[DW Hybrid] Beginner's Phantom Infiltrator

Twin Fangs should be on Stormbox with Tether.

I would had probably used Fettan Mask istead of Stormserpent helm now. Sure it would be a loss in %damage but you can use these points to get more stats from your skills and for example pick up some WPS such as Whirling Death and Execution. At glance the build could really use more skillpoints.

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First of: Thank you for this build guide, and the many others. Without them this game would, frankly, drown new players in complexity. (I remember seeing the devotions screen for the first time andā€¦ well, know the clichĆ© how looking up at the stars makes you feel small? Also applies to the devotion screen.)

Now for my concrete question:

Whatā€™s your thoughts on using Word of Pain as bat-proccer instead of Stormbox?

Iā€™ve tried out both skills, and when I test it on a few dummies or something the Stormbox seems to trigger Bat MUCH more often. So case closed, youā€™d think.

But I find it very hard to use in practice. I target an enemy and since my mouse if over that one already I shadow strike it, it dies, nothing much gets procced. Or I manage to target a different one, but then I shadow strike or rush away and the tether breaks. AoE is very small.

Word of Pain seems much easier to use. Needs a few more points investment (but itā€™s not bad since I have more +skill items than this build at the moment) but then it has a 10 meter AoE and 0 cooldown. I can toss it in, charge. Or charge, toss it in. With no cooldown I can be sure to place it on any enemy that pops up. When targetting a big mob itā€™s just as effective at spamming bat as Stormbox is, and if I need to run away itā€™ll heal me all the same.

In practice I just notice that when I use WoP (ultimate forgotten gods, around level 90 by the way.) I have to heal a lot less.

So am I missing something? Is there a trick to using the storm box more effectively? Is it picked for better single-target performance? Or is just a matter how good you are at targetting and positioning?

Hello.

If weā€™re talking about a big mob then it doesnā€™t really matter since mob is supposed to die Quick anyway. With Stormbox you get better heal when it matters the most - boss fights.

WoP is just a common debuff so it ticks every 1 second, so even if you debuff a crowd with it you canā€™t squeeze the most out of itā€™s 0.6s cooldown. Stormbox with at least 1pt in Tether on the other hand will have a tick rate from 0.3s and below, which means itā€™ll be proccing much better when dealing with solo bosses.

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Interesting. I did get the impression the stormbox triggered more often, nice to see that confirmed.

But sometimes I see bat proc much more often than 1/second with WoP. Would that be because I used it twice at staggered intervals? I.e. if word of pain is in effect on two groups of enemies, can it trigger bat more often?

But I take your point about boss fights. I suppose I should pay more attention to what the storm box is doing there, though Iā€™m mostly more focussed on staying aliveā€¦

According to my knowledge of the game it should not work this way, but I might be wrong.

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It just has to do with the fact that you have more monsters being influenced of WoP. At least I think so. You can perhaps try on practice dummy. Cast WoP on them one by one (might be hard to controll) vs WoP on both of them at the same time.

Iā€™ve tested it again on the practice dummies near Fort Icon. There are two clusters of dummies there, making this an easy test.

Whenever WoP is cast once, it will only ever trigger 1 time per second, at the same time the damage tick occurs. Itā€™s perfectly in sync. Even if I cast it so all 7 dummies are hit at once.

But when you stagger the casts on the two groups of dummies (aiming to the left and right of the groups) the damage ticks will also occur in a staggered fashion, and itā€™s quite possible to get the bat triggering every twice in a row in less than 1 second. (0.6 I assume, since thatā€™s the cooldown.)

So moral of the story is that when fighting large groups and cast WoP multiple times, you can get more devotion procs than youā€™d otherwise assume. But ultimately Stupid_Dragonā€™s argument about better single-target performance for storm box still stands.

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Hi, Iā€™m fairly new to the game and I liked this build, is it viable for 1.1.9.1?

Yes, it is :slight_smile:

Can be a bit squishy for new players, but with some practice I believe anyone can manage to play it. Just donā€™t expect it to facetank everything, not this kind of a build.

So, unrelated question: How much does this build actually benefit from dual wielding?

Obviously it helps if both weapons boost shadow strike. And on auto-attack, the dual-wield line of skills could proc if you take them. But 90% of damage comes from the special attacks. (Shadow strike, ring of steel, blade burst, devotion procs.)

Reason I ask is that I found some pretty dang amazing two-handed weapons (bane of winter king sword and soulrend scythe from Steps of Torment.) And on the one hand it feels a bit odd to throw away the character concept of a dual-wielding blender. But on the other hand, those weapons seem in a whole different league than the spectre blades and even the loxmere dagger I found. (That one actually seemed pretty underwhelming.)

Downsides of two-handed Iā€™ve found:

  • Slower cooldown on pneumatic breath
  • no boosts from dual-wield line of skills.
  • Dual-wielding looks cool

Upsides:

  • Faster cooldown on Word of Renewal
  • Couple extra skillpoints from not taking dual wield skills.
  • I do not think any single handed weapons come even close to the two-handers I found
  • Scythe also looks pretty cool.

Anything Iā€™m missing?

Not sure if anyone ever used Bane of the WK for SS but Soulrend had been used in SS builds before, but Spellbreaker or Reaper rather than Infiltrator though. SS Infiltrators had been using Loxmereā€™s for ages.

The reason to use dual wielding is because SS hits with both weapons and the buff from Lethal Assault basically applies twice, while in case of a 2H weapon it would only apply once. Moreover if I remember correctly DW Loxmeres or Spectral Longswords will result in lower cooldown of SS than a 2H weapon with built in cdr. In case of Loxmereā€™s you can potentially have higher %damage than a 2H because itā€™s classified as a caster dagger. Lower base damage in this case is not a problem at all.

For ā€œthisā€ build though itā€™s not even a question what to use. Spectral Longswords and to lesser extent Loxmeres are budget weapons that you can reliably acquire, while Bane of WK and Soulrend are endgame stuff.

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Thanks for the feedback. That would be the flat damage bonus of Lethal assault applying twice, correct? Percentages wouldnā€™t double. But the flat damage is pretty huge.

Dual wield does however allow you to put in two cold stones for +200% cold damage, so that is another big advantage. (Took me an embarrassingly long time to realise you could do that. With my sorcerer character I just assumed that you could only have 1 instance of a buff active and never thought to test it.)

Soulrend comes with cooldown and a Nidallaā€™s Justifiable Ends boost, so it gets cooldown down to 1.4 seconds which I think is pretty good. With Spectrals I get 1.5, spectral and loxmere 1.3. (But the loxmere I got is a weak version.) And the lifesteal is insane. 25% total. (Thinking of dropping Ghoul since it seems a bit redundant with that much life-steal going on.) I get a feeling I got extremely lucky finding it the first time I ever stepped in legendary Steps of Torment.

Did find this Shadow Strike build by @banana_peel that uses Winter King: [1.1.6.2] Endless Winter. Bane of the Winter King family: SS Infiltrator, CT Spellbreaker, pseudo-pets Trickster, PS Trickster, BA Blademaster

But from looking at patch notes I think that was from a time when that sword gave cooldown reduction.

Hello. First of all thanks a lot for the build Iā€™m having so much fun with it at the moment :smiley:
I just wanted to ask a coupe of questions:

1- Iā€™m currently still in normal (level 57, just got to malmouth, havenā€™t done any act 7), but iā€™m taking quite a bit of damage and iā€™m scared to switch to elite. Hereā€™s my build atm. Iā€™m relying mostly on lifesteal from Gluttony. I havenā€™t died a lot but got really close.

2- About devotions, which one would you recommend more, Leviathan or Yugol build?
also also, I noticed you take hawk over scholarā€™s light but idk why, they both cost the same and light gives 4 green, and also gives better damage boost (I may be underestimating bonuses that hawk gives)

3- Last, would you still recommend this build for lategame farming, or is there currently better versions of dw inflitrator that are better (like pierce or attack speed+wps cold)

Sorry for if Iā€™m asking a lot (and also for necroing this post :skull:) but iā€™m really excited to get to make my own builds and your insight would help a lot.

I levelled with Leviathan because extra AoE damage is nice on a SS build. Especially now that Nightfall isnā€™t a beast it used to be. Yugol was the more sturdy setup for rushing bosses while ignoring crowds.

Canā€™t comment on Hawk vs Scholarā€™s Light. The Leviathan setup has OA on the low side so probably that.

Um, sorry, I kind of retired from GD. Donā€™t even keep up with whatā€™s in the patches anymore.

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I donā€™t know where this info is posted, I didnā€™t read it. When leveling this build, which attributes (Chracter/bags screen) are priority?

Welcome to the forum. :slightly_smiling_face:

If you click on the grimtools link and then hover your mouse cursor over an attribute itā€™ll show how many points have been spent in it.

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