My dual claw/energy shield solo build

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Victo wrote:

I fail to see how 8% phys damage, 4% attack speed and 4% lifeleech for 4 + 1 skill points is not useful.
4% lifeleech help you so much to get capped, especially when your dps are low. And when you use Vaal Pact you dont even have a cap, which makes this cluster insanely good.

And besides that you have to beat the other bonusses with an investment of 5 skillpoints, which in many cases proves tough once you get into high level ranges and already picked up the best clusters for your build.

It takes 2 points to get to that cluster, plus the 4 in it, so 6 points total, for the offensive power of 2 nodes worth. I'm not even using the new claws yet, and my dual strike only has 2 dps supports on it, and life leech hasn't been an issue for me at all. I'm not sure how close I am to the cap, but for ES users the cap is a lot higher than for someone with HP, because ES is available in much larger quantity. Maybe this is because my weapons are better than what other people might have, but I just don't need the extra life leech for my build and would rather have more direct offense or defense.

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Torin wrote:

Maybe getting it at lvl 70+ is good but not before that. Better to get more damage or accuracy or crit, you get same effect as a bit more leech. Also this build does not have Vaal pact so more leech might not be useful while more defense/offense/accuracy always is.

I wonder how to do this build and get Vaal pact as well. I was planning to go more mixed Evasion/ES equipment then pure ES like OP. Maybe with less max ES I will be required to get Vaal pact.
Maybe something like this:
Link to passive tree

As you mentioned, pure ES makes it so that I don't see the purpose to going for Vaal Pact when my cap is so high (and that's speaking from mediocre gear and 3500 ES, with really good gear I'd be around 5-6k). Those 10 points could be put towards more ES (from the cluster just below witch) and some more dps, effectively raising the cap and your survivability at the same time. I've stood in groups of mobs spamming dual strike, half dc'ing at times, and never got low enough on ES that I wished I had gotten Vaal Pact to help me leech faster.

I think there has been a misunderstanding concerning my post, I have been referring to the assumption that the claw life leech cluster is not worth putting points into in general, not in relation to this build (thats why I brought Vaal Pact into play).

Besides that I have to agree that it would be 6 instead of 5 skill points investment for the absolute majority of builds and that the current changes to lifeleech availabilty make the cluster feel less useful.

You have to take into account though, that in many cases you will have nodehighways to more damage oriented clusters as well, which lowers their relative effectiveness as well.

In the case of your build those highways don't exist because you f.e. picked arrow dodging and crystal skin, therefore needing to take that path anyway

What brings me to the question why you wanted to pick up arrow dodging without high evasion rating. Also Crystal skin didn't feel really good on my shadow, but I can't tell if CI users have more trouble with status ailments than non-CI users.

I would rather put the points from arrow dodging and crystal skin into the Critical Multiplier cluster on the way to these two nodes, but other than that your build looks really good.

With Grace aura, my evasion goes up to the 20% range, making the extra 20% against projectiles a nice bonus for the relatively small investment. It's not as impressive as if I were at 50% evasion with a pure eva build and would become almost immune to projectiles, but it's still a decent bonus. Melee attackers I can kite, and max resists take care of spell damage, projectiles attacks were the only thing that really gave me trouble. Although now that I can move out of the way of projectiles, I may refund that and Crystal Skin if neither are proving to be very useful. But with the crit damage gem on my Dual Strike, my crit damage is at 333%, which enough to one-shot whites and most blues on a crit, and enough to take down yellows and bosses within a diamond or two. I feel really comfortable with my dps right now, and am mostly trying to find ways to increase survival, which may mean going to the ES cluster below witch's starting point, I have plenty of refund points to try different things out, =)
CI generally do have more problems with status ailments, because the threshold and duration calculations are based on what max health would be, rather than max ES. And sadly, our would-be max health is a lot lower than other people, because of having no investment towards HP.


The claw leech cluster is still decent if someone needs extra leech, but the change to claws having more inherent leech has devalued the cluster by a lot. With old claws and blood rage, you were at 2% total inherent leech with most of the claws, making the 4% bonus triple that value. Now you're at a minimum of 6% leech, and 4% bonus less than doubles it. I just don't think that as many people will need the extra leech now with the claw changes, especially considering that for those with energy shield, you can walk away from combat for 5 seconds and be back to full.
Vaal Pact in general I just dislike. For HP users, you're cutting off emergency healing from flasks and the ability to have natural regeneration between fights, which on its own I don't think is worth the benefit of slightly faster leeching. If you can't leech more than the damage you are taking, you will die, so mobs with physical damage reflect or tanky bonuses become a lot more deadly. For CI users, your ES should be high enough that the cap isn't an issue. If you're constantly taking more than 20% of your max ES per second then you're probably fighting content that is beyond you, and should work on upgrading your gear. Vaal Pact is only a restriction for HP builds, and an unnecessary and out of the way luxury for CI builds.

I first respeced my build to use Vaal pact but decided to try it similar to yours but using hybrid equipment. Also since GGG said they are going to be nerfing auras by not letting you use alternate weapon slots to keep their skill gems I will probably need to cut down on some auras and I would rather lose Grace then Discipline and will not be able to keep both (Wrath+Anger/Hatred+Discipline+Reduce mana for a 4 slot non weapon/shield item).

Will get back here with results at the end of 1 week race :)

im still trying to work this shadow class out, i have real difficulties and cant solo merciless :(

how important is carnage heart? how the heck you get enough mana to run 4 auras? (iv seen build and studied gear, i can barely run 2) what is mana cost of dual strike? Is it much better than double strike?

Hi, I've been trying out a Claw/CI build for some time now. Before i was going for the LS jack of all trades.
I'm currently 56 gone through most bosses without problems and merciless isn't rly a problem as long as I remember I'm a "hit and run" class ;]
the only archnemesis I seem to have is a room with 2 necromancers and full of blue spark mage skelletons.
I have crap gear so not even worth mentioning.

Here's my build. Pretty simmilar but significant differences.


I use 3 auras Discipline, Grace and Wrath (thus the increased lighning node). My gear is standard ES/eva. Grace and arrow dodging basicly makes me immune to projectiles.
I'm using Fire Trap + Warlords Mark + Lightning Strike combo for Aoe (which mows down mobs pretty quick), and 4xViper Strike(mostly in ES mob cases or when hard hitter) + Dual Strike + Flicker for single targets. The only thing bothering me sometimes is mana. But I guess it will come out better with better gear and when I level up the mana cost gem.

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Torin wrote:

I first respeced my build to use Vaal pact but decided to try it similar to yours but using hybrid equipment. Also since GGG said they are going to be nerfing auras by not letting you use alternate weapon slots to keep their skill gems I will probably need to cut down on some auras and I would rather lose Grace then Discipline and will not be able to keep both (Wrath+Anger/Hatred+Discipline+Reduce mana for a 4 slot non weapon/shield item).

Will get back here with results at the end of 1 week race :)

I died at level 8 to the cold unique skeleton in the prison twice so far in the 1 week race. But that's in no way related to my build, I just need to pick up random blue gems to get some cold resist rings. The build in general should work fine for hardcore, cold damage at the end of act 1 normal is the only thing that gave me trouble when levelling and that was cause I had no resist at the time. All of my mid-end game deaths can be attributed to lag/desyncs or just plain stupidity, I've very rarely bit off more than I could chew.

When the aura nerf happens, I'll probably cut it down to 4 auras (hatred, grace, discipline, anger), and dual strike, blood rage, whirling blades, and flicker. I'd be putting portal on the offset, and I might be able to put blood rage on my offset too, but I'd be happy with just 4 auras. I'm more of a fan of grace than I am of anger/wrath, elemental damage doesnt get leeched, and the bonus isn't all that big (about 5% more dps, compared to about 15% more evasion). But it's just one of those minor tradeoffs between survival and dps that people can choose what fits them best, =)

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bingobill wrote:

im still trying to work this shadow class out, i have real difficulties and cant solo merciless :(

how important is carnage heart? how the heck you get enough mana to run 4 auras? (iv seen build and studied gear, i can barely run 2) what is mana cost of dual strike? Is it much better than double strike?

Shadow class in general makes you think "I'm want to build pure dps and be an assassin type character", but when trying to solo, that just doesn't work. For building a solo character, you have to keep a balance between survival and dps. You also have to be careful about charging into big groups of enemies as a melee class (and especially a CI one without health flasks for emergency healing). If you need to, you can go to easier areas like the Ledge in act 1, or Fellshrine Ruins in act 2 , or back to the end of Ruthless, and grind out a few more levels. Being just 2 or 3 levels higher than what you're facing makes a big difference. Having max resists is also a must for merciless, which is why I'm using two resist rings that both have +all resist.

Carnage heart is an amazing item for this build, but it's not required. The 25% reduced energy shield is only making me lose about 10% of my total ES, and between the +all stats from carnage heart and my two +30 strength nodes I can use any hybrid ES gear or red gems that I need to. With the claw buffs, I would have a lot more life leech with new claws (up to 12% inherent life leech using both level 55 claws, 6% otherwise), which would make up for the lack of carnage heart for other's builds. Blood Rage is also important to use for the free 5% leech and 3 frenzy charges. And of course there's leech mods for amulets, weapons, gloves, but for me, Carnage Heart is enough leech to take care of it all. If you find your leech isn't enough, then instead of a dps cluster, you can take the Raker cluster near Ghost Reaver for an extra 4% leech.

I'm getting a lot of +mana from gear, and I get mana for each level up, you also need to be linking your auras to Reduced Mana gem, it saves a ton of mana (up to 30% cheaper auras at max level). With the mana leech passive I don't need a massive mana pool, and I've done fine on as low as 30 max mana, but I'm usually more comfortable around 50-60 max mana. If you want more mana for more auras, there's 3 increased mana nodes just below the ES cluster at the witch starting area.

Dual strike is only a little bit cheaper in mana (dual strike is 9 compared to double strike's 11), but with enough dps for your mana leech, neither's mana cost should be an issue. Dual strike also hits harder, unless your weapons are very different. Double strike only attacks with your mainhand weapon twice (at 70% penalty), whereas Dual strike attacks with both weapons once (with no penalty). I suggest trying to put Melee Physical Damage and Melee Damage on Full Health supports on your main attack instead of elemental damage supports, because physical is what leeches you back your health and mana. Getting a 4-link so that you can use 3 damage supports is fairly easy and helps a lot for increasing dps. Also make sure your weapons have high physical damage mods and that you max out their quality for even more damage, as that's what's most important to your weapons.

Hi Im mostly focused on pvp (im aware ggg is taking ages to implement it and we dont know much about it) but what things would you change in this build for a pvp oriented shadow? Specifically non hardcore cutthroat league.

Being a claw build, the main weakness in PVP will be the "enemies can not leech life" node, and Puncture and other dots will make natural ES regen difficult. To make up for this, I would drop some of my DPS nodes (the southern part of the tree and accuracy), and pick up reduced ES delay and the ES cluster below Witch starting point to look something like Link. This is about 80% increased ES, and 90% faster recovery delay, becoming much more focused on ES survival. I haven't tried any cutthroat yet so I can't speak as to how helpful this change will be, but it seems to make sense logically of covering the weak spot and counters for the build.

Dual Strike would still be the strongest single target attack, and I'd put that in my highest link with as much damage as I can get, for 5L that would probably be physical damage, physical on full health, fire damage, and crit damage. I would probably also add lightning strike with LMP, elemental damage, and physical damage to act as AoE and somewhat ranged for clearing minions. Flicker Strike would definitely stay, to be able to get right on the target, and maybe also Puncture because it's deadly against other CI.

thanks for detailed response!