Learning to play the Shadow Blade

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Stuns are easily cured by a physical wild. Which everyone starts with (except silly Shalore, and undead who can't use them.) Did you get rid of yours?

[jam3]

I have it (not upgraded). It might have been a 'duh' death, because while I usually use it at the beginning of the fight it very likely was no longer on cooldown by that point? Except Stuns hurt cooldowns.

Maybe I shouldn't use it at the beginning of fights? I have liked the 17% (14%?) physical resist.

[morganp]

I've always felt the stun-removing property far more important than the damage-mitigating property. By the time you're stunned, both properties of the infusion will help, but if you start the fight with it, well... you've already spent your only debuff remover.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Agreed. It's best to keep your wilds for debuff removal, unless you can get a better method (and even then, probably still better to keep them for debuff removal.)

[Atarlost]

You should never replace your starting wild. It has the lowest possible duration and only removes physical. The most common death sentence effects are stun-likes or pin-likes or silence. All the stun-likes are physical. I think there's one mental pin-like and two physical pin-likes and one magical strength debuff that can act as a pin if you're near your load limit. Silence is mental. You do not use your primary physical infusion for anything but these unless you're "safe" and dying of poison or disease because if you do it might be on cooldown when you really need it.

I've never gotten anywhere with any rogue subclass, but if stealth is functional you can probably use it to last out silence since it's usually short duration. That means your second wild should also be physical, either phys/ment or phys/magi. If you're not playing roguelike probably phys/ment.

A wild inscription will never be forced onto cooldown, but your cooldown won't reduce when stunned.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Stealth is functional, but iffy in the early game. Late game, when you cap cunning, max stealth, and then get unseen actions (also maxxed) you can be damn near invulnerable. You might read up on some of the rogue permastealth builds. (Effectively, you aim for maxxed stealth and undetection chance, and more importantly, maxxed chance of not breaking stealth when you attack, courtesy of unseen actions.) I'm not sure how easy applying that to a shadowblade would be, but it's possible for rogues to get unseen actions up to 100% to not break stealth. Yes, that's 100% chance to make shadowstrike crits as well. And keep making them, since you don't break stealth.

[Atarlost]

Stealth is functional, but iffy in the early game. Late game, when you cap cunning, max stealth, and then get unseen actions (also maxxed) you can be damn near invulnerable. You might read up on some of the rogue permastealth builds. (Effectively, you aim for maxxed stealth and undetection chance, and more importantly, maxxed chance of not breaking stealth when you attack, courtesy of unseen actions.) I'm not sure how easy applying that to a shadowblade would be, but it's possible for rogues to get unseen actions up to 100% to not break stealth. Yes, that's 100% chance to make shadowstrike crits as well. And keep making them, since you don't break stealth.

What you need if you're silenced is HiPS, not unseen actions. That should be possible much earlier I think.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

T%his is also true. I was making the argument for the long term viability of stealth, not so much as a cure for the single situation. However, Hide in Plain Sight doesn't have a perfect success rate. It can almost be riskier to use to try and run then teleporting blindly on Vor Armory 2. Though ideally, it can help KEEP you from getting to situations that bad.

[Atarlost]

That means you probably need a pure mental infusion for clearing silence as well as a pure physical for stuns. You certainly need a manasurge on a shadowblade. That doesn't leave many slots for healing.

[jam3]

Does Wintertide + Physical Wild cover me?

I just discovered that I did alternate Maze and am now on alternate Old Forest, I think I will leave and do something easier.

When should I save Dearth?

Edit:

I just tried that, Wintertide works against mental silence.

Currently I have Heal, Regen, Manasurge, Physical Wild. I just got a nice Shield, is it better than Heal or Regen? Currently I pop Regen at the beginning of a fight and during a fight to keep up my HP and use Heal for when my life gets low. I also have seen Movement ones, which look nice.

I think I have tons of places to put Class Points, and so won't open Stealth at 20 (hopefully I get an Anthoril, but maybe I should just give up and Open Divination).

[jam3]

Got to level 3 of Daikara and level 4 of Old Forest. Had to escape both (mutliple times) due to bosses (in Daikara's case, Harkor'Zun).

I am 19, what should I do before I go in and make another try? I sort of think that I should take an inscription at 20 (Shield) and that should be good enough with a bit of luck. Not certain where I should go to get to 20.

My escorts have been 3 Warriors and 1 Thief. Which is unfortunate, I think Anthoril escort is one of the best things you can get from the RNG. I failed one of the warriors when he ran by a group of wolves to a group of dragon hatchlings and I couldn't defend both directions at once.

[jam3]

And died.

Ambush, I was doing awesome, I took out a alchemist so quickly. Then I was taken to fearscape. I shadowstepped, didn't have any stamina so just clicked to attack, and then was dead.

I think I should have used boots or evasion or displacement? I could have also started my regen, but my strategy has been do max damage (couldn't use flurry in this case due to lack of stamina) to end the fearscape as fast as possible.

I hit for ~100 damage.

He hit for 174 and 259 (and additionally had the fearscape attacks which did ~50 damage or whatever per turn).

I had a nice juggernaught ish gloves too, which I wasn't using.

Not sure if I am up for trying again right now, I feel I have other things to do. I do like the shadow blade class, I really feel like they are lacking stamina though (like I should be putting points in will).

is this permanent?
http://te4.org/characters/66232/tome/cd ... c189d8fbfa

[sofocles]

The way i see it there are two viable ways to go with a shadowblade

Cunning- stealth. Already discussed, but what you forget is that it doesnt matter if its 100% chance , but on the mobs ability to see inv. Very high lvl mobs can make you break stealth no matter how high ur stealth is. (discussed many times on other guides.... please read). This means that on very high lvl mobs you will still need to attack , escape, hide, attack again. Im not sure if stealth is a viable option on infinite dungeon for example.

the other viable option i see is cunning ambush... i havent tried it though but i heard it can be as powerful if not more than stealth build, plus, its different from a normal rogue.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Do you mean the character dump? Yes, that lasts until you manually wipe it from the site. (And there's not much reason to do so.)

Makes it handy to link that if you're posting a character build to get advice, rather than having to describe exactly what you have. Much easier for others to browse. Old ones are useful to look back and see what you did that was successful, and what you did that wasn't.

[Furey]

Is there some way to get unstunned as a Cormac SB?

Also, I am thinking about taking Armor Training 1 and putting in 3 in Strength to do so so I can use the Storm Bringer's Gauntlets. Good idea?

1. Wild infusion for stuns is your only choice as a cornac.

2. Armor training 1 is totally worth it. Many excellent gauntlets and such that require it.

If you are finding early game challenging, don't wield daggers. I usually grab the biggest two hander i can find, skip the two weapon tree for a while, and just rush my way to victory. Get phase door to 5 ASAP.

If you are Cornac, open the temporal tree ASAP and get the time shield. It is broken how good it is.

Rush-> Stun > Flurry > Teleport away, heal, repeat. Don't try to slug it out, you will die early, and often.