Shadow Veil Question

[fateriddle]

I've tested Shadow Veil on my adventurer builds, despite it's seemly suicidal to lose control for 8 turns, I actually find this skill having great potential:

1. All status immunity, 35% damage reduction for 8 turns, picking up quick spell, will make its CD 13 turn.

2. Your foes aren't doing their best in the duration of Shadow Veil. You are most certainly dead if standing among a crowd of monsters doing nothing for 8 turns, but casting Shadow Veil in the same scenario is just fine. It seems only the one that you blink on will try to attack you in melee, at least for the most of time.

I intend to build a Shadow Veil adventurer, and would love to know everything about this talent before hand, some questions:

1. Using physical critical or magical critical? Not obvious, I know for a fact with Eye of Tiger, Shadow Veil can refresh itself, so it seem to be count as magical critical; but it also trigger Magic Combat, and intuitively %weapon skills usually goes for physical critical. If only someone could read the code and make sure.

2. It certainly feels like your foes are not doing much during Shadow Veil, but is it the truth?

3. Shadow Veil is a spell, so does the attack check accuracy or is it not gonna miss?

4. How does it work with Reaver Combat + Magic combat? It appears Reaver Combat's extra attack only triggers the first time you blink on something, but if Earthen Missile procs, does it trigger Reaver Combat in the process?

Thanks.

[grayswandir]

I don't have the answers to those questions off hand, but I do remember one interesting bit about Shadow Veil:
Regardless of your speed, it only triggers once per game turn, when it then does as many attacks as you'd normally get.

So, say you have enough weapon/global speed so an attack takes half a turn. If you attack normally, you'd be hitting an enemy every half turn. But under shadow veil, you're hitting twice, waiting a full turn, and then hitting twice again.

I'm not really sure how useful this is to know, but you did say you wanted to know everything.

[HousePet]

You seem to be confused between the spell Shadow Veil and the attacks you make while affected by it.
The spell cannot crit, but the attacks you make while affected can weapon crit.
They are just normal weapon attacks (with damage converted to darkness), so they use accuracy like normal.

[fateriddle]

So, say you have enough weapon/global speed so an attack takes half a turn. If you attack normally, you'd be hitting an enemy every half turn. But under shadow veil, you're hitting twice, waiting a full turn, and then hitting twice again.

Wow, didn't know that, so building up speed does help!

You seem to be confused between the spell Shadow Veil and the attacks you make while affected by it.
The spell cannot crit, but the attacks you make while affected can weapon crit.
They are just normal weapon attacks (with damage converted to darkness), so they use accuracy like normal.

So how do you explain "normal weapon attacks" refresh a spell's cool down(with eye of tiger)? SV attacks do count as spell critics from my experience. I'd really hope there are more facts less assuming in the discussion.

[HousePet]

Well you start by removing the assumption that I didn't check the code before posting.

I can't see any way for Shadow Veil to reduce spell cooldowns by itself.
If you had a spell proc on hit, which critted, that could do it.

[fateriddle]

Well you start by removing the assumption that I didn't check the code before posting.

I can't see any way for Shadow Veil to reduce spell cooldowns by itself.
If you had a spell proc on hit, which critted, that could do it.

That's weird, in my test, I turned off all possible procs, and SV reduces spell CD, but never reduce physical talent CD. Could you kindly show me the part of code that states it counts as physical critical?

P.S. Does SV blinks count as teleport for the purpose of triggering "after teleport" passives?

[HousePet]

I can't show you anything that states it is a weapon crit, as there is no such thing anywhere.
I can show you the code that triggers each turn while you are affected by Shadow Veil.

Code: Select all

on_timeout = function(self, eff)
		local maxdist = self:callTalent(self.T_SHADOW_VEIL,"getBlinkRange")
		self.never_act = true
		repeat
			local acts = {}
			local act

			self:doFOV() -- update actors seen
			for i = 1, #self.fov.actors_dist do
				act = self.fov.actors_dist[i]
				if act and self:reactionToward(act) < 0 and not act.dead and self:isNear(act.x,act.y,maxdist) then
					local sx, sy = util.findFreeGrid(act.x, act.y, 1, true, {[engine.Map.ACTOR]=true})
					if sx then acts[#acts+1] = {act, sx, sy} end
				end
			end
			if #acts == 0 then self.never_act = nil return end

			act = rng.table(acts)
			self:move(act[2], act[3], true)
			game.level.map:particleEmitter(act[2], act[3], 1, "dark")
			self:attackTarget(act[1], DamageType.DARKNESS, eff.dam) -- Attack *and* use energy
		until self.energy.value < 0  -- keep blinking and attacking until out of energy (since on_timeout is only once per turn)
	end,

The important bits are near the end.
The 'self:attackTarget' line is what is making you attack. 'attackTarget' is the standard melee attack function. 'act[1]' is the randomly selected target, 'DamageType.DARKNESS' converts your base weapon damage to darkness. 'eff.dam' makes it do more damage than a normal attack. I've check the combat code, and there is currently no way to tell it to roll a spell crit instead.

As for the PS: No, it doesn't.