Grenades

This build focuses entirely on entering Stealth as much as possible to drop fields upon fields of Stun Grenades.

Huge credit to Pichapao from the Sanctuary Discord for helping me optimize and test this build.

1. Cast Shadow Imbuement on Cooldown
2. Cast Caltrops
3. Cast Smoke Grenade
4. Cast Blade Shift -> Barrage -> Evade -> Repeat
5. Cast Shadow Step periodically for Fluidity and for Unstoppable.

This build focuses entirely on outputting as many Opportunist Grenades as possible as these are the highest damage ones.

To do this we apply Shadow Imbuement, which in combination with Lethal Dusk, makes us enter Stealth when we Evade into enemies that have Shadow Imbuement applied. This drops Opportunist and Surprise Stun Grenades.

Build Requirements and Replacements

Unique Items

• Harlequin Crest is not mandatory will give you a lot of survivability and will give you enough Cooldown Reduction to make the build work.
• Umbracrux is not mandatory but will make your damage skyrocket.
• Starless Skies is also not mandatory but gives an incredible amount of damage.

Paragon Board Stat Requirements

• None

Stat Requirements

• None

Affix Replacements

Skill Choices and Explanations

Basic Skills

Blade Shift is used to proc Close Quarter Combat and as the fastest Basic Skill to proc Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown.

Core Skills

We use Barrage as the fastest ranged Core Skill to proc Close Quarter Combat and swap our weapon to our Crossbow before Evading and firing off a barrage of Stun Grenades that will use our Crossbow Weapon Damage for increased damage.

Agility Skills

Shadow Step is our main Unstoppable and Mobility skill.

Caltrops essentially functions as a huge damage multiplier through the Enhanced Caltrops Passive and the Deadly Ambush Legendary Node.

Subterfuge Skills

Smoke Grenade is used to gain more damage and to spawn The Umbracrux Totem.

Dark Shroud is used passively through the Umbrous Aspect and therefore does not need to be placed on our Skill Bar. Dark Shroud is an insanely powerful defensive skill in Season 4 because of it's parabolic scaling.

Imbuement Skills

Shadow Imbuement is taken to enable Lethal Dusk.

Ultimate Skills

We do not use an Ultimate Skill on this build

Masterworking Priority

Although this guide shows the most optimal gear setup, it's not easy to acquire and generally compromises must be made. For that reason, it's important to understand how the different affixes rank in terms of Masterworking priority.

Breakpoint Affixes

These affixes and their exact Masterworking values are used to reach specific breakpoints.

• Armor
• All Resistances
• Attack Speed
• X Imbuement Lasts for X Casts
• Ranks to X Passive

Maximum Priority Affixes

These should be 3x Masterworking at all costs as they are incredibly powerful affixes.

• Ranks to Dark Shroud

High Priority Affixes

These should ideally be 3x Masterworking but are not an absolute necessity.

• Lucky Hit Chance (Gloves)
• Critical Hit Chance (Gloves)
• Cooldown Reduction
• Dexterity
• Maximum Life

Medium Priority Affixes

These should ideally be 2x Masterworking, although exceptions exist when other affixes of the same priority level or higher co-exist on the item.

• Close Quarter Combat: Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies
• Precision: Critical Damage
• Victimize: Vulnerable Damage

Low Priority Affixes

These are mostly interchangeable 1x Masterworking affixes.

• Movement Speed

Umbracrux Explained

Why is The Umbracrux on All Builds?

The Umbracrux finds a home on almost all builds because it is quite powerfully bugged in two ways: it double dips with all target-based non-cc multipliers and has a multi-hit bug elevating it's effective multiplier.

Known Double Dips

• Methodical Caltrops
• Exploit
• Deadly Ambush

Multi-Hit Bug

To understand the multi-hit bug we first need to know how The Umbracrux Totem works. It functions by emitting two echoes corresponding to two hits every 0.5 seconds. The first echo does 100% of the hit and the second 20%. On top of this, every single hit in the internal cooldown between echoes is added at 100% effectiveness to your next 100% echo.

Example:
Your Rapid Fire hits the Totem 20x for 100 damage in a 0.5 second timeframe. Your totem echoes will be as follows:
100 -> 20 -> 0.5 second wait -> Next Hit + 18 * 100

This means that in practice, instead of a [x]20% multiplier to our damage, we get a (1920 + 2000)/(2000) - 1 = [x]96% multiplier. This is then increased by the double dips.

Why Don't you Have Crowd Control Effects on Your Build?

The Totem can't be CCed and therefore will not benefit from any of those multipliers.

Dark Shroud Explained

How it Works

Dark Shroud is used passively through the Umbrous Aspect and therefore does not need to be placed on our Skill Bar. Dark Shroud is an insanely powerful defensive skill in Season 4 because of its parabolic scaling. This means that it gets stronger the more we invest in it.

Level 1 Dark Shroud provides 40% DR at 5 stacks.
Level 5 Dark Shroud provides 48% DR at 5 stacks. 1 - (1-48%)/(1-40%) = 13.33% effective DR increase.
Level 15 Dark Shroud provides 68% DR at 5 stacks. 1 - (1-68%)/(1-48%) = 39.5% effective DR increase.
Level 19 Dark Shroud provides 76% DR at 5 stacks. 1 - (1-76%)/(1-68%) = 25% effective DR increase.

As you can see, the more we increase our Dark Shroud level the stronger each level gets. Going from 1 to 5 is equivalent to adding a 13.33% DR affix while going from 15 to 19 is equivalent to adding a 25% DR affix.

Dark Shroud Explained

08/05/2024

• S5 Updated