ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, I really WANT to like shadowblades, they're everything a rogue should be, but I just can't seem to get the hang of them. Dual daggers I figured, and I noticed that lots of stuff scales with spellpower, but not much really uses magic. I'm focusing on damage output and mobility, with rush shadowstep and ambuscade for mobility, and flurry and the sustains for output. 1 in both dirty fighting and dual strike, then 5 in backstab. I just don't seem to be able to pull it all together. Advice?

The secret about Shadowblades is that, once they get to level 18, they can only ever die the first time they enter a new level. For this reason, I like Cornacs for their low experience penalty; they also get an extra category point to put in an early Stealth tree or inscription.

To start, get 1/5 Dirty Fighting and 4/5 Dual Strike; by alternating between the two you can now keep anything stunned forever. That will let you beat pretty much anything in a one-on-one fight as long as they aren't immune to stun. I also like to get one point in Dual-Weapon Defense and Blur, to boost my defense against melee enemies, and 4 points in Illuminate for the area damage. 5/5 Phase Door and 1/5 Teleport are pretty important in my opinion.

Ambuscade the talent is the key. There is no penalty for getting your shadow killed! As long as your real body is safe, it's fine. So what you do is, you clear out the area immediately at the entrance of the level. Once you're no longer under attack, cast Ambuscade, cast Teleport, go crazy attacking everything you can see until your shadow disappears, and then wait for Ambuscade to come off cooldown. Repeat long enough and you will have cleared the level and can go pick up all the loot.

Arcane Eye is an incredibly sweet escort reward for Shadowblades, because Shadowstep can go through walls; if you know there's a room somewhere, you can cast Arcane Eye in there and Shadowstep a shadow in there.

_________________

I would have never thought of spamming ambuscade like that! My problem so far is that turnaround right around L10, but when I get one up there, that'll work great for me, it's exactly what a rogue style player should do. Thanks!

Do note that Ambuscade is quite weak when you first get access to it.

It statistically scales with spellpower and talent levels, and the duration goes up with talent levels, but the bases at L18 are likely to be quite bad, and it will struggle very badly to take out anything strong.

Once you get the skill capped, however, it lasts a while and the damage/durability losses compared to your real body aren't too bad, and Shadow Veil is much safer to allow your Ambuscade to use than it is to use yourself.

Also, your body's kinda defenseless when you're using Ambuscade. This can come up, enemies do teleport sometimes. Keep an eye on it.

For the early levels, I vastly prefer to heavily level Dual Weapon Defense over any other option. Dual Strike+Dirty Fighting at L1 will usually keep an individual locked down long enough to kill, albiet not perfectly, but Dual Weapon Defense will give you the actual physical durability to deal with a ton of earlygame threats. Cap it fast. Dual Weapon Offense, so that your bump attacks are actually nasty, isn't bad either.

It took forever to kill Reknor orc boss with Ambuscade. It has big damage penalty, and very low duration. But yeah, it's still nice skill, borderline cheating.

Overall, I think, Shadowblade is weak early game, and only start to shine very late, when you got Ambuscade, Shadow Veil, 5/5/1/5 or so in stealth skills and several speed boosts.

One thing that's really working for me for early-game Shadowblade is to basically build it like a Rogue, put points in Dex/Cun/Con, and max Dual-Weapon Defense ASAP. That plus Flurry and a Wand of Conjuration seems to be working pretty well so far. (I am terribad at TOME so please take with a grain of salt haha)

It is quite possible to beat the game without ever touching the ambush tree (not something I'd recommend, I did it just for giggles).
I wouldn't even say that it's hard compared to say, marauder or brawler - you get a lot more utility.

Whatever the build, I'd suggest getting teleport online asap, maxing dual weapon defense and 1 point into the +defense sustain (blur sight). If you don't sustain shadow combat early, as soon as you get shadow feed you can dump the manasurge rune for an extra escape/wild, and switch it again later.

_________________
<darkgod> all this fine balancing talk is boring
<darkgod> brb buffing boulder throwers