Shade: Dual swords, single sword, sword + dagger, or dual daggers?

[Quadsword]

Torn on which of these to use. I'm kind of leaning toward sword + dagger since it seems to be pretty good at clearing hordes and has decent single target damage. Wasn't fond of dual daggers. They just seemed to be weak all around, but maybe I'm doing something wrong (bad build, using them ineffectively, etc.)

P.S.: I know I could use glaive or spear. I just don't want to because using those as a Shade just doesn't feel right.

[Squeakret Squirrel]

I heard a lot of good things about the sword and dagger.

I personally use glave, If you miss your first power attack and land the second on the back of an enemy it feels wonderfull, It's like being a really stealthy executioner.

[The second attack on the glave as of now does quite a bit more damage than the first so the miss is intetional which can be harder to do than you'd think.]

[NOTE: The glaves light attacks may or may not cause motion sickness to a large amount of people.]

[Torbaal]

I just love the dual daggers, but S&D are good too. DD do DoT damage on light attack, so a hit is enough to kill a clan rat, even if you miss the head.
But you want to aim for the head, and build your properties and trait around crit chance / crit effect.
Swift slaying if very fun and effective. To avoid damage, you need to dance dodge the horde.
I also play her with the talent that give amo back on backstab. You don't have to crit, just hit the back.
Wich means that you can unload 15 bolts on a boss while invisible, backstab his back while still invisible, and gain amo back as soon as you lose aggro.

[Lunacy]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TxxyYMqwdocwymMGTmD6d7nZ2CAHsFOhYyDfPyb_Kxw/edit#gid=0
here's some infiltrate damage values on the training dummies with all of elf's melee weapons
armor isn't a 1:1 ratio with Chaos Warriors and Bosses, but guessing it's only slightly lower.

[Mondays]

Originally posted by Torbaal:

I just love the dual daggers, but S&D are good too. DD do DoT damage on light attack, so a hit is enough to kill a clan rat, even if you miss the head.
But you want to aim for the head, and build your properties and trait around crit chance / crit effect.
Swift slaying if very fun and effective. To avoid damage, you need to dance dodge the horde.
I also play her with the talent that give amo back on backstab. You don't have to crit, just hit the back.
Wich means that you can unload 15 bolts on a boss while invisible, backstab his back while still invisible, and gain amo back as soon as you lose aggro.

Try DD with "Resourceful Combatant" as well, the amount of up-time on ULT is beyond useful

[Prydain]

DD for damage if you can survive hordes okay and S&D for more survivability. Only 2 weapons I switch between on Shade. For DD I do attack speed/crit chance while on S&D I do attack speed and either block cost reduction or stamina depending on the roll.

A small tip for DD would be to keep moving as your swinging at a horde so you have less chances of being surrounded. Also block every now and then if you feel like your about to be hit since you don't want to take any damage whenever possible.

[amariq]

Dual swords deal more damage and have slightly higher attack range in comparison to dual daggers (and maybe swird & dagger). I stayed with them.

Ofc glaive is overall better, but I think for Shade you gain maximum of your ulty only with dual weaponry (double hit, more targets hit, no need to skip first attack as in case of glaive).

[Velamont]

From this list? Only DD. Yes dual swords were buffed BUT they are trash anyway.

[Tamaster]

Dual Daggers are garbage.

Pathetic reach, no armor penetration, nonexistent stagger, nonexistent cleave.

Go against a horde of medium / high density and see how your little daggers do nothing aside from getting you hit constantly because you dont have reach and stagger to be effective against the horde. Have also fun being completely useless against elites and specials in melee.

The ONLY thing dual daggers are good for is the Shade's boss killer build with concoction, shrapnel and power vs monsters sicne they have the highest critical multiplier in the game.

For anything aside backstabbing bosses with that specific build, they are useless.

[Kyzael]

So what would be the overall choice between the 3 dual weapons? They all got a buff to armor pen.

[Xarko]

Ive been clearing ledenduh with 2h sword on my shade. Definetly my favorite weapon on her. Charged stab makes it easy to steath pick a target you want even in the middle of a horde, normal swing aoe clear and stagger efficiently.

Dont have problems with the weapon "not feeling right" either. There are shades with 2h swords in Total War W2 as well.

[Merque]

I always go for DD.

The only negative aspect is survivability: only 2 shields (not accounting for properties), basically no shove. You will want to avoid the following situation under ANY circumstances: being surrounded alone with your ult on full recharge. Obviously this is applicable to many other classes as well, but few quite so much as to shade with DD.

Now, if you got your positional awareness right, here are the upsides:

Anything that increases your dmg such as crits and headshot, gives you one of the highest dmg multiplicators in the whole game. If you consider all those +% dmg that the shade get's, this results in raw numbers being insane.

This combined with the insane speed and high base crit chance of the DDs + the fact that your charge deals double damage leads to the following:

- VERY good horde clearing cababilities if you aim for that headshot. Stagger doesn't matter for DDs during hordes as you WILL kill anything in a 180° arch in an acceptable timeframe.
- Again, positional awareness, if you get behind those SVs e.g. you can one shot them from behind as your quick attacks tend to proc that needed crit sooner than on any other weapon
- charge attack out of your ult can comfortably kill 2 chaos warriors at once (and now that cd has been halved, you can probably get 2-3 ultimates / horde with a bit of luck)


But as stated above: you are going to be a glass cannon - except for curse res, I take that dodge distance, as I quite never rely on blocking. Otherwise no survivability options whatsoever.

Edit: one more little thing, I take "Swift Slaying", making your DD even more reliable in clearing those hordes.

[Hezz]

Dual swords are terrible. They're only good for cleaving and there's way better weapons than dual swords for cleaving that don't sacrifice nearly as much power (like Glaive). Sword and Dagger I don't personally use but I hear some people like it as an even mix between cleave and power. Dual Daggers are the worst weapons for hordes (but still serviceable) but are THE definitive boss melting weapons.

[DeFragged]

DDs are meant for skirmishing - nipping away at the edges of a horde, clearing stragglers, working your way from the outside of a horde. ALWAYS be moving, and work in the occasional block and push.

They deal DOTs so you don't even need to finish off trash mobs, a swipe or two and let the damage finish them while you move on to another target.

They deal Headshot damage, which makes killing armored targets with headshots necessary... but not unusual.

Like Merque says: They have insane crit damage. You can one-shot a lot of big targets with a charged DD backstab attack, with or without the ulti.

I run mine with +crit chance and Resourceful Combatant so I can literally spam my ulti and take the heat off me while I clear hordes or elites, and with a horde accompanying any boss, it's not hard to get off 3-4 additional ulti-backstabs per boss easily.

[Velamont]

Originally posted by Hezz:

Dual swords are terrible. They're only good for cleaving and there's way better weapons than dual swords for cleaving that don't sacrifice nearly as much power (like Glaive). Sword and Dagger I don't personally use but I hear some people like it as an even mix between cleave and power. Dual Daggers are the worst weapons for hordes (but still serviceable) but are THE definitive boss melting weapons.

Yes

[Filthy Casual]

Damage maxes out at some point there is a Max Damage #. Luckily with 2 weapons you can do that max damage twice, Glave and Draich can only max out that damage once. It really doesn't matter which 2 weapons though once you start maxing out your gear.

You want to watch an epic Shade Run with 2 Swords watch this.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/249633135?t=00h29m01s