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Help with my Shadow Veil build?


larvi

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My first shadow warrior started as a standard melee polearm build that I later swtiched to shadow veil with a throwing star so I could use it as a campaign running. I liked the SV part so much I decided I wanted to start a build from scratch just focused on that (plus I need a light campaign runner). Here's what I've got so far and would like some input as to what other skills to pick. I mainly plan to use him for boss farming and campaign running (and hopefully smithing eventually.

 

Skills

1.) AL focus (keep at level to around level 25-30 when 100% veiled then quit)

2.) Tactics (5 now then maybe more later)

3.) Ranged (a few points here and there for item levels, maybe more later if needed for attack speed)

4.) Armor (a few points here and there for item levels maybe master later if needed for skill unlock)

5.) Blacksmtih (5 now to unlock EP, 200 later)

6.) EP (keep at char level)

7.) Damage Lore (take to mastery, maybe more)

8.) Alchemy maybe?

9.) unsure (is there any use to speed lore other than saving a socket or 2 ?)

10.) unsure

 

Stat points - all in dex probably for attack and ranged weapon damage, not sure any other stat is useful for this build

 

Weapon will be throwing star or maybe play around with a 2 handed energy weapon

 

CAs - SV (creep,fade,sinister pact), Rousing commad (for attack and speed boost early on, probably won't need later on)

 

This will pretty much be a left click only build, I tried using some CAs on my current SW but in my experience the spell cast time tends to cut into %LL damage you could otherwise be doing and isn't really worth it.

 

Is there really any need for defensive skills on a SV build? I know you have to unviel to wake up the guardians (and get more undead from the swirling mist) but there seems to be plenty of time to viel again without risk in my experience.

 

Also not sure if I need any sort of Area of Effect attack, or if the SW even has any decent ones. I can probably get experience from boss killing and running the cursed forest chain which is a piece of cake with SV.

 

Thoughts?

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Hey larvi!

 

I wish I had some advice...but alas, my experience with Shadow Warriors is scant :biggrin: Hopefully my little bump of helpingness will flag the attention of one of the big Ancarian Warriors who would have some help for you.

 

cheers!

 

:eek:

 

gogo

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I would suggest AL Lore so you can make use of Skeletal Fortification & Spectral Hand. However, I understand what you mean about cutting into the LL% time. SF is handy for mobs though. If you do take this, Ancient Magic might compliment it well.

 

Alternatively don't use the other skill slots and put all your points into your main skills?

 

Alchemy would be a good choice, the bonus to potion duration is nice.

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It really depends on how you want to play your character. My level 120 Shadow Warrior (now no more due to accidental deletion :) ) buffed Shadow Veil and used only Skeleton Fortress and Spectral Hand. I didn't need damage lore, tactics, alchemy (I never took a single potion, what they cannot see they do not try to hit), or any weapon skills. So my build went like this;

 

2) Astral Lore (Increase damage output)

3) Astral Focus (Lower regen times)

5) Concentration (Lower regen times even more)

 

At this point I had all the skills I needed, the rest proved to be optional and I just picked whatever took my fancy at the time

 

8) Blacksmith (I fancied trying out modding items just for fun)

12) Enhanced Perception (Just see what I might find in the way of drops)

18) Riding (I wanted to see what difference to bonuses that mastery might bring)

25) Armour Lore (On the rare possibility something might discover I exist and try to hit me)

35) Ancient Magic (Why not add even more damage, even if I don't need it)

50) Spell Resistance (I had to pick something)

65) Toughness (I had to pick yet another something)

 

I breezed through the campaigns at Bronze, Silver and Gold levels and cannot honestly think of anything that might have stood in my way in Platinum or Niobium. After all, if I have never been hit up to that point, why should anything ever hit me?

 

In fact I think that I will rebuild him and document my progress for a build guide.

 

PODGIE the BEARBARIAN shall live again! :)

Edited by podgie_bear
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Thanks guys, I'll play around a bit with Spectral hand and Skeletal Fortification to see how much casting delay they have. Spell resistance might be a good choice as well in the event I accidently step in a trap or the Swirling Mists tornado. I just finished the silver campaign with this guy at level 32 and moving into gold now. So far so good.

 

And Podgie, sorry to hear about your save games, I had something similar happend when the save for my level 110 Dragon Mage got corrupted and I didn't have a backup either. But I figured that was the perfect time to try out closed net since I was going to have to start from scratch anyway and now I have a couple level 100+ chars and more on the way. And best of all Deep Silver does the backups so I don't have to worry about remembering to do it.

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Well, just beat gold and moved into Platinum at level 47. I did export my char and played around with choosing AL lore, Ancient Magic and using spectral hand/skel fortification but while that approach worked fine it doesn't really suit my play style for this char so will stick with my original plan of a ranged left click only build. I did start using an energy weapon for non-boss encounters and liking the damage that it does, I think it will be fun once I get damage lore mastered since I will have a good chance of multiple status effects.

 

One issue I did run into was while fighting the Swirling mist in gold at a huge level disadvantage (I was 34 or 35, mist/undead were 55 or 56). I was minding my own business, veiled and shooting energy bolts from the outside way away from the mist when all of a sudden my health dropped to <25% and I got the dreaded flash, drank a potion and noticed I was still loosing health from some sort of DoT effect. So I retreated back to silver for a bit, ran the cursed forest quest chain all the way through abashai, made a few levels and chose Spell resistance as my 8th skill. Came back to the mist and still noticed that I got DoT damage from something in that encounter but it was much less severe and easy to cure with a potion or 2.

 

So what it the mist encounter would cause a DoT on veiled SW? I know it wasn't the tornado that pops up as I was no where near the mist and I was also no where near the NPC so I doubt it was some spell that was targeting him that I just go caught in. Could the undead be reflecting my DoT somehow? It seemed to happen when I was shooting the ghouls.

Edited by larvi
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Update - beat platinum at level 70 and in Niob now. Would have been there sooner but got stuck on swirling mist perma weaken bug that I spent 2 days trying to get past. For my 9th skill I took Mal Champ focus because I started using frenzied rampage which works really well with both ranged energy weapons and %LL throwing stars with little or no casting lag. Still undecided on the 10th skill, will leave it open for now and see how Niob goes.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Well, just beat gold and moved into Platinum at level 47. I did export my char and played around with choosing AL lore, Ancient Magic and using spectral hand/skel fortification but while that approach worked fine it doesn't really suit my play style for this char so will stick with my original plan of a ranged left click only build. I did start using an energy weapon for non-boss encounters and liking the damage that it does, I think it will be fun once I get damage lore mastered since I will have a good chance of multiple status effects.

 

One issue I did run into was while fighting the Swirling mist in gold at a huge level disadvantage (I was 34 or 35, mist/undead were 55 or 56). I was minding my own business, veiled and shooting energy bolts from the outside way away from the mist when all of a sudden my health dropped to <25% and I got the dreaded flash, drank a potion and noticed I was still loosing health from some sort of DoT effect. So I retreated back to silver for a bit, ran the cursed forest quest chain all the way through abashai, made a few levels and chose Spell resistance as my 8th skill. Came back to the mist and still noticed that I got DoT damage from something in that encounter but it was much less severe and easy to cure with a potion or 2.

 

So what it the mist encounter would cause a DoT on veiled SW? I know it wasn't the tornado that pops up as I was no where near the mist and I was also no where near the NPC so I doubt it was some spell that was targeting him that I just go caught in. Could the undead be reflecting my DoT somehow? It seemed to happen when I was shooting the ghouls.

 

I am pretty sure that if you have a NPC with you, then whatever DoT they get hit with, you will get as well, if you're a veiled shadow warrior. I was using Rallied Souls in the human area with the spitting spiders, and I was constantly getting poisioned even though there were no spiders anywhere near me, and I am guessing it was because the "summons" were getting poisioned, and affected me. I don't know why (feature or bug of Shadow Veil). So, I stopped Rallying the Souls to my cause and just slayed everything myself from the shadows. Haven't gotten hit with anything else yet.

 

So far, I haven't gotten RIP-ped by this, but I know that I have to fight a Dragon, the Mist and some undead (build/destroy the monument quest in swamp) with an NPC that we cannot avoid because they are a part of the campaign story. I am always on "high alert" when those darn NPC's are with me, thumb on the potion button (and mounted when outside, just for extra protection).

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Well, I found the downside of no defensive skills. After unveiling to wake up one of the guardians, clicked on the buff to re-veil again and when it didn't take right away figure I missed clicked so hit it again. It ended up being lag so both clicks eventually took and I unveiled again right next to a TG from a trap generator who one shotted me. Level 96 SW gone :drunkards:

 

Oh well, started a new hafted SW to try out the Legendary I found and going more traditional with defenses this time.

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Dagnabbit! I feel your pain, Larvi... I've had more than a couple of close calls triggering those pesky Guardians... makes me wanna farm the Garganthopod or Carnach to avoid such mis-clickety badness.

 

On a related side-note, I've encountered this a couple of times (thankfully while farming Silver Guardians):

 

Un-veil to awaken the guardian, and usually I'll set a Skellie Fort while they activate... and a couple of times the Guardian has been able to turn to me and start attacking. When I turn Veil back on, the Guardian will still keep attacking me, even though I'm in the shadows! As long as I stand still, they keep attacking as if I'm visible! If I move away, then they'll stop attacking.

 

Don't know if this is a console-only feature, or whatever. Just a heads up for anyone who stumbles upon this 8)

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Thanks guys. Yeah, I've run into the situation before where if I veil while in melee range of something they will keep hacking on me still. When I first started farming the guardians I would go around and take out all of the traps to be on the safe side, but stopped doing that because it added a lot of time to the farming but it would have probably kept me alive this time. I thought I had the veiling thing with the guardians down to a science. I stand right by the door in the middle of the 2 traps unveil then quickly veil again. If I see the blue line from the shield generator I'm all set and I'd hit my rousing command/killing spree combo and start firing away with the throwing star. One oddity that I noticed is that after waking the fire guardian and killing it, when I walked around to the frost guardian he would wake up as well without me having to unveil again, that almost killed me the first time too because I unveiled just as he woke up not expecting him to.

 

If you are looking for something other than the guardians to farm I would recommend the Gyrvim(sp) dragon. Completely safe while veiled and you can keep killing without a server reset just by getting in and out of the cave pretty quickly. So go in, make a beeline to the dragon, kill it, collect the loot, then hit the tp at the back behind the dragon to exit the cave. Rinse and repeat. Found some nice items from it as well.

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Thanks guys. Yeah, I've run into the situation before where if I veil while in melee range of something they will keep hacking on me still.

 

Cool. Thankyou for the confirmation from PC side 8)

 

If you are looking for something other than the guardians to farm I would recommend the Gyrvim(sp) dragon. Completely safe while veiled and you can keep killing without a server reset just by getting in and out of the cave pretty quickly. So go in, make a beeline to the dragon, kill it, collect the loot, then hit the tp at the back behind the dragon to exit the cave. Rinse and repeat. Found some nice items from it as well.

Great point! The (boss/miniboss) dragons are Dangerclass 10, so legendaries are possible from them.

 

AFAIK, you have to kill 3 plants after exiting the cave before re-entering, or the dragon doesn't respawn immediately. This may be only for the console, but I have confirmed that is true.

 

Personally, I just farm the Garganthopod. Offline console freeworld game only takes about 60 seconds to load, which is shorter than running the cave (with my 135% runspeed). I got killed farming Guardians because of the veil/unveil mis=click so now only Scorpion wrangling for me :D

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AFAIK, you have to kill 3 plants after exiting the cave before re-entering, or the dragon doesn't respawn immediately. This may be only for the console, but I have confirmed that is true.

 

For the PC that isn't necessary, I just re-entered the cave without killing anything. It seems to work like orc cave where all the encounters will respawn if you get in and out in a timely manner.

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