ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Shadowblade, as a name and concept, sounds very sexy. The implementation is unfortunately quite underwhelming.

Nice things about ShadowBlades:
-loads of mobility options (rush, phase, teleport, shadowstep, PT)
-some cool spell support (illuminate, invisibility and the temporal stuff in particular)
-mostly based on sustains and passives, so you don't have to play around with lots of activates and cooldowns in normal combat - straight attack is your default action

Bad things about ShadowBlades:
-few offensive spells (and no damage ones)
-only 1 custom tree
-that one custom tree is severely lacking in useful skills
-many of the cool spell options available are immensely expensive for a class that is generally too spread thin to invest heavily in Willpower
-the "shadow" theme is underplayed, with only 1 darkness damage talent

My main beef is with the 1 custom tree. A critique of its talents:
* Shadow Combat - the only damage ability in the game which scales purely with talent level (I think), and the only ability in the game that becomes more expensive as you increase it. Maxed out it causes 15 damage for 4.3 Mana. Really pitiful when you compare it with any other talent. Especially compare it to Frost Hands and Fiery Hands, which do far more for no ongoing cost!
* Shadow Cunning - not too bad, but my main beef is that Shadowblades have few spells that actually rely on spellpower, as many have functionality based mostly on talent level. This isn't as useful as the Arcane Blade equivalent.
* Shadow Feed - no problem with this, though SBs don't burn through mana as regularly as Arcane Blades, so it's a bit less useful than their equivalent ability.
* Shadowstep - A Rush, but without any damage dealt, and costing twice as much?! The cooldown may be lower, but the usefulness is nil! 100 stamina is not something to blow away when trying to close in on an enemy. Oh, and this is a level 4 talent, compared with Rush as a level 2 talent. Gah! It can pass through walls, but without innate ESP like Cursed this isn't too special (they can get Arcane Eye, of course, but that's a locked tree, and is of more limited use).

So, things I'd recommend:
1. Scale Shadow Combat damage with spellpower (I understand this is in SVN, but looking at the code it's still too low for the cost). It needs to have a decent base amount to be useful at the start of the game, and scale high enough to be worth investing in for the long term. As the only really unique ability the class has it must be something that stands out.
2. Give SC a set mana cost (and make it low - no more than 1 or 2). No ability should get worse as you increase it. Potentially remove the mana cost entirely, making it in line with Fiery Hands.
3. Change Shadowstep to attack the target (maybe doing 120% darkness damage?)
4. Reduce the cost of Shadowstep, maybe give it a mana cost instead (since that's easier to replenish)
5. Or replace Shadowstep with something that isn't just Rush repackaged - make it a phase that does a ball of darkness damage that confuses upon arrival, for instance. Just don't give it a prohibitive cost.

Ultimately it needs more though. Another unique tree that really solidifies the darkness theme of the class. Some thoughts on things that would be useful:
- A sustain that changes your attack to be partly darkness damage instead of physical
- Darkness damage % increase and darkness penetration
- Status effects on enemies, such as silence, pinning, confusion
- Pulling a single enemy in close with a strike on it
- Some ranged projection attack (like Wave of Power)
- Ability to create darkness fogs (like duathedlen) and to see in them

Other suggestions welcome. It seems like other classes have had some nice refinements in the last few months whilst Shadowblades have been left behind.

Shadow Combat is essentially the Darkness version of Weapon of Light or Weapon Folding. The SVN version, I am told, does about the same damage as Weapon of Light, but WoL has a fixed cost (2 Positive per hit), not an increasing cost at higher talent level. Weapon Folding does huge damage (not sure if it's more than SC and WoL, but it's certainly not less), and has APR thrown in, and costs nothing per hit. So, SC is the most expensive of the 3 (at least if you equate 1 Mana = 1 Positive, which can be disputed), and also does the least damage of the 3.

Apart from that, SBs simply have a lot of useless talents. Shadowstep is useless without ESP, as noted above. Willful Combat -- who has the stat points to boost Wil? And it's not even a sustained talent. Deadly Strikes -- another non-sustain, this time boosting APR. I've never invested in either of these except as a prereq for Snap, and even that's a questionable investment.

I have them with tactical unlocked and stealth locked. Divination is gone, because spellcrit is worthless for them.

In another thread, I suggested a tree for Temporal Wardens based around giving them bonuses for a turn or so after teleporting, based on the idea that it disorients opponents to have them blinking around so much (talents for +crit rate and possibly damage or multiplier, +defense, and +global speed, say.)

That tree would also fit Shadowblades -- possibly even better, since it fits into their assassin theme to teleport 'behind' someone and ambush them. And they need distinctive talents more, anyway.

Alternatively, Shadowstep could get one or more of those benefits.

aristalis wrote:I have them with tactical unlocked and stealth locked. Divination is gone, because spellcrit is worthless for them.

The thing is that (as mentioned above) with no way to see through walls, Shadowstep becomes even less useful than it currently is. This is bad --it looks like it's meant to be their iconic power, yet it sucks right now.

So perhaps they should get some other form of enemy detection.

Mana-draining telepathy sustain with the same range as infravision?

Some sort of "Ambush" tree would be quite good for them, including short-lived short range detection, techniques to disorient targets and passive bonuses when using mobility spells.

Shadowblades just got sexier

/me looks for new shockbolt murals....

Oh, not THAT kind of sexy.

Another idea that I had a while back (though it might not be needed if they've already been thoroughly sexified) was a pair of talents based around teleporting to and teleporting away from enemies.

One of them would teleport you adjacent to a random nearby enemy, but try to position you (within its range) so you're adjacent to and in-sight of as few other enemies as possible -- in other words, it would try to teleport you into the ideal location for ambushing one enemy at once.

The other talent would be a short-range teleport that tries to teleport you to a random nearby spot where no enemy can see you.

A bit similar to controlled phase door, yes, but distinct in their own way, and I think they'd be fun to use for hit and run attacks -- bamf into the blind spot of a bunch of enemies, kill one of them, bamf away. Lather, rinse, repeat.

(I'm not sure this strategy would actually work in ToME, though, since in the fights that really matter you tend to get one boss enemy that's ridiculously powerful compared to the rest -- also, many of the nastiest fights are in no-teleport areas. Hrm.)