reaver/shadowblade!

[comrade raoul]

I've been playing around (though not that seriously) with a sort of reaver/shadowblade combo (http://te4.org/characters/49523/tome/7d ... 61ccad48c0) on the grounds that:

(1) Corrupted Strength and Shadowstep would be awesome together.
(2) And Ambuscade and Dark Portal would be hilarious.
(3) As would Meta on top of everything else.

Post-midgame, I still like the idea, and the character is fun to play, but am not totally happy with my current implementation. My impressions:

--) My melee damage thus far has been comparatively modest (despite having broken down and grabbed Blood-Edge from the item vault halfway through a depressingly vault-free Dreadfell run), partly due to accuracy issues that Finer Energy Manipulations somewhat predictably failed to fix. Perhaps this wouldn't have been true if I abused shortstaves, but I didn't find any so the temptation never arose.

--) I took Meta mainly in order to make my diseases land more reliably (with Spellcraft), and to mitigate cooldown. I'm now thinking I should've spent the category point on being a Shalore instead; Timeless would have been close to as good for mitigating cooldowns, since most of this character's aren't that long to begin with, and I could have really used the speed and crit boosts. But it's possible that I just haven't been taking advantage of Metaflow enough.

--) This is the first time I've tried the Light/Aegis/Fungus/Corrupted Strength combo on an adventurer, and it really is awfully powerful. (My one death, to the Master, was from really sloppy play.) However, it works best with a slower, tankier approach, whereas Ambuscade favors burst damage. Maybe having all three defensive trees was overkill.

Any thoughts on what I should've changed?

[stinkstink]

If I really wanted to abuse Ambuscade, I'd go Shalore and swap out Plague, Meta and Finer Energy for Nightfall, Temporal Combat, and either Augmented Mobility (psi slot and mobility during ambuscade) or Battle Tactics(GWF hits are affected by staff accuracy bonuses and become completely insane.) You're pumping STR but not really getting a lot out of it besides melee damage, I think vaulting over some shortstaves and putting those stat points into Dexterity for GWF would give you more damage. Invigorate's stamina regen could also be handy for keeping True Grit up. Getting Stealth for Shadowstrike might be an option as well, to take advantage of Ambuscade's permastealth.