ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, from the outside, shadowblades look really shiny to me. They have phase door and prob travel to get them out of scrapes, they're a class that stacks essence of speed but maintains a solid resource-free attack... there's a lot to like there.

I'm just not quite sure how to get into them. how feasible are they, really? What are the must-have skills and powers? I've never played a twin-dagger class before - should I be trying to play a rogue first? Is it even reasonable to try for a character who can sustain both speed and PT while still having at least a few mana left over to run the utility powers? Is it better to try to play them with or without stealth? Any insights from people who actually know and love the class?

i've never gotten a shadowblade past the master, and haven't played one in several betas. in the past i played them basically like rogues, but sinking some points into phase door, and vision/id/etc after unlocking divination. i never developed stealth much with them, although i've also usually ignored stealth with my rogues, favoring pumping their offensive and crit enhancing abilities.
since the introduction of runes/infusions and the ID reforms, it seems to me like shadowblades are much less unique and exciting, however. they might need some tweaks to make them a little more interesting....

Okay. Have played a shadowblade a bit now (currently about level 17, trying to figure out what I should do before heading in to grind mummies for a few levels, in the hopes of surviving the cultist quest when it hits. I'm a completionist)

First thing that I've noticed is that shadowblades are always tight on build resources. Generic skill points aren't horrible, but they have 15 different things that they want to do with class points, they're a bit tight on runes/infusions/category points, and they need to invest in every single one of the stats for one reason or another.

- Strength is the least important, but you still need it for armor qualification and load-bearing.
- Dex drives primary damage, to-hit, defense, and your primary attack trees
- Cunning drives primary damage, crits, a few other useful things, and some of your other trees (including your magic regen)
- Magic drives your best utility trees, one way or another.
- Willpower is necessary if you want to be able to use those juicy, juicy sustains and still have some mana left over to cast with. It also helps out your stamina.
- Con is con, and helps you not die.

So, a few thoughts are coming out of this.
- Strength really looks like the least useful of the bunch. If you're willing to do without heavy armor, you won't need more than 20 points for armor qualification, and possibly less. Given how precious stat points are, it may well be worthwhile to leave strength pathetic, let your armor lag, take the lack of carrying cap on the chin (possibly grind more to make up the money, annoying as that may be) while hoping for carrying-cap-increasing items, and eventually qualify for your armor on the strength of your rings (or go with robes). I found some dragonhide armor early on, and cranked my strength to be able to wear it. I'm now regretting that.
- Dex and Cunning are both strong "more=better" stats, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the bonus to weapon damage.
- For Con, you really want to be able to qualify for 5 points in Health, but may not want to push it farther than that. that extra 5 poitns of HP are certainly handy, but...
- Willpower is tricky, and will depend dramatically on what magics you want to sustain. If you want to be able to sustain both Prob Travel and Essence of Speed - well, that's 450 points that you have to sock away. It's tricky to gauge properly, and it's tricky to plan things so that you have the mana by the time you want to sustain the power.
- Magic - well, obviously, you'll want enough magic to qualify for whichever spells you want to qualify for. Magic also helps *boost* those spells, and is awfully handy for a number of the escort rewards.

Basically, it really does look like the shadowblade needs to be planned rather ferociously so that you can get what you want (or at least most of what you want) with a reasonable degree of efficiency. If you unlock essence of speed and prob travel within 4 levels of one another, you're pretty much doing something wrong - either you won't have nearly enough mana to sustain them both, or you'll have been running around for a large number of levels with a manapool that's hugely more than you need.

The way I figure, I want to crank cunning and magic at the start, to get probability travel and the stealth tree maxed out. Once you have those two thing, you can wallwalk out of combat, stealth, wallwalk back in until your stealth breaks, repeat. Dex I raise high enough for whatever weapon material is currently available to me. Everything else can wait. You never know what gear you'll find, and it'll feel silly cranking strength when you find a randart that cranks it for you (Or carrying capacity or a chestpiece that is worth wearing but has no requirement.) and likewise for the other stats. Willpower and mana bonuses seem particularly common in fact.

One thing I'm not sure of is whether I should spend a category point on divination or just grab another rune slot and throw a vision rune in there. Vision seems like the nicest part of that branch, and it'll cost talent points you're already short on to unlock and level. But maybe it's worth it later? Generic points always seem to be the ones I'm short on though, since they drive weapon mastery/health, trap detection/disarming, conveyance and you get fewer of them than class points. I can always find places to put the class points, but the only spot I want to really max out is stealth tree and maybe dirty fighting and the magic speed boost, everything else can get by with just a point to unlock. 5 points in flurry isn't that much better than 1. For generic points, I'd love to max the whole passive combat techniques tree, the whole conveyance tree, both trap based abilities (God I hate traps) weapon combat, knife mastery, and health.

I like that the class is strapped for points though. Makes your character feel more unique and your decisions important.

I actually got vision off of an escort quest, and it's worked well for me. The area is a bit smaller than I'm really happy with, but saving the category point is a pretty big deal. Divination also has Precognition, which would be *very* nice if it weren't competing with everything else for my max mana pool.