After Patch - Goodbye My Blood Magic, Duel Wielding, Flicker Strike Shadow

"

Torin wrote:

"

Charan wrote:

The change to Blood Magic has been explained to me. In a nutshell: use the gem.

uff, I hope that was not explained to you by GGG because that is then crap.
This is another topic that I plan to open but in a nutshell: we should not have create builds that depend on random drops of skill gems. Unless Blood magic gem becomes a quest reward for all classes this cannot work.

It was, and I disagree with this, much as I think Falcord would. He's suggested that some builds will arise from uniques, which are of course random drops. Blood Magic is a natural ability for certain classes, understandably, and very, very difficult for others to learn. That's just the way it is now. The centre of the Skilldrasil has changed in purpose. It's got a lot more to offer now, and leaving an incredibly strong Keystone like Blood Magic there is not entirely smart.

So if some builds that USED to be natural and easy via the Skilldrasil are now reliant on skill drops, I'm afraid that's the way it is. What was, might never be again. In some cases, we can protest that and do so mightily and change may occur.

In this case, I think the anomalous nature of Blood Magic is fine as a distant Keystone and random mid-level drop.

blood magic support gem is quest reward for marauders in act 2... cruel and higher i think. i forget the exact quest but i know i can get atleast 2 of them right now.

Good bye :(

"

ApocalypticTrick wrote:

I cannot believe how far the blood magic keystone moved away from the Shadow start.

Flicker Strike was so fun and my main ability that now feels pretty worthless with the cooldowns added. Removing the gem. Sad.

Had so much fun, but I don't think I will ever be able to play this kind of Shadow again after Open Beta.

I won't be able to get to Blood Magic until VERY late into the game. Not fun...won't even attempt it with it so far away.

I won't be able to spam Flicker Strike to kill hoards of archers and will have to kite for days. Not fun...hate constant defensive kiting...prefer constant offensive attacking.

BTW WHERE THE HELL DID ALL THE SHADOW CRIT GO?!?

I feel like my Shadow build was singled out for biggest nerfs in the game....WTF...I'm totally bummed.

Ugh....I was having so much fun....

I guess I'm glad I got to try this at all...this champ will never happen again after open beta.

You whine a lot.

Might want to take a break until the game goes live.

I think flicker got nerfed entirely too much. I am not entirely against the CD but right now it is a very underwhelming skill by itself and has to depend on frenzy charges to have any value.

Someone mentioned using blood magic and chaos inoculation to solve this problem. But what if I just don't want to waste my skill points diverting to a great tangent just to get the same ability flicker previously had? Seems somewhat restricting.

I have proposed this in a thread by itself but if we can increased Cdbypass: frenzy charge from 1:1 to 2:1 it will actually have a good balance between spamming and lackluster. You should be able to use flicker by itself twice before entering CD as well.

I want to be able to spam FS with a ton of archers around. I have no other gap closer skills yet.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

You're fixating on the "shadow" part of the build

Class is meaningless in this game, it only affects where you start on The Grid.

Instead of lamenting the loss of your "blood magic, Duel wielding, flicker strike shadow", you should look for a new, better way to build a blood magic, duel wielding, flicker striking character.

I'll admit, I don't know the intimacies of that kind of character. But I have out lined what I believe to be the basics in this build

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQQACmXZTg6E6Rwe7wu1IrX6zSRCnaAk-w5iNDa1ajr9uIZFSA6wR12CwlR55wBYUYY8XFkWGHO-ypl3ztDsfztvT5bGNAmUFqWj9cQ-yd_nAEeKFxObr2V8vbirtMW51kRhiYOTJMDI90rQIyR9wYe3jLei0Go=

It has a number of duel wield dmg/block/attack speed nodes, plus 1 Frenzy charge, and Blood Magic. All before level 30.
In terms of progression, it has access to a large duel wield circle at the south east corner of The Grid

"

tommorrow wrote:

I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

You're fixating on the "shadow" part of the build

Class is meaningless in this game, it only affects where you start on The Grid.

Instead of lamenting the loss of your "blood magic, Duel wielding, flicker strike shadow", you should look for a new, better way to build a blood magic, duel wielding, flicker striking character.

I'll admit, I don't know the intimacies of that kind of character. But I have out lined what I believe to be the basics in this build

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQQACmXZTg6E6Rwe7wu1IrX6zSRCnaAk-w5iNDa1ajr9uIZFSA6wR12CwlR55wBYUYY8XFkWGHO-ypl3ztDsfztvT5bGNAmUFqWj9cQ-yd_nAEeKFxObr2V8vbirtMW51kRhiYOTJMDI90rQIyR9wYe3jLei0Go=

It has a number of duel wield dmg/block/attack speed nodes, plus 1 Frenzy charge, and Blood Magic. All before level 30.
In terms of progression, it has access to a large duel wield circle at the south east corner of The Grid

Why adapt to changes and test them when one can simply come to a forum and whine about them?

You cannot expect adult like behavior from people with the mentality of small children. No offense meant OP.

"

tommorrow wrote:

I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

You're fixating on the "shadow" part of the build

Class is meaningless in this game, it only affects where you start on The Grid.

Instead of lamenting the loss of your "blood magic, Duel wielding, flicker strike shadow", you should look for a new, better way to build a blood magic, duel wielding, flicker striking character.

I'll admit, I don't know the intimacies of that kind of character. But I have out lined what I believe to be the basics in this build

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQQACmXZTg6E6Rwe7wu1IrX6zSRCnaAk-w5iNDa1ajr9uIZFSA6wR12CwlR55wBYUYY8XFkWGHO-ypl3ztDsfztvT5bGNAmUFqWj9cQ-yd_nAEeKFxObr2V8vbirtMW51kRhiYOTJMDI90rQIyR9wYe3jLei0Go=

It has a number of duel wield dmg/block/attack speed nodes, plus 1 Frenzy charge, and Blood Magic. All before level 30.
In terms of progression, it has access to a large duel wield circle at the south east corner of The Grid

I am not shadow but I pretty much have most of the skills you outlined (except for the blood magic based passives) and I still have to say flickr is prettty limited even with the extra frenzy charge. The point I am trying to make is that flicker does not have enough things on its plate to qualify as a full on active skill of itself. Its now you are forced into using an additional skill (frenzy) in order to make flickr be useful. There should be ways to immprove flicker skills without having to go through blood magic.

@thepmrc: A game in closed beta needs forum support or you will end up with a game similar to like D3. Uneven, unbalanced and limited. Just because you are used to playing a game in certain way or make a build that the changes don't effect does not make you more "adult". If it did, you just contradicted your "maturity" by making a "Learn to play noob" statement. So if you would please, rather give a viable reason as to why the skill tree is fine the way it is as opposed to pretending that the game is complete.

I wasn't around before Flicker Strike had a cool down, but I feel that, with the right build, it can still be ridiculously spam-able.

If you have a Duelist or Shadow with Blood Rage gem and some other means of life regeneration (weapons that life leech or life regenerating items) to offset the Blood Rage penalty, you can cut down numerous lower HP enemies in no time using the Flicker Strike/Blood Rage combo. It's even better if you can add a life leech gem. When I first tried this out, I was shocked at how effective the combo was and almost think it should be nerfed a bit. Almost. The combo doesn't work well on bosses, so I guess it evens out (for bosses and mini bosses you need the Frenzy gem).

Flicker strike + Blood Rage + Life Leech on a fast dual wielding build with some Frenzy passive skills and some HP regenerating passives/items thrown in is crazy powerful for powering through maps of lower mobs. And really fun.