Shadow Impale: In-Depth Feedback

PTR Feedback
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I played S6 Impale with Ricochet and Overpenetration runes in PTR non-season and want to share this feedback:

GETTING TO THE POINT :point_down:

  • Overall underwhelming.
  • Needs more single target power.
  • The Rift Guardian Kill is too slow without Bane of the Stricken, previously wasn’t.
  • Lacks defense for High GR survival.
  • Pigeonholed into the Overpenetration rune in solo push.
  • Little contribution in a 4-player group.

This elite killer specialist build has transformed into a generic killer with single target emphasis. The DH class has many skills with area effects. Impale has always been our go-to RGK portrayed as the classic Assassin. It can aim at the elite, unlike GoD6 which cannot. Is it wise to buff it in this manner?

I do not mind the extra trash clearing help from the 6pc bonus as it supports new play modes, however, we must now kill elites AND trash together for the fastest progress in push.

When attempting max push, due to the +3GRs gained from the new 6pc bonus, the single target just underwhelms. In a successful GR137 push I fully relied on a Power Pylon to kill the guardian. Basically, wear a Stricken or find a Power Pylon.

At my paragon (6130), I am configured for defense and I must wear Esoteric Alteration and heavy Physical Resistance to survive playing at melee range, if I remove this gem for Stricken, I can’t stand still long enough to deal damage in Oculus Rings and I have to make small movements and Vault to survive. This reduces my effective DPS.

Those who barely can face tank will likely feel the survival issues as a result of increasing your GR ceiling by 3. You might have to make a choice, exchange your Esoteric Alteration for Stricken and stutterstep with F&R+Squirts, or run down your Endless Walk bonus and deal less damage, nulling most of the gains from the 6pc buff.

Lastly, I wouldn’t take Impale into a 4-player group, it doesn’t bring much to the table after GR135, this is evident today in 2.7.1, extra splash damage doesn’t fix this problem, more single target dps does.

That all into account here is what I recommend:

  • Shadow 4pc Bonus: Doubles the effectiveness of the Shadow Power Gloom rune.
  • Shadow 6pc Bonus: First Enemy Hit: 120,000%, Subsequent Enemies: 30,000%

This gives another 2-3GRs in the form of single target damage, while making it more friendly for low paragon players and those who prefer playing in melee range. It also restores Impale’s RGK status, and the single target damage should be visible when grouping with other A-S tier members.

VIDEO OF GR138 CLEAR NON-SEASON

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I would give holy point shot a bigger buff (250-300%)

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I just timed the Rift Guardian Kill, Erethon @ solo GR138, it took 3:48 with Trapped, Zei’s, Pain Enhancer.

With Stricken, Trapped, Esoteric gem combo and no Wolf Companion, the kill took 1:35.

The request for 120,000% makes that kill ~2:23 without Stricken, much more acceptable for GR138.

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A small update: GR138 defeated in 13:58 with a great map, in tremendously laggy conditions – the whole run felt glitched. I used Stricken, Trapped and Pain Enhancer, Overpenetration rune. This is the best combination, requires good elite affixes AND not to many clumped together. High paragon is a must.

I stand by my feedback. Shadow Impale at GR138 is mild. Balanced with GoD6 – but that is a B-tier build. DH needs A-tier builds badly. Raise the single target power add a little defense for low paragon players. Revisit GoD6 in a future patch up the pierce cap by +1 on Ninth Cirri. Let’s bring Shadow’s Mantle to a good spot so we all feel good about it.

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I’m not a DH expert like dmkt is, but want to add that after testing all the new builds, Impale feels pretty weak and squishy. Many seasons back it was in a good place, but now it just doesn’t compete.

The new changes don’t change much.

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Hey Poco, how did it feel compared to Hota? I haven’t seen much Hota activity on the non-season boards.

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GR133 in 10 minutes 37 seconds, done with 1050 paragon. Trapped was around 100, stricken at 70, gogok at 70. There’s no way they’ll let this go live with the shards as they are now…

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HotA is much more powerful. At least 2x, probably more. My best is 131 on live, and it’s a straightforward 6GR buff. The LoD version is almost unkillable as well, so survivability isn’t a factor. I tried a 125 with new impale and gave up after lots of deaths and getting behind on the timer. Granted, my hota gear is amazing and I’m not that great at playing shadow, but that 125 would have been a cakewalk for HotA.

I don’t think HotA 2.0 will crack 150, but mid to high 140s is definitely possible. It sounds like based on your impale testing that’s totally out of the question for shadow. I really want impale to be good, since I just dropped a primal dex/AS/AD/LpK karlei’s, lol.

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Wow. I just almost finished a 137 but logged because I forgot to repair and died-red and had to log.

I think 135s with s6 should take about 3 mins, and 137 about 5?!?!

Only running BoP and Trapped, both at lvl 30ish…

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Yeah I just tried a few runs in non-season tonight with Overpenetration (that’s the rune I used pre-2.7.2 as well) and I think I’d agree with generally underwhelming. On paper, it looked better than it felt in practice.

The first rift I tried was a mediocre map with an average mob type. To me it felt only a little bit better in that situation. If it’s a map where you’re mostly still just going to hunt elites because you can’t get enough good trash together, it’s not much of an improvement. Maybe +1 GR.

The second rift I tried was better. I opened a Battlefields map with a good mob type where I could position myself next to elites and burn them down with a big line of slow moving melee mobs in a line behind the elite. Then it felt more like a +3 GR difference to me.

Not the only build that needs good maps/mob types/positioning to excel, but part of the main identity of Shadow Impale prior to this change was it’s consistency. You could open a lot of rifts close to your limit and clear them, more so than most other builds. For many players, they could get quite close to their theoretical limit with Impale. You could fish heavily for that little bit more, but with Shadow Impale a semi-casual clear would be much closer to your theoretical max than many other builds. This change just feels like it makes the build a bit fishier at the high end.

The change almost feels like it’s eroded the identity of Shadow Impale a bit?

It felt a bit better for solo GR speedfarming, the extra AoE helped gain a little extra progression there for a bit faster clears for sure, but hardly anyone will use Shadow for solo speedfarming because GoD and the new Marauder’s will just be way better. There might be the odd duck still playing Shadow Impale for everything, but it’s just still not really good enough at anything compared to multiple other DH sets.

Yep. I definitely felt this. I ended up leaving a good chunk of DPS on the table for toughness. I’ve played a glassy Impale variant in the past where I was right on the limit of what my toughness could handle (fishing a decent amount for mob types I could actually survive) and without more paragon or god-tier gameplay I’m just not really capable of, the buff shifts the goalposts enough that I really struggle to survive without some sort of toughness crutch. As dmkt mentioned there’s a few different approaches for gaining toughness, but at the end of the day unless you have a ton of paragon or play like a god, most players will need to do something.

I’m definitely limited by the toughness and at my paragon I feel like I really need to sacrifice some damage in order to actually stay alive.

I was actually kind of excited about this change when I read the patch notes, but it just didn’t feel all that great in practice. Is it a bit of an improvement? Sure. But it just doesn’t seem like quite enough in multiple regards. I feel like Shadow Impale has lost a bit of it’s identity.

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I said all of this to a mate via email after he told me about the new ptr patch and s6 “buff”. I was pretty damning of the suggested ptr changes to be bluntly honest. I still am.

Blizzard needs to scrap the current PTR changes for shadow set and buff single target damage and give some incentive to use the build as a RGK in 4 man meta high level groups. until then, it’s just gonna be rubbish imho. I love the build to bits, it’s easily and by far my fave build ever, it’s a shame to see it so crappy. A friend on PS4 also said he’d love to see it get some love and a buff as he much prefers it to GOD HA.

If you are having issues at 6k, imagine what people with ordinary paragon levels will feel…I’m at 2.7k NS (unlikely to increase as I pretty much only play SC for season journey and then switch to HC).

I don’t know if that’ll be enough to be honest. That’s a single target increase of 55,000%, so 70% or so. I think that’s like 5 GR levels? It won’t even compete vs GOD HA, which is 10 GRs stronger than current s6 impale builds imho.

Forcing players into a singular rune is a really BAD idea and totally kills diversity and also makes it much harder to gear for, since you are looking for a HPS quiver with cold dmg and we all know that HPS is the single hardest off hand in the game to get right, hard to get it non ancient with correct rolls than most other off hands with ancient status imho.

Not even close to enough of a buff (at least by itself).

Might I also add that the current PTR changes are CRAP for console players. We have much poorer density than the PC version of the game, so these changes are a kick in the face for us - if it’s underwhelming on PC, it’ll be EVEN MORE SO on consoles. Even on a good map, with what we call good density on console, it’ll still suck.

My suggestion from some time ago still stands for the build:

buff HPS to 250% and give it an extra dagger
buff 4 piece DR AND elusive ring
buff six piece single piece set - probably needs to be close to 150% imho
they should fix the physical rune too for impale, letting it have the CHD with the 6 piece set. NO other build set has a rune that cannot be used with the 6 piece set…

Blizzard really doesn’t understand DH very well at all I’m afraid. It was always Yang’s baby.

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What’s the S6 top clears in season 25?

I’m currently stuck on 141 with less than stellar gear/gems/enchantress. I cleared 139 in 9 mins, and I died 8 times. I’m thinking of dropping CoE for Elusive at this point, but I’d like to hear more ideas from the forum…

S6,CC3, Anguish, Terror, 5 cooldowns.

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It makes it a bit fishier if you use Ricochet, I think… but significantly fishier if you use Overpenetration, since now you can deal non-trivial damage to an infinite number of targets.

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As things are on the PTR non-season – S6 Impale is evenly tied with GoD6 HA in solo push power. And GoD6 is about 4GRs too weak from acceptable power, it’s a B minus build in my eyes.

The way I envision this working is that we try to get all builds within 1-3GRs of each other and those slightly weaker builds really should have specialties.

S25 isn’t a good benchmark for lasting changes. I believe Dieoxide has defeated GR150 with GoD6, S6 and M6 on season.

All of my own GR push references are for non-season only as the balance achieved here ripples into future patches. I am currently #1 on PTR with S6 Impale at GR138, I’m positive all those 10k+ paragon behemoths didn’t flex their push muscles. I can attest that my own clears are honest hard pushes and probably 1-2GRs away from the maximum clear potential.

This is exactly correct, there is visibly better progress in high density. On that GR138 clear the 1st floor was incredible with summoners. Something tells me the subsequent hits weren’t as quadratic as predicted. Not quite the same gains you’d expect with a big radius area damage build. That could possibly be due to the attack getting split 3-ways via Holy Point Shot. It’s like grandchild damage: Holy Point Shot divides it by 3, then S6 6pc divides it by 3 again. I’ll post the video today.

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The fan shape of the thrown daggers probably doesn’t help with that. At max range, the 3 daggers are probably 15 yards apart from each other, meaning that enemies hit by dagger 1 aren’t going to be proccing AD onto enemies hit by enemies hit by dagger 2, and vice versa.

To really get the most mileage out of I:OP’s lack of target limit, you really need all those mobs stacked up well on top of an elite. But DH lacks a good pull skill. I guess you could use Ess of Johan + F&R rather than EW + CoE, but that’s obviously a bit of a damage loss of at least 33%, more if you take into account Ess’s inability to get ideal rolls.

Bottom line seems to be: as you said, the main thing the set needs is a big boost vs the first target.

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Bolas can group… with the bow power I think

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GR140 in 12 minutes 27 seconds, done with 1217 paragon. Gems were in 115-120 range.
This is going to be nerfed so hard…

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Why?

I’m at that lvl with <50 lvl gems and p1100. No nerfs needed!

Don’t forget how easy the min/max is on PTR…

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If you’re using 3 shard exploit then yeah, the nerf will be when they remove the ability to use the second wpn shard as it was originally intended.

I’m with cknopp on this.

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Shadow DH can’t do the 3 shard thing.

You can only do the 3 shard thing on DH by dual-wielding handcrossbows.

Shadow Impale only works with a melee weapon. You can’t dual-wield melee weapons on a DH. Shadow has to use melee weapon + quiver, so can only use 2 shards no matter what.

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