b43 Nightstalker the Shadowblade >>Stealthblade<<

[Tagedieb]

Hey everybody, i proudly present my second win.
Nightstalker the unseen Shadow:
http://te4.org/characters/5446/tome/789 ... abb43ca1b6
First off let me tell you that this toon provided the most fun i ever had in tales. It became just so precise and flexible and provided a feeling of fluid control more and more.

I was really lucky with equipment, i had incredibly high stealth, around 40 luck, so in the end he was normally not even attacked by trashmobs, they didnt recognized.
So i decided to make him a high darkness dmg glasscannon, which was so fun with ambuscade. (+85% darkness dmg). i saw Shadowsteps for more then 7000k dmg all in all sometimes. and killed a lot of bosses with one attack. My shadow got incredible strong with high stealth and darknessdmg, so i could let him kill lots of bosses, while sitting in save shadows.
All in all high peak was really easy, lost no life and killed both sorcerors in around 6 turns.

This is a tactical controlbuild, which hits hard and fast and vanishes before beeing captured. So its nothing to "storm the front" blindly (at least till lvl 40), you need to know your enemies, their location and your skills and plan your attacks according to this.

I got a few tips to add to the stealthbladebuild:
- track and burningstar make a great combo with shadowstep. i always knew where they were and assasinated them quickly. At least make sure you get a track item and use it regulary. I cannot emphazise enough how important they are to plan your attacks with shadowveil ambuscade and shadowstep!! Most important hint in this textwall
- Heroism infusion with ambuscade to make your moving shadow last longer and on yourself before every shadowveil, its so useful now for shadowblades. never died the whole game during a shadowveil.
- Prodigies wordly knowledge >>conditioning was really helpful, making your shadowblade quite more stable, adrenaline surge saved my ass a few times, you burn your stamina so fast, and another shadowstep or whirlwind for lowlifeloss come in so handy
Lucky day should need no further explanation on a heavy stealthbuild
Speed This time i added temporal, which was nice but not overwhelming. It might be as well build without it. shadowveil is great with speed because you can act in between, but i got many speedbuff items anyway, and the manacost of essence of speed is so high, you only can use one ambuscade and one shadowveild with a little reserve for emergency teleport. perhaps better get another infusion and a stronger flurry with it.
Cursed aura as cornac this comes handy, as a glasscannonbuild i normaly ran madness for 16%offhanddng and 12% critical dmg. i would have preferred shroud for more savity but my best items just didnt had it

Ok i think iam done here, textwall is standing and ready to hit you hard
For even more information on the stealthblade build see also >> http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=33203
its b37 and a bit outdated but contains all the basic information you will need.
Finally I hope to see a few more Shadowblades out there,
Have great fun and always stay in the shadows.

Tagedieb

[Parcae2]

Do you happen to know what the stealth value is measured against? Enemy cunning?

[lukep]

Stealth is checked against:
character level / 2 + Cunning / 4 + see through stealth bonuses + piercing sight bonuses

[Wolpertinger]

Are you still using that shadowstrike addon? I've been considering a build like this but I don't know if I still need that addon.

[Parcae2]

Thanks, Lukep! Do you by any chance know the formula for seeing through invisibility as well?

[Tagedieb]

No you dont need the shadowstrikeaddon, since few patches shadowstrikes are treated as normal attacks in every way.
>the shadowstrikeaddon is obsolete.

[Fhtagn]

I tend to find early game with shadowblade stealth builds punishingly hard. I guess quite a bit of that difficulty stems from by relative inexperience, which is why I'm asking for early game survival hints for this build, as in: how do you skill for the first ±20 levels?

[lukep]

IIRC, invisibility is just "see through invisibility" vs. "invisibility", except something with 0 see invisible will never notice it. Like the stealth check, it uses the old check hit formula, which I'm not familiar with, but it's less predictable than the new, tiered one.

[SageAcrin]

I tend to find early game with shadowblade stealth builds punishingly hard. I guess quite a bit of that difficulty stems from by relative inexperience, which is why I'm asking for early game survival hints for this build, as in: how do you skill for the first ±20 levels?

You want my opinion?

You can make a careful balance of building stealth as much as possible while still building skills you need to survive. The best bet would probably be Two Weapon Defense for this, IMO-40~ Defense will take you to Dreadfell against most physical combatants, giving you a crutch to lean on. Toss in a level of Blur Sight and you're actually pretty okay on Defense for that period in time.

This isn't the only possibility, of course-heavily building damage trees so that you have good standard physicals, or even picking up Invisibility short term so that you have an extra layer of defense in exchange for pretty much all of your damage, could work.

But the thing is, if you're relatively inexperienced, this is a build you should run screaming from. I've seen someone get a Stealth oriented Shadowblade going, but they died half a dozen times before reach the East-and they'd cleared beforehand. The build is amazing, later(the deaths kinda stopped), but early, it is very hard to get working from what I know.

It requires a very good idea of what you want to build, how well it works with your playstyle, and what you can get away with while you're putting your heavy investment into Stealth. And if you try to dip into the points too much for earlygame survival, Stealth won't be useful for too long and you'll have wasted your time. There's no simple build order I can give you.

(I would give you a rough build order I'd done, but I'm more interested in heavy armor Shadowblades, humorously. They're great dualwielding tanks with two good Defense boosting skills and Essence of Speed!)

Obviously, it works, and if you have the mentality for it, go for it. But it's generally something I'd not recommend to a newbie, unless they really mesh with the style of play involved.

[Fhtagn]

You want my opinion?

You can make a careful balance of building stealth as much as possible while still building skills you need to survive. The best bet would probably be Two Weapon Defense for this, IMO-40~ Defense will take you to Dreadfell against most physical combatants, giving you a crutch to lean on. Toss in a level of Blur Sight and you're actually pretty okay on Defense for that period in time.

I seem to be lacking in damage as well, but then again, I have been extremely unlucky in the weapons department most of the time. Dipping into Blur Sight for short-term benefits is an idea that hadn't really occured to me yet - not for a stealth build at least.

(I would give you a rough build order I'd done, but I'm more interested in heavy armor Shadowblades, humorously. They're great dualwielding tanks with two good Defense boosting skills and Essence of Speed!)

I actually considered going for a "pure" melee build without shadowstuff or stealth - I might play around with that a bit, now that I know it can work out

Obviously, it works, and if you have the mentality for it, go for it. But it's generally something I'd not recommend to a newbie, unless they really mesh with the style of play involved.

I'm not quite sure yet about what really fits my style of play - I'll have to find out. In other roguelikes (ADOM and Crawl, mostly) I tended to go for heavy melee or heavy caster builds. I won ADOM with heavy melee, and my only Crawl wins so far were with a heavy melee and a wizard, so... yeah. Maybe I'm just not made for stealth builds.
I always find it kind of hard to not try things (like opening vault doors or attacking enemies I should have run from) - usually my curiosity gets me killed more than anything else. As for ToME, I'll just have to see. So far Berserker and Bulwark both worked pretty well for me. Now I'm keen on trying Marauder and some heavy caster builds - Corruptor sounds like a lot of fun. I'm also considering a casting reaver, but every build I've seen so far involves dual wielding and going to melee, so I'm not sure that's even a viable build. Basically, I guess I mainly need a lot of playtime with different builds.

Thanks a lot for that input!

[kazak]

I tend to find early game with shadowblade stealth builds punishingly hard. I guess quite a bit of that difficulty stems from by relative inexperience, which is why I'm asking for early game survival hints for this build, as in: how do you skill for the first ±20 levels?

I somewhat agree with you there. Every time I see one of these shadowblade winners, I have to run out and try one. But I typically end up getting annoyed at the early game and move on to something else. After trying a few more the past couple days, there are a few things that've made the early game better for me.

I basically just use stun and coward tactics to get through the first boss (Prox or Norgos). With the levelup from that, I pump MAG to 20 and max Illuminate. That's first priority, as maxed illuminate will reach your entire LOS and take out most low level fodder in 1 hit. What doesn't go down is blinded, making it easy to pick them off. Spend the next few levels getting at least a point in blur sight, dual defense, the prereq's for shadowstep, and sink extra points into the dual skill that increases offhand damage. I also favor +def and +hp items, as there's not as much opportunity to level CON early on.

After spending a few levels blinking around and spamming illuminate, start maxing Shadowstep once it becomes available. At high levels, it does great damage with high range and a relatively low cooldown. Between illuminate, shadowstep, and phase door/teleport (as well as good defense and your steadily increasing damage), this typically gets me through the next few levels until I can start maxing ambuscade and then shadow veil. With ambuscade, you can be cheesy and either send your shadow around the corner or teleport it, then just illuminate or shadowstep whatever you see. Rest, repeat. Run in and finish things once they're softened up. Things should get a good bit easier once shadow veil gets a few levels.

[Tagedieb]

Yes its true, a stealth build shadowblade is not easy to play in the first lvls. As i have played it so often i normaly loose them later in the east on in a farportal.

>>> I will provide more detailed tips and build possibilities for the first 20 lvls the next days. I dont have the time available now.<<<

For the stealthpart i must disagree, as stealth is both your offensive and defensive.
before lvl 4 you want rush, dual strike and the rest dual fighting. a second point in shadowblades is an option too( dont forget to take it out again, you are really thin on class skills) as this skill provides your early dmg.
at lvl 4 you want flurry and dual defense 1 point, for the troll treasure i skill dirty fighting and backstabing but remove the points afterwards and skill stealth then.
I normaly go cornac, and put the first 2 catpoints in stealth. If you feel unsecure you can buy a fourth infusion or invest in an escort generic tree with the second instead.
i get 1 point in deadly strike very soon, as it does dmg, improves your dmg and most important doesnt need time to use. its a free attack which does not take any time, i even think it doesnt break daze, but perhaps that changed.
till lvl 12 i only put 2 skill points in stealth and one in shadowstrikes and focus on shadowstep (you want it at lvl 12 if your cunning allows and not later then lvl14), as its also both defensive and offensive and just so good. you need it for dmg, daze and to reach casteres /archers >> its the best rushlike skill in the game. you can use use through walls if you have a trackitem or otherwies vision.
with shadowstep and stealth, you will have a high damage attack with lowcooldown, combined with flurry you should have no dmg problem. afterwards i focus to max unseen actions. If unseen actions is maxed, stealth is a great defensive and offensive tool and will often provide 3-4 shadowstrike criticals without breaking and let the archers/caster miss you and kill their friends instead.

defensive skills till lvl 20:
rush, dualstrike
lvl 4 dual defense (1point),
lvl9 2-3 points in stealth
lvl 12 shadowstep
get premonition from escort if you can
max unseen actions (before stealth and before shadowstrikes)
if you have enough + magic gear, dont put more then a few points in mag, you max phasedoor and get one skill in teleport
you go in with shadowstep and rush and out with phasedoor (even possible through walls) and teleport.
till lvl 20 you want 2-3 points in thick skin. con is as important as dex.