Mindstar Shadowblade for the win!

[fateriddle]

A lot of ways to play Shadowblade, but if you compare her to marauder and arcaneblade, it appears speed & shadowstep are her defining feature(stealth takes 16 class points, no thanks), so it will be a shame not turning on both essence of speed and momentum.
But lots of builds don't even include momentum, because BS is one of the class that has been restrain from full potential by limited resource, that's where the idea of Mindstar SB comes in, pump in tons of willpower is one of the better way to solve resource crisis, normally it has a drawback of damage loss, but with mindstar as her new weapon, SB can actually reach an incredible amount of stamina/mana with on par or even better damage.
And yes, it is possible to master Mindstar for a SB, just take out all the talent points from spells and she will find Zigur. It's a shame fungus must come with antimagic, or it could be a great pick for mindstar SB.

[cctobias]

You could do mindstars on SB, but unlocking Light generic is almost certainly a far better option for SB. If you can do both that is cool. But its almost certainly always more optimal to have Light tree fleshed out and use daggers than have mindstar fleshed out.

Generic points can be pretty tight and SB actually has a number of good generic options. You should always invest in conveyance. Light is a top priority for the class, IMO, Survival can be very good with charm mastery, and divination is also quite good although whether one spends the category point is a hard choice and also heavily dependent on escorts.

Its concievable you could fit MS in there, it would be tight but doable, but one should never sacrifice it for Light.

[fateriddle]

I don't think generic points being tight for SB, and taking out your 5/5 dagger for a 5/1/1/1 Mindstar is merely 3 more points(or you could just do a 5/0/0/0 if you think the point is that tight). Of course you can take both Light and Mindstar mastery, because the latter one doesn't need a cat point to unlock(500 gold).

[cctobias]

Well there are a number of issues, which are not insurmountable but are pretty serious.

First it is not the case that mindstar flat out better damage-wise. In fact they will be considerably worse without a significant investment in Willpower and assuming an SB is going for Cunning either way. Even with really good stats, which are the largest contributor to damage they are not always so amazing, and pretty much suck until you get mindstars that are t3+. So you wind up with some tension in that you may wind up want Magic/Cun/Will/Dex. You might be able to get away with only partial investements in Mag and Dex enough to make other key aspects of still perform.

One of the extremely attractive aspects of mindstars is Leaves Tides and its very nice evasion against everything. But in order to truly leverage this you need decent mindpower. So you would need to pump both spellpower and mindpower. This is doable, but difficult. Additionaly you may want some extra points in it, although in general mindpower is more important than points for that. And to some extent you do not necessarily need extremely excellent spellpower for an SB, however you will want at least decent spellpower for various reasons.

There is a conisderable amount of things to fit into your item budget to do this. Not saying its impossible just that its not an easy fit.

Mindstars are not obviously better damage than daggers but you can do well with them and a combination like Mental Tyrant + 2 mind damage mindstars can be very nice. Whether or not mindstars will be comparable to daggers is extremely dependent on what stats you can get. I am not entirely sure how mental tyranny works with shadow step darkness conversion. Add on superpower for an extra 30% will and that would be good damage with good res pen. But all in all its not an easy build to do.

[fateriddle]

In late game, mindstar scales like 100%+ wil 50%+ cun, compare to say 50%dex, 50%cun dagger, I'd say it's a big win in straight damage, it lose some in critical modifier but gain many in APR(which SB lacks), and off-hand mindstar hits 100% damage by default. It is true mindstar start out weak, but you won't be earning 500 gold soon either, so floating 3/5 in dagger mastery and dual wielding daggers is a good solution to your concern of early game.

Stat-wise, I'd go wil/cun>dex>mag>>else. The main reason of doing mindstar SB is pumping willpower for comfortable mana/stamina, plus its the major damage modifier, so this build will invest the hell out of willpower. Again, the investment starting from around lvl 12, after you purchased mindstar mastery and getting your tier 3 weapons. Wil/cun/mindstar all contribute to mindpower, so Leaves Tides will be efficient, and Nature's Equilibrium will be a convenient healing.

Dex investment is mainly for Precise Strikes to cover critical rate. And I don't think even a conventional dagger SB emphasis Magic, save some +mag equipment for talents will do.

[ooli]

You'll lack a decent equilibrium management if you want to use the mindstar power (leaves tides).. And any time you cast a spell. It seems it raises your equilibrium or something. So you can go dual mindstar, but dont count too much on using Mindstar Tree skills.

[HousePet]

Its only Vim usage that raises Equilibrium.

[fateriddle]

Possible to pick up mindstar recovers equilibrium.

[cctobias]

You don't need to recover much equilibrium with MS only. Leaves Tide is the the main thing that would increase Equi, the slow is ok. But neither one is something you would spam a lot.

The heal can reduce Equi so that is basically good enough. Its somewhat annoying game mechanics play wise but its doable.

If MS is not alone then you either have have AM or AM+Fungus both of which give other ways to deal with Equi.


As for MS damage, yes MS with psiblades have superior stats, and that is all they have other than the good APR. In the end they do not particularly better. But can be made to be good. A MS shadbowblade is all well and nice but its not going to be significantly more damage than a Arcane Might Shadowblade even even the MS SB take superpower. You are not properly accounting for the difference in multiplier from base power and there are many good dagger artificats that add either amazing effects (Mercy) or extra stats contribution. The MS artifacts tend to modify things that don't help SB, but can still be good. Combine this with the ability to close the gap on stats in various ways and it just not particularly better. It can work fine. But its simply not a clearly better option for damage.

[fateriddle]

its simply not a clearly better option for damage.

I'll be more than satisfied for on par damage with dagger in single hits without buffs. Again MS build is about more mana/stamina to activate all sustain and still have plenty left for skills like Deadly strikes/Willful combat/Shadowstep/Flurry and such. I think there is a Higher Shadowblade post out there just to achieve similar thing with racial talent.

P.S. On a complete different topic, I really like your adventurer build, and I just find all the %weapon scale skills in Wyrimic tree work with Magic Combat! What's more, if dual wield, they hit with both weapons, that means a 8 hit Dissolve, a 6 radius cone Wing Buffet proc on any foe hits, same goes for Quake, Ice Claw. Really like your opinion about building a Magic combat adventurer base on this.

[cctobias]

its simply not a clearly better option for damage.

I'll be more than satisfied for on par damage with dagger in single hits without buffs. Again MS build is about more mana/stamina to activate all sustain and still have plenty left for skills like Deadly strikes/Willful combat/Shadowstep/Flurry and such. I think there is a Higher Shadowblade post out there just to achieve similar thing with racial talent.

P.S. On a complete different topic, I really like your adventurer build, and I just find all the %weapon scale skills in Wyrimic tree work with Magic Combat! What's more, if dual wield, they hit with both weapons, that means a 8 hit Dissolve, a 6 radius cone Wing Buffet proc on any foe hits, same goes for Quake, Ice Claw. Really like your opinion about building a Magic combat adventurer base on this.

Yes dissolve and frenzy (from cursed) can work real well with Magic combat. Just be aware of the significant reduction in proc rate for dual wield. Dissolve DW is actually the same as dissolve SH as far as procs.

In theory, magic combat proc wise, there is probably nothing better than 5 combo kick hits, because that is at non-reduced proc rate. You would need 10 DW hits to get the same. However 8 DW hits is still excellent. And with an adventurer you could have two attacks with 8 hits and they are both mindpower (to some degree, cursed doesn't really use tons of MP).

Also consider the procs from Demonologist, those actually work better with those two skills as there is no penalty for DW or for the acid cone its based on crits. The combo of demo acid stuff + wymric acid stuff is an interesting build. Not necessarily the most powerful but probably very strong. Keeping in mind you only need a shield to put the demon seed debuff on and are not really required to use shields to have demon seeds.

[OrionJAnderson]

Remember that although Mindstars end up with better stat scaling than daggers do, they have 1.1 range, while daggers have... 1.3, I think? So Daggers get an average +15% randomization rather than +5%. Also, Shadowblades have a lot of ways to generate large numbers of weapon hits. Daggers often come with good damage procs (erosion, etc.) while mind stars almost never have damage procs.

[Effigy]

I made a mindstar Shadowblade on Nightmare(Adventure), mainly to test whether Psiblades would scale Arcane Might. Sadly it doesn't. Anyway, the way I built the character was suboptimal for leveling because I wasn't sure if I was going to stick with mindstars or not in the long run. I had only about 20 Dex for leveling, so my dagger damage was subpar during the midgame, and I didn't start raising Wil until level 30 when I committed to mindstars, so my mindstar damage was subpar. I invested a lot in Mag for Time Shield, Celestial/Light, and Arcane Might. I cleared the spider nest in the East, but ran out of lives shortly after that.

Overall, I think the build has potential but you need to start investing in Wil sooner so your damage is good when you switch from dagger to mindstar. Mag is important if you're planning to rely on damage shields, but it would be better not to rush it to 50+ like I did. Cun also didn't need to be rushed as much as I did. It's probably worth getting Dex to ~30 in the midgame for dagger damage and skill requirements, although I would leave it there permanently and use +stat items to unlock 5/5 Momentum. Arcane Might is probably not worth it since it doesn't get scaled by Psiblades; Flexible Combat or Windblade would be better offensive prodigies.