Shadowdancer Questions on synergy (Monk/Rogue)

[QuiteGoneJin]

How does Rooting Pain work with Shattered Pillar? Does it go off often? Can it gain wounds off itself, I really want to avoid another damage loop like the blunderbuss Swift Fully debacle.

 

Is dance of death or enduring dance worth on a dagger shadowdancer? Can you turn it on in stealth?

 

Do long stride and fast runner stack?

 

 

My motivation, I tried a soul blade assassin mindstalker and felt like  a shadowdancer could just as mobile and fun but a little more tanky and I wasn't enjoying the long casted cipher abilities . 

[QuiteGoneJin]

EDITED: out the dances for reposte and an earlier blade turning, irrc these go well together. 

 

My musings, totally untested and need to know a lot more

 

Might sacrifice might for int so blade turning lasts longer and with the fast move-speed and longer stealth I can re-position better

 

Shadowdancer 

lvl 1 swift Strikes and Escape

2 backstab

3 lesser wounds

4 smoke veil and 2 wep fighting

5 dirty fighting

6 Fast Runer

7 lightning strike and finishing blows

8 blade turning

9 reposte

10 Shadowing Beyond and Duality of mortal

11 Long Stride

12 rooting pain (tumbling if it doesnt syngerize well?)

13 Devastatig Blows and the long pain (for later dagger funniness, hope this doesnt look silly)

14 Deep Wounds

15 Tumbling

16 Turning Wheel and Improved Critical 

17 Flagellant's Path

18 Slippery Mind or Parting sorrow or spell resistance

19 instrument of pain, and ?? from rogue

20 Skyward Kick. 

 

This is not to be optimal, just to feel like a ninja. Though I do want to play it on POTD w difficulty mod on. Trying to avoid heartbeat drumming and swiftflurry though with daggers they might be ok? (ie not broken). 

Edited May 25, 2018 by QuiteGoneJin

[QuiteGoneJin]

Is Main Character respeccing still broken? Hoping to be able to change this around as I discover stuff but if its still broken I may have to look up how to test builds with console commands.

[Climhazzard]

On the last shattered pillar I made I think I was getting about 2 wounds per hit, but you'll probably get 3 wounds per crit by endgame.  I know I get wounds back when I use raised torment, not usually enough to use it again though, 1 or 2.  You can't really spend wounds as fast as you get them unless you're whiffing a lot.  But the wounds cap prevents rooting pain from being to gimmicky.

 

The "gains wounds" message is always before rooting pain in the combat log so I don't think you can get wounds from rooting pain.

 

I don't think I would bother with either dance with a melee build, but there might be uses for them, idk.

 

Not sure about long stride + fast runner.

[Climhazzard]

Is Main Character respeccing still broken? Hoping to be able to change this around as I discover stuff but if its still broken I may have to look up how to test builds with console commands.

 

 

It's broken for multi class at least.  You'll lose one of your level 1 picks, and watcher powers.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Climhazzard

[QuiteGoneJin]

Changed the dances to reposte and blade turning.

 

With decent enough int this should be mobile, fun and still have good dmg. No clue though my theorycrafting skills are lvl zero. 

 

Thoughts? Might be too many rogue actives that I never get to use.... 

[Climhazzard]

There's not much point in rooting pain if you don't have anything to spend your wounds on.  I guess you could set thunderous blows to always activate when you have 5 wounds, but I would recommend at least getting one more monk active, my preference is raised torment.

 

You might want to consider a way to make sure you can activate sneak attack and deathblows as well, not to mention slip deathblows in there somewhere.  I would get persistent distraction and perhaps crippling strikes.

[Purudaya]

Shattered Pillar/Assassin is a lot of fun, but you might find that you're not using stealth during combat as much as you'd expect since smoke veil isn't very reliable atm. I would choose it anyway to keep your character a tad squishier to balance out the high DPS.

 

Dual sabres, confounding blind, Swift flurry (only as broken as the weapons/abilities you pair with it), thunderous blows, persistent distraction, and heartbeat drumming (deathblows is a tad overkill and comes in late anyway) are the pillars of the build. The trick is to use Swift flurry in combination with "full attack" abilities like confounding blind and crippling strike to increase the chance of triggering a second attack. You will occasionally score chains of 4-5 attacks at higher levels, but it's nowhere near as OP as some of the blunderbuss/frostseeker shenanigans. It's enough to give your character the highest DPS in the party (as a rogue/monk should be) without breaking the game (there are plenty of times when SF doesn't generate bonus attacks). 

 

Given that Swift Flurry is all but guaranteed to be hit with the nerf hammer when the patch comes out in a couple of weeks, you might want to hold off. Until then, this build is probably best played on PotD with scale up -> everything.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Purudaya

[QuiteGoneJin]

Oddly enough I want to go dagger only because I like the animations. Honestly might just be vanilla and go pure dagger rogue no subclass. 

[QuiteGoneJin]

For a basic dagger rogue (H Orlan) was thinking

 

Single Class Dagger rogue

1 Escape

2 Backstab

3 Veil and 2 wep

4 blinding strike

5 confounding blind and finishing blows

6 Dirty Fighting

7 shadowing beyond and persistant distraction

8 tumbling

9 devastating blow and uncanny luck

10 adept evasion (crippling strike if not deflecting much by then)

11 reposte (arterial strike if notevading enough) and slippery mind

12 improved critical

13 deathblows and potent empower

14 accurate empower

15 Withering strike

16 Enduring Shadow and Gambit

17 Toxic Strike

18 coordinated pos

19 Vanishing Strike

20 Murderous Intent

 

Just put it here so i have 2 build ideas in one thread to refer back to. 

[Purudaya]

 

For a basic dagger rogue (H Orlan) was thinking

 

Single Class Dagger rogue

1 Escape

2 Backstab

3 Veil and 2 wep

4 blinding strike

5 confounding blind and finishing blows

6 Dirty Fighting

7 shadowing beyond and persistant distraction

8 tumbling

9 devastating blow and uncanny luck

10 adept evasion (crippling strike if not deflecting much by then)

11 reposte (arterial strike if notevading enough) and slippery mind

12 improved critical

13 deathblows and potent empower

14 accurate empower

15 Withering strike

16 Enduring Shadow and Gambit

17 Toxic Strike

18 coordinated pos

19 Vanishing Strike

20 Murderous Intent

 

Just put it here so i have 2 build ideas in one thread to refer back to. 

 

 

The problem is that right now veil seems to fail immediately almost half the time - you will stealth and then instantly unstealth with no indication as to why. Either it's a bug or there are far too many invisibility-breaking conditions (damage over time is one of them, but there must be more because it often doesn't work even if you haven't taken any damage) that interrupt it. Pre-combat opening backstabs still work great, but if you're planning on making a build based on in-combat stealth you might want to wait for the patch.

 

Granted, the devs haven't yet acknowledged the problem in the bug forum (that I've seen), so who knows.

 

Otherwise, looks like a solid build. I don't know how valuable coordinated positioning will be and so you may want to take Gambit instead despite the high guile cost.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Purudaya

[QuiteGoneJin]

Ah thats real poopy, its worked the few times I've used it, is it really that persistent? Damn hope that's rare (for me) cause that is really discouraging and class breaking. Gambit is in the build at lvl 16 as you get two abilities. 

Edited May 25, 2018 by QuiteGoneJin

[QuiteGoneJin]

Maybe someone needs to make a mod where it combines with suppress affliction just for its duration. Or something that delays all debuffs/dots till visible again. But how the heck that bug made it to live idk, re-entering stealth is a core mechanic of rogues and Josh talked about it directly on many streams when people asked about the class improving from POE1. Ugh.... 

Edited May 25, 2018 by QuiteGoneJin

[Purudaya]

Ah thats real poopy, its worked the few times I've used it, is it really that persistent? Damn hope that's rare (for me) cause that is really discouraging and class breaking. Gambit is in the build at lvl 16 as you get two abilities.

 

Whoops, somehow overlooked that. Yeah, in their current state rogues need some serious tuning imo. They have about 4-5 power levels worth of active abilities that range from underwhelming to borderline useless, even moreso once you get persistent distraction. The class should be built around stealth and burst damage: it gets the second part mostly right but largely through passives while giving you several single target debuffs that you have no real need for (what is the point of Sap?). Meanwhile, how does a fighter have an ability that guarantees a critical hit but not a rogue?

 

As for veil, try testing it in fights with 6+ enemies and at least one magic user or possibly chanter. That's where it seems to fail the most (even when you don't have any afflictions, which is why I suspect a bug).

Edited May 25, 2018 by Purudaya

[QuiteGoneJin]

I'm this close to shelving the game for now. Honestly I backed it on day one and hearing this pisses me off cause I spent all week looking for a mobile active melee class and finally realized plain jane rogue might be my ticket, only to hear this. (I spent 150hrs rerolling over and over). The more I delve into it the more unready it feels. 

Edited May 25, 2018 by QuiteGoneJin

[KDubya]

If you are going with Dance of Death I'd suggest going for Trickster as the illusion spells will help a bunch with the not getting hit part.

 

Rooting Pain works well as long as you are spamming something that uses wounds like Efficient Anguish, Torments Reach or Skyward kick. As a multi abilities are tight so I'd focus on one or two of these.

 

If you avoid the self proccing abilities like Swift Flurry everything else is not too far out of whack for balance.