Mechanics
Now, how do we survive these 100+ stacks of Bleed? We make use of ward on hit and cast from many sources, the main ones being:
Arcane Warden 8/8, Essence Duel 5/5,
Huge Arcane Idol and Large Arcane Idol with
SuffixChance to Gain 20 Ward on Melee Hit,
Icy Flow 5/5 in Shatter Strike.
As well as the mastery passive of Spellblade which gives us 4 ward on hit. We also gain stacks of Shattered Aegis 5/5 whenever we hit enemies, giving us generic damage reduction. And of course we'll need to maintain capped physical resistance which will cut the damage our self inflicted Bleeds deal to us by 75%
(self inflicted damage does not gain the resistance penetration from area level that benefits enemies).
It is important for us to maintain 100% critical strike chance with Shatter Strike so we can utilize the Cold Steel 4/4 node to it's fullest, granting us 240% critical strike multiplier, raising it to a 340% more damage multiplier. Now Shatter Strike has no sources of critical strike chance in its tree, which means that we need to get our melee critical strike chance in our character sheet to 100%. We can achieve this by having tier 5 or above PrefixMelee Critical Strike Chance on both our one handed swords, as well as utilize something like either Peak of the Mountain (my prefered choice) or Prismatic Gaze, and the Knowledge of Destruction 10/10 as well as Runeword: Cataclysm 5/6 for additional critical strike chance and 15% more damage vs low health enemies.
An optional but important mechanic we can make use of is the Astonish 1/1 in Flame Ward to trigger it automatically upon stun. Beware however that this can become quite awkward if enemies are either too weak or too strong, with a fairly forgiving middle ground. The reason for this is because even when enemies are quite weak, if you take enough hits one will eventually stun out even if you might not be in any immediate danger, and on the flip side if enemies are too strong almost every hit will trigger it and if enemies are super strong they'll start killing you before it ever even has the chance to trigger, at which point it's better to take off the node and manually use flame ward in anticipation of damage.
A very useful mechanic against tanky enemies and bosses is that when you achieve fairly high attack speeds (around 100+ on sheet in my experience), you'll start being able to simply hold down Shatter Strike and periodically tap Mana Strike to weave in Mana Strike's in between the Shatter Strike casts. This is when the build starts feeling very smooth in my opinion.
Gameplay
Gameplay consists of simply walking up to enemies and pressing Shatter Strike, whenever your mana gets low you Mana Strike once or twice to regain your entire mana globe and keep going. If you think you're in danger you can preemptively Flame Ward to be able to facetank enemies until you're in range. If you're about to hit a particularly tanky you can press Enchant Weapon for a massive damage boost to quickly melt them. Teleporting inbetween packs.
Bugs
(FIXED AS OF 1.0) As of 0.9.2 There is also a bug with Frost Claw , its Shiver Shell 3/3 node and Diothaen's Bloody Nib. Causing Frost Claw to trigger from our self inflicted Bleeds and giving us a considerable amount of mana Gift of Winter 3/3 as well as ward from Reowyn's Veil 1/1. This bug is not necessary for this build to function, nor will this build stop functioning once this bug is fixed.
As of 0.9.2 The Calculated Destruction 5/8 node 5 points bonus gives generic increased critical strike chance instead of increased spell critical strike chance, meaning we can use it to help cap our crit chance. This bug is also not necessary for this build to function, and we actually gain fairly little from it since we don't stack int to begin with, but it can help in the early stages of the build.
