Maining elf, 30lv with some extra hours at it. Usually playing Waystalker or Handmaiden. I tried Shade but found it wanting. A shame, since the idea of the career is cool as duck. So throwing in my observations and suggestions:
The issues:
1.) Aggroes don’t always break when stealthed, especially with lengthy boss attacks or attack combos.
2.) You only get one backstab with your ultimate, making it a relatively poor one-hit-skill.
3.) When in stealth, lumberfooting to the kill, you’re useless to the team in a potentially tough situation.
How to fix it:
1.) Make aggroes actually break, unless they are mid-swing. Attack comboes (some bosses do several-hit comboes) should break too, again unless mid-swing.
2.) Make stealth not to break unless the timer runs out.
3.) Give bonus stealth timer on special & elite kills.
4.) Tweak stealth timer, bonus timer and career skill cooldown with meticulous playtesting so it won’t get OP/permastealth.
5.) Tweak the damage bonus multiplier down, since now one can have several attacks.
6.) Give the Shade a speed boost and/or a short dash when going stealth.
7.) One more clip for the repeater crossbow (plz).
Hey, old HM player here, I moved on to Shade so I hope I can help
About the issues :
This is a bug that need to be fixed
You get TONS of bonus damage on that strike
I’m going to explain right after, but this says to me that you’re using it wrong
About the fixes :
Same as above, need to be fixed
2-5) The main point of stealth isn’t, weirdly, backstab. And that’s why people are getting it wrong. I mean, yeah sure stealth allow you to put a nice backstab. But the true point are Go through ennemy, and deal tons of damage. The first point allow you to get through a horde to save a grabbed ally, or kill a Globadier/Ratling/Blightstormer in an angle your mates can’t hit. The second allow you to melt boss health bar. Giving her multiple attack with bonus duration would turn shade into a patrol cleaner, which feels, in a way, even weirder cause you’re supposed to avoid them.
I’d love to see that added to the “Stealth last longer” trait. We need funnier trait anyway. But yeah, this would make “Ranged not breaking stealth” a more Boss focused, or going through horde to kill a special and coming back, and “Stealth makes you move faster and last longer” would turn it more into a RESCUE OUR ALLY button (or go for the rez when you’re alone after a wipe) xD
The weapon is kinda hard to balance cause it’s strong af. Imo we just need a more consistent ammo regen way, not just a trait that is almost mandatory if you’re going with the xbow
Agreed, I use stealth for bailing out some/all of my teammates from sticky situations way more than for melting bosses. I am glad they reduced the cooldown for stealth to use it more frequently, so that I can get in some good backstabs too - taking down a Chaos Warrior in one strike never gets old!
“2.) Make stealth not break unless the timer runs out. 3.) Give bonus stealth timer on special & elite kills.”
Oh my god this is the best Shade suggestion i’ve seen yet, the idea of going invis and being able to stay behind enemy’s would fix so many problems with Shades kit, this would of course require a damage reduction per back-stab but it sounds super fun! Great idea, really hope FatShark considers this.
Probably so, as I don’t main Shade. My point however, was not really to ask for advice on how to use the class (fortunately there’s plenty of advice on it in here or reddit) but to formulate suggestions to make Shade stand out as a more separate role from HM. A class that could make shortish, special-killing “melee dives” into the horde, and come out unscathed if timed skillfully enough.
I don’t want to give offence, but I’m a bit confused about what you mean by this. Can you please clarify.
Does not a Handmaiden do this faster/better though? Indeed although some other classes do these things decently, it’s very much the Handmaidens specialty as a utility/support subclass. In this respect the Shades ult is very useful indeed, but since Handmaiden can already do it quite well, it’s not really a “selling point” for Shade’s ult. More like an extra useful feature.
The xbow does insane dps to be sure, and it seems the devs tried to balance it with the small ammo amount. I suppose it’s all well and good that all elf classes are not insanely good at ranged combat (for HM too, is quite decent with +40% ammo cap talent and her insane mobility).
I like the buff they gave it as well. Feels way more useful now that it can actually be used in some more casual situations, and with concentration potion it’s very useful against bosses.
I still miss having more backstabbing capability per ult-use. It’s only one target and then it’s gone.
Still there are many cases where backstabbing a juicy target is just asking to get mauled by the surrounding foes. It’s not often you can be absolutely positive there won’t be anyone popping up into your own back.
Backstab is thematically right for the character but not a tool really fitting a game about handling crowds of enemies. Why should I want a teammate to go into a pack to slay a chaos warrior then finding herself surrounded? For forced ingress the slayer and knight are more brutal and give themselves time by knocking down foes. For ninja movement/help the HM is quicker and the ranger more reliable.
In addition, the stealth itself gives you a large visibility penalty and is certainly not a good way to move quickly around. It’s certainly simpler to try to tweak and stick to this existing mechanic, but currently the passive is encouraging players to take unwarranted risks. The active should be about giving burst damage - beyond a single attack, I think keeping it while doing melee is more thematic than keeping range - on a few important targets. That would a role quite distinct from slayer and fanatic.
Make the backstab a secondary talent/passive. It currently entices people to take risks and being annoyed when feeling they can’t use their character strengths in 95% of a given game.
Yeah sorry it was a bit confusing.
They is two point of stealth :
-Go through an horde to save an ally (HM does this quite good too, but if you fight in near a corner and your ally get grabbed, you can’t really dash to him). She differs from HM so in When yo use it. The HM is more like a short cd saving dash you can use even on decently bad situation, the Shade one is only for f* up situation, even if the cooldown helps her use it more often
-The second use is to delete Chaos Warrior or melt bosses ^^
