Fan of Knives

Fan of Knives is a Hatred Spending Demon Hunter skill unlocked at level 14. The Demon Hunter quickly whips around in a full circle, sending out a nova of blades that hit all targets in range, many of them multiple times.

Background

Fan of Knives in action

The Demon Hunter magically summons a wealth of blades, distributing them in a spinning arc, damaging and slowing enemies within close-range, similar to the nova spells from Diablo of yore.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Fan of Knives rune effects page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Icon	Skill	Description

Fan of Knives Hatred Spender (Level 14)

[e] Cost: 20 Hatred Cooldown: 10 seconds Throw knives out in a spiral around you, doing 450% weapon damage to all enemies within 10 yards of you. Your knives will also slow the movement of enemies by 65% for 4 seconds.

Retaliate

[e] Instead of throwing the knives immediately, the knives will release automatically dealing 336% weapon damage to all enemies if you are struck in the next 20 seconds.

Hail of Knives

[e] Increase the radius to deal 336% weapon damage to all enemies within 18 yards.

Crippling Razors

[e] Increase the slow amount to 79% for 4 seconds.

Assassin's Knives

[e] Throw long-range knives that deal 85% weapon damage to 8 additional targets.

Fan of Daggers

[e] Imbue your knives with a 20% chance to stun enemies for 3.5 seconds.

Note: Information is based on a level 60 character and rank 7 runestones.

Fan of Knives Video

A video of Fan of Knives can be seen below, courtesy of the Diablo.IncGamers.com You Tube channel.

Skill Design

Fan of Knives may have the best D3 acronym yet.

Fan of Knives is a short-range area-of-effect ability that damages all of the enemies in range of the skill. This type of skill is best used either when surrounded by enemies or within close quarters where the enemies are bunched together to a point where the skill will penetrate deeply into the group. The knives also include a slowing debuff.

Synergies

The following Demon Hunter passives provide a benefit to Fan of Knives, runed or not:

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Development

Faces. Knives. An uneven match.

Fan of Knives was first shown at BlizzCon 2010 as one of the originals when the Demon Hunter was unveiled. Flux gave it a whirl in the demo:[1]

The real limiting factor of this one is the very short range of the knives. They did good damage, but the range was barely beyond melee reach (not that the DH was using melee weapons), and it was fairly mana-expensive. As a result, this one was only worth using when you had at least two or three enemies at very close range. The perfect situation for it was a circle of Vessels, and I enjoyed killing all 6 or 8 Vessels in such scenarios several times with this skill. It took 2 or 3 FoKs to finish them all, but this was the fastest and most effective skill against those clusters of enemies in the entire demo.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Fan of Knives became a level 4 skill.

In Other Games

As many fans noticed upon announcement of the Demon Hunter and getting to see her skills for the first time, Fan of Knives is a returning skill from previous Blizzard games, namely WarCraft III and World of WarCraft. In WarCraft III, it was an ability used by the "Warden" hero character, and in World of WarCraft it is a level 80 ability used by the Rogue class. Fan of Knives appears to be making a niche within the Blizzard pool of spells and abilities, such as other spells like Teleport, and Blizzard.

Media

Fan of Knives can be seen in action on video here:

• Gameplay: Blizzcon 2010

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Fan of Knifes specific gallery contents

• 

  Fan of Knives.

• 

  Where does she get those wonderful toys?

• 

  FoK, another picture.

References

• BlizzCon 2010 Demon Hunter PvM Hands-on Report
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011
• HardRock's Demon Hunter Skills and Their Rune Effects -- IncGamers 6th Sep 2011
• Demon Hunter Active Skills -- Diablo III 12th Sep 2011

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