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Date Posted: 10/29/02 12:30pm Subject: The shadowzerk, a brief guide - Date Edited: 10/29/02 12:39pm (2 edits total) Edited By: Lok-SG
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Frau here. I'll tell you why my spec is best for shadowzerking. I figure Ill write this now that I have hit my target rank (4) and have experienced the full build.
But before that, I would like to say that all the SB builds are good except the staffblade. I don't know how many times people ask me for the most uber blade build, and you just can't answer that because it depends on what you like the best.
A CB is the master of the quick gank. Victer, Grievance, Tupa are all CB's, and they rack up the realm points. If you like to 2 shot a caster then run, this is the build for you. CB's have no points in LA (or less than half spec). Try 44 cs, 44weap, 35 steal, 35 env.
A Soulzerk gives up envenom for strong crit strike and left axe. They can gank and tank, but they are not going to rack up DoT dmg. Mostly they use envenom for snare and disease. Try 44 LA, 44 Axe, 34 CS, 35 stealth, and 5 env. These are popular now since people think envenom is going to be useless with out of control body resistance.
A 5 spec really shines if you want to play it to realm rank 6. You basically go for mid 30's in all skills to be well rounded. With spellcrafting and 150 platinum, you too can take all 5 specs to 50 at rr6. Try 39 weap, 36 steal, 34 cs, 39 la, 22 env. Some trade weapon and stealth for more envenom.
The staffblade doesnt train weapon styles at all. Usually you are talking a kobold with high CS, envenom, and stealth, extra dex and qui at generation. THis build has a high level catastrophy due to lack of weaponskill with staff...variance is bad, and your weaponskill number is low. But for the first BG, you can really have fun with the big dex driven damage of staff and the nice long delay of staff.
I am a shadowzerk. We give up almost all critical strike to be strong with envenom and left axe. We are the strongest SB tank, and weak on gank. This is a very PvE friendly build, as once you start getting decent evade + dodger 2, you can tank fairly well. Shadowzerks are midgards assassin hunters, and they are the ones best suited to deal with tanks. In a stealth group, SZ's shine late battle after all the people with perf have opened.
My spec and reasoning
44 LA
42 Axe
10 CS
36 stealth (autotrain 28 )
36 envenom
44 LA is there to get icy brilliance, the 2nd move in the rear style LA chain. This chain does huge damage with a bleed, and is one of the strongest weapons in your arsenal as a SZ. If something runs, you just lay in with this and they die fast. The damage from Icy is about 30% more than snowsquall (the first move) and the bleed keeps them from restealthing. Not much can last long with a SZ rearstyling on it.
10 CS is there because of backstab 2. BS2 is a rear positional from stealth that pops bladeturn and has a short 3s stun. This style is critical for SZ's taking down casters. You pop them with BS2, then do snowsquall/icy and its dead. Right now with casters able to change facing while stunned it is hard to land the snowsquall/icy chain, but that will be fixed in another patch. Any time you think you have some guy who is going to run and not melee, use BS2 as an open. It is well worth 10 points. I considered 21 CS for a perf open, but that has no stun component and I would have to drop to 39 axe to get it, so it wasnt worth it (perf at 21cs doesnt do much more than a doublefrost anyway-better off moving for the BS2).
36 envenom- my build is a realmrank 4 build. I did a little study and there were very few blades at rr5 or higher on merlin midgard...most move on before then. With +11 from items and +3 from rr4, you can hit 50 envenom and use lifebane the top end DoT. DoT's matter alot for a SZ, since you just keep repoisoning a victim until it dies, and that top end DoT helps alot. Also the top end str/con debuff isnt too shabby, and the long duration snare/disease are good too. SInce you are going to melee something to death, having the extra damage output from solid envenom helps a great deal, and having the thing stay there and not run off from your snare is nice, and having it not hit you that hard because of the debuff is nice. At present you can only hit +11 by using doden's drops.
36 stealth- again with +11 and rr4 you get 50 stealth. Since you are an asn hunter, your best defense against most other infiltrators is to avoid being perfed. The way you do this is by having a high stealth rating so that they have the least amount of time possible to line up the perf. The core reason a SZ wins v. asns is because they elimintate all the front loaded dmg of anyone with points in CS by opening with a sloppy doublefrost style, and rendering the battle into MY LA vs. their dragonfang. Having 50 stealth also means you can slip through enemy ranks at mileforts etc better than anyone else, and that helps. I also like the speed while stealthed. Some people advocate low stealth builds, but I think that is bad because you open yourself up to perf and tilt the balance their way.
If I do play this build to rr6, then I can dispense with the little +2 envenom and stealth items and still hit 50 stealth, envenom. This frees up those slots for other things, like resistance gear etc. Since you are a hit and stick around kind of fighter, having higher resistance and life matters a great deal, and a lesser comittment to skill adders helps. Again you must be more physically imposing than other asns to beat the crap out of them as a SZ, and tying up 2 slots with little twerpy +2 skill adders isnt going to help this.
The final spec is 42 axe. THis is as high as I could get with my autotrain level ( 28 ). Weapon skill is driven by axe rating and strength, and it in turn determins your damage cap for base weapon damage and how easily you are evaded, parried or blocked. People who complain about getting evaded, parried, or blocked all the time usually have poor weaponskill. I picked axe because there are more left hand usable axes in the game, and you can only use left axe styles with an axe in your left hand (cant do it with sword). I might as well have that offhand hit harder.
I picked norse and went with +15 str, +10 con on the advice of my good friend Cime who at the time was on his 3rd or so rebuild. You are going for hoss damage witht his build and that 15 str helps since str is a tertiary attribute. Norse with 85str ain't to shabby at generation. The 10 con also helps you last. Had I to do it again, I would prob chunk only 10 into str and put the other 10 into qui to get a 2% faster swing rate. Norse is the best by far for SZ in my humble opinion.
I autotrained stealth to 28, and had essentially all points in LA and Axe with leftovers in envenom to 4. I stunk on the first BG, basically acting as a gimped zerk, but my BG3 build was
34 LA
27 axe
10 cs
25 stealth
4 envenom
With adders I got close to full spec on LA, axe, stealth. Envenom was enough to disease and snare people. I could climb walls at 25 stealth and harry people in the CK. I also had doublefrost. At the time, this was before the armor nerf (where mythic changed infils and shades from vulnerable to slash to neutral and resistant to slash) and I had about 50% chance to solo a duo enemy pair of asns unbuffed.
From this lvl 35 build, I took axe, left axe to 39. I parked axe there at 39 for a while, and took left axe to 44 with extra points in stealth. I would bump up my axe skill to keep it at full spec through my 40's, and I think I had hit my final stealth spec of 36 at lvl 45, which helped me have a bit more fun in real RvR. It was only in the 46-50 range did I finally start to pour points into envenom.
Is this build fun? Well if all you ever want to do is solo RvR, the other builds are probably better since you need the quick kill. But this SZ is awesome on the walls during a keep defense, and is a very nice addition to a pure stealth group party, filling the muscle role that most other blades don't. It is nice to be able to run around unstealthed with a group and still melee hard, which means you are better for a mixed group of 8 on 8 pvp. The main joy for me though is hunting down and killing other asns.
As far as realm abilities go, the usual IP/Purge/Dodger2 reccomendation is good.
Purge is great since it counters dragonfang stun and nightshade venom, as well as let you punch out of the insta mezzes and stuns bards, minstrels lay on you and just mow their ass down.
IP is a necessity in rvr because everyone else has it. I typically will drop about 1.5 lifebars of the enemy and then have them win on IP/FA. Keep in mind that you can have purge/dodger2 at 2L8, and you can only start to get IP at 3L3. In my opinion purge/dodger2 matter more than getting IP at 3L3, but thats my opinion.
Dodger2 is the best thing you can get for PvE and reducing dmg received. The comback/frosty gaze sequence off of evade is your mainstay from lvl 39 on, and getting a 6% evade boost with +12 quickness is really worth 8 realm points.
I would get dodger 2 by BG3, then begin to work towards purge.
I have not respecced realm for IP and at present have
aug quick 2
aug dex 2
mastery of pain 2
duelists reflexes 1
tireless 1
toughness 1
regeneration 1
purge
dodger 2
MoP2 takes you from a crit on 1 out of 10 blows to a crit 1 out of 5 blows. This is noticable, particularly if you fight with 2 fast weapons. Duelists reflexes ups LA dmg by 3% per level. I figure since I already have aug dex 2, I might as well dump 4 points in here and up dmg by 6%, which is like the difference between a 94qua and a 100qua weapon.
Tireless is nice for regenerating end on the run. SOmetimes it is too dangerous to stop and rest, or the group is leaving...tireless will help you recover end on the move. YOu maybe get another style late battle with it, which can help, but it is nothing like shammy end. I got this on BG1 to help with pve/solo
Regeneration only works if you are sitting. I got it on BG1 to help with pve/solo. It helps a bit, but isn't that important for RvR.
Toughness is 3% more total life. What is good about this is it works AFTER everything else, so I get something like 34 hp unbuffed for it with my 155 con, and if I am buffed to around 1700 hp, it bumps it over 50hp for a single realm point. My total life in gear, unbuffed now is around 1300, which helps.
I am struggling with the idea of respeccing realm. I am 4L1 now so I can go dodger2/IP, or I can wait til 4L3 and do purge/IP. I am in no hurry to respec. I think Ill toss a few more realmpoints in things to try stuff out before I respec to IP. I want to test the thesis that if I get all of the nasty dmg add stuff, I might just be able to mow through an IP regardless. Another idea I am kicking around is bladedance, since those guys who wait til the last sliver of life before punching IP could just have their ass bladedanced out of exsistance (also would be a nice way to just lay a little parting shot on the usual alb zerg that just mows me under with raw numbers). I heard a few guys saying that they wanted to get a whole stealth group with bladedance, so they could all stealth in, bladedance, and kill an entire group.
As far as gear goes, here is my rig now
Shadowblade epic armor
2 infernal black diamond rings (DF)
shadowsteel? necklace (Spin, +2 stealth, takes me to 50st)
glacier girdle from WoW's
1 hollow chitin bracer (for qui and body)
1 bracer with 4% thrust and 25hp from dodens
ghostly cloak from 44th one time drop in ygg
99% player crafted arcanium cleaver (4.0 delay)
99% player crafted war axe (3.1 delay)
golden alloy axe (+4 axe, +1 left axe, procs)
I put the GA axe in the 2h slot, and have the cleaver and war axe in the main hand and left hand as default. I switch by weapon hotkey to the GA axe, which puts the war axe on my main and the GA on the off hand. Typically I use snare + enervate on cleaver+war axe, and have the DoT on the GA axe. This lets me land all 3 poisons with one hotkeyed weapon switch per battle. Also I frontload my damage with the cleaver for the opening snowsquall/icy sequence or BS2 sequence, then switch to the faster weapons for subsequent battle.
When SC comes in, Ill prob go to cleaver, hand axe, hand axe in the main, left hand, and 2h slots. THis will improve front loading and speed on the open, and really make me a blur in subsequent rounds. I dont do this now because the axe bonuses on the GA axe make a noticable dmg improvement.
I like using fast weapons in later rounds because this makes it much harder for them to execute reactionary chains. If they have multiple reactionary styles, they must quickly get the right one and quick weapons make this hard. Also fast weapons punch through pulsing bladeturn, and give you more blows to land more crits, and reduce the consequences of any one evade/parry/block.
I can open up the inventory and manually equip other weapons, and I have a set of pre-envenomed weapons where I can keep DoT runnign all combat and enervate, snare, and disease a 2nd foe. This takes practice, since you dont want to waste an evade on a weapon switch (when you switch weapons, you usually have to start combat again with DF).
All n all, I am having alot of fun with this SZ as long as I stick to the stuff that is the bread and butter. Stealth groups are a blast, and one of these days Ill get IP and all those IP using guys are going to be in deep doo-doo.
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sweet nostalgie....i just finished exping at that time....
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Date Posted: 10/29/02 12:30pm Subject: The shadowzerk, a brief guide - Date Edited: 10/29/02 12:39pm (2 edits total) Edited By: Lok-SG
===========================================
Frau here. I'll tell you why my spec is best for shadowzerking. I figure Ill write this now that I have hit my target rank (4) and have experienced the full build.
But before that, I would like to say that all the SB builds are good except the staffblade. I don't know how many times people ask me for the most uber blade build, and you just can't answer that because it depends on what you like the best.
A CB is the master of the quick gank. Victer, Grievance, Tupa are all CB's, and they rack up the realm points. If you like to 2 shot a caster then run, this is the build for you. CB's have no points in LA (or less than half spec). Try 44 cs, 44weap, 35 steal, 35 env.
A Soulzerk gives up envenom for strong crit strike and left axe. They can gank and tank, but they are not going to rack up DoT dmg. Mostly they use envenom for snare and disease. Try 44 LA, 44 Axe, 34 CS, 35 stealth, and 5 env. These are popular now since people think envenom is going to be useless with out of control body resistance.
A 5 spec really shines if you want to play it to realm rank 6. You basically go for mid 30's in all skills to be well rounded. With spellcrafting and 150 platinum, you too can take all 5 specs to 50 at rr6. Try 39 weap, 36 steal, 34 cs, 39 la, 22 env. Some trade weapon and stealth for more envenom.
The staffblade doesnt train weapon styles at all. Usually you are talking a kobold with high CS, envenom, and stealth, extra dex and qui at generation. THis build has a high level catastrophy due to lack of weaponskill with staff...variance is bad, and your weaponskill number is low. But for the first BG, you can really have fun with the big dex driven damage of staff and the nice long delay of staff.
I am a shadowzerk. We give up almost all critical strike to be strong with envenom and left axe. We are the strongest SB tank, and weak on gank. This is a very PvE friendly build, as once you start getting decent evade + dodger 2, you can tank fairly well. Shadowzerks are midgards assassin hunters, and they are the ones best suited to deal with tanks. In a stealth group, SZ's shine late battle after all the people with perf have opened.
My spec and reasoning
44 LA
42 Axe
10 CS
36 stealth (autotrain 28 )
36 envenom
44 LA is there to get icy brilliance, the 2nd move in the rear style LA chain. This chain does huge damage with a bleed, and is one of the strongest weapons in your arsenal as a SZ. If something runs, you just lay in with this and they die fast. The damage from Icy is about 30% more than snowsquall (the first move) and the bleed keeps them from restealthing. Not much can last long with a SZ rearstyling on it.
10 CS is there because of backstab 2. BS2 is a rear positional from stealth that pops bladeturn and has a short 3s stun. This style is critical for SZ's taking down casters. You pop them with BS2, then do snowsquall/icy and its dead. Right now with casters able to change facing while stunned it is hard to land the snowsquall/icy chain, but that will be fixed in another patch. Any time you think you have some guy who is going to run and not melee, use BS2 as an open. It is well worth 10 points. I considered 21 CS for a perf open, but that has no stun component and I would have to drop to 39 axe to get it, so it wasnt worth it (perf at 21cs doesnt do much more than a doublefrost anyway-better off moving for the BS2).
36 envenom- my build is a realmrank 4 build. I did a little study and there were very few blades at rr5 or higher on merlin midgard...most move on before then. With +11 from items and +3 from rr4, you can hit 50 envenom and use lifebane the top end DoT. DoT's matter alot for a SZ, since you just keep repoisoning a victim until it dies, and that top end DoT helps alot. Also the top end str/con debuff isnt too shabby, and the long duration snare/disease are good too. SInce you are going to melee something to death, having the extra damage output from solid envenom helps a great deal, and having the thing stay there and not run off from your snare is nice, and having it not hit you that hard because of the debuff is nice. At present you can only hit +11 by using doden's drops.
36 stealth- again with +11 and rr4 you get 50 stealth. Since you are an asn hunter, your best defense against most other infiltrators is to avoid being perfed. The way you do this is by having a high stealth rating so that they have the least amount of time possible to line up the perf. The core reason a SZ wins v. asns is because they elimintate all the front loaded dmg of anyone with points in CS by opening with a sloppy doublefrost style, and rendering the battle into MY LA vs. their dragonfang. Having 50 stealth also means you can slip through enemy ranks at mileforts etc better than anyone else, and that helps. I also like the speed while stealthed. Some people advocate low stealth builds, but I think that is bad because you open yourself up to perf and tilt the balance their way.
If I do play this build to rr6, then I can dispense with the little +2 envenom and stealth items and still hit 50 stealth, envenom. This frees up those slots for other things, like resistance gear etc. Since you are a hit and stick around kind of fighter, having higher resistance and life matters a great deal, and a lesser comittment to skill adders helps. Again you must be more physically imposing than other asns to beat the crap out of them as a SZ, and tying up 2 slots with little twerpy +2 skill adders isnt going to help this.
The final spec is 42 axe. THis is as high as I could get with my autotrain level ( 28 ). Weapon skill is driven by axe rating and strength, and it in turn determins your damage cap for base weapon damage and how easily you are evaded, parried or blocked. People who complain about getting evaded, parried, or blocked all the time usually have poor weaponskill. I picked axe because there are more left hand usable axes in the game, and you can only use left axe styles with an axe in your left hand (cant do it with sword). I might as well have that offhand hit harder.
I picked norse and went with +15 str, +10 con on the advice of my good friend Cime who at the time was on his 3rd or so rebuild. You are going for hoss damage witht his build and that 15 str helps since str is a tertiary attribute. Norse with 85str ain't to shabby at generation. The 10 con also helps you last. Had I to do it again, I would prob chunk only 10 into str and put the other 10 into qui to get a 2% faster swing rate. Norse is the best by far for SZ in my humble opinion.
I autotrained stealth to 28, and had essentially all points in LA and Axe with leftovers in envenom to 4. I stunk on the first BG, basically acting as a gimped zerk, but my BG3 build was
34 LA
27 axe
10 cs
25 stealth
4 envenom
With adders I got close to full spec on LA, axe, stealth. Envenom was enough to disease and snare people. I could climb walls at 25 stealth and harry people in the CK. I also had doublefrost. At the time, this was before the armor nerf (where mythic changed infils and shades from vulnerable to slash to neutral and resistant to slash) and I had about 50% chance to solo a duo enemy pair of asns unbuffed.
From this lvl 35 build, I took axe, left axe to 39. I parked axe there at 39 for a while, and took left axe to 44 with extra points in stealth. I would bump up my axe skill to keep it at full spec through my 40's, and I think I had hit my final stealth spec of 36 at lvl 45, which helped me have a bit more fun in real RvR. It was only in the 46-50 range did I finally start to pour points into envenom.
Is this build fun? Well if all you ever want to do is solo RvR, the other builds are probably better since you need the quick kill. But this SZ is awesome on the walls during a keep defense, and is a very nice addition to a pure stealth group party, filling the muscle role that most other blades don't. It is nice to be able to run around unstealthed with a group and still melee hard, which means you are better for a mixed group of 8 on 8 pvp. The main joy for me though is hunting down and killing other asns.
As far as realm abilities go, the usual IP/Purge/Dodger2 reccomendation is good.
Purge is great since it counters dragonfang stun and nightshade venom, as well as let you punch out of the insta mezzes and stuns bards, minstrels lay on you and just mow their ass down.
IP is a necessity in rvr because everyone else has it. I typically will drop about 1.5 lifebars of the enemy and then have them win on IP/FA. Keep in mind that you can have purge/dodger2 at 2L8, and you can only start to get IP at 3L3. In my opinion purge/dodger2 matter more than getting IP at 3L3, but thats my opinion.
Dodger2 is the best thing you can get for PvE and reducing dmg received. The comback/frosty gaze sequence off of evade is your mainstay from lvl 39 on, and getting a 6% evade boost with +12 quickness is really worth 8 realm points.
I would get dodger 2 by BG3, then begin to work towards purge.
I have not respecced realm for IP and at present have
aug quick 2
aug dex 2
mastery of pain 2
duelists reflexes 1
tireless 1
toughness 1
regeneration 1
purge
dodger 2
MoP2 takes you from a crit on 1 out of 10 blows to a crit 1 out of 5 blows. This is noticable, particularly if you fight with 2 fast weapons. Duelists reflexes ups LA dmg by 3% per level. I figure since I already have aug dex 2, I might as well dump 4 points in here and up dmg by 6%, which is like the difference between a 94qua and a 100qua weapon.
Tireless is nice for regenerating end on the run. SOmetimes it is too dangerous to stop and rest, or the group is leaving...tireless will help you recover end on the move. YOu maybe get another style late battle with it, which can help, but it is nothing like shammy end. I got this on BG1 to help with pve/solo
Regeneration only works if you are sitting. I got it on BG1 to help with pve/solo. It helps a bit, but isn't that important for RvR.
Toughness is 3% more total life. What is good about this is it works AFTER everything else, so I get something like 34 hp unbuffed for it with my 155 con, and if I am buffed to around 1700 hp, it bumps it over 50hp for a single realm point. My total life in gear, unbuffed now is around 1300, which helps.
I am struggling with the idea of respeccing realm. I am 4L1 now so I can go dodger2/IP, or I can wait til 4L3 and do purge/IP. I am in no hurry to respec. I think Ill toss a few more realmpoints in things to try stuff out before I respec to IP. I want to test the thesis that if I get all of the nasty dmg add stuff, I might just be able to mow through an IP regardless. Another idea I am kicking around is bladedance, since those guys who wait til the last sliver of life before punching IP could just have their ass bladedanced out of exsistance (also would be a nice way to just lay a little parting shot on the usual alb zerg that just mows me under with raw numbers). I heard a few guys saying that they wanted to get a whole stealth group with bladedance, so they could all stealth in, bladedance, and kill an entire group.
As far as gear goes, here is my rig now
Shadowblade epic armor
2 infernal black diamond rings (DF)
shadowsteel? necklace (Spin, +2 stealth, takes me to 50st)
glacier girdle from WoW's
1 hollow chitin bracer (for qui and body)
1 bracer with 4% thrust and 25hp from dodens
ghostly cloak from 44th one time drop in ygg
99% player crafted arcanium cleaver (4.0 delay)
99% player crafted war axe (3.1 delay)
golden alloy axe (+4 axe, +1 left axe, procs)
I put the GA axe in the 2h slot, and have the cleaver and war axe in the main hand and left hand as default. I switch by weapon hotkey to the GA axe, which puts the war axe on my main and the GA on the off hand. Typically I use snare + enervate on cleaver+war axe, and have the DoT on the GA axe. This lets me land all 3 poisons with one hotkeyed weapon switch per battle. Also I frontload my damage with the cleaver for the opening snowsquall/icy sequence or BS2 sequence, then switch to the faster weapons for subsequent battle.
When SC comes in, Ill prob go to cleaver, hand axe, hand axe in the main, left hand, and 2h slots. THis will improve front loading and speed on the open, and really make me a blur in subsequent rounds. I dont do this now because the axe bonuses on the GA axe make a noticable dmg improvement.
I like using fast weapons in later rounds because this makes it much harder for them to execute reactionary chains. If they have multiple reactionary styles, they must quickly get the right one and quick weapons make this hard. Also fast weapons punch through pulsing bladeturn, and give you more blows to land more crits, and reduce the consequences of any one evade/parry/block.
I can open up the inventory and manually equip other weapons, and I have a set of pre-envenomed weapons where I can keep DoT runnign all combat and enervate, snare, and disease a 2nd foe. This takes practice, since you dont want to waste an evade on a weapon switch (when you switch weapons, you usually have to start combat again with DF).
All n all, I am having alot of fun with this SZ as long as I stick to the stuff that is the bread and butter. Stealth groups are a blast, and one of these days Ill get IP and all those IP using guys are going to be in deep doo-doo.
====================================
sweet nostalgie....i just finished exping at that time....
(((((