Yeah, it’s kind of annoying being boss kill and getting tunneled by the bosses.
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I agree that she is rather squishy. The way I try to counter that is by using the dual daggers. I built for max crit chance and attack speed with an extra shield worth of stamina on a trinket. Dual daggers have a large number of dodges and blocking should save you from the few attacks that might’ve hit you. With the crit and attack speed, killing the elites is no problem as long as I can get behind them. I know many people don’t use the daggers, but with them I could see her working as is if she just had reduced threat. I do agree that the turnout isn’t really worth the risk , but I usually only play with friends so I don’t have to worry about teammates who might be salty towards me for playing shade. I have fun playing shade and I can see her being a much more useful pick if she just had a lower target priority than other classes (that way you wouldn’t be targeted as much if you had other teammates around, but you would get punished for going off on your own). Either way, I’ll make her work for the time being and see what changes as we go on.
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Yes, I’d also love it if stealth actually correctly broke aggro of enemies. I get it when enemies are swinging as you use stealth, but when it’s one little slave rat targets you after you’ve already been in stealth for like 3+ seconds and hits you for a quarter of your health that I get a little annoyed.
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Noticed that too. Little things like not being focused so much could make a huge difference to Shade that wouldn’t need damage increases or buffs like that to make it easier for newer or less skilled players. The playstyle atm really takes game knowledge and very good positioning during almost every fight.
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Try always staying behind any of your friends while they melee too. I avoid damage for entire matches doing that. Doing it to Kruber who’s using Halberd turns them into a killing machine. Never be alone!
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Exactly, her passive to one hit kill man sized enemies on crits is really powerful if you can make use of it. It feels especially good against shielded sv considering you can have your team all attacking it and have it take longer than it would to kill a CW. I think shes fine as is, just give her less aggro and I’ll be happy, and I’m sure many other shade players would be happy with this as well.
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Yup, she is good at dealing with those singled out enemies who somehow always end up in the middle of your team lol.
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Love the ideas in here, really hoping Shade gets some dev love soon.
Heck, even just reducing the cooldown of her ult (make it comparable to Handmaiden dash) and maybe reduce the duration to 5seconds or so to balance would be great.
I’d completely scrap backstab oriented playstyle and make her poison focused. Make dual daggers only for her and rework them ( they already poison on normal hits but it’s very meaningless ) and maybe give her hagbane interactions.
In my experience, ult doesn’t break aggro only when the enemy attacking you has no other choice but to keep attacking you, ie nowhere to move. Same goes for Bardin.
It’s still wonky and shouldn’t be that way. Any attack animation against shade should insta-cancel the moment she turns invisble.
I absolutely love the idea to give her something to do with poison.
I don’t agree with the aggro loss suggestions. They just don’t fit well in this game. Happily backstab stuff while nothing is attacking you? There’s nothing challenging in that. Giving more ways for tanking classes to draw aggro and taking advantage of that for more backstabs sounds better to me.
Maybe they could replace the 15 sec duration on 25lvl talent with another similar to handmaiden’s, that gives you 3 seconds perception loss after becoming visible. But then the ultimate goes from high risk-high reward to no risk-high reward and maybe makes handmaiden feel less viable
The more I’ve played her, the more the backstab itself feels a wrong tool indeed. Make her into a bursty anti elite/boss melee character and stick to this. Backstabbing is akward and only encourage very dangerous positionning in a game where the players are normally super outnumbered.
I’ve suggested in the other shade thread the following :
Make the ult shorter, but attacks don’t break the stealth, - or only shorten it .
Drop the backstab passive and keep it only to a talent. Instead give her the following passive : each syncrhonized block gives her a critical hit on her next attack. Take the dodge passive from Maiden and give it to her, it fits her more imho. (Maiden could get a more passive protection instead)
I think the problem with backstab is players think they need to backstab EVERYTHING, trash mobs included, which just isn’t practical or needed. You can stab them in the face and kill them plenty fast. Backstabs are for bosses and elites. Easy to line up when you’re stealthed or they are agro on a teammate, and still possible to line up with skill if they’re agro on you by side dodging around them when they do a heavy attack.
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I share your view of shade being a melee burst character on single targets, that’s why I propose this passive. It would also make any weapon besides glaive more viable to use.
As for backstab, I think it’s a nice and unique feature that encourages skillful play, the way it synergises with said passive makes it even more rewarding.
The passive you suggest feels more brawly and would suit other characters like WHC or merc kruber more than shade. I feel like the dodge passive is a nice trade, though.
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Tha backstab is indeed quite unique but currently it really does only apply to bosses. Even attacking annoying elites is too much of a trade-off. If you can go behind the maulers/CW/shielded SV you’re ending up both very vulnerable to being attacked in the back yourself - with the pesky habits of foes to sneak behind players - , and you’re also potentially into the line of fire of your ranged teamates and not covering their own backs, having a player wander a bit alone like this is really dangerous.
There are situations where this can be done safely, but in almost all of them, other characters can attack as well and often more quickly. So unfortunately, I’d wager that any burst damage the shade could perform really ought to be done from the front because of the nature of combat. Playing with the aggro mechanism could be interesting but would risk making things more confusing both for the shade and other players. Not knowing when an opponent is susceptible to suddently attack you instead of a teammate is quite a liability.
About the passive I’ve suggested, it’s just one among many possibilities to give her higher damage. A “dumber” but right to the point passive would be increased damage against single targets in general.
What I dont like current Shade is her weapon choice and how backstab work
IMO, Shade should use light/dual weapon but right now I feels glaive is the best choice for Shade due to high damage charge attack to both normal and armored enemy even it a bit hard to execute but much more reward than other weapons
Dual daggers should be her main weapon but with low base damage make it isnt that good even you can backstab an enemy and low stagger power make it less appeal to use in legend
IMHO, I want FS to buff some other Kerlilian weapon like dual swords or dual daggers to perfrom well in legend. Now I mostly see ppl use only glaive and spear (but now I like to use 1h sword on waystalker in legend cuz it perfrom well with hagbane)
Or change shade’s passive into sneak attack instaed. Make enemy that doesnt has aggro on Kerlilian take additional fix damage when damaged by her.
So fast weapon like dual daggers gonna deals more damage when shade using it and her repeater xbow gonna deals tons of damage to boss like it suspose to be
meh only needs more ammo in the crossbow. more like 15/30 ammo not 15/15 like now its not enough.
Add a bit of Armor Penetration on Daggers if used by Shade.
Patch notes:
“Increased the damage on Dual Daggers and Dual Swords heavy stab attacks to 0.25 damage, up from 0.2 and increased their armor penetration to 0.5, up from 0.25.”
But now they do the same damage or less than Glaives 2nd power attack with ult.