Shadow Knight Build

Hello everyone. I am new to this game (started yesterday) and so far really like it. I have been playing around with a necromancer style witch and it got me thinking if I could make a character like a Shadow Knight from EQ. With that in mind I have a few questions for those of you with more experience with this game.

What I have in mind is a tank that uses a one hander/shield or a two hander with a hoard of undead fighting besides him.

1-Is it viable? Can I be tanky enough while spec'd out for more minions?
2-Can you be tanky enough wielding a two-hander instead of a shield?
3-If you spec defensive in the strengh portion of the tree and offensively with your pets (and possibly curses), will the dps be high enough later in the game?

I always really liked Shadow Knights and any feedback regarding how to approach this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

This is the style of build I am looking at.
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQUB_ovirljmuYTXa576qafqjhqdWbQPZkxMenHH_LQO8i7udu7PWtVtV5WEki4bzk5N066ial8uabnSkScKBCMwZK129y6rZVXS5K_cDnzAId5LBiVr62ALjdhmqSWW1QR6KkO516oOCjDo_WJ3wnu2eKx2TFULvPbO48G0Bz2hNr20s8HO4ytoRSXluk67GMDEAJYew5PXojIdEa-0tGauDae7SdKrMCrjG42kknW4xujO9_XvZxrsAleu4McREOGerelxrkcR8IoAlsXnB3e_baqGW6O7uvJ-wmO2kDWE8t5aqNkhqYTiS8iZvQJ3zwJZSRB4xZtvQkrA5lhvqmuudvta7Q54TQG6ojeodjGTSffTP_B7y9UXz7uKQBkA1OTmAc44i9SLxKvRND3XEiGPI82xIFcgEqJu0iiqDj5OBgOQ3gcsFqmfNpyDYtuF_S_8

My question is do you want to be more oriented towards being viable yourself, or more for your minions.

I wish there was another damage type that was more evil, or attacks that fit into this idea of a shadow knight. I could see using a skill like viper strike, but the name itself throws it off, stacks chaos damage that ticks over time. There aren't any kill skills like hand of death or wahtever the eq name was for it.

If you want minions to do a bulk of the damage you will want more points invested in them. Some of the minor bonusses to 1 handed skill won't net you much damage.

And really nothing in chaos can really tank unless you use enduring cry plus use the charges to go immune to physical.

I think you could make something like it work, but quite a few of the points you picked won't do you any good.

My idea was win battles through attrition. Build survivability and continually summon minions and have a lot of smaller sources of damage adding up to the total DPS. I appreciate the feedback and due to my inexperience in the game so far it is hard for me to judge the values of each passive skill.

I'm sure it will take time to tinker with the build and trial and error. I will definitely keep your suggestions in mind as I try it out.

Thanks!

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I like that tree. Thanks! It seems like it is built out much better then my first try at it. I just got to the first set of minions passives (going north on the tree). I will work on this as I play the character up and let everyone know how it works out.

try to think about using totem and fire spells too, since you dont want to hit physically the monster and be tanky, at least you do some DPS do help the minions

totem can help the minions livign and you can add to fireball/firestorm a totem support gem, to have a costant rain of fire for backup

silly kadrek, u are missing an additional minion node, that is touching your path to instability, for 1 point, its a must if you go that route.

"

SEOINAGE wrote:

silly kadrek, u are missing an additional minion node, that is touching your path to instability, for 1 point, its a must if you go that route.

OMG TRUE

I've been thinking alot at this build, I really like the concept.
So here's another build:

it's a summoner/caster..
I choosed ice because I find cold damage to be more "death-ish"("cold dead body", "freezing to death", etc), and you can alternate fire damage from exploding minions with cold damage from you.
you can use hybrid armor+es armours or full ES clothes(taking chaos inoculation and dropping the life nodes, ), and you can drop eldrich battery if you want ES as a form of defense..


in any case you will use as main skill rase zombies linked to minion life sg, minion damage sg and if you want raise skeletons, in a 4 link piece
ice spear+elemental proliferation+added cold damage+mult.proj.+totem sg+pierce, you will hit so many enemies with a high chance to freeze then and the surroundings, in a 6 link piece
then freezing pulse +added cold damage+mult proj and a ice nova+added cold damage+increase area of effect(3 linked pieces each)
for auras,run clarity and hatred on both(hatred lvl 1 is good too), then wrath if you want to, but remember you need discipline, and you could use determination and vitality too(if you are using eldrich battery), choose 3 of them and link to a reduced mana cost gem(i'd choose clarity discipline and hatred for the CI, clarity discipline and det/vitality for the eldr., clarity disci and det for the nonci-noneldr), and if you have more space, a frost wall, cold snap and elemental weakness could be useful

I wanted to try a more "melee/caster/summoner" build too

in this case we can use glacial hammer by our own+other ice spells, and we will use minions has exploding meat shield, to have more hp's and damage for our own..

Using same minions skill and ice skills, but:
glacial hammer instead of freezing pulse(with added cold damage+faster attacks), and frost nova could still be useful because bigger AoE and all around you
auras: clarity, discipline and determination for sure, but if you wanna take the risk and take eldrich battery, go for discipline+vitality


suggestions?critics?
p.s.: why use discipline+eldrich battery? because discipline when you use eldrich grats a HUGE boost of mp..