Hello. I recently tried dd shade and im enjoying it a lot. But I was wondering what talents I should run and what weapon you prefer for range. I’m only doing veteran right now and trying to get better (lvl 15). I would be grateful for any general tips for shade also . Thanks for your time
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Range just depends on what you find enjoyable. Which stats you take on your gear depend on what role you want to take. Boss killing? Elite killing? Bit of everything?
Crossbow:
- boss damage
- horde clear
- elite killing
- special killing
Hagbane:
- boss damage
- horde clear and cc
- weak against armour
- low ammo capacity
Longbow:
- accurate sniper
- high headshot damage
- good boss damage
- limited ammo capacity
Swift bow:
- horde clear
- low armour damage
- low boss damage
- faster charged shots
- good mobility
Talents with DD row by row:
2/3, attack speed is fine, but dodge distance would be optimal as DD has a short range and sometimes has to kite a lot.
1/3, depends on if your team is getting grims or not. If they are 3 is the best.
1/3, high backstab damage can benefit single target weapons greatly, while Bloodfletcher is good for ammo.
2,
1/2/3, cooldown reduction is my highest recommendation because you’ll do more boss damage with it than shooting from stealth. Shooting from stealth can work just fine though. Longer stealth could be gamebreaking, but most of the time it could be farely useless.
For stats on DD (11 mins: 30secs, onwards):
That also includes playstyle. Jsat is probably a lot more offensive than most Shades though. For a start I’d recommend pushing in to kill Elites and pulling out a bit. Dodge a lot during hordes and do 1-2 pushes to keep them CC’d. Use your teammates as barriers between you and big groups. Your main job as Dagger Shade is clearing larger enemies and bursting bosses down.
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Gold tip for daggers versus shieldvermin.
Make sure allies don’t infinite stagger them, then:
Charged attack, immediately push to break their block and follow with a charged attack to the head, either use ult with it to kill it, hope for a crit or quickly repeat till dead.
Doesn’t work if you have teammates blindly flailing at them however. Then you’re looking at two minutes of blocky goodness 
As for talents agree with kitten, in current build I use the cooldown on ult a mandatory with crit ult reduction on daggers and 8-10% bonus crit (4-5% on weapons and trinket)
Regarding ranged weapons, hagbane is good if you know how to handle it, but since bloodfletcher is broken I’d stick with longbow for now.
Hagbane can get you out of a bad situation and with barrage is decent on bosses. Mild team damage on charged shots however. And don’t bring it if you aren’t sure whether your team had enough sniping power without a longbow.
Edit: Sorry for all the edits but, tip for hagbane if you do use it, always save 2-3 emergency shots, never spam, one charged does wide aoe and clears a path if used properly. Plan your shots.
Thanks for the replies a lot of good info!
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Shade is a carreer that offers a surprising amount of variety given that at first glance, it comes of as a pure boss and elite killer. Kitten put it quite succeedly how to approach shade, even with DD you can make her a boss killer, an elite killer, something in between and you can even have somewhat of good melee CC, though not as good as with dual swords or SaD. I usually run her with SaD as to me, it combines the best of two worlds, you got the good melee CC of dual swords with your light, light (, light), block attack combo and the priority killing of DD with the second heavy (like with the glaive, you have to purposely miss the first charge and then hit full force with the second, something you don’t have to do with DD).
My personal recommendation would to always go for mobility since you are a very squishy melee class. With DD, you want to be able to get in and out of engagements, so more dodge range and movement speed are good investments since nothing is more frustrating than trying to get a backstab on a boss and you can’t reach it. Shade has almost equally high potential as handmaiden to become virtually untouchable (I have played a round recently with shade where literally the only damage I ever took was from friendly fire^^), what she lacks in additional dodge distance she can make up with her active, that is just very versatile. The lack of CC on DD can easily be countered by using your active on light attacks to add a little more punch to your cc, and since you can get your active up in almost no time with DD, resourceful combatant and cooldown reduction, you can spam it during hordes when things get haywire.
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Good post to which I’d like to add a note of caution with frequent use of ability during hordes and such; don’t break stealth right away, and make sure you block till it’s safe.
Sometimes mobs will either run right away and you attacking might leave you stranded in the middle of a horde, stuck. Or you might face repeated hits still aimed at you in stealth till the animations end. On the opposite end you have the chance that enemies will instantly turn around and hit you when you exit stealth so plot your exit trajectory and surroundings and make sure you know what is around you.
Currently stealth is very much weighted against players with how it works, enemies will finish their animations when you go in, and enemies will turn to you when you get out.
Thanks or the help!
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+1 for this! Hagbane is crazy powerful, but you gotta be intentional and accurate or else you waste ammo and then have no range. I generally save mine for bosses and emergencies.
I play a lot of shade and generally try to fill in the gaps that the team needs, and above all don’t get kill greedy. If the team has a horde under control, no need to facedive into it yourself, better to watch the back / other lines of attack and keep your head on a swivel for specials. When bosses/elites show up, that’s your time to shine! Shade is amazing in a boss+horde situation, because one assassin strike will get you aggro and then you can kite while team mops up the horde.
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