[1.05] Mellie the skellie shadowblade

[Poe]

Finally got a shadowblade going

http://te4.org/characters/7273/tome/d19 ... 69fb52a06e

Skellie durability Really helps with shadowblades, much less squidgy in the early game.

Fun game, built as a glass cannon, i really wanted to dive into stealth, and i unlocked it with great plans but it always looks like you need so much investment to get a good return and other stuff just makes you more powerful faster.
Completely ignored the ambush tree as well, apart from being cheesy it isn't really worth the bother, the silence grapple is a nice effect but you can always just shadowstep-flurry casters so not really solving a problem.

I have to say i got fantastic, and appropriate, gear, loads of darkness and phys boosts, the mummy armour i put on about level 20 and never took off, the 30 point damage sponge will get you through the mid game in good shape. Weapons wise the Mandible is meant for shadowblades, and towards the end i boosted normal weapon proficiency to get a bit more bang in the main hand, went with Razorblade, also the Femur is ace especially when it gets starry but not consistent enough.

Some stamina problems right until endgame, but hey ho, when you shadowstep then flurry then windblade at over 200 global speed for about 12-14k damage, you're picking at straws really. Speaking of windblade, it made me completely stop using sweep and whirlwind, wouldn't take them again.

I'd be interested to see how the parry on dual weapon defence continues to scale at higher levels, it got a huge boost (relatively, it's a bit rubbish to start) when i put on the ring of the warmaster and an extra category point could make it really worthwhile.

deaths were 5 to the big golem before i learned my lesson, 1 to a mind worm that stuck everything on huge cooldowns near a stair boss and a rare, and 1 to myself (flurrying against a forge giant stairboss, that forge shield is a sod).

Anyway
funfun

[grooog]

Very cool stuff, I just started getting into trying a magimelee skelly myself! No deaths so far, unlike my other characters, so it's promising.

Were you as happy with Flexible Combat as you were with Windblade? Was there no dex-based weapon that could've sufficed as your mainhand weapon, freeing up more stat points to go elsewhere?

The biggest thing I notice as a skelly so far is that when I get blinded or frozen, I habitually look for a Wild infusion to fix my woes, but I can't! What was your solution to this issue - just cast a big shield and wait?

[Poe]

For the dex based weapon, i ran the maths on the training dummy, with razerblade i did 2500 damage per game turn base bumping (10 turn sample size) and the next best dagger i had ended up at about 350 - 400 less, Now this doesn't take into account other stuff like resistance penetration as the dummy had no resistances, and if i had found or commissioned a really good randart dagger with big phys pen, we might have been talking, but i didn't and with things ability to shrug off crits now i wanted the more consistent damage. Also i should note that there was nothing else i really wanted in my generics, maybe displacement shield but it's 1 turn activation puts me off, the skellie racial is more useful for that.

Flexible combat is great for all the on hit classes, i had a ton of damage that activated on hit, 300 dark plus 100 mind (those nice gauntlets came after beating the main bosses), plus i had strength dex and cun anyway so it wasn't really that weak, so yeah, ace, it was a toss up between that and arcane might, but i'm happy with the choice.

Status effects- heat beam runes, just like single wild infusions, slightly higher cooldown but fine for purpose until relentless pursuit comes along.