I’ve had some issues with the way Shade was balanced in 2.0 and I’d like to bring them up so they can be reevaluated.
In 2.0 Shade had Infiltrate reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, meanwhile Ranger Veteran’s Disengage is still 10 seconds (and from a quick look over the 2.0 notes invisibility for other classes was not adjusted). This doesn’t make sense, why was this change specifically targeted at Shade?
Shade also had Cloak of Mists remove her damage bonus from infiltrate, this makes the talent a non-starter IMO. What Shade is going to give up their bread and butter damage multiplier for a reduced cooldown on 5 seconds of stealth?
Shadowstep is extremely lacking, there is nothing there that makes me want to take it over Cloak of Pain. It should be swapped with Vanish, or reworked to make it more appealing.
Combined these changes force you to pick Cloak of Pain to simply get yourself somewhere near pre-2.0 Shade. I think the talent changes were meant to kill decanter/CDR builds where you could eviscerate bosses on Champion or lower. But the end result is that they seem pretty slapdash and don’t make a whole lot of sense to me taken together, though I can see some logic in them independent of each other. Fatshark, please reevaluate these decisions as I think they may have just been ideas piled onto each other during the WoM beta without regard for how they would synergize.
Forgive me; I didn’t realize you’d made a Feedback topic; don’t feel the need to reply to my other post if you’d not like to
EDIT: So sorry for the wall of text… good lord, I let myself go with this one.
Shade, pre-2.0, was a freight-train that just so happened to have pointy bits. She didn’t just remove all of the Elites in the game single-handed with her Infiltrate, she could drop a boss in 10 seconds or less or your money-back (given circumstances, sure, but they were common circumstances: Potion of Concentration + Bomb w/ Shrapnel isn’t exactly unlikely).
Even on Legend, she would mulch anything that came her way (with the exception of a Bile-Troll, who basically had a predetermined Time-to-Kill). As far as Careers go, she was top-3 for clearing the most difficult runs for her simple ability to remove anything that wasn’t a trash-mob.
Comparing her directly to Ranger Veteran isn’t particularly fair given that he can’t fulfill the same niche. Moreover, her stealth is (at a numbers glance) statistically better.
At a whopping 60 second cooldown (42 with CDR talent), minus any CDR from other items or Rat-Stabbing bonanzas, Infiltrate is vastly superior to the 120 second cooldown of the Ranger-Veteran’s Disengage (84 seconds with CDR talent)
Inflitrate doesn’t require a talent to leave an area
Infiltrate, pre-2.0, did a minimum of 1000% damage when hitting someone from stealth (with a talent , that’s 10 seconds of 1000% damage arrows) compared to Ranger Veteran’s 50%. I’m unsure of what the values are post-2.0
In short: I don’t think Shade can reasonably be compared to another stealthing character to the others. Her pre-2.0 version was overpowered and should not be replicated, at least IMHO
On the other hand, I don’t deny your analysis of the new top-tier talents for Shade other than that I love Shadowstep. I think it adds so much to her ult because when I’m fighting I’m often in the thick of it when I pop Infiltrate; sometimes I’ll catch a smack or two to the face even after stealth because attacks were already en-route to my location. The teleport has entirely remedied that issue
Cloak of Pain is just weird and I don’t get much from it, so I sorta get your vibe there. I find Cloak of Mists to be more niche: other than to guarantee a few backstabs, I think that CoM is designed to make her into an anti-trash character instead of an anti-Elite.
Just realised that was a bug report thread I responded to before so moving my comment here:
Honestly if you think Shade is too weak now it’s hard to imagine you’ve actually played her since 2.0.
You know what other characters with an invisible Ult don’t get? Auto crits out of Ult (a few seconds of them no less), the ability to re-engage stealth through normal combat, or anywhere near the insane damage output Shade gets from hers. Even with 5 seconds Shade’s Ult is the strongest of the invis ults by a mile.
10 seconds is waaaaaayyyyyyy too long for Shade to be stealthed. 5 is extremely reasonable for the value she can get out of it.
Her Ult talent choice row do kinda suck mostly just because only one of them ever seems to get picked.
I agree, but the puzzling thing is that her stealth damage isn’t tied to her stealth duration so why mess with it?
It’s not entirely fair, but it’s the best point of comparison we have. Both are 10 seconds, RV can augment it with talents to actually make it better than infiltrate (ignoring the damage bonus or assuming you took Cloak of Mists) as RV doesn’t drop stealth during attacks, making it more of a horde clear and general utility when you take boss melting out of the equation.
For some reference it takes ~2 seconds to cross from where you drop the Disengage smoke bomb to the edge of the invisibility smoke in my entirely unscientific dwarven science experiments in the keep. That’s a diameter of ~4 seconds, the new Shade could traverse that entire distance and go one more second before dropping stealth now, so while she doesn’t require a talent to leave her “area” she is nearly as limited as the RV without the talent.
Shade pre-2.0 was about as balanced as Zealot or Huntsman and if you played her perfectly in the dodge meta there was no reason to ever pick Handmaiden. Her damage needed to be toned down, and I know decanter was too good for her and I’m certain that’s the reason behind Cloak of Mists removing the damage bonus.
I’m glad I’m not the only that thinks the final talent row is a little wonky, it really feels like it was made by committee. Like changes to her talents and changes to infiltrate were made independent of each other and then all rolled together into 2.0.
Where I mained her for a long time, I haven’t played her in nearly three weeks now. The original 2.0 combat was really unbalanced to dual weapons, which only exacerbated the problems I saw out of the gate but now that the dust is settling there are still some glaring issues I hope FS can recognize and resolve.
Do you mind elaborating on this? In particular, why you’ve chosen not to play her. Like, the dual weapons being overpowered/underpowered? Specifics sort of thing.
I find it really interesting seeing people’s opinions and experiences with these things. You’re the first person I’ve seen who has said they use that talent(mind you, I haven’t gotten the chance to see a lot of different Shade players). It’s important to note that Cloak of Pain’s second stealth and Cloak of Mists do offer a 100% crit chance despite not having the infiltrate damage. It can be useful against man-sized enemies or for other various reasons.
When you would get hit when stealthing, does holding block not work reliably enough to save you from a random hit aimed at an ally? Or is Shadowstep(for you) for other things like gas and general mobility?
Ranger Veteran gets to melee without being revealed for 10 seconds, Huntman gets a 1.5x damage bonus for 6 seconds on all attacks and Shade gets a single guaranteed crit, not sure where you’re getting “a few seconds of them” my testing in the keep doesn’t show an increased crit rate post-Infiltrate do you have a source on that?
RV has a talent to reload and reduce their cooldown, and everyone has resourceful combatant available to them. Bringing it down to 5 seconds is an absolutely gut to the utility of Infiltrate.
Well I think we’re starting to see a theme here, I’d probably be more satisfied with these changes if the talents provided something useful to offset them.
She lost her utility. You have a 5 second stealth, realistically a 4.5 and then another 5 if you take Cloak of Pain and whack something at the last minute to extend it, but that means you need to have enemies around and not be engaged in something else. You can’t stealth, pick up a team mate and heal them. You can’t spin a stone on Athel Yenlui nearly as effectively at 5 seconds as you can at 10 (each rotation is roughly 15 seconds). You can’t stealth and wait out a special you can hear but not see in a horde. Often you can’t even stealth and make it to archers in time to kill them with 5 seconds during a horde.
I know what you mean. Usually with allies I’ll have to stealth when I’m starting to revive or really close and then hit/shoot an enemy to extend the stealth if I want to do more. If I’m trying to travel a distance I’ll fire a shot into an enemy while running to get that extension on the stealth. My biggest beef has been with Cloak of Mists. It has 45% CDR instead of the old 30% but it takes away the infiltrate damage. I mean, you get it back pretty fast if you do 45%+10%, but still.
As for Shadowstep, I had found it annoying because it instantly forces a dash every time. If it did something more, I’d be cool with it. Like having the option to dash(by pressing F again) in addition to some other small bonus. I do miss Shadowhunter(can shoot while stealthed).
The strength of shade’s stealth has never been tied to duration, it’s always been about the insane damage she can pull off with a backstab. I think right now she’s in a great spot. Idk any other class aside from maybe BH that can pull off that level of damage
This is what doesn’t make sense to me, they nerfed her damage in what I will as a decanter/CDR Shade begrudgingly call a “smart way” with the removal of the damage bonus off the CDR talent. But then they went a step further and nerfed her utility in a really heavy-handed kind of way, and gave virtually nothing in the talents (except arguable CoP) to fix that. Why do that? Stealth duration does not tie into her damage issues in any way I can see.
It’s like two people were told to reduce Shade’s power, one took it by reducing her burst damage, the other did it by reducing her utility. But then they applied both of them.
Cloak of Mists is kind of interesting to me. While it seems to give up a big point from the Career, it also opens up a couple of new setups. It’s the way to sensibly play Shade with Glaive or Axe (or 1-H Sword for that matter). The problem with those weapons was that they didn’t interact with infiltrate well and thus were very suboptimal picks. Now they can be used effectively, even if it changes the Shade’s style (and role, to an extent) very heavily. Combine with Vanish, and you get a Shade that can stealth almost constantly, and backstab just about everything.
To me, it changes the focus of the career from Infiltrate’s normal single high-damage hits to backstabbing, especially together with Vanish. I takes some getting used to, but it works.
FS should really bring the firing without breaking stealth talent back and extend the ult back to 10 seconds. I quite like mag dumping into the bosses with the crossbow, before backstabbing them. Plus the extra duration let you pick up and heal teammates relatively safely, so having that utility back is my logic with that.
Shade was far too strong before. With power stacking and using barrage with shrapnel on bombs, you could actually 1 shot a boss. As in 1 shot kill it. That is broken.
She is still extremely powerful. Take dual daggers, throw crit power on them and the charm, take the 50% crit power talent. Congrats, you can now hit longbow damage on a melee weapon. Combine this with her ULT giving unlimited crits on the secondary stealth and you got your overpowered bit back. You can wipe nearly an entire patrol solo. You can still ofc use a purple pot and nuke a boss.
Recently picked up Shade after pinging 35, after all the complaints of nerfs and otherwise I was absolutely blown away by how good she is, with dual daggers even. You are right about her having jank talents, after completely massacring the lords I’m having a hard time seeing any reason to go with her oddball anti-horde build.
Right, and what does any of that have to do with stealth duration? This is the part that makes no sense, she needed her damage reigned in not her utility.
Because 10 seconds was a huge amount of time do almost anything, from both reviving and healing your friends, to running far away from any enemies, to running across a field and line up a shot, to just waiting for another activation to come up while no enemies reacted in any way. By limiting the time we have to do these things, FS has limited the potential output of Shade as the skill needs somewhat more tactical use now. Another option would’ve been to directly hit the damage her Infiltrate strike does, which would’ve hit the whole thing much more severely, and would’ve very much limited her usefulness.
If you read my post you’ll see the ended up doing both, by removing the Infiltrate damage bonus from the CDR talent you’ve effectively nerfed her burst damage since you can no longer stack CDR with decanter and brutalize bosses via repeated Infiltrate backstabs.
If 10 seconds is too long for shade why is Ranger Veteran unaffected?
The fact that you’re comparing RV ULT and Shades ULT is extremely worrying. If you can’t see which one is far more powerful, then I suppose theirs zero point in even discussing balance based around it.
Ranged Veteran ULT is absolute garbage compared with the Shade one. I mean c’mon, the best thing you can do with RV ULT is to use a bomb twice. If his ULT was under 10 secs i’d lost any little respect of Ranged Veteran i actually have.
