Shadowblade Build and General questions

[averaen]

So I'm fairly new to the game (I saw The Master once!) and I've finally settled on Shadowblade as the class I'm going to invest some significant time into. My most recent character is here: http://te4.org/characters/19271/tome/01 ... 7f2908a863

My plan so far has been to get through the early game with the two stuns. Grab all of Technique / Dual Attacks and some solid passive boosts. After that go for Essence of Speed and then stack all the +speed abilities in Shadowblade.

Is it worth levelling constitution in order to get Thick Skin? Is there a way to get more stamina or stamina regen as Shadowblade? I find myself running out very quickly and it's a lot harder to regen stamina when you step out of a fight than it is to regen health.

What kind of gear should I be stockpiling? Should I stock up on things like confusion/stun/blindness resist and swap it in when I'm going to an area that I know I'll be hit by it? Same thing for elemental resists?

[Canderel]

Con stamina addon? :'-)

[Frumple]

Stamina regen kit, more like it There's also plain +stamina equipment laying around if it's a serious issue. Willpower boosting stuff also helps a little.

Some willpower might not hurt. SBs can use a bit, both for willful combat (which isn't impressive, per se, but it helps, some) and for keeping those bigger sustains running.

Your general plan is fairly solid, ave. I wouldn't be 5/5ing dual strike early on (2 or 3 is pretty decent for most of the early/mid game), but that's just me. Going by the character linked, you definitely want a point into teleport -- just one, but at least that much. Consider displacement shield and probability travel eventually, especially the latter if you're sinking a bit into willpower to shore up your stamina. PT is basically game breaking in the areas you can use it. Hop through a wall, talent dump (deadly strikes->Dual strike->Flurry->Sweep, ferex), hop back through in the other direction, rest, repeat.

Don't forget about the other temporal talents when you start heading toward essence. Congeal and Prison in particular can be pretty helpful if they land.

Don't ignore the phantasm tree if you can afford to invest some. Illuminate at 3 is pretty good, iirc.

S'bout all I can think of, other than maybe a try a shalore at some point. Both them and halflings lend themselves well to crit builds (halfling's first tier racial, shalore's second), but shalore's racials are a little more useful overall, imo. Timeless is just great.

[grayswandir]

If you unlock Combat Veteran, 1/1/1/3 in it should take care of most of your stamina problems, if you want to spend a category point on it. That last skill is more effective than it looks. Other than that, yeah, you want equipment.

Duck and Dodge is nice when maxed out - you get a 4 turn evasion whenever you take 10% of your health in damage.

Dual Weapon Training is good to max out. Unlike most skills where you get less benefit for each additional point you put in, dual weapon training increases its benefit exponentially. Putting 5 points in it versus just 1 gives you overall 28% more damage, disregarding shadow combat.

Arcane Eye is incredibly useful for shadowblades, since it lets you use shadowstep through walls. I think you can use that combo to get away with just 1 point in probability travel, but I haven't tried it.

Also, why were you stacking see invisible?

[averaen]

Also, why were you stacking see invisible?

I did two rogue escort quests and went with points in the see invisible generic each time.

Overall I'm going to put fewer points into Dual Strike to start, pick up Illuminate 4, and max Dual Weapon Training.

Is Shadow Combat worth maxing?

[Frumple]

I personally find it pretty useful. It's like getting an extra green ego on all your weapons, at the cost of some mana. Makes a pretty big difference early-mid game I find, damage wise, and it tacks on a bit extra damage later, too. I'd like it more if it weren't for the mana cost per hit, but what can you do?

[averaen]

I've noticed that slime damage slows enemies - is there somewhere I can find a list of what kind of damage does what effect?

[Frumple]

Other than the code itself, I'm not aware of one.

That said, said code is pretty human readable. You'd be looking primarily at damage_types.lua and the stuff in the timed_effects folder, I think. Maybe the stuff in general/objects if it's in the actual item code.

It's mostly just a case of looking for EFF_X (where X is whatever the effect is -- try shortening the word to something sensible if the full thing doesn't work, i.e. 'slow' instead of 'slowed') to see what the damage type inflicts and then cross-checking the code in the timed effects stuff to see what that does. Find-in-file functionality (I use Notepad++, m'self) helps quite a bit.

A more accessible list would make a really nice wiki page, but, uh... there's a lot of damage types. A lot. It'd take some effort to get anything comprehensive

[bricks]

Frumple ninja'd me, but this should still save you some time.

http://svn.net-core.org/repos/t-engine4 ... _types.lua

All damage types (should be) listed there. Some are only used in one or two places. If you want to avoid some serious spoilers, like some special artifact effects, just search the text for the desired damage type. (username: guest, password: guestor) If the damage type has a name that isn't tied to a specific resist, chances are it will have a special effect.

A comprehensive list of damage types wouldn't be too useful, anyway. The only place they show up without descriptions is on equipment, and even when the effect is non-obvious, it's just a matter of fighting things until it triggers.

[phantomglider]

The nonbasic damage types you are likely to see are:

bleed (physical damage-over-time)
gravity (physical, +50% vs. pinned targets)

fireburn (fire 50% now 50% DOT (?))

ice (cold + chance of freezing)

lightning daze (lightning + chance of daze)

acid blind (acid + chance of blinding)

manaburn (arcane, destroys mana/vim/positive/negative and does damage based on the amount burned)

wasting (temporal damage-over-time)

drain life (blight + heals you for 50% of the damage)
corrupted blood (blight + chance to disease)

slime (nature + slow)
poison (nature damage-over-time)
insidious poison (nature DOT + reduce healing modifier)

The other damage types, I believe, only show up in talents, where the talent description will tell you what it does, or on artifacts.

[Frumple]

There's a couple more weird ones from artifacts too, I think*. That's most of the common-ish ones, though. At least as I can recall with a TV nattering in the background distractin' me.

*E: Maybe true light damage, for one. Innit there a quiver that does that? *checks* Ah, yeah, is. Light damage + perma-lights the tile. There's also a darkness blind, which does what you'd expect.