Twisting Blades - Shadow Tank

Shadow Tank is all about clearing as fast as possible by using Shadow Imbuement in conjunction with Icy Alchemist.

1. Cast Concealment.
2. Cast Dash on top of Elites or Bosses.
3. Cast Caltrops on Elites or Bosses.
4. Cast Shadow Imbuement.
5. Cast 3x Puncture -> 1x Twisting Blades.
6. Cast 3x Puncture -> 1x Twisting Blades.
7. Cast Dash for mobility.
8. Cast Concealment for Unstoppable.

This build has an incredible amount of synergies built into it.

Seneschal Construct groups and Chills enemies. Shadow Imbuement in combination with Icy Alchemist do AoE damage and freeze the grouped-up enemies. This allows us to do more damage through Frigid Finesse, Frostbitten, and Control Glyph.

Caltrops and Smoke Grenade, which is cast through Dash because of Quickening Fog, buff our damage indirectly.

Concealment in conjunction with Resistant Assailant and Nightstalker Glyph reduce Shadow Imbuement's cooldown.

Build Requirements and Replacements

Uniques

• Asheara's Khanjar can be replaced with Condemnation or Rapid.
• Harlequin Crest replaces Aspect of Might.
• Starless Skies replaces Accelerating.

Aspects

Paragon Board Stat Requirements

• Str: 530
• Int: 530

Skill Choices and Explanations

Basic Skills

We use Puncture because it's the best Basic Skill to apply Lucky Hit. On top of that it provides us with Vulnerable, which, while nerfed, still gives us [x]20% damage. Lastly, Puncture is the Marksman Skill we use for Umbrous and Close Quarter Combat.

Core Skills

We use Twisting Blades in this build for various reasons: not only is it overall the strongest Core Skill in terms of AoE damage, single target damage and crowd control.

Flurry is an alternative Core Skill you could use but the power level of the build would suffer quite significantly.

X:1 Rotation means we use X Basic Skills for every 1 Core Skill.
For example, 1:1 Puncture -> TB means we alternate between using Puncture and Twisting Blades.

Agility Skills

In this build we use Dash.

Dash is overall a very strong mobility ability that lets you dash across the length of your screen. We further increase Dash's strength with the inclusion of Quickening Fog, which drops a Smoke Grenade at the end of our Dash and lowers its cooldown when we daze enemies with a Smoke Grenade.

Subterfuge Skills

We use Smoke Grenade and Concealment in this build.

Smoke Grenade is a very strong skill that allows us to daze enemies on-demand and get a [x]25% damage buff against any enemy dazed by it. All talent points taken that buff Smoke Grenade work with Quickening Fog. This synergizes perfectly with Dash.

Concealment is used to lower Shadow Imbuement's cooldown and provide Unstoppable.

Imbuement Skills

Shadow Imbuement is a pivotal part of this build.

Cold Imbuement is used for increased single target dmg after freezing enemies with Icy Alchemist.

Ultimate Skills

We do not use an Ultimate Skill in this build.

Armor and Resistances

Armor

As of Season 2 it's much easier to reach the Armor cap so we no longer have to stack + Armor% on every slot.

You need roughly 7600 Armor to cap with a maxed Disobedience on your amulet and 9500 when the aspect is on an armor slot.

This means you need 2 Armor% affixes when you have Disobedience on an armor slot and 1 affix when it's on your amulet.

Resistances

As of Season 2 the Resistance cap is 70% and up to 85% with +15% Maximum Resistance. This is now a very strong stat for damage mitigation.

To cap your Resistances in this build you need 1x Resistance Affix, 2 of the same single Resistance on Rings. You will gem the rest.

Example:

• Cold Res on Boots
• Fire Res 2x on Rings
• Shadow, Poison, and All Res on Rings

Multiplicative Scaling Damage

Close Quarter Combat

When we attack an enemy with a Marksman Skill we get a 10% Attack Speed buff. In this build we use Puncture.

When we attack an enemy Cutthroat Skill we get another 10% Attack Speed buff. In this build we use Twisting Blades.

Once both buffs are active for a total of 20% Attack Speed, we now gain [x]40% of our Damage vs. Crowd Controlled Enemies as multiplicative damage. Since we can get over 400% Damage vs. CC this means we effectively double our damage against crowd-controlled enemies.

Bossing

This build, like all non-poison builds, can struggle with killing Bosses efficiently. A thing you can do to alleviate this, if survivability is not a problem, is to do an amulet swap before engaging.

Amulet Swap:

• Inner Calm
• Weapon Mastery
• % Dexterity
• % Cooldown
• % Energy Cost Reduction

Boots Swap:

• Mangler's
• Dex
• All Stat
• Energy Cost Reduction
• Cold Res

Seneschal Construct

Senechal Construct is the Season 3 mechanic.

They are a Mech Spider that can be buffed through the use of Tuning Stones to do a wide array of things.

In this case, we use the Fire Fly skill potentiated with Arcing, Gripping to pull enemies together, and Frigid to Chill and enable Icy Alchemist.

We also use Flash of Adrenaline combined with Duration, Safeguard and Tactical to increase our damage and survivability.

Paragon Board Placement and Leveling Order

Placement Order

1. Place Closer
2. Ignore the Glyph in the second board until you have a level 15 Devious.
3. Place Control on the third board.
4. Place Chip on the fourth board.
5. Place Pride on the fifth board.
6. Place Turf on the sixth board.

Leveling Order

Level 15

1. Devious
2. Control
3. Closer
4. Pride
5. Turf
6. Chip

Level 21

1. Control
2. Devious
3. Pride
4. Chip
5. Closer
6. Turf

Variation

Old version of Dash Junkie without Tibault Condemn

01/21/2024

• S3 Update

11/04/2023

• Changed Gear, Skill Tree and Paragon Board to account for Tibault + Condemn
• Added old build to variations
• Added Hemomancy

10/21/2023

• Changed some skill points, removed dodge
• Added Shako
• Removed Attack Speed Dodge on Gloves

10/20/2023

• Removed Tibault's
• Fixed Vampiric Powers