself by running it quickly until you get it, or pay the premium for it already on a pair of boots. I have the Cruel .4% version of this enchant and it works just fine. This works mainly as a backup source of Life and Mana leech for when your Vinktars is not up, which should almost be never.

Shield

For a shield you will want to look for a base with around 350-400 Energy Shield, with ‘Critical Strike Chance for Spells’ as well as some Elemental Resistances. Getting ‘Spell Damage’ is also great, but will cost a lot to get that with the other affixes.

Belt

For belts, it is recommended to get a Crystal Belt with around 100 total Energy Shield, Elemental Resistances and some sort of Flask affix on it. This is just a simple crystal belt that I got after using a few chaos, it worked for my needs at the time. Now you won’t be able to use this base until level 79, so in the meantime just look for a good rustic or chain belt with similar affixes.

Rings

Here we will just need to look for Energy Shield and Resistances! Very simple and affordable rings. You can also look to get Diamond Ring bases for more Critical Strike Chance. If you are also in need of an Attribute, you can look for that on your ring slot.

Weapon

For a weapon, you will want a dagger, with ‘Critical Strike Chance for Spells’, ‘Spell Damage’ and ‘Critical Strike Multiplier’ as a base, as we only care about Spell Affixes. Getting ‘Attack Speed’ is great for our movement skill, but will be expensive on top of these affixes.

As per usual, I always start every character with the Wanderlust/Goldrim combination. This provides a good start for your elemental resistances, as well as good Movement Speed and Freeze Immunity.


The newly buffed Lochtonial Caress gloves make for very great leveling gloves, as you get some Life as well as a 10% chance to get a random charge type upon slaying monsters. This means you will regularly have Endurance/Frenzy/Power charges while leveling, adding some good Offense and Defense.


Of course, as with every spell caster build, start with some Lifesprig wands. These are strong as they give you a +1 level to socketed spell gems, which is a fair bit more damage as spells scale their base damage from gem levels.


The Karui Ward is an excellent amulet for leveling this build, as it provides so many benefits for our projectiles and Movement Speed and can be equipped at level 5.


The Belt of the Deceiver makes for a nice leveling belt with Life and Elemental Resistances and can be equipped very early at level 20.


At level 38 I highly recommend getting the Gull unique and recommend using this as your endgame helmet. This unique is currently very very overpowered and provides insane affixes for its level requirement. Not only do you get a great Life roll, Cold Resistance and implicit Energy Shield, but you also get the chance of getting lesser Shrines from killing monsters. These Shrines act as lesser versions of their bigger Domination shrine counterparts. These shrines appear frequently and are amazing for leveling and even the endgame!


Finally, at level 46 you can equip a Belly of the Beast. I recommend just picking up a non-linked Belly for extra Life and resistances for leveling as it provides much needed boost to your Life pool. They are currently very cheap for just around 2-3 chaos.

I suggest starting with and using Ethereal Knives all the way through the character progression. It is very Mana intensive, so you will have to run a Mana Flask for leveling until you get Mana leech later on. You will of course want to socket Ethereal Knives in one of your Lifesprigs. As you level, you can grab and socket Added Fire and Added Lighting support gems to your Ethereal Knives until you get access to the main support gems for the setup.

For assistance on single target, you can grab a Flame Totem and socket that in your other Lifesprig with Added Cold and Added Lightning support gems. Instead of Flame Totem, you can grab a Blade Vortex at level 12 and socket it with the same supports as your Ethereal Knives. Don’t forget to get a Flame Dash at level 10 for your leveling movement skill! Around level 12, you will also be able to socket the Ring of Blades jewel above the Ranger start, getting you the 360 degree Ethereal Knives Nova!

Once you reach level 18, you can setup your Ethereal Knives with Controlled Destruction and Faster Casting. If you choose to use Blade Vortex, I recommend the same links. You can also take advantage of Herald of Ash and Herald of Ice for some more damage whilst leveling. At level 24 you will want to drop Herald of Ash for Hatred.

Once you can equip The Gull at level 38, I recommend that you now socket your Ethereal Knives in this setup, now using the main progression of support gems: Ethereal Knives - Controlled Destruction - Pierce - Spell Echo. This setup should work for clearing zones and basic monsters all the way until your final gear setup. For single target, you can continue to use Flame totem support, or Blade Vortex just swapping the Faster Casting for Spell Echo in your Lifesprigs. You can also choose to use Slower Projectiles in place of Pierce in your Ethereal Knives setup.

From here, you will just want to follow the unique item and passive tree progression I have listed out, making sure to use proper Life and Utility flasks as well as looking out for decent Life and Hybrid based gear. Once you reach level 69, this is when you will want to repec following the provided tree and start equipping your Energy Shield gear as well as using the Discipline Aura.

As a side note: leveling CI builds can be tough. You have to make sure to have proper Life and Utility Flasks, as well as getting as much Life in the tree and on gear to make it through! You will definitely die if you are new to this leveling strategy, but fear not! It gets so much nicer in the endgame, so stick through it!