Playing Shade ATM with this build: Shade still useless
Really enjoyable. You get more stagger than Waywatcher and more damage vs bosses.
Your hyperbole helps no one. I just played a lot of both champ and legend, and my daggers stagger everything short of a Chaos Warrior just fine. Yes they take more hits, and you can’t stagger the bigger enemies while they’re doing a big attack like overhead swing, but… that’s what dodging is for? It’s dual daggers, you need to be light on your feet and not just sit there hoping that spamming left click will stun-lock everything.
4 Likes
As an elf player I also feel like sharing my thoughts here.
Gear im running legend with is as follows:
Dual swords +5%CC, +5%IAS & SS trait.
Longbow +8,5%dmg vs armored, +4%CC & Scrounger (orange so no max stats).
Necklace +20%HP, +2 Stamina (dont know what to go for instead stamina), HT trait.
Charm +5%IAS, +10%dmg vs monsters, Decanter trait.
Trinket +5%CC, +33%CR, Shrapnel trait (can swap first stats on move speed etc depending team comp).
Now, I think swords are almost as good as in VT1, but I’m gonna ditch them if/when I get red SnD. I like them better.
Longbow should do much more dmg to bosses/minibosses and even CWs with charged headshots. Would make it feel more rewarding to have skills to land those headshots. I can take down specials etc, and it’s in a good place with that. Just lacks a punch on those bigger enemies that your team might struggle against when fighting hordes/bosses at the same time.
Ultimate skill is weak af. Can’t kill stuff reliably. Sometimes massive chains and sometimes barely 1-2 SVs… Needs to get better to be viable like other ranged classes ults.
I can run legend and be useful for my team with this setup no problem, but skill should get rewarded at some point with ranged weapons.
Someone mentioned dual swords slowing down after 2 charged attacks in a row and I can confirm. Would like to hear FS about this and is this intentional. Given that on legend you need more than 2 to kill even SV and light attacks are a nogo vs armored.
Would love to use 2h sword and feel like i’m one of those legendary Swordmasters of Hoeth, but that weapon is so terrible. Again I don’t know what is FS logic behind it when they made that weapon to strike from downward angle to make it harder to decap stuff. Also canceling the attack queue is bugged. If I press mouse1 3x and in the middle of 2nd swing decide I need to go defensive, it still swings that 3rd time before getting to guard mode. Same goes when dropping guard. I release block and go for mouse1 swing, it does push/swipe and what ya know, I lost the opening I needed… Would like to get an answer to this also from FS.
Hagbane was a beast in VT1. It still feels great when it works, but sometimes arrows just go through enemies or gas clouds disappear and don’t do dmg. Idk what’s up with that.
Glaive 1st charged attack… Please get rid of it…
Spear was the 1st weapon I got hyped with, but that attack pattern is just meh, so it flew away long time ago.
I am by all means not the best player, but not the worst either. These are my observations so don’t take them as ultimate guide on whats good and what isnt.
Oh what a coincidence, just last night i started trying out dual swords+ longbow with a extremely similar setup for stats and traits.
And i agree on longbow charged shot being a bit weak, headshotting a stormvermin feels great but each shot takes so much time and both body and headshots feel unrewarding compared to shortbow.
I also find the F to be overnerfef and unreliable, sometimes it even fails to accurately hit a target that has been aimed in on and is glowing red.
I truly like hagbane against waves and big groups, even normal stormvermin…but i struggle on bosses and shields as well as high range or chaos warriors.
I think spear is alright but its anti armor is average and strange hitbox actually makes headshots difficult, can stand infront of a CW with the stab heavy and aim at the head and it fails more than it works for some reason.
And i wouldnt dare claim to be the best either, i am just salty seeing all those Sienna players easily beat me no matter how i try 
…Well not that the game is about that but still .<
Is this a serious post ?
1 Like
Vs bosses you dont charge attack, you spam light attack for the dot which stacks. All arrows into boss - F - all arrows into boss - melee.
From what i can tell, the poison doesnt actually stack anymore.
If i shoot 2 charged shots with no pause between a stormvermin wont die.
But if i pause until the ticking stops then it does…sometimes, or at least goes down to being easy to deal with in melee.
Nerf on nerf.
Are you sure about that? I thought I can kill a SV with 3 - 4 quick shots and ignoring it. Didnt play much elf since the big patch though.
For bosses the ratogre absolutely melts if I shoot all arrows with quickshots as fast as I can.
Before the big patch i could wipe stormvermin patrols and hordes with almost any weapon or bow of choice with the right setup, it was fairly easy.
People were even solo’ing legend and making video´s off it.
But back to hagbane, i have no idea if its a bug or not but i really am quite sure,the poison really doesnt seem to stack anymore.
Otherwise? Why would some enemies die when there are delays between the shots and survive when there are none?
if only it works. Because the only stealth really working is the one of the handmaiden. Shade, ranger and huntsman stealths doesnt alwways work as intended. If you have a mob attacking you, you will have to deal with his attack and dodge/parry him before considering you really stealthed. Otherwise you will get hit.
I’ve played over 100 levels of elf and 1.0.5 made glaive brokenly good. Elf weapon balance in 1.0.5 beta was really really good which is why i played so much of it. Daggers, spear and glaive all had their strong points and even S n D was ok. The cleave and stagger increase on legend made glaive brokenly good. Hordes should be its weakness but by increasing cleave by 1.5 it can now handle hordes alone with uncontested clearspeed (in beta glaive could cleave 4 fanatics, on live, 6 fanatics).
Even b4 patch I think elf had good and balanced melee weapons compared to other characters but after the patch glaive, with elfs toolkit (more dodge distance / stamina regen), is arguably even better than halberd or falchion. I think that only slayer outclasses glaive in melee and halberd mercenary is a close third.
The best builds for elf atm, imo:
HM talents - 3 / 2 / 2 or 3 / 2 / 1
Glaive - AS / Crit + swift slaying (can be parry or resourceful combatant aswell)
Longbow - Crit / Chaos dmg + Conservative shooter
Neck - Stam / health - Boon
Charm - AS / Chaos dmg + pot dura
Trinket - Curs resist / Crit + Dupe or Shrapnel
sidenotes:
-The 20% chaos dmg combined with 15% power from talent enables ur longbow to kill leeches with 2 light body shots
-swift slaying, I think, is the best for HM because she doesn’t needs any more defense in her kit
-stamina regen talent gives more dps if you can play without 20% dodge distance
Shade talents - 1 or 3 / 3 / 3 / 2 / 2
Glaive - AS / Crit + resourceful combatant
Repeater - Crit / Skaven dmg + Scrounger or Longbow - Crit / Chaos dmg + Conserv shooter
Rest identical to HM
sidenotes:
-10% skaven dmg + 15% power from grim makes 3 bolts kill a stormvermin with body shots.
-stamina regen talent gives more dps if you can play without 20% dodge distance
-longbow better for true solo
-30% cdr on ult is a decent option for more boss dmg and faster ults for ambients but shadowhunter can be a gamesaver because you can get into positions ur teammates can’t to shoot down specials and even reposition after, also during hordes ur special will recharge in around 10 seconds while meleeing so CDR is useless.
I haven’t played waystalker nearly as much as HM and Shade so I don’t claim to know optimal builds for her but I think she also has more choices for optimal loadouts and might be the only career where glaive isn’t always the best option because she doesn’t get any survivability from talents or special. I have completed true solos for shade and HM with those builds (waystalker work in progress) and played countless of hours of pubs and 4stack with them.
1 Like
One person was making solo run videos. The rest were poor attempts and speedruns. Nobody I’ve played with is that good.
Glaive is alright but don’t compare it to Halberd lol. It has unmatched headshot multpliers, hidden behind a weak, average AP charged attack.
Not sure how you figure it staggers well, that’s not my experience. it certainly has no chance versus shield vermin unless you are totally uninterrupted
Glaive is the best guys, that’s a no brainer there for anyone who plays Legend.
All of the other weapons can work if you’re good enough, nothing comes close to the glaive though, damage, stagger, cleave, armor penetration and how easy it is to use in every situation.
errrr… no.
it stacks, and is the main strength of the hagbane.
the hagbane is a really reliable weapon in terms of handling to me.
for v1.05 with the power nerfs, it takes 2 heavy direct hit arrows to kill a packmaster, 3 arrows for a gasrat, 3 for firerat/gatling/SV, etc etc. the damage it does is extremely constant.
the problem is that, most people shoot the bow at the enemy, don’t see things die, and keep shooting. it’s a fire and forget bow, u pump 3 arrows into a firerat then turn around to deal with other stuff, it will die in 2 seconds, during which u could be pumping another special or thinning a horde out.
the usage of the hagbane is also not well understood. i shall outline it here:
- on unarmored targets, light attacking applies a stacking poison. you can pump 3 arrows quickly into a gasrat and then focus on other stuff.
- on armored targets, the poison only takes into effect if you penetrate the armor, so you need to heavy shot SV types.
- the poison explosion on heavy strike NO LONGER penetrates shields like it used to in early beta, you need a way to inject them from the back or when their block is broken.
- the shots on hagbane has no penetration apart from direct armor penetration. the shot will explode on the first slaverat in an oncoming horde, so to maximise it’s potential you gotta aim it such that the center of the explosion hits a dense concentration of mobs.
- a heavy attacks explosion will stun and inject non-shield armored targets, altho the damage is lower than a direct injection. you can basically CC stunlock and kill most of a SV patrol just with this bow by spamming heavy attacks.
- when your party is surrounded with mobs, and wipe is imminent, spamming this bow can clear a path for your party very well, at the cost of friendly fire. good trade off for an emergency.
1 Like
Is that for legend? Because on legend you need 2 direct charged hits with a longbow to kill packmaster.
yes, try it out, shoot two hagbane arrows at a packmaster and wait it out to see if it dies from the dot damage alone.
in the previous patch, it was only 1 arrow
Sounds good, doesnt work
for pub 
Why I think glaive is better than halberd is because it has long dodge distance on shade and HM so you can solo situations that halberd couldn’t, for example 4-5 maulers + multiple cws can get bad with the low dodge halberd has. Also for shield SVs elf’s every special is made to deal with those, HM is the best being able to kill one during stealth every 20sec (or less if you take dmg on purpose). If you don’t have ur active up however, spamming push stab is a great way to open shielders up.