Ethereal Knives

People have already done a pretty good job of covering the issues with this skill, but I want to consolidate them into one place and add a little:

* It has a slow cast time and short range and low damage, meaning that using this skill typically means immobilizing yourself for 1 second while nearby mobs that simply won't be killed by this skill pound on you.
* It costs a ton of mana, meaning that not only is the skill overpriced at its regular, ineffective level, but support gems and auras on this are really, really overpriced.
* Its damage scales on pretty much all of the worst indices: there are no +x physical damage nodes to match the +x elemental damage nodes, meaning that it only scales on +x spell damage and +x projectile damage nodes, both in short supply. Since it's physical, it also doesn't get any elemental status effects.
* Even after the patch, I still found myself firing it at mobs that were out of range constantly. It's terrible range is even shorter than the character AI seems to think.
* It's short range, but it also has a narrow arc, meaning that it's only at "peak effect" if you can channel a narrow cone of 5-10 monsters directly in front of you; however, it's so slow that after a single cast, those monsters will be surrounding you rather than in front, meaning you only get one shot before you have to reposition.
* Last, but not least, just about every other skill in the game has better damage scaling just by leveling up and better secondary effects.

Seven pages and basically no positive posts..

Awesome skill design!

I used this as my aoe skill until I got Whirling Blades and realized how boring and useless it was.

Xapti, please show me a dagger with cast speed mod, because i have yet to see one.

Only real usefulness I found with this spell was to attach the Added Cold Damage support gem. And even then it was only minimally useful since Decoy Totem did a better job of keeping mobs off of me. I like this spell don't get me wrong. It just needs a little TLC to make it better and more useful. As is I am currently leveling a Marauder to get a totem to replace this, most likely shockwave totem but maybe rejuvenation totem.

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Headhorr wrote:

Xapti, please show me a dagger with cast speed mod, because i have yet to see one.

I'm not saying that you're wrong and that cast speed can spawn on daggers. I'm just saying I don't remember it being removed, or when it was removed.
Also, even if I have a faster casting dagger, I couldn't access it from the website because my stash only shows for 9 tabs/pages.

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evargnug wrote:

I used this as my aoe skill until I got Whirling Blades and realized how boring and useless it was.

Although whirling blades is terrible for damage too — especially if you're a dual wielder.

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Xapti wrote:

Although whirling blades is terrible for damage too — especially if you're a dual wielder.

The majority, if not all, of the new skills from 0.9.9 are horrible. Either pitiful damage, poor mechanics, or in the case of righteous fire a super-niche skill that maybe 5-10% of the people will use. Some of them may have cool ideas (and even that is arguable) but I haven't seen one yet that is actually well thought out, designed, and implemented appropriately.

Meh, I'm probably bitter about having wasted my money at this point.

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Xapti wrote:

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Headhorr wrote:

Although whirling blades is terrible for damage too — especially if you're a dual wielder.

With the exception that it can also physically proc criticals, along with your other default physical skills. You'll have to spend points in various spell nodes for a similar effect with EK.

I've actually had a few cast speed daggers, they were all garbage and vendored, I'll see if I can get another. Still not sure how that would make anything better for dagger wielders, it's not necessarely the cast speed that is the problem, and I would rather have a + x-x damage mod rather than cast speed no matter my spec

If you play without diamond flasks you'd want daggers with 80% implicit crit chance , 99 spell crit chance , spell/crit damage and cast speed.

They are perfect for most skills but this skill with the 5% base crit chance it still would be useless.