My dual claw/energy shield solo build

Important
---I am working on leveling a new shadow right now, this build has a rough spot in the mid game, before getting Ghost Reaver and the leech cluster, again a bit later before getting the leech claws and CI. Hopefully I'll pick up a few tips I can give to help in this part, and I may tweak the build order slightly over the next few days.---

My build is based around dual wielding Claws (which have built-in life leech), and the two keystones Chaos Inoculation (sets max life to 1, gives 50% more energy shield, and immunity to chaos damage), and Ghost Reaver (changes life leech into ES leech). Building around this, I get a fairly tanky end-game shadow with good ES, high dps, and a lot of leech for survival. The build is also strong at all parts of the game, although it does have a few rough spots between the major milestones (level 30-40 is usually the toughest). However, I don't get any int passives early on, so you will probably need to get an int amulet to help equip claws and ES gear.

At the moment, you can put auras in your 2nd weapon set, swap over to cast them, and switch back to your main set with the auras still up. This might get changed in the future, but for now it is allowed and I use this to get more auras than I'd normally fit on my bars.

Here is how the build looks at various stages of development, I'll try my best to coordinate it with the major game milestones (end of act 1, end of act 2, end of cruel, etc.). I also give short explanations of the order in which I got the new passives and my though process behind them.
19 points I started out going to the 18% damage and 12% attack speed, then down to Claws of the Pride notable for more damage, and east again for Agility and Fitness (Fitness will be refunded later, only take it if you feel you need more HP early).
29 points Got Nullification notable for the ES boost, and went through the Crit Chance cluster to go north and get Mind Drinker for mana leech (mana should no longer be a problem after this).
42 points Went for the ES bonuses by Witch now, getting the two +30 stat nodes along the way to help for item requirements, and because they're just good.
55 points Went through the crit cluster to pick up Ghost Reaver, and the life leech cluster, and got the one int node before CI, so we can refund Fitness (from the shadow starting area) to get CI at any time. We now have the core of the build, you can get CI any time you feel comfortable, my suggestion of when to get it is when your ES can handle all damage coming in, and your health never gets touched (within reason, never play recklessly). Another option would be to get it when you upgrade out of Life on Hit claws and get Life Leech claws. After CI, you can build how you want, grabbing the ES nodes by GR and and the large cluster below Witch starting place for a huge amount of ES. I went for more dps after this though, as detailed below.
65 points Grabbed the two claw clusters I passed, and the last 20% crit damage below Mind Drinker, not much more to this one, just some raw damage boosts.
75 points Picked up the Accuracy cluster next to GR, and went south from there to the other Accuracy cluster and the two +30 nodes.
87 points (level 72) One-handed damage passives on the south end (Strong Arm cluster), finished the Claws of the Pride cluster, and got the ES cluster south of GR.


Current gear: My 2nd set is a 5L weapon with Wrath, Discipline, Hatred, and Anger auras linked to a Reduced Mana gem




This puts me at 3.5k energy shield after discipline, and 2900 listed (5800 actual) dual strike dps unbuffed, with auras up and using two more dps gems instead of IIR and IIQ, I'm almost double that. Some of my gems in my gear I'm not using, just leveling up for now. I also need to work on upgrading my claws to new ones for the huge extra life leech bonus (I'm planning to get a pair of 6% claws), but for now I'm at 18% life leech with blood rage up and that suits me fine. My only real attack is Dual Strike, I'd use flicker and whirling blades more if they were reliable, but for now the desync issues are just too much. I'm also hoping that a better green aoe gem for claws will be released later, but for now, dual strike spam is what works best.

Thanks pal, appreciate it.

why claw? may be better will dagger?
You don't need life leech, but you have them.

"

BOBAHATOP wrote:

why claw? may be better will dagger?
You don't need life leech, but you have them.

Four reasons, mainly.

1) I am a stubborn person, when I make a choice I stick to it as long as it remains remotely viable. I don't feel the need to be perfect, or strive for the most optimal build.
2) I like claws. It's that simple. In any games I play, my weapon of choice is generally either a claw type weapon or a melee quarterstaff. I practice martial arts with a staff in real life, and the concept of claw or fist type weapons has always intrigued me.
3) At the time I created this character, it was already hinted at that 9.12 will bring "something of interest" to energy shield based claw users. This has been pretty much confirmed to be a keystone that will convert life leech into ES leech, so I'm basically getting a head start on building around the 9.12 changes. And at the moment, I've never felt particularly weak because of using claws instead of daggers. Also, there's going an end game unique claw that will provide the ES leech effect as well as a good ES boost, the Diamond in question gave us a screenshot at around page 125 of the unique item thread.
4) Early survival. Shadows start with very few survival based nodes, compared to pure classes who have survival or dps options from the start. The life gain on hit from claws was amazing for survival, more than making up for the complete lack of defensive passives. Working on defense passives and then picking up CI happened at the same time in the game that I switched from life on hit claws to life leech claws, which would work even better with the 9.12 passive I mentioned before.

Sure, my build could easily be adapted to daggers, and maybe with greater damage output, but I like it as it is, and can't wait to see what other cool things the future will bring to my build.

I see in your skill gems you have multiple dual strikes and things like projectiles linked to bloodrage. Why would one do that? I guess my real question should be what skills i should focus on if i do this build.

The mystery here for me is how do you get to play WB & Fliker strike with the desync issues ?

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bigler666 wrote:

I see in your skill gems you have multiple dual strikes and things like projectiles linked to bloodrage. Why would one do that? I guess my real question should be what skills i should focus on if i do this build.

Some of the skills in my gear are just there for the gems to level, but almost all of my sockets are linked so that's why random things are linked. The second dual strikes I don't use for anything, and the multiple projectiles gems don't affect blood rage at all. The skills which I do use:

the 5L dual strike
whirling blades+ias+item rarity
flicker strike+mana leech+damage
blood rage
frost wall+faster casting
portal+faster casting
grace, discipline, wrath, and anger all with reduced mana cost on my 2nd weapon set

"

super_maZon wrote:

The mystery here for me is how do you get to play WB & Fliker strike with the desync issues ?

By dying. A lot. I try to avoid using whirling in combat, it's mostly for getting me out of oh shit moments by dashing through a frost wall, I never try to use it as an aoe attack. As for flicker, I don't spam it even though I have blood rage, I'll only do one flicker at a time. So to answer your question as to how I can use them without the desync issues, it's pretty much by not using them. I wish I could take full advantage of WB and FS without fear of dying, but I can't, so dual strike spam is all I do =(

the ability threes are empty :(

edit: seen the edit now :)

"

kurojishi wrote:

the ability threes are empty :(

edit: seen the edit now :)

Sorry the old links weren't working, it's updated now for 9.12, and I converted the leveling process of my build to the new tree as best I could. The beginning is pretty much the same, and 9.12 didn't nerf any part of my build, so it's just gotten even stronger mid-late game play. At level 68, I got a huge survival and DPS boost out of the 9.12 changes, =D

Since the stat wipe happened after an earlier patch Ive decided to switch over to your build. Before the skill tree reset Ive been using dual claw pure evasion gear. Im thinking about switching over to your build, should I go for pure ES gear? Considering that Ill have 1 hp.

Would this be a good solo build?