How you play well VenomDrop and NightSworn?

[Samseng Yik]

Deadeye is straight forward enough.
But these 2 path seems like require more setup.
And There is only few skills give her invisible, and I need to spend a turn on it.

[Pixel Peeper]

Yes, having to go into Stealth to gain the main path benefits is a big problem. Wasting a turn is too high a price. To gain those benefits, you will rely on trinkets (Silent Treatment) and stealth powder. Otherwise they will be incidental, such as after using Dead of Night to heal.

Mostly you have to rely on other path benefits. The Venomdrop's Flashing Daggers are very very good, and the Nightsworn has the highest Lunge damage of any Grave Robber.

If you get a Silent Treatment those paths become fantastic.

[Grimwulf]

There's an Inn item called My Time in the Desert that gives her 5% of going stealth each round (can be used multiple times). Then there's a pretty common cloak trinket that triggers stealth with 15% chance per round. Stealth powders that can be produced in near-infinite amount with a certain stagecoach upgrade. And a pretty rare Silent Treatment that gives you 66% stealth each round.

You're bound to get some of those before the mountain boss. Until then, Nightsworn is very solid in dance teams. Consider pairing her with a team like Aspirant Occultist with Binding Shadows and Berserker Hellion with Breakthrough. HWM and Jester are also good options. This will allow your GR to spam lunge every turn, which is fairly powerful even without stealth. Deadeye gets a damage malus on lunge - she is a mostly stationary hero, not counting Pirouette.

Venomdrop is fairly versatile. She plays nicely in dance teams, and she can stay in one place too. However, if you find Foreclosure Notice as a Venomdrop, you'd want to put her in pos4 and just leave her there. Another good thing about Venomdrop is the -3 speed, making your GR slower than most combo-setting characters. Normally she goes first and has to attack a target before you can set up a combo, resulting in no turn 1 crit. Venomdrop doesn't have that problem. Flashing daggers with blight have a nice synergy with Flag's Necrosis, among other things.

[Vudak]

I don't like playing venomdrop as I just feel like requiring stealth to get +2 blight is too much of an ask.

I actually really like Nightsworn though, I generally open with Shadow Fade during a fight then go for Lunge which is almost always a 1shot kill, which really helps justify the turn used for shadow fade, plus it hits rank 3 which is a very nice rank to be able to 1shot, it also pierces all sorts of defenses which is great - its really like a hot knife through butter.

I also played her with a somewhat flexible positioned party, so they could on the fly put her back into lunge range etc. I forget if it was upgraded or not, but her skill which destroys a corpse also grants stealth which is good for field clear & easy restealth (as well as a heal if required). If you get trinkets / inn items that give her chances to gain stealth on round start, put her up front for the piroette if you have a way to remove the daze / have enough debuff resist / like to live dangerously :P

Nightsworn has an element of go big or go home / higher risk & reward, but I found her godlike burst more than enough for me to overlook the moments you don't get the magical big crits.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Vudak:

I forget if it was upgraded or not, but her skill which destroys a corpse also grants stealth which is good for field clear & easy restealth (as well as a heal if required). If you get trinkets / inn items that give her chances to gain stealth on round start, put her up front for the piroette if you have a way to remove the daze / have enough debuff resist / like to live dangerously :P

I believe Dead of Night stealths her for 1 turn base, 2 turns when Mastered.

You could consider the Daze on Pirouette to be a defensive measure. She's fast so she'll Pirouette in round 1, spend the rest of the round in Rank 4 where it's safe, spend the rest of round 2 in Rank 4 too (thanks to the Daze), and then she'll be able to act twice in a row: once at the end of round 2 and again at the start of round 3. Hit-and-run.

[Vudak]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

You could consider the Daze on Pirouette to be a defensive measure. She's fast so she'll Pirouette in round 1, spend the rest of the round in Rank 4 where it's safe, spend the rest of round 2 in Rank 4 too (thanks to the Daze), and then she'll be able to act twice in a row: once at the end of round 2 and again at the start of round 3. Hit-and-run.

The issue I found was that the computer would wake up when they smelt that daze and turn it into stun far more often than I liked. It could just be me noticing the few times it actually happened - but feelsbadman lol, so I just stopped risking it generally unless it was just a short road fight etc,

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Vudak:

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

You could consider the Daze on Pirouette to be a defensive measure. She's fast so she'll Pirouette in round 1, spend the rest of the round in Rank 4 where it's safe, spend the rest of round 2 in Rank 4 too (thanks to the Daze), and then she'll be able to act twice in a row: once at the end of round 2 and again at the start of round 3. Hit-and-run.

The issue I found was that the computer would wake up when they smelt that daze and turn it into stun far more often than I liked. It could just be me noticing the few times it actually happened - but feelsbadman lol, so I just stopped risking it generally unless it was just a short road fight etc,

Ah yes... it very rarely happens, but when it does happen, it sucks real bad.

I honestly prefer resisting the Daze myself. Just saying, it's not the worst thing in the world, and it can keep your Nightsworn (one of the most fragile characters in the game) away from direct enemy attacks for a round.

[Vudak]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

Originally posted by Vudak:

The issue I found was that the computer would wake up when they smelt that daze and turn it into stun far more often than I liked. It could just be me noticing the few times it actually happened - but feelsbadman lol, so I just stopped risking it generally unless it was just a short road fight etc,

Ah yes... it very rarely happens, but when it does happen, it sucks real bad.

I honestly prefer resisting the Daze myself. Just saying, it's not the worst thing in the world, and it can keep your Nightsworn (one of the most fragile characters in the game) away from direct enemy attacks for a round.

Yeah, I probably fell into a bit of a sub-optimal but comfortable habit of just going through the motions of a safe shadow fade/lunge. Much of my experience was based of a (probably somewhat stupid) Grand Slam run using her as nightsworn lol. I'll try and use her more with pirouette when I dust her off again soon.

[Raki]

Originally posted by Vudak:

I don't like playing venomdrop as I just feel like requiring stealth to get +2 blight is too much of an ask.

I wouldn't underestimate the +2 blight. With 3 ticks, that's basically 6 dmg, which is more than the average dmg of many attacks. This can be improved further by duration trinkets, crit, and of course Flashing Daggers essentially doubles the bonus if you can hit two enemies.

I admit that Nightsworn is more flashy, but for me Venomdrop feels more reliable. I have an extremely hard time picking between the two, because I love both playstyles.

Also, I agree that the Daze can be quite useful. If you can buff her speed enough, the daze should wear off before the enemies have much of a chance to act. Allowing you to act twice in a row, which really packs a punch, especially if you can stealth her.

EDIT: I guess the thing with speed is wrong. The enemies will get their turn in the current round, after all. I guess I'm used to playing with a tank with taunt, so it never felt like a huge concern.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Raki124:

Originally posted by Vudak:

I don't like playing venomdrop as I just feel like requiring stealth to get +2 blight is too much of an ask.

I wouldn't underestimate the +2 blight. With 3 ticks, that's basically 6 dmg, which is more than the average dmg of many attacks. This can be improved further by duration trinkets, crit, and of course Flashing Daggers essentially doubles the bonus if you can hit two enemies.

I admit that Nightsworn is more flashy, but for me Venomdrop feels more reliable. I have an extremely hard time picking between the two, because I love both playstyles.

Also, I agree that the Daze can be quite useful. If you can buff her speed enough, the daze should wear off before the enemies have much of a chance to act. Allowing you to act twice in a row, which really packs a punch, especially if you can stealth her.

EDIT: I guess the thing with speed is wrong. The enemies will get their turn in the current round, after all. I guess I'm used to playing with a tank with taunt, so it never felt like a huge concern.

I'd like Stealth to be viable on the Venomdrop, but the math is very iffy. Flashing Daggers will inflict 4 BLGT on two different enemies to begin with, for a total of 8. If you take a turn to Stealth, you're losing out on 8 BLGT and base damage... to gain 8 BLGT, maximum (+4 the next turn and +4 the turn after that). And BLGT rarely gets its full effect, the enemy dies before you get the full value even if you apply the BLGT right away. Waiting a turn to apply it is awful, not to mention that you potentially waste a 2nd turn because the Venomdrop has -3 SPD (catastrophic considering you need enemies to act to get the damage in).

Taking a turn to Shadow Fade is already highly controversial on the Nightsworn... on the Venomdrop it's utter nonsense. The one thing you do get for using Shadow Fade is +30% BLGT RES Piercing for a single turn, and it's nowhere near worth it.

Shadow Fade needs a pretty big buff. Right now it's functionally a self-stun.

[Hormesis]

Originally posted by Samseng Yik:

Deadeye is straight forward enough.
But these 2 path seems like require more setup.
And There is only few skills give her invisible, and I need to spend a turn on it.

with nightsworn my fights always start the same: start front row, shadowstep then lunge. from there i'll often use pirouette but not always. sometimes i'll grave rob the corpse for an additional stealth and heal, which keeps my tank in row 2 and moves the opponent team forward 1. a big part of this game is preventing the enemy team from doing what it wants to. many times enemies have moves that require there being a hero in the front, but if that space is occupied by a hero they can't target, well they're forced to use a less powerful move. nightsworn is a great choice if the rest of your team can be moved around w/out issue but venomdrop is better if they can't.

as venomdrop i don't even both with shadowstep for the most part. the biggest draw for the skill for me is how ridiculously hard lunge hits if upgraded and your invisible w/ the nightsworn pathway. lunge gets nerfed hard in the venomdrop pathway so it's just not worth it for me. you could always use flashing daggers which while invisible in venomdrop gives some good dot potential tho. also an upgraded graverob gives 2 stealth so you could synergize that as well.

tl;dr: nightsworn when team composition allows for flexible maneuverability. venomdrop when it does not.

[Raki]

Keep in mind you get the +2 blight twice if you use Shadow Fade or an upgraded Dead of Night, since you get 2 Stealth Tokens.

So basically, you get a defensive move for free, since in the long run, you get the 4 blight "back" (the opportunity cost of not applying blight straight away). It can also be useful to delay your move, to let other heroes deal with dodge tokens, push/pull enemies to set up Flashing Daggers, or take the bonus with you into the second phase of a creature den.

Finally, you use combo tokens more efficiently with Poison Dart, since the crit increases the duration of 6 blight, not just 4. Considering that there are quite a few other ways to enter stealth, and trinkets to further increase the duration, buffing to +3 blight would probably be overpowered.

I admit that in the Road Battles, the instant damage from Nightsworn is ultimately more impactful. However, personally I think the roadbattles are not such a huge issue, the real problem you have to solve is Lair and Boss battles. There, the DOTs usually have enough time to tick to their full duration.

One thing I dislike about venomdrop is having to enter the frontline to reliably stealth with a skill.

With Nightsworn, Lunge is a really strong move, so you reposition yourself for the next Shadowfade naturally. But with Venomdrop, Lunge is quite lackluster and feels somewhat like a wasted turn. You also have to stay in the frontline for one turn if you want to make use of the resistance piercing provided by Lunge.

I'd prefer her to have some way to reliably enter Stealth from any position, e.g. by removing the positional requirement for Shadow Fade for Venomdrop. Dead of Night is fine for road battles, but in many Lair and Boss battles, there are no corpses to use the skill on.

P.S. Late reply, sry.