Ethereal Knives

Post your feedback for this skill here!

Make sure you concisely state your character build, level, and other complimenting abilities you have when you talk about a skill - The more we know about your character, the better we can understand your feedback.

Ethereal Knives is a spell. It is not an attack, and does not use your weapon in any way.

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AlienFromBeyond wrote:

What's the spread on the spell like? Can you tag a guy with more than 1 projectile at close range with it?

No. Only one projectile can hit each target. For This skill, we specifically implemented the ability to turn off the 'shotgun' behaviour for some spell projectiles. No word yet on whether that'll get applied to Fireball, Ice Spear and friends.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

The interesting part is that physical leech mechanics should work on it, in theory. But physical leech shouldn't apply to any elemental damage that is added to the skill (which will probably be the majority of the damage for people who continue using this skill).

The stats you're thinking of are, in fact, %1%%% of Physical Damage from Attacks Leeched back as Life - note that it specifies "attacks". They do not apply to physical damage from spells.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

Also, Jozen, added integer damage from gear has never worked on spells. Because this is a spell, I would guess this is intended behavior.

Correct. Added damage from gear is implicitly only for attacks. I'd prefer to have that explicitly described, but in that case, reducing the wordiness of a very common mod won out, and also this is the same as those mods functioned in D2.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

The interesting part is that physical leech mechanics should work on it, in theory. But physical leech shouldn't apply to any elemental damage that is added to the skill (which will probably be the majority of the damage for people who continue using this skill).

The stats you're thinking of are, in fact, %1%%% of Physical Damage from Attacks Leeched back as Life - note that it specifies "attacks". They do not apply to physical damage from spells.

My bad. I remembered it as just "Life Leech From Physical Damage". BTW, the prefix list on the site lists it as quoted above and not the more accurate wording.

Odd. The one I quoted is copied directly from the relevant data file (hence the %1%%% formatting part, which I forgot to remove), so is definitely how it should appear in game. I have no idea where the website ones come from, but I'll make a note to look into it.

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Zarondd wrote:

Does pierce work with EK?

Yes, the knives gain a chance to pierce.

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Zarondd wrote:

As in will EK now hit the same target more then once assuming they pierced through another target first

No. Each target can still only be hit once.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

I realise my longer posts don't always encourage a direct answer from GGG, so I'm going to keep this much shorter than usual, and more blunt.

What exactly is this skill supposed to be? When it was conceived, how was it meant to be used? Implicitly, am I being stupid in trying to find a way to make it my main damage source from level 4 onwards?

Cheers.

Not a clue, sorry. I wasn't involved in the design of this one, and I made it based on what I'm told. The skill has been through a LOT of iterations where previous behaviours weren't balanced or didn't work right.
I don't think people here are massively happy with the current stat of the skill either, but it works and isn't completely broken, so it's at least a start.

Thanks for the in-depth feedback!

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

When you try to use the skill and click a point beyond its range, it will move closer until that point is in range and then use the skill. Thankfully, it seems to take the improved range that faster projectiles provides into account in this range finding. However, someone who is more accustomed to other projectile spells (especially ones with multiple projectile supports added) will find this very unusual. I know that there are other skills that use this range finding technique, but I've never particularly liked it, and I don't find it to be a good fit for this spell. I find myself using shift at long range more often than not to try to fine-tune the direction of flight. The range often seems to be a little longer than the range finder would suggest, but that may be a product of latency.

Initial testing suggested it was really frustrating being able to click on a monster and not hit them because they weren't quite in range. We found this skill felt better to use when treated more like ground slam than a projectile like ice spear in terms of targeting. It seems you disagree - I'm interested if anyone else wants to chime in on this one.
Actually, currently the range of the skill isn't taking increased projectile speed into account - that's something I should make a note to do.
The reason the range you'll walk to when using the skill is less than where you hit is because each projectile has some random variation in it's movement, including speed, so sometimes they go a bit further than others. The minimum targeting range set for the skill is at point where you'll (almost) always hit something at that range, rather than a bit further where you might or might not depending how the random variation affects you.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

The base range is almost pitifully small. I like the fact that faster projectiles will increase the range (it is a chronically underutilized stat), but it takes quite a lot of it to make EK feel suitably powerful. It's no wonder to me that most people never give it a chance.

My understanding is it's not intended to be a really long-range skill, but there's an open issue for increasing it's base range which I need to talk to people about, so that might be getting bumped up.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

I'm not a fan of the look of the spell. If it weren't for the arm movement, it might make me think my character was sneezing on things. Maybe some sort of sonic boom type of effect on each individual projectile would help?

I like the look of the knives themselves, personally, but the green effect which plays on them a bit less so. I'm hoping we're able to continue to improve it.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

There's now a spell that does physical damage, which creates a use for all sorts of physical-damage-only supports etc that were previously not useful on any spell. Who doesn't love that?

Agreed. I've been waiting for physical damage spells for a while.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

I think the base damage is near perfect but just a little on the high side (wut? he said it was too high?) considering all the options for improving it.
It's got a nice tight arc that makes you feel like a boss when you aim it just right.

Interesting.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

EK fills a much needed niche for projectile spells that will hit multiple unbunched targets without having to throw on Multi Projectile supports.

I'm glad it's found a place.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

I'm curious as to whether physical damage done by spells is being mitigated by armor.

It is. Armour mitigates physical damage, it doesn't care (or even know) where that damage came from.

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Xapti wrote:

I hear ethereal knives has a base casting time that's really large?

If that's the case then I don't think the character sheet DPS numbers are correct for it, since it assumes a cast time of 1s normally I think (or maybe that's just a problem for attacks...)

The character screen does not assume a 1 second cast time, it uses the cast time of the skill. For attacks it uses the weapon's base attack duration, which is correct for almost all attacks.

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Xapti wrote:

Supposedly multiple projectiles from spells are able to hit the same target, and not-so with attacks, but I think this spell is an exception.

Correct.

There is no 'standard cast period', so nothing (or everything) is nonstandard.

All spells specify their own cast time. It's a basic part of being a spell. Only a few have exactly 1s (although ironically, Lightning Warp is one of the ones which does).

It does appear that currently base cast time is not displayed on spell gems. I'll make a note to try to fix this - I'm pretty sure it used to work, so I think something's regressed there as part of some other change.

Generic increases to physical damage do work with Ethereal Knives.
What specific bonus are you referring too which doesn't?