Bloody Nib Crit Shatter Strike Spellblade Build Guide

Super high damage output.

Very simple gameplay.

Easy to get going, with a super high equipment ceiling.

Satisfying play style that encourages learning enemy patterns.

Very squishy.

Need to use Mana Strike to sustain mana.

Relies heavily on Flame Ward for defense.

Mechanics

WARD

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 12 ward on skill use as well as 100% of mana spent gained as ward. 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).

CRIT

It is important for us to maintain 100% critical strike chance with Shatter Strike so we can utilize both Cold Steel 2/4 and Eye of Reen to their fullest since they grant massive crit multi. 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%. In 1.1 our main sources of crit will be the newly changed Defender of Welryn 8/8 and Prodigy 5/5 nodes. With enough dexterity and intelligence you can cap your crit with those two nodes alone, But obviously we won't be able to do that right off the bat, so while leveling i'd recommend putting PrefixMelee Critical Strike Chance on your crystal sword and if needed use a Peak of the Mountain as it's easy to obtain and serves as a good temporary bandaid for critical strike chance early on. And of course if you're only missing a little bit of crit you can always seal the PrefixMelee Critical Strike Chance affix at tier 1 or 2, get PrefixCritical Strike Chance on your Huge Arcane Idols, PrefixCritical Strike Chance on rings or gloves and the - Grand Winds of Oblivion blessing.

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

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.

Anathor useful little tip is that when you get above 100% or so increased attack speed you'll be able to simply hold down Shatter Strike and tap Mana Strike to weave it inbetween casts. This lets you make efficient use of the Blade Weaver 2/10 passive as well as smoothes out the dps and ward curve over the course of longer boss fights.

Otherwise 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) There is 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.

(FIXED AS OF 1.1) 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.

I usually start off leveling with Glacier until I unlock my mastery and then switch to Shatter Strike whenever I have a decent enough weapon and can specialize both Shatter Strike and Mana Strike.

(0.9) I'm now running this build at 1200 corruption, but I usually use a Cradle of the Erased in echoes as it can provide a crazy amount of block chance, that combined with the Glacial Reinforcement 1/5 in Flame Ward can let us reach close to if not 100% block chance with about 50% reduced damage from block effectiveness, letting us tank a couple additional hits. Switching to duel wield whenever I fight a boss.

(1.1) I haven't really felt the need to use Cradle of the Erased even at 1000 corruption but you can if you want to, it's still just as viable, no real change has been made to the swap.

I'm a firm believer of making your own loot filter and as such won't be providing mine, sorry.

Q: Why are we using Siphon of Anguish and Shattered Chains?

A: Siphon has a fairly low LPL and is very easy to drop, making getting a 2 or even 3 LP one viable, and it applies stacks of Doom which lets our Shattered Chains give us 15% more melee damage, it also gives us armour, cleanse on potion and some melee damage.

Q: Do I have to have a Nihilis / Omnis?

A: No, it's just that a well rolled Nihilis / Omnis grants a good amount of resistances (more so Omnis but Nihilis can still grant 15% all res which is still super good). They also grant additional levels to skills which is super good for us since a lot of our skills could use the points.

Q: How much damage does this build do?

A: My current setup with a 1 LP Eye of Reen can go well above 20 million dps on the dummy, the double Crystal Sword setup in this guide can get close to 10 million dps, surpassing it if you're using Ornate Glass Idol and Grand Glass Idol with damage affixes. But these were both fairly well geared setups so don't expect to see such numbers right away. The setup shown in the planner is pretty much BIS and will most likely break 30 million dps, I have not tested it yet.

Q: Can I trust the dps tooltip?

A: No. the dps tooltip will not show your true dps, in some cases it can show which item will give you more damage but especially when it comes to uniques it will often be wrong since it doesn't account for a lot of conditional stats.