Types of Shadow Builds?

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+150% to their chosen defensive stat

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_rakk wrote:

Great post Strill, really useful to me (2 days into this game).

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+150% to their chosen defensive stat

What do you mean by this? Is it better to choose one stat to minimise damage (like either evasion or armor)? Should I be picking up the elemental damage reductions a priority as well or are they not so important if you have high evasion/armor? Also what is the deal with block, is that just a chance for you to block attacks and minimise all damage, and are they worth taking (looking at the increased block chance for duel wield passive points).

Thanks

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Strill wrote:

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ixJay wrote:

So my first character is a Shadow. I see people are posting a lot of different types of builds. I was just wondering what a Shadows main focus is. What attributes and perks should i be looking for with my items? Passive skill tree wise, what should i do.. or is that really just up to me? So far i did some Increase One Hand Physical Damage, Duel Wield Block, Attack Speed, Maximum Life, & Movement Speed. Next step i was looking at Increasing Critical Strike Chance or Increase Invasion & Energy Shield. What is your opinion? With a build going this way, which way should i be heading towards?

Thanks in advance.

Pick a particular weapon or spell, then look on the tree for bonuses that apply to that weapon/spell. If you can get from the shadow starting point to the area with the weapon bonuses you want, and still get plenty of useful passives along the way, then you can make the build work. For example, passives which benefit cold spells are spread all throughout the shadow, Witch, and Templar trees, so a Shadow can use cold spells if they stay in that area. Dagger and Claw passives are all around the Shadow starting point, so those are an option as well. Heck, if you head through the center all the way to the duelist tree, you can pick up useful life, attack speed, and movement speed passives along the way making one-handed and two-handed sword builds a possibility as well.

Making a good build is all about minimizing your attribute passives, and getting the right proportions of offense and defense. If you can find a path to the passives your build needs which minimizes attribute point nodes, maximizes useful nodes like attack/cast speed, life/defenses, and damage/crit, and has a good balance of offensive and defensive nodes, then you can make your build work.

Some rules of thumb:

For Weapon-based builds, Increased Physical Damage is weak because much of your damage at high levels will be elemental, not physical.

For weapon-based builds, Weapon Elemental Damage nodes are extremely powerful for the above reason

Attack/cast speed and crit nodes are useful because they are a multiplier to your overall damage whether physical or elemental, and are more difficult to find on items than Increased Damage stats.

Melee builds should have at LEAST +150% Life and +150% to their chosen defensive stat, or at least +215% energy shield if using Chaos Inoculation.

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HeroOfExile wrote:

For Weapon-based builds, Increased Physical Damage is weak because much of your damage at high levels will be elemental, not physical.


hmmmm. but the physical dmage is the base for the elemental damage? the more physical = the more ele damage?