Hi guys, i’m really interested into play Kerillian Shade.
Can You give me some tips?
How backstab works?
And tell me which is your favorite talents setup
Thx!
Backstab is actually pretty hard to pull of in straight forward engagement, so expect to have about 10% of hits to be in the back, maybe 20 if you’re lucky. It is best against boses and big single-enteties like chaos warriors and plage bearers, since they tend to be slow to turn around and often focus one character, allowing you to flank them. Movement speed and dodges are key to flanking, so I find those talents to sinergise well with her main passive, and they are great as just standalone talents. You can pull it off against horde, if you stay to the side of your formation, and, when numbers come in against center of your party, you can try and surround them, using that extra move speeed. Also, if you want to backsab, I suggest faster weapons. But,you can just take spear and do extremely well with dodges, just keep your distance. For now, halberd and spear are really good, allowing you to do a lot of damage while not taking any of it back.
It is a fun playstyle, and you can pull that of with a bit of practice, but I wouldn’t suggest it as a starter. If you’re not super confident, give up backstabing everything, just try to hit boses and warriors. Also, you can oneshot CW with her active, pretty worth it in my opinion.
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You are THE boss and elite killer.
Daggers have faster light and strong attacks in addition to double critchance with strong attacks, since you use both weapons, which means killing any mansized special with a crit attack is easier, downside is, they have next to no horde clearing, since attacks are mostly single target and you get less F ability damage out of them.
Glaive does more damage and has better horde clearing, the second strong attack move, due to its swing direction, is amazing for headshots, which allows you to still deal a lot of damage from the front if you are unable to get behind an enemy, obviously, its slower.
I dont use spear or sword/dagger combo, but cant say if they arent just as good.
As range weapon, I prefer something hard hitting, like the volley crossbow with legendary mod Barrage, due to the alternative fire, you will most likely kill any special up until and including champion diff if one of the three bolts is a headshot/crit, Longbow is fine aswell.
Like poplavok mentioned, Dash and Blockshove are key - 2-3 swings with daggers, 1-2 with glaive are best to get used to the weapons before you have do block/dodge, imo.
Her invisibility allows to both engage and disengage fairly easy, despite some shitty tracking enemies still tend to do after you vanish, you can revive teammates with ease with it though or get behind a ground level gunner/glob to get rid of them, if your team runs out of ammo.
You want to first backstab a boss until you aggro and then use F to lose aggro and get another strong attack in, maximizing your damage - thats the best case scenario though and most bosses will just come with a horde.
Because of your high boss damage, you will most likely get more aggro and you need to block/dodge more than other people in your run, aswell.
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So I’ve seen you on some other posts and noticed you play a lot of shade. I also play a lot of shade. Have you ever had your stealth disappear as soon as you activate? (I mean without attacking at all) I have had this happen a few times and it gets a little annoying as stealth is completely wasted. Also, does strong attacking in stealth do more than light attacks? I still haven’t tested this enough on bosses to know, but I can always one shot chaos warriors with strong or light so I don’t know if there is a difference.
Yes, its bugged, little you can do about it.
I wouldnt know, the dummies are sht, no need to sweet talk it, I always use strong attacks though since those do bigger numbers on them, because I just assume strongs do more with the multiply from F.
Really? I always get max damage from light attacks on dummies on stealth, but I don’t always get max from strong. Though it does seem like strong attacks do more to bosses than light.
Dunno what you mean with max damage, just tried it on dummies, light does less than the strong, Im using glaive though.
This is what I mean, First is strong, second is light. Light always hits that damage cap, whereas strong doesn’t always hit that. (With dual daggers)
Oh, well you use daggers dont you?
The strong attack DOES more damage, but since you stab with BOTH weapons at the same time you have to combine those numbers, with the light attack from daggers you hit only once with high damage.
Thats what I meant instakilling mansized enemies with dagger strong attack is so easy, because both attacks can crit.
Atleast… thats what I saw while using daggers.
Oh yeah, I didn’t take into account you hit with both on strong attack. That makes much more sense now lol. I really only ever use dual daggers and it’s nice that they gave them bleed damage.
Yeah I like to use daggers when I want to go fast and Im not Zealot, the strong attack is so fast and satisfying, other weapons should take notes …
I just wish they would show bleed and backstabs for training dummies. I want to find out of the bleed scales off the amount of damage you do, or if it’s a set amount. And I think you move faster just spamming light attacks than you do with strong attacks.
Indeed, thats why you use light for horde “clearing” while dancing/dodging around them and strong for bosses, since 2 strong attacks need es much time 2-3 light attacks, but do more damage and will get you aggro.
Also Im not sure but I thought only strong deal bleed?
And yes, dummies are sht, I really, really hope they fix that, cant even tell how much I benefit from the backstab radius talent.
Lights do give bleed, I’ve seen it multiple times on hitting gutters. I just don’t think it’s as strong of a bleed. I don’t even take the backstab radius talent because I can’t tell if it’s even worth it. The 50% damage increase is a nice choice until I know what it is though. I can definitely feel that on bosses.
Which talent, lv25, do you use?
Thx for The incredible amount of tips guys!
I use 30% cdr, in many situations the 15 seconds isn’t as useful because you usually aren’t in stealth for the full 10 seconds anyways. The ranged in stealth isn’t really worth it because of how much damage you can do by backstabbing more often. Though you could take the ranged in stealth and bring along hagsbane or something if you want to have a more wave clear based build.
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I played her a bit today, two handed sword + volley crossbow. The strong attack is a stab which I managed to use few times to backstab two Stormvermins with one stealth kill. It is a fun class to play, but handmaiden easily beats at versatility. The elf’s volley crossbow has much more accurate volley spread which allows you to kill multiple special enemies with one or two 3 bolt bursts.
As such use the active skill against high value targets, but be careful to not get cut away from others. I found the two handed sword light attack a great way to thin down the hord and the heavy for heavy type enemies, picking off specials. Also as always dodge and speed/dps are your friend.
I think they messed up with backstab bug time. In game 1 it has that super loud sound of bonecrack of some sort, that is really fun. I sometimes took backstab builds not because I thought it’s worth it, but just because I liked the sound 
A bit more serious, I miss sound indications, because often you’re not shure if you’re hitting back or not, especially when things are chaotic, or those stormvermin rotate superfast. I often can’t tell, if I did it right, so I don’t know, if I should try to get from behind better or it was good enough. And it’s reaaly hard to measure effectiveness of that extra flank talent.
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