Ars Arcanum: The Shard of Hate Lives!

by Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild - 10 years ago     show comments

Books have often been society’s only bastion of light for passing along knowledge that would otherwise be lost to time or convoluted by the oral tradition. In order to provide new and old adventurers with as much advance knowledge of what to expect when their journey in Sanctuary continues forward into Westmarch and Pandemonium Fortress this March once Reaper of Souls is officially released, we decided to create this tome of knowledge – Ars Arcanum. A new Legendary weapon or armor piece will be featured, discussing its stand-alone powers and capabilities, as well as how it may synergize with new builds or other items.

If you’ve been keeping up to date with Diablo news over the last few months then you’ve probably heard of the Design a Legendary series. We’ve known that our community designed legendary would have the ability to launch special elemental attacks when you use Cold, Poison, and Lightning skills, but how exactly it worked or the damage those skills did was a mystery, until now. With the most recent update to the Game Guide the Shard of Hate was finally added into the database and most of its secrets have been revealed.

“Would that all the misbegotten spawn of my wayward daughter had but one heart I might plunge this through, so that they all might enjoy the gift of my pitiless ire.” -Mephisto to Hephasto, Chief Weaponsmith of the Burning Hells, upon the delivery of this blade

Lets take a deeper look at the procs themselves.

Lightning skills trigger Charged Bolt – This will most likely function like an un-runed Shock Pulse or like the sparks from an Electrified elite. Since this proc will most likely be short ranged and have a random pathing nature you’ll get the most out of it by being as close to your enemies as possible.

Poison skills trigger Poison Nova – This will work much like Anadriel’s Visage. It will be a melee ranged nova that deals damage to all enemies around your character.

Cold skills trigger Freezing Skull – We have no real skills or abilities in the game right now that we might equate this to directly, but based on it’s description it will probably be a Magic Missile like attack that shoots out in a straight line damaging the first enemy it comes across.

The Shard of Hate will have a greater benefit for melee classes since it seems most of the procs require you to be relatively close to your enemies in order to be effective. That isn’t to say that the ranged classes couldn’t be built around diving into the thick of combat in order to take full advantage of the Shard of Hate.

A few questions still remain though, are there any cooldowns on the procs or do they have very low proc chances? If they are cooldown based, are there individual internal cooldowns on the procs like the Tal’Rasha’s set bonus? If so, you’ll get the most benefit from this weapon by diversifying your skills to cover as many of the elemental types as you can. If the individual procs share a single cooldown, then you’ll be better focusing on a single elemental type since you’ll be able to stack elemental damage to further buff those skills and the proc. One very interesting thing to note about the selection of Cold, Poison and Lightning damage types is that the only class that can actually use skills of all of these types is the one class that gets the least amount of benefit from the weapon, the Demon Hunter. And in the cruelest twist of fate, the Demon Hunter only has access to Cold damage skills with a ranged weapon equiped.

I do wonder if the abilities of other items can trigger the proc from the Shard of Hate. If so, a Barb, Monk, or Wizard using Anadriel’s Visage or Pox Faulds could potentially use every proc on the weapon, but would it be worth it? Hard to say. I’ll be interested in seeing how theorycrafters tackle these challenges in order to maximize the usefulness of this beautiful weapon.

Is there a skill combo you plan on using for the Shard of Hate? Will this be the weapon you build your melee Demon Hunter around? Or will this just end up being a transmog unlock for your personal weapon of choice?