Sand Shards and IW

Sand Shards, dervish earth skill:
Enchantment. For 30 secs, whenever you fail to hit with an attack, all nearby foes take x earth damage.

Hmm, sand shards does not trigger when you attack with IW. It's weird that sand shards thinks that you "hit" but stuff like zealous does not count you as "hitting" while you're under IW. Unless they patched IW to set off "on-hit" effects...

I also tested doing IW + sand shards while blinded. IW would trigger as it always does but sand shards wouldn't. Without IW on, sand shards triggers normally.

Thats because the 'hit' portion of the IW is 'deal no damage' which means you're not hitting at all and therefore the 'hit' becomes non-existant (physically). Now this doesn't mean you're missing or failing to hit, as your strikes are replaced by magical damage instead.

On an irrelevant note, sand shards is a good backup AoE skill, it's not as frequent as Balthazar's Aura, but it's cheaper.

I remember that the simplest description we had for IW before sand shards was that your attacks miss but you deal magic damage whenever you attack. This explained how evasion, blocking and missing were not an issue and how zealous and vamp won't trigger.

Now, with sand shards we have your description:
Hits with IW are not physical hits so they don't set off weapon mods and ignore missing/evading/blocking. But, the magic damage is counted as a hit for skills like sand shards.

Tested it with Price of Failure and Insidious parasite. PoF counts attacks as hitting just like sand shards. Parasite doesn't count the attacks as hitting (probably because it triggers on "hits with an attack".

I guess when you attack, it's still counted as an attack for the purposes of stuff like Spiteful Spirit. But, the damage you deal to someone is NOT counted as an attack at all for anything. It's as if you never attacked at all.

There are two parts to a succecssful attack. The attack performed (the swing made before the hit), and the attack hitting. IW acknowledges the attack performed, but eliminates the attack from hitting, replacing it with magical damage instead.

Now for skills like empathy, you are penalised for making the attack 'movement', hit or miss, the swing was made, and you are penalised for that. (of course you have to make a complete swing to trigger empathy)

IW is a unique skill in terms of it's game mechanics, as it relies on attacking to trigger the damage, but also eliminates 'striking' from the equation.

Oh i forgot to mention, they nerfed sand shards already, you have to be weilding a scythe in order to use sand shards