Shade Best Build

[Dynasty Devil]

Started off with Waystalker and recently started playing handmaiden and having a blast. Now that shade is much more viable, I would like to know what the community's favourite build for her is. Also any tips on how to play her. Which talents should I use, weapons and accessories?

Also happen to obtain her hat/mask which i've kept for a while. I know Glaive is good on her but is dual swords viable or is the gap too far? Have kept a red dual sword with 5% attack spd & 5% crit chance. Tried it on handmaied but spear is just too fun for her.

[Laef]

I wouldn't even touch a weapon that doesn't have two strikes on charged attack. Daggers is what I prefer. You can kill two chaos warriors out of ult if they are standing close together. Dual swords sucks against armour, but out of her ult I'd imagine you would kill as many targets as the charged attacks allow you to hit.

[Hezz]

Dual dagger or glaive. Dual Daggers has by far the highest burst damage and dps potential and has good synergy with talents like Bloodfletcher but makes hordes far more dangerous to you as you cant cleave the effectively nor can you fight them from a safer range, and armor becomes a real issue and needs charged strikes to handle.


Glaive will handle hordes and armor much better but will be a lot more awkward to burst with as the 2nd charged attack does more than the first so you need to purposefully wiff your 1st attack to maximise burst, it doesn't synergise with talents and even best case scenario burst damage and dps will be much lower than daggers.

These are the two most common choices and have different advantages. The third choice is.... whatever you find the most comfortable. All weapons are viable. They arent all optimal and some are just flat out inferior in every way to either choice but at the end of the day forcing yourself to use daggers when you aren't good at that playstyle is just going to make you worse off than if you took a spear or dual swords or something

But always take volley crossbow. That thing is just incredible

[Dynasty Devil]

Originally posted by Laef:

I wouldn't even touch a weapon that doesn't have two strikes on charged attack. Daggers is what I prefer. You can kill two chaos warriors out of ult if they are standing close together. Dual swords sucks against armour, but out of her ult I'd imagine you would kill as many targets as the charged attacks allow you to hit.

Interesting never thought about dual daggers as I haven't used them for some time. How do you deal with horde or getting swamped since the range is so short.

Originally posted by ShellaSunshine:

I haven't really experimented with finding specific traits for her but I do prefer the dual swords for Shade. The charged attacks are much faster than the glaive so if you add a strength or speed potion plus attack the boss from the back, it deals crazy amounts of damage.

Tip: before the boss turns aggro on you, use infiltrate, walk through boss, start attacking their back again. You'll get more hits this way. Just be careful when you're doing that on a Chaos Spawn. Apparently, his aggro animations have been changed slightly.

I guess that is situational if you require potions but I can imagine the amount of damage you can deal. Forgot you can walk through boss thanks for the tip!

[Googalabon]

Dual daggers, stack crit chance and crit power. Trait on the daggers should be cdr on crit, get cdr on gear as well and the 30% reduced talent. This means that if you fight a boss and have a conc potion, you will be able to kill the boss with the conc potion. If you don't have a conc potion you'll probably still be able to do about 50%+ of its hp.

This means that due to the insane amount of innate crit the dual daggers + shade has, with some left click spam you'll be able to spam your f during hordes (Esp crucial with chaos hordes).

I believe that the shade with a conc pot is the premier boss killer, pyro f with max cdr reduction pretty much accomplishes the same thing but in slightly more time but the boss will be constantly staggered.

[Slamadam]

a little note cause people keep tellin ya that dual daggers outburst glaive: thats only true vs unarmored targets. glaive's second hit actually outbursts dual daggers out of stealth vs any kind of armored target. doesnt matter all that often cause you instagib anything that aint a boss anyways, but since the biggest point of shade is killing bosses, i'd say its quite a big piece of false information that gets spread alot.
edit:
that means they are still stronger at killing ratogres, chaosspawns and trolls.
just sayin glaive is better vs the endboss-bossfights. the rat warlord, the chaos warlord and skittergate
i just rly hate how risky daggers are vs hordes. aspecially considering how squishy you are, and one hit reaching u is half your hp

[Googalabon]

In order to handle hordes with dual daggers is the left click spam, with increased dodge range if you continually slash left click and dodge sideways in the open you'll never get hit, and if you ever START to get seperated by your group (Most of the time is a good thing obviously not far but you can distract a large amount of enemies) then use infiltrate to walk back and probably kill a high value target on the way.

Shade dual daggers with speed pot is one of the most fun horde killing activities I've experienced in a while.

[Googalabon]

Originally posted by Slamadam:

a little note cause people keep tellin ya that dual daggers outburst glaive: thats only true vs unarmored targets. glaive's second hit actually outbursts dual daggers out of stealth vs any kind of armored target. doesnt matter all that often cause you instagib anything that aint a boss anyways, but since the biggest point of shade is killing bosses, i'd say its quite a big piece of false information that gets spread alot

No you're wrong, the dual daggers hit twice for WAY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more then the glaive. Bile troll? One infiltrate with dual daggers stacking crit brings it to its first puke phase.
Ontop of bringing you many more infiltrates during the boss battle with cdr on crit.

[Slamadam]

Originally posted by Googalabon:

Originally posted by Slamadam:

a little note cause people keep tellin ya that dual daggers outburst glaive: thats only true vs unarmored targets. glaive's second hit actually outbursts dual daggers out of stealth vs any kind of armored target. doesnt matter all that often cause you instagib anything that aint a boss anyways, but since the biggest point of shade is killing bosses, i'd say its quite a big piece of false information that gets spread alot

No you're wrong, the dual daggers hit twice for WAY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more then the glaive. Bile troll? One infiltrate with dual daggers stacking crit brings it to its first puke phase.

yeye i edited. and the glaive STILL hits stronger vs armor. biletroll doesnt have armor, so i didnt say anything wrong
vs no armor glaive hits for damage cap and daggers for damage cap x2.
vs armor the glaive still hits damage cap and the daggers simply dont.

[Dynasty Devil]

Originally posted by Hezz:

Dual dagger or glaive. Dual Daggers has by far the highest burst damage and dps potential and has good synergy with talents like Bloodfletcher but makes hordes far more dangerous to you as you cant cleave the effectively nor can you fight them from a safer range, and armor becomes a real issue and needs charged strikes to handle.


Glaive will handle hordes and armor much better but will be a lot more awkward to burst with as the 2nd charged attack does more than the first so you need to purposefully wiff your 1st attack to maximise burst, it doesn't synergise with talents and even best case scenario burst damage and dps will be much lower than daggers.

These are tge two most common choices and have different advantages. The third choice is.... whatever you find the most comfortable. All weapons are viable. They arent all optimal and some are just flat out inferior in every way to either choice but at the end of the day forcing yourself to use daggers when you aren't good at that playstyle is just going to make you worse off than if you took a spear or dual swords or something

But always take volley crossbow. That thing is just incredible

Yes Horde is a concern for dual daggers, I guess ult can bypass that but depends on the situation and how big the horde is. With scrubs i reckon it's not a problem, but if mixed with elites it would be tricky.

Reason why I asked about dual swords also is because i'm a bit bored of glaive since i use for waystalker and sometimes handmaiden, glaive seems to be the most viable in legend. I will begin with champion to test but if I do go to legend I feel not using glaive is not an option since there are so many armoured units. Playing as bardin the most on legend it still suprises me how many kerillians still carry sub par weapons like two handed sword. Once they get swamped with armours they pretty much insta die and are a burden on the team

[Googalabon]

Originally posted by Slamadam:

Originally posted by Googalabon:

No you're wrong, the dual daggers hit twice for WAY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more then the glaive. Bile troll? One infiltrate with dual daggers stacking crit brings it to its first puke phase.

yeye i edited. and the glaive STILL hits stronger vs armor. biletroll doesnt have armor, so i didnt say anything wrong

Very true it doesn't, only boss that does have armor outside of chapter is the storm bro, but that guy has a little guy on his back that is iiiiiiiiiiiinsanely weak to shades of all varieties.

[Laef]

Dual daggers are fine against hordes, just make an lmb spam macro and dodge around. Put attack speed and crit, speed on crit... You become a lawnmower. If you are actually stacked up with buddies its even more trivial. If you get seperated you better be good at dodging. dagger block is so rapid I can block and release with the macro on without causing a shove.

[Slamadam]

Originally posted by Dynasty Devil:

Originally posted by Hezz:

Dual dagger or glaive. Dual Daggers has by far the highest burst damage and dps potential and has good synergy with talents like Bloodfletcher but makes hordes far more dangerous to you as you cant cleave the effectively nor can you fight them from a safer range, and armor becomes a real issue and needs charged strikes to handle.


Glaive will handle hordes and armor much better but will be a lot more awkward to burst with as the 2nd charged attack does more than the first so you need to purposefully wiff your 1st attack to maximise burst, it doesn't synergise with talents and even best case scenario burst damage and dps will be much lower than daggers.

These are tge two most common choices and have different advantages. The third choice is.... whatever you find the most comfortable. All weapons are viable. They arent all optimal and some are just flat out inferior in every way to either choice but at the end of the day forcing yourself to use daggers when you aren't good at that playstyle is just going to make you worse off than if you took a spear or dual swords or something

But always take volley crossbow. That thing is just incredible

Yes Horde is a concern for dual daggers, I guess ult can bypass that but depends on the situation and how big the horde is. With scrubs i reckon it's not a problem, but if mixed with elites it would be tricky.

Reason why I asked about dual swords also is because i'm a bit bored of glaive since i use for waystalker and sometimes handmaiden, glaive seems to be the most viable in legend. I will begin with champion to test but if I do go to legend I feel not using glaive is not an option since there are so many armoured units. Playing as bardin the most on legend it still suprises me how many kerillians still carry sub par weapons like two handed sword. Once they get swamped with armours they pretty much insta die and are a burden on the team

2 hand sword is actually quite fun with shade. the stab deals damage cap from stealth even vs armor and you have nice horde clear. yep you have problems when you get swarmed by armor, but since your stealth has such a small cd now, you can just pop it and reposition if that happens

[Googalabon]

Originally posted by Laef:

Dual daggers are fine against hordes, just make an lmb spam macro and dodge around. Put attack speed and crit, speed on crit... You become a lawnmower. If you are actually stacked up with buddies its even more trivial. If you get seperated you better be good at dodging. dagger block is so rapid I can block and release with the macro on without causing a shove.

You macro your attack? That sounds boring but slightly pain free

[Hezz]

Originally posted by Slamadam:

a little note cause people keep tellin ya that dual daggers outburst glaive: thats only true vs unarmored targets. glaive's second hit actually outbursts dual daggers out of stealth vs any kind of armored target. doesnt matter all that often cause you instagib anything that aint a boss anyways, but since the biggest point of shade is killing bosses, i'd say its quite a big piece of false information that gets spread alot

This is true but only really matters vs Skarrick and the War Camp boss, and sort of the Skittergate miniboss. Stormvermin and Chaos Warriors die in one strike regardless though Glaive will obviously outperform them outside of stealth burst. Rat Ogres, Bile Trolls and Chaos Spawn has no armor. Stormfiend does but not on its back, especially if you also hit the little brain baby in that juicy squishy head. Halescourge has no armor, neither does Rasknitt, and Deathrattler is the same as Stormfiends. Gatekeeper starts armored but if allowed will become an unarmored Chaos Spawn.

[Slamadam]

Originally posted by Googalabon:

Originally posted by Slamadam:

yeye i edited. and the glaive STILL hits stronger vs armor. biletroll doesnt have armor, so i didnt say anything wrong

Very true it doesn't, only boss that does have armor outside of chapter is the storm bro, but that guy has a little guy on his back that is iiiiiiiiiiiinsanely weak to shades of all varieties.

like i edited in, i know in most situations the daggers are superior, but i just hate how much riskier they are.