Nightblade's Phantasmal Blades..?

[Caoimhin]

I am very confused about how these are apparently they main attack for the Nightblade. They have a cooldown, which can be taken off with Frenetic Throw, but that also reduces the dmg a lot (-50% wpn dmg and total dmg modified by -50%). I'm currently around lvl 17 and I've been using just the regular attack, using the Blade Burst and the Phantasmal Blades when the cooldowns are done. I want to use PB, but I noticed my DPS goes from around 450 to 80 if I make PB my main attack (with Frenetic Throw active). What am I misunderstanding? What am I missing?

Thanks for any help!

[KG]

No mastery has a single "main" attack or anything like that. Grim Dawn is really flexible. A clever player (or someone that just reads a lot of build guides) can figure out how to make all sorts of bizarre things work.

"DPS" on the character sheet is almost never a reliable indicator of effectiveness. PB, for example, has multiple blades but the DPS stat only takes into account one of them. It is also a spell so it uses cast speed and not attack speed and benefits more from having a lot of points invested early on than an attack with a big percentage of weapon damage. Oh and it will also eat your mana for breakfast if you invest too many points too early or aren't geared for it.

[ha..HA!]

Sheet dps on PB only counts one blade. So if you throw out 7 per throw, that would actually be 80×7 if you use it as a shotgun.

[km_md60]

Frenetic throw converts 100% of your piercing damage into vitality damage and reduce overall damage in exchange for spammable ability. The reduction in damage is a result of lavk of vitality damage support (which needs different devotions and gears), and the damage reduction from the frenetic throw. Using vitality dagger (Bone spike from Trog blood mage is particularly good) with good vitality damage buff can be very beneficial. Many faction gears also buff vitality damage (side with order faction and Barrowholm).

I am building vitality phantasmal blade reaper (HC, lv60)- she's quite strong thus far and very flxible. She can mow dawn mobs from range and go toe to toe with bosses in melee range. However, you need energy regen and energy reduction to make it works well without drinking potion like an addict.

[Caoimhin]

Thanks for the help guys! I hadn't thought that the DPS only took into account only one of the PB blades.

@KG
Yeah, I meant that, from what I could find on forums, PB seemed like the one Nightblade skill that most builds were built around of. And I assume If you're lvl15+ and you're still attacking without a skill in your left click, then you must be doing something wrong. But idk, I could be wrong about that. I played a lot of Diablo 3, and attacking without a skill there was definitely the wrong thing to do.

@km_md60
What exactly is "vitality damage"? The wiki says it's increased by things that increase magic damage, and also Spirit. What constellations do you suggest I go with if I wanna use PB with frenetic throw? PS. I like your MGS profile pic xD

[powbam]

Originally posted by Caoimhin:

PB seemed like the one Nightblade skill that most builds were built around of.

You would be insanely wrong and might have been confusing PB (Phantasmal Blades) with PB (Pneumatic Burst), both in the NB mastery.

While many people do use Phantasmal Blades to great effect I can definitely tell you that NB is by far my favorite mastery and I virtually almost NEVER build a Phantasmal NB (except when I want to remind myself that I don't much care for the skill). I use this mastery almost exclusively for where it really shines, DW melee.

[Matthew]

I can never get over the animation. It looks like you are casting the blades from above your head :/

Yes, petty. But I normally don't play NB mastery much anyway, and when I do it is usually for the flashy DW skills.

[Caoimhin]

@powbam
I assume DW is Dual Wield. I *am* basically going DW melee. Made myself two epic maces last night before I stopped playing (since I had just unlocked the smith). I don't know if I'd be confusing PB with Pneumatic Burst, considering that Pneumatic Burst is a healing skill. Seems odd for a build to be focused around a healing skill. Either way, what do you suggest I do with Phantasmal Blades if I'm going basically DW melee? Get Frenetic Throw and just spam PB?

[KG]

Ignore it unless you're making a bleed build. If you want to go DW melee, that is.

[powbam]

Originally posted by Caoimhin:

I don't know if I'd be confusing PB with Pneumatic Burst, considering that Pneumatic Burst is a healing skill. Seems odd for a build to be focused around a healing skill.

Not what I was trying to imply. I was basically refuting your observation that somehow people that used NB in their builds were somehow fanatically only using Phantasmal? Go browse thru the Build Compendiums and you will find far more builds using everything but Phantasmal.

Originally posted by Caoimhin:

Either way, what do you suggest I do with Phantasmal Blades if I'm going basically DW melee? Get Frenetic Throw and just spam PB?

I would just get rid of it and use ABB or SS and likely have any of the WPSkills specced. In lieu of ABB/SS you also have other masteries skills to take advantage of that can sit in the LMB slot perfectly fine.

In the end it all boils down to what appeals to you.

[Caoimhin]

@powbam
I appreciate all the help, but all these acronyms are a bit confusing, since I'm still pretty new to the game.. xD
By "have any of the WPSkills specced", you mean have ABB or SS maxed out?

Originally posted by powbam:

In lieu of ABB/SS you also have other masteries skills to take advantage of that can sit in the LMB slot perfectly fine.

I assume you mean skills from other masteries (classes/jobs)? Considering Nightblade doesn't seem to have any other skill aside from Phantasmal Blades+Frenetic Throw without a cooldown.

Again, I apologize if I seem super dumb or something. This game has a lot of different dmg types and whatnot, it can be pretty confusing. And I look at builds online but they usually are all endgame builds that mention a bunch of things I don't even know about, filled with acronyms that I don't know what they mean.

[powbam]

Originally posted by Caoimhin:

@powbam
I appreciate all the help, but all these acronyms are a bit confusing, since I'm still pretty new to the game.. xD
By "have any of the WPSkills specced", you mean have ABB or SS maxed out?

Originally posted by powbam:

In lieu of ABB/SS you also have other masteries skills to take advantage of that can sit in the LMB slot perfectly fine.

I assume you mean skills from other masteries (classes/jobs)? Considering Nightblade doesn't seem to have any other skill aside from Phantasmal Blades+Frenetic Throw without a cooldown.

Again, I apologize if I seem super dumb or something. This game has a lot of different dmg types and whatnot, it can be pretty confusing. And I look at builds online but they usually are all endgame builds that mention a bunch of things I don't even know about, filled with acronyms that I don't know what they mean.

Ah, my bad.

• ABB = Amarasta's Blade Burst
  
• SS = Shadow Strike
  
• WPS = Weapon Proc Skills (in Nightblade these are all the skills along the very top of the mastery that occur after the Dual Blades skill). These have a chance to "proc" during your default attack animation, or during your default attack animation "replacer".

WPS are also (apparently) known as Passive Weapon Skills in the Game Guide:
http://www.grimdawn.com/guide/gameplay/combat.php#q09

Passively Activated Weapon Skills
Some abilities in Grim Dawn are passively activated on your basic attacks. The Soldier and Nightblade masteries provide several examples of this. Each of these abilities has a chance to activate, which is displayed as a percentage. What that means is that on every basic attack you do, you will have a chance of using the ability instead.

As you invest in these skills, their chance of activation will increase. It is possible to get the total chance of activating passive weapon abilities to go beyond 100%. When this occurs, all of your basic attacks will be replaced by abilities and their chances of activation will be used to determine their relative frequency.

If you use a skill with NO COOLDOWN as your main attack these WPS will NOT proc, EVER, while this attack is occuring. Phantasmal Blades/Frenetic Throw is just such a skill and is thus a BAD choice if you intend on making use of WPSkills. WPS can proc during your default attacks or with a skill designated as a "replacer".

A replacer skill would be a skill like Cadence in Soldier, or Firestrike in Demolitionist, or Savagery in Shaman. These skills mention in their descriptions wording like "When used as your default weapon attack" that denotes they are default attack replacers. I could have sworn they specifically mentioned it as such but it appears that Crate has made it even more confusing in this aspect. I do not know why they shucked the "default attack replacer" terminology from the descriptions. Tsk, tsk. Nightblade has no default replacer skill of its own, instead its main feature is to provide the WPSkills and provide the means to DW without the need of items to do so.

If you decide to use a skill that instead has a COOLDOWN, like Shadow Strike in Nightblade, as your main attack on the LMB (Left Mouse Button), your WPS skills will only have a chance to proc during the cooldown period but cannot proc during this skills activation. This is perfectly fine to build in this fashion while making use of WPS if you so choose.

While a Replacer skill is considered overall more optimal it is by no means necessary in GD. I know on the outside looking in this may all sound confusing, once you grasp the concept it all becomes as simple as 1+1=2. It is much harder to explain than it actually is, only because it has several factors in the equation that need to be explained before one can grasp the whole picture.

NOTE: @Zantai - Please go thru and unify this terminology in both the Game Guide and in the Skill Descriptions in-game. I don't know why the **** you guys have steered a way from the commonly accepted usage of WPS and "Default Attack Replacers" but over the course of writing this up I only just now became aware that you have made it all disjointed and vastly more confusing with no unifying terminology and it appears that the terminlogy you were trying to bring in to being "Passive Weapon Skills" or "Passive Active Weapon Skills" is largely at odds with the community accepted "WPS". WTF, no one says PWS or PAWS that I have ever seen?

And the Default Attack Replacers descriptions in-game that denoted them as such is all kinds of ****ed up now. When the heck did this happen?

[km_md60]

Vitality damage is one type of damage in grim dawn. There are devotions that support vitality - bats, gallow, rattosh, typhos, dying god. It usually comes in 2 flavors, vitality/chaos (occultist) and vitality/aether (necromancer).

The problem of every damage type is to find resistance reduction. Vitality is generally well-resisted by enemy in the void (those leech) and in higher difficulty since vitality damage usually associated with life leech. Finding skill vitality RR is super important. So far, you have two skills that fit the description, occultist’s vulnerability and necromancer’s spectral wrath. There are more like rattosh the veil warden and gears that grant skill but they won’t come into play until late game.

While it’s tempting to pump spirit to increase ‘magical’ damageม others will advise against such thing. Vitality damage buff from devotion and gears are more powerful than spirit bonus. Actually, I play to level 60 without putting any point into spirit (a few into physique for gear requirement) and generally do well in term of damage.

[PrinceXavieR™]

pb blades are quite powerful builds. should u be interested check out these threads.

Campaign: (frenetic version)
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63314

Crucible: ( non- frenetic)
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67887

Currently vitality is the most supported damage type and is the most highest damage version possible. i would say even surpassing many dw nightblade versions in terms of kill speed. have fun!

[Caoimhin]

@powbam
Wow, thanks a lot, I really appreciate all the help. I had completely forgot that those skills next to DW only work with the default attack. I guess now I should use the chick in Devi's Crossing to reset my skill points and go for either a build without Frenetic Throw, going for a replacer skill like you said, either Cadence or Fire Strike, or go for a build without all those skills that activate with the default attack, using PBlades as my LMC attack. I'm leaning more on the side of the WPSkills, considering people say vitality dmg and vitality dmg resistance reduction is really important, and I don't have any of that.

@km_md60
Thanks for the help! Second time I heard of Rattosh, but I don't have that constellation. It must be part of one of the DLCs, same with the Necromancer (of course). I think I'll play without the PBlades+Frenetic Throw for now, until I get more used to the game, and find equipment to support all the vitality stuff.

@PrinceXavieR
Thanks! I'll definitely check those build out!