Introduction
Amulet: 2/18 Assassin
Mainhand weapon: +3 Fade ATMA bugged Chaos RW 1.07 Suwayyah
Offhand weapon: +3 Fade ATMA bugged Fury RW 1.07 Runic Talons
Armor: Enigma BP
Gloves: Trangs
Ring 1: 10 fcr crafted
Ring 2: flexible (Nature's Peace/Wisp/Raven Frost)
Belt: Arachnid's Mesh
Boots: Waterwalks
Switch
Weapon 2: 15 BO beta CtA
Shield 2: Lidless Wall
Inventory
As is the case with most builds in SPF PvP, if you can get away with % life trifecta items (beta CtA, 1.07 Shako, Oak Sage charges ring) then you should do it. Ghost can do it but barely. Still, because they are melee build and will take damage in exchanges, you really want to build them as tanky as they go. I settled for 65 fcr and 27 fhr breakpoints. 65 fcr is standard, but 27 fhr seems okay in all cases except when dueling Grip's Trapper. That's only instance where I kinda wanted more fhr, and additional fhr can be swapped in easily via charms if situations call for it. Very high life and the fact that WW is not interuptible make fhr much less of a priority.
While my build theoretically maxes out at level99 (which I don't think I'll ever attempt) one missing skill point is of no relevance. With +6 Fade from claws, 20 invested points and 8 all skills from gear, Fade is cast at level 34, which means 8% DR from Enigma and 8% DR from Ber'd Shako puts me at 50% DR cap. This means I don't need to use a single Shadow skiller in my inventory, allowing me to pump attack rating. 18 points into Clawblock get me 60%, and rest are self explanatory. Venom is least important therefore maxed out last. In terms of traps, Wake of Fire, Lightning Sentry and Blade Shield are great 1 point wonders. LS and WoF supplement your WW for stunning effect, both defensively and offensively. BS also helps out with your damage output passively, applying Venom, having AoE component for getting rid of minions, and most importantly, it looks cool. Dragon Talon and Dragon Flight both have their niche uses in some specific matchups.
Fool's claw vs Fury and general attack rating issues
Despite dropping Fool's claw from my setup I'm actually huge fan of those claws in general. 1.10s can produce great Fool's claws fairly reliably, and they can also come with 3os (which means up to 75% OW or 50% OW + jewel, whichever you prefer). Problem with Fool's claws is that you can rarely get both good staffmods on them and 2os for 50% OW which I consider mandatory for Ghost. Also if you compare 1.10s Fool's claws with Fury, you realize that everything else except attack rating is straight up worse. You have much less physical damage, you have less life (eth claws give -10 requirements), less OW, and no control over staffmods. On a budget Ghost with lower AR, or if you can't bother prebuffing with Demon Limb I would recommend starting out with Fool's claw. You need solid attack rating to hit the target on first WW tick so you stun them and then continue to whirl over them. Worst thing that can happen is if you fail first WW check and target goes away. That's actually greatest strength of having Fool's claw – almost guaranteeing that first tick will connect and that you can keep the target in place. Once you get attack rating to sufficient level (usually around 7k) Fury should be the best choice, even non eth.
Alternate gear choices
While I believe there's not much to debate here, there are some pieces that I'm still unsure on what should be done with them, namely boots. I don't have good classic rares, so if you build in Waterwalks with their 15 dex and 65 life, you actually profit roughly 330 life total. That's rather big. On the flip side, you can't use boots as emergency measure to cover resistances in case someone brings DWeb or something similar. Having flexible boots means you can slap on Infernostrides for 10 max FR, stack resistances with good rares etc. Gores also raise your damage output by minimum 8% compared to losing ~5% life with Waterwalks. You can't really quantify it because it's complicated but I decided to roll with Waterwalks for now and go with tank theme. I still don't know if it's the proper choice and probably won't ever know. I've been considering use of Shadow Dancers, but their high strength requirement is rough. If you make Dancers setup however, you can completely change your staffmods on claws, because rather than +6 Fade claws, you can have Dancers and beta CtA/Spirit to cast lvl 34 Fade with. They also provide great stats otherwise – 30 fhr covers your breakpoint completely and 25 dex/30 frw is great. Your Kicks would also be much better, and if we had Anni/Torch I firmly believe Dancers would be best boots. Based mosty on hunch, I believe that Classic rares > Waterwalks > Dancers > Gores.
In practice it's very difficult to use traps offensively to stun the opponent, keep him locked and then proceed to WW over them. People just know better to move away from traps right away and not getting tangled with them, but they still have purpose. Majority of the time in order to actually get the initial hit you will just have to namelock, teleport and WW without any setup or traps, unless the target is something that can straight up kill you in exchange like Hammer based Paladins or blocking Wind Druids.
One thing where WoF has huge advantage over LS is its very subtle animation. If you throw WoF next to someone, it's entirely possible that it won't get noticed at all. NextDelay on it doesn't matter because you will almost never go with more than one trap offensively – you just don't have the time. If you drop WoF or two close to your character and someone tries to stomp you, those traps will stun them like mad. Druids are particularly vulnerable to this. WoF is much better offensively when you use low number of traps because it stuns harder due to almost twitce as fast firing speed and its subtlety. Whenever I try to namelock a target I go either with WoF or MB. WoF is also much harder to WSG out of than LS due to wide range it covers, and even with only 5 shots it has, it's enough to cripple or kill some caster types assuming your WW is on point.
Video
Just a collection of last weeks small FFAs. Have very little to show off, but it's nice to see roughly it works
Tienje might as well be best PvP guide writer on these forums. His guides were decade ahead of almost everyone else and were focused on right things - not the perfection of items, which majority of guides are plagued with, but PvP concepts and fundamentals of how to build your character and pilot it. It's no wonder his Ghost guide has been one of more influential PvP guides out there. Many people have made and played their Ghosts, but one thing was never mentioned - Ghost just isn't great PvP build all things considered. It skips the strongest aspect of PvP assassins – their traps, and instead tries to roleplay as Barbarian using Chaos runeword and its Whirlwind skill. WW Barb in itself isn't that great of a build, so trying to emulate that as Assassin isn't going to work extremely well either. Build still does well what it was advertised to do – kill casters, but it struggles a lot in many matchups. SPF itemization is much different than Battle net, and in case of Assassins (and Ghost especially) build does differ a fair bit from Battle.net. Previous patches allow for character that is actually stronger than its Battle.net variant which is rare.
After building a bonjwa, this character is much weaker and more difficult to both build and play. Still I think for the most part this is the way to build Ghosts on SPF. Caveat that I have to mention is – use this as a template only if you are using prepatch items. If you for some reason don't, then you should not follow this build and will benefit more of using Tienje's original gear setup or as close as possible.Ghost?
Ghost is type of Assassin that uses Chaos runeword and Whirlwind oskill as primary way of dealing damage. Because we're using trap skills as one point wonders to achieve stunning effect, and skip investing in traps almost completely, we will have majority of our points in Shadow Disciplines skill line. Whirlwind is better melee skill than anything Assassin has in her arsenal. Kicks aren't bad but you can rarely if ever stand face to face with some of the stronger physical attackers like Zealots, Smiters and similar. Due to the fact Whirlwind is moving attack, you can easily WW away from opponent and hit them while they cannot hit you. It's also great against walking targets like Bow based Amazons. Clawblock works only if you stand still, cast or attack. Because WW counts as attack, you can keep Clawblock while WWing and it is also uninterruptible. Kicks or any other melee finishers that Assassins have access to, all lack some of those properties.
LCS
Ghosts do suffer a lot from the fact that they need to meet a lot of breakpoints/values in various areas:
Ghost is type of Assassin that uses Chaos runeword and Whirlwind oskill as primary way of dealing damage. Because we're using trap skills as one point wonders to achieve stunning effect, and skip investing in traps almost completely, we will have majority of our points in Shadow Disciplines skill line. Whirlwind is better melee skill than anything Assassin has in her arsenal. Kicks aren't bad but you can rarely if ever stand face to face with some of the stronger physical attackers like Zealots, Smiters and similar. Due to the fact Whirlwind is moving attack, you can easily WW away from opponent and hit them while they cannot hit you. It's also great against walking targets like Bow based Amazons. Clawblock works only if you stand still, cast or attack. Because WW counts as attack, you can keep Clawblock while WWing and it is also uninterruptible. Kicks or any other melee finishers that Assassins have access to, all lack some of those properties.
LCS
- They need fcr to move and cast.
- They need ias and proper claw types for laying traps and Whirlwind.
- They need attack rating to hit their targets.
- And as all characters, they need %DR, resistance cap and enough mana/hp to be comfortable.
Because of all those requirements you will be rather stretched and some of your stats might suffer a bit. When building Ghost you will very quickly realize how building her can be difficult, and unless your inventory is on point there will be clear gaps in your build.
Gear
Helm: 1.07 Shako Ber/Jah/VexGear
Amulet: 2/18 Assassin
Mainhand weapon: +3 Fade ATMA bugged Chaos RW 1.07 Suwayyah
Offhand weapon: +3 Fade ATMA bugged Fury RW 1.07 Runic Talons
Armor: Enigma BP
Gloves: Trangs
Ring 1: 10 fcr crafted
Ring 2: flexible (Nature's Peace/Wisp/Raven Frost)
Belt: Arachnid's Mesh
Boots: Waterwalks
Switch
Weapon 2: 15 BO beta CtA
Shield 2: Lidless Wall
Inventory
There is narrative (that I also bough into) that Shadow skillers are way to go for Ghosts, but no matter what math I did, and no matter how hard I tried they seemed like they were never good. Only thing where they do help is raising Venom damage, Fade %DR and Clawblock. Since I already was at 50% DR cap it made no sense to use those charms. Venom deals damage over 20 frames in Hell, meaning that it doesn't add damage to every hit. Having higher Venom damage is great against maxblock builds, but if you have your foe stunned you will probably land multiple hits over the course of WW. Best way to increase Ghost's damage output was to increase her attack rating to something respectable. Having consistent hits on your foe guarantess better stunlocks and more damage that way.
I also opted out of using Fool's claw completely. If you are on a budget, I heavily suggest you use Fool's claw, but after deciding to give Demon Limb a shot, I think I'm at the point where further investment into AR isn't that beneficial. 7k AR is enough vs anything that you can kill in the first place. Fury gives you control over what staffmods you can use on claws, and getting 50% OW Fool's with +3 Fade just won't ever happen.
Suwayyah + Runic Talons are really the best option (almost only option for this setup) because it both hits fastest trap laying speed after WSM bug and keeps it while under effect of 10% slow from Arachnid Mesh. If you want to use Suwayyah + Feral Claws for example, you need IAS source from somewhere other than claws, like HLW, IAS jewel in Shako or Valk Wing, none of which I'd use considering the sacrifices in your build you'd have to make.
I have to emphasise the impact of inventory on this build. Because gear is used to either meet breakpoints or is just crazy strong, (like 1.07 Shako for example) you will have to cover lots of holes with your inventory (resistances, attack rating and mana). 95 allresists from inventory is actually insane. As you can see from tables above, my gear gives almost no resistance at all, and good inventory carries this build hard. I think having enough mana for comfortable playing is more important than squeezing every last bit of AR from inventory. I've seen people use around 550 mana, but my personal comfort zone is around 750. Low mana feels really bad to play. Rest is fileld with attack rating charms. Attack rating is hard to come by with this setup. WW is oskill and gives you almost no AR bonuses because of low skill level. Because you want Oak ring and you don't use Ravenfrost majority of the time, this makes AR really hard to get – you rely on Demon Limb, AR from fcr ring (which I have none) and inventory. ~600 AR from inventory gives ~4k attack rating after Demon Limb buff. With 7k attack rating you are good to go against most of the builds out there.
Skills
Ghost aren't pressed for skill points much. In fact, Trappers often times use entire Shadow skill line as one point wonders. Level 98 might seem a bit wasteful but that doesn't mean we can't optimize things. Highlighted skills are ones that I'm either getting from or are being boosted by claws.I also opted out of using Fool's claw completely. If you are on a budget, I heavily suggest you use Fool's claw, but after deciding to give Demon Limb a shot, I think I'm at the point where further investment into AR isn't that beneficial. 7k AR is enough vs anything that you can kill in the first place. Fury gives you control over what staffmods you can use on claws, and getting 50% OW Fool's with +3 Fade just won't ever happen.
Suwayyah + Runic Talons are really the best option (almost only option for this setup) because it both hits fastest trap laying speed after WSM bug and keeps it while under effect of 10% slow from Arachnid Mesh. If you want to use Suwayyah + Feral Claws for example, you need IAS source from somewhere other than claws, like HLW, IAS jewel in Shako or Valk Wing, none of which I'd use considering the sacrifices in your build you'd have to make.
I have to emphasise the impact of inventory on this build. Because gear is used to either meet breakpoints or is just crazy strong, (like 1.07 Shako for example) you will have to cover lots of holes with your inventory (resistances, attack rating and mana). 95 allresists from inventory is actually insane. As you can see from tables above, my gear gives almost no resistance at all, and good inventory carries this build hard. I think having enough mana for comfortable playing is more important than squeezing every last bit of AR from inventory. I've seen people use around 550 mana, but my personal comfort zone is around 750. Low mana feels really bad to play. Rest is fileld with attack rating charms. Attack rating is hard to come by with this setup. WW is oskill and gives you almost no AR bonuses because of low skill level. Because you want Oak ring and you don't use Ravenfrost majority of the time, this makes AR really hard to get – you rely on Demon Limb, AR from fcr ring (which I have none) and inventory. ~600 AR from inventory gives ~4k attack rating after Demon Limb buff. With 7k attack rating you are good to go against most of the builds out there.
Skills
Fool's claw vs Fury and general attack rating issues
Despite dropping Fool's claw from my setup I'm actually huge fan of those claws in general. 1.10s can produce great Fool's claws fairly reliably, and they can also come with 3os (which means up to 75% OW or 50% OW + jewel, whichever you prefer). Problem with Fool's claws is that you can rarely get both good staffmods on them and 2os for 50% OW which I consider mandatory for Ghost. Also if you compare 1.10s Fool's claws with Fury, you realize that everything else except attack rating is straight up worse. You have much less physical damage, you have less life (eth claws give -10 requirements), less OW, and no control over staffmods. On a budget Ghost with lower AR, or if you can't bother prebuffing with Demon Limb I would recommend starting out with Fool's claw. You need solid attack rating to hit the target on first WW tick so you stun them and then continue to whirl over them. Worst thing that can happen is if you fail first WW check and target goes away. That's actually greatest strength of having Fool's claw – almost guaranteeing that first tick will connect and that you can keep the target in place. Once you get attack rating to sufficient level (usually around 7k) Fury should be the best choice, even non eth.
Attack rating is often time problem for Ghosts, but there are ways around it even without having crazy inventory. Unfortunately you can't have your cake and eat it. If you use any of these it will be a compromise of sorts, but a necessary one. Demon Limb to cast Enchant is great way to boost your AR, and only downside to it is if you can't be bothered with prebuffing. It should increase your AR by roughly 30% but without good AR base it won't matter much. By dropping Oak charges ring for Raven Frost you can still keep Fury claw but your hp and minion stack will suffer. Or you can use Fool's claw to boost your AR, but your physical damage will take a hit. There's no clear winner here, like I said, can't have cake and eat it without great inventory, but there are always options to get acceptable AR.
ATMA bugging claws?
ATMA bugged Grief/Beast have been staple of PvP characters since 1.11 days. With advent of 1.13 and increased rune drops it became theoretically possible to do the same with claws by using Zod rune to create ethereal Zod bugged claws. Zod bugged claws have been around, but with steep price and difficult to find bases with proper staffmods, they are still novelty items in SPF PvP.ATMA bugging claws?
Questionable practice aside, these do add significant damage. Going from standard Chaos/1.10a Fool's OW claw to double Zod bugged Chaos/Fury more than doubles physical damage output of a Ghost. This is important, because Venom and OW are both damage over time, and once proper Whirlwind connects, majority of your damage output will be physical. For Grief choice of base doesn't matter as much because it adds flat +400 damage. On %enhanced damage like Chaos/Fury etherealness matters much more. Offensively it's one of greatest damage increases you can get – more than HLW and more than Gore Riders. I think you should do it if you don't mind ATMA bugging as a practice and have couple Zods spare, Fury being more of a priority. Ghost are characters with a bit lower damage ouput comparing to average PvP character and getting ethereal claws somewhat fixes their problem of being able to get outtanked in exchanges. -10 dex req on claws means you can invest more into vitality as well.
Alternate gear choices
While I believe there's not much to debate here, there are some pieces that I'm still unsure on what should be done with them, namely boots. I don't have good classic rares, so if you build in Waterwalks with their 15 dex and 65 life, you actually profit roughly 330 life total. That's rather big. On the flip side, you can't use boots as emergency measure to cover resistances in case someone brings DWeb or something similar. Having flexible boots means you can slap on Infernostrides for 10 max FR, stack resistances with good rares etc. Gores also raise your damage output by minimum 8% compared to losing ~5% life with Waterwalks. You can't really quantify it because it's complicated but I decided to roll with Waterwalks for now and go with tank theme. I still don't know if it's the proper choice and probably won't ever know. I've been considering use of Shadow Dancers, but their high strength requirement is rough. If you make Dancers setup however, you can completely change your staffmods on claws, because rather than +6 Fade claws, you can have Dancers and beta CtA/Spirit to cast lvl 34 Fade with. They also provide great stats otherwise – 30 fhr covers your breakpoint completely and 25 dex/30 frw is great. Your Kicks would also be much better, and if we had Anni/Torch I firmly believe Dancers would be best boots. Based mosty on hunch, I believe that Classic rares > Waterwalks > Dancers > Gores.
Second thing that's kinda worth talking about is building in Raven Frost 20 dex as your default ring instead of Oak ring like majority of Battle.net build do. Loss in coverage due to Wisp and Oak is rather notable, but RF is actually insane ring if you think about it for a second. CBF means you never have to use Cham Shako and you always keep 50% DR, 20% cold absorb is nice vs Blizz sorcs, 40 mana is always useful and 250AR/20dex boosts your AR by 2k. Even its cold damage is useful when you WW and chill your enemy, they have much harder time walking out of your WWs. RF is amazing, and often time Oak will be completely useless when there's lots of AoE damage like vs Trappers or Wind Druids, and there is also a hassle in using Oak charges and repairing them every couple duels. Building in RF saves you 20 dex which is nice but loss of flexibility makes it not worth it in my book. Still you should have one close by when situation calls for it.
You could theoretically build in RF by having good modded 2/25 1.08 assassin amulet and reaching 65 fcr that way. It would probably be worth it, but to my knowledge 1.08 amulets are being explored only recently and no one actually has something like that. In future who knows…
Traps for stun and getting the initial hit
While both of those traps are used in conjunction with Mind Blast to stun enemy characters, how they work is completely different.You could theoretically build in RF by having good modded 2/25 1.08 assassin amulet and reaching 65 fcr that way. It would probably be worth it, but to my knowledge 1.08 amulets are being explored only recently and no one actually has something like that. In future who knows…
Traps for stun and getting the initial hit
In practice it's very difficult to use traps offensively to stun the opponent, keep him locked and then proceed to WW over them. People just know better to move away from traps right away and not getting tangled with them, but they still have purpose. Majority of the time in order to actually get the initial hit you will just have to namelock, teleport and WW without any setup or traps, unless the target is something that can straight up kill you in exchange like Hammer based Paladins or blocking Wind Druids.
On defense, LS is great because you have time to set up you defenses and its awareness range is huge. It covers almost entire screen except its corners. LS will react on charging Paladins before you can see them on your screen, and even level 1 LS will kill Oak Spirits very quickly making it very annoying. People have also been conditioned by LS Trappers to avoid LS fields instinctively and that can be used to deny the area of the map too.
Both traps have their purpose, but tl;dr would be WoF for offense and combination of WoF and LS for defense.
Both traps have their purpose, but tl;dr would be WoF for offense and combination of WoF and LS for defense.
Video
Just a collection of last weeks small FFAs. Have very little to show off, but it's nice to see roughly it works
Conclusion
Now that I've come here I'm not even sure what to say. It goes without saying that I poured insane amount of time and effort on this character. I've reworked her many times with many ideas in mind, but it does look to me like she is for the most part complete. While there are some theoretical improvements that might happen in future, such as 2/25 1.08 amulet or introduction of Anni/Torch into 1.14d SPF, any micro optimizations that might happen along the way will only just change life or AR slightly. I no longer see any tangible improvements that might push her to next generation of Ghost design. And pushed it has been - because of great gear and build, it has outgrown its initial promise of killing casters and has turned into overall great character that can even stand toe to toe with Paladins and even winning FFAs from time to time, something that Ghosts generally have no business with due to low damage output and no ranged potential.While Youmu absolutely uses some cutting edge gear, I hope that PvP scene can adopt some of the design philosophy of tanky playstlye when planning their Ghosts. It's amazing build that naturally lends itself to aggressive playstyle which increases your personal skill a lot, is ton of fun, style and can do well in right circumstances.
Thanks to everyone who contributed in helping me building this character, and special thank you to SPF PvP scene for ideas and motivation, fun times and for sticking around.
Thanks to everyone who contributed in helping me building this character, and special thank you to SPF PvP scene for ideas and motivation, fun times and for sticking around.
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