D/X Ebon Dust Build: The Zatoichi

Simple PvE Ebon Dust build. It is highly effective and offers good survivability. I use monk as a secondary for a hard res but you can use whatever secondary you like.

Mysticism: 10 + 2
Scythe Mastery: 12 +3
Earth Prayers: 10

( my math may be fuzzy on the point spread but that's approximately correct)

Your skill bar should look like this.

[skill]Mystic Sweep[/skill][skill]Reap Impurities[/skill][skill]Faithful Intervention[/skill][skill]Heart of Fury[/skill][skill]Aura of Thorns[/skill][skill]Mystic Regeneration[/skill][skill]Ebon Dust Aura[/skill]

Put whatever you like in the 8th slot. I use Rebirth for a hard res.

The tactics for use are simple. The instant you get into game put on faithful intervention for spike protection. When combat is about to happen throw on Heart of Fury, Mystic Regeneration, and Ebon Dust Aura. Get yourself surrounded as much as possible then hit Aura of thorns to snare. You should be using an Ebon Scythe with this build in case that wasn't apparent.Use mystic sweep as a good spammable attack skill to lay your blind. Then hit reap impurities for a big heal on multiple enemies, 75 per hit on a blinded enemy with the attribute spread I laid out. Keep Mystic Regeneration up at all times along with Ebon Dust aura. you should be laying down up to 4 seperate conditions as your enchantments cycle through and expire. This build is highly survivable. I've stood in wells with conjure phantasm on me and still stood against it with no appreciable health loss. Enjoy.

I've tested a variant with [skill]Victorious Sweep[/skill] in place of [skill]Mystic Sweep[/skill], sorry in advance to the mods but the edit button refused to work for me, and found the overall damage output remains about the same and you have the bonus points of healing when striking an enemy with less health than you. Victorious sweep is a much better choice. However, for those of you who are unwilling to unlock it with Balthazar faction then Mystic will serve you until you get to the point where you can purchase Victorious sweep.

Well, although I already had this idea, I thought it would be appropriate to put it up here under your ebon dust aura build. Let's just call mine the Ebon Fury build ^^. I've started to take my dervish thro cantha for no reason in particular, and along the way i came up with this awesome build which hasn't failed me yet and is very effective in my opinion.
D/A
The attributes are a little fuzy, and mine are very funny because I only have my obsidian mystic headpiece and don't wanna switch up XD but there are some standards that certain attributes must be at for it to be effective... you will find you have more or less and will have to juggle runes to find what fits you:

Mysticism: 9 minimum
Shadow Arts: 9 minimum (8 if you feel that 43 secs is unnecessary)
Scythe Mastery: 12 minimum
Earth Prayers: around 9 minimum

Skills:

Ebon Dust Aura E
Unseen Fury
Victorious Sweep
Mystic Sweep
Mystic Vigor
Vital Boon
Signet of Pious Light
Any Res

AND with a simple modification (taking out mystic vigor for Aura of Thorns) it is also very PvP effective.
The main idea behind this is you cast ebon dust>mystic vigor>vital boon then hit unseen fury and go to work. Energy gets a little hard, but with even all your normal attacks hitting your target it does wonderful damage. Unseen fury allows makes sure your target cannot block or evade your attack if the target is blinded. Healing is a little bad, but as long as you are attacking (and since most of your attacks will be able to hit regardless) victorious sweep+mystic vigor should do well. For even more effect heal, simply cast vital boon and remove using pious light sig.

Obvious weekness are heavy curses, blinding to you (unseen fury doesn't work if you are blinded so a condit removal monk would be nice), and importantly, you MUST get at least one attack SKILL in on your target before you start on the barrage otherwise the whole point of the build is defeated. If your target has a stance on before you attack, it should only take around 3 attacks to blind it and neutralize the defenses ^^ post comments!

Nice build. I would recommend at least one of the interventions. I use faithful because it stays on with no upkeep. This is more or less to guard against spikes, which happen an awful lot in Nightfall. I also prefer Mystic regeneration over Vital boon but that is more a matter of personal preference. I do notice though you only have two enchants on there and yet you still have Mystic sweep. You're kind of robbing yourself of that extra 10 points of damage like that. I'm not sure where you could fit another one in without defeating your build purpose though. Depending on the energy usage you might want to consider swapping out Mystic Sweep for Chilling victory since it will lend to your damage output and make up for the lost 10 points in a big way. It has a higher energy cost and cooldown time but you can spam Victorious sweep and keep doling out damage until you get the chance to swing big.

very true, i just like vital for the low cost, low recharge, and pious sig combo which basically can bring you from the brink of death, i know what u mean and ill see how the energy upkeep works with chilling victory, taking out res would help alot.... but who would do that? ^^
it could have many variables, but the main idea of the build is simple: damage without prevention (and playing as a dervish i constantly spit when i see my high damage being prevented lol) thanks for the comment
oh, and btw, most mysticism skills are ineffective due to the wide spread of att points

I feel you on the damage without prevention. Personally I just slug through it and either my Heart of fury and aura of thorns ending will drop some Degen on them, thus insuring I do some damage to them, or whatever they put on me or put on themselves, blind, stances whatever, will wear off. In the meantime, outside of mass enchant stripping, which is almost unheard of in PvE, at least I have yet to encounter a skill that can strip all my enchants being used by a mob, I am pretty much immune to big damage. An interesting note though and I could be very very wrong about this but I have noticed that I can drop blind on an enemy without necessarily having to damage them. I will haveto pay real close attention next time I play but I've noticed a lot of times a ranger will put up an evasion stance and I'll be missing him or be blocked by him all day and yet somehow he is still blinded. I have no other blinding skills in my bar and none of my team, henches or heros do either. I can see why you don't use mysticism though. In reality even though we utilize some of the same skills our builds are used for very differnet purposes. Yours is used to deal damage without prevention. Mine is used to drop multiple conditions and use those conditions to stay alive, blind just happens to be the most useful since I'm usually handling melee mobs, same with the cripple from AoT. the other two, the bleeding and burning are just icing on the cake and keep me in health when I lay the big hit with reap impurities.

Hey yo loving the Build have u considering putting in armor of sanctity might add a nice defensive touch to the build even though most would be blind ne ways idk just a thought thx im gonna try this out

yeah, really wanna post this on wiki seeing as how i was 1st to post something of the sort using unseen fury on here, but i dont know how XD