The shadow is a design disaster

You know, HC is a challenge mode of sorts, just like solo self found, so I'm not sure it should be used as an argument here.

After all, what we're seeing is perfectly normal, it's common in games to lose most of their build choice in challenge modes. As the requirements placed on your characters get tighter, the small differences between different options become more important and you're left with just the most reliable stuff.
If that didn't happen, it means that there just wasn't enough challenge in the challenge mode, because the other possibility would be that someone made a perfectly balanced game where all options you can take are equal. That would be quite a headline if the game has any amount of complexity beyond rock-paper-scissors, even something like chess, that might seem balanced, has stuff that just doesn't work at higher level.

Even if we leave common sense aside, and even that isn't doing any favors to the argument because if an assassin can take out someone without getting anywhere near them you can bet the sweetest piece of your ass they will do it, the gaming archetype of assassin isn't really suitable to PoE HC. That type tends to play strongly into high risk - high reward mindset, and the gap between risk and reward is heavily skewed in that environment.

There are usually ways to make the archetype attractive, of course, we see them all the time in roguelite/like games, but you can't just transplant the whole thing in PoE because:
1. Reward can't be huge because 'lol I died' is the default game mode, unlike rogue-ish games
2. The loss is just too great, in a rogue-ish you're expected to die, so you will lose a few hours of investment at worst, and in a roguelite it isn't even completely lost, in PoE you can lose much more

I love the Trickster and building as hybrid ES/Eva/Life after reading something Sidtherat wrote many years ago and what he said about it in this thread should be read by all who wanna build that way.

I think the Shadow ascendancies do have flavour and identities, don't be mislead by the art of each one, the artist was invoking artistic license and they're old images, The Saboteur is the trap/mine ascendancy and does that excellently, I would argue this ascendency is the strongest, thematically, in the whole game.
The Trickster is a bout more tricky to define other than a jack-of-all-trades and master of ES/Eva. The recent redesign is excellent. While the Assassin does need a rework as good as the Trickster received it does have a identity, that somewhat fits within the assassin theme, mainly as a crit based character, whether spell or attack.

The Shadow isn't a design disaster. Assassin could use some work but Saboteur and Trickster are fine.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

its not a ranger, its a shadow, at no point does ggg suggest you stick to the starting nodes of your class, there are very few builds in the game that stick to their class starting zone, that is not the intended design.

When about half you skill nodes are ranger nodes, its a ranger build you can call it a shadow all you want because it starts in the shadow but its a ranger build and you are only making the original argument stronger, that shadows are whitch/rangers with extra steps.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

hats not actually true. people play ev/es shadows, they even play ci ev/es shadows with 1 life and dont path down to the ranger/duelist. these builds can be incredibly powerful defensively.

They cant, thats why no one plays them as melee in hardcore, dont belive me? take a look at poe ninja.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the truth is the reason most people would pick life isnt because its more tanky, its the opposite, theyre playing softcore glass cannons that want to deathzerg content so they get 3-4k life and throw everything else into damage. they do not want to invest in defenses that will provide more of a deathless play style at the expense of having less deeps.

This is wrong, in hardcore you pick life because its a million times easier to manage and to sustain unless you are rich which most players are not. Once again you come to the thread with softcore perspectives which dont help because everything works in softcore even the worst of builds you just have to die enough times

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

most builds path to their neighbours for things, if you go make 20 decent builds it would be usual for 19 of them to path into their neighbours, most builds cover 2-3 zones.

Thats the whole point of the thread, they shouldn't, this is a issue which is pervasive to the whole game but the shadow has it the worst, just because something became the norm doesnt mean its good design, classes need identities and those identities need to work.

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Raics wrote:

You know, HC is a challenge mode of sorts, just like solo self found, so I'm not sure it should be used as an argument here.

After all, what we're seeing is perfectly normal, it's common in games to lose most of their build choice in challenge modes. As the requirements placed on your characters get tighter, the small differences between different options become more important and you're left with just the most reliable stuff.
If that didn't happen, it means that there just wasn't enough challenge in the challenge mode, because the other possibility would be that someone made a perfectly balanced game where all options you can take are equal. That would be quite a headline if the game has any amount of complexity beyond rock-paper-scissors, even something like chess, that might seem balanced, has stuff that just doesn't work at higher level.

I completely agree with you on the challenge aspect, but what most people are arguing here is not that all builds work, its that the "default" build works.

Lets put it this way, you buy a single player game and you select the tank character, then you reach the later stages of the game and you find that you cant progress because the developers only made the mage powerful enough to progress, do you think that is good design? you would expect that the developers at least tested the base aspects of the game so that you could play the base game in a competent way right? or do you think that only some classes should be able to finish the game?

it works. im lvl82 right now and im doing fine in ~T10 maps with.. 36% fire resist. i just know when to disengage, regen and hit again (why these resists? family comes first to fixing my gear)

you might pretend it is not about the build, but it is. your build (in HC sanctum, the lvl67 assassin) has SEVERAL basic character building issues that you cannot pretend 'should work'

1) your gear is just TERRIBLE. there is no excuse for that. few hours AT MOST of blood aqueduct farming will net you 50 chaos you need to get your starting ES/EV gear (uniques or rares). heck, vertex/sin trek/ascent/QotF are 20c COMBINED right now in HC Sanctum and you can get much better (including EV/ES rare chest) if you farm bit more

you have (without Grace/Discipline) 2900 EV and 500 ES. ~7000 and 900 with auras up. that is a mere fraction of what is available 20c away

this is game about grinding gear. there is really no excuse for not bench-crafting up items you have. these small changes snowball quickly.

i wont touch misc items, these are there just to fix resists after all but each ring can roll ~40 ES and ~150EV, belt even more, amulet can get +ES and +%ES etc etc. it REALLY adds up.

2) you claim to re-live shadow and yet you masterfully ignore both ES/EV wheels. that results in paltry ES and EV values. ES is too small to be a buffer, EV is so low so you get hit far often than you should AND Ghost Shroud barely does anything (210 ES a pop, hardly stellar)

3) with 900 ES you try to sustain with ES leech. sorry but what? your leech rate (after capping) is 160ES/second. 5+ seconds to reach full. and that full is less than a thousand. for real? one good ignite and you are gone


I understand you play hardcore but i also kinda start to understand why you dont have high lvl chars. these build issues are 'git gut' type of thing and you can say whatever you want about fantasy/vision/immersion - you play a game and you seem to ignore the rules of this game

1) build viability depends on gear. your gear is Act5 at most. no archetype will work with gear this bad.
2) you actively avoid using mechanics you claim dont work
3) you somehow want to rely on ES leech with 900 base ES. ES leech can be finicky with 9000 ES due to penalties, with 900 it is just a waste of time and passives

(im not even touching on damage output or minor 'weird' decisions, these are outside the scope)

i know you will refute and handwave all this but still some build improving advice (so you can actually test what you claim doesnt work):
- Ghost Shroud requires ~20K+ evasion (my current char has 40K with flasks, no Grace) without it you are wasting your time. this mechanic requires numbers and investment but 20K you can get (without Grace ofc) for 1-2-3hours of BA farming
- check masteries. youll find ES/EV hybrid quite good. get EV wheel for '100% inc EV from body' mastery. i also think youve picked the wrong suppression wheel but thats minor.

evasion change will make you evade 95% attacks leaving you only spells and dots to worry about. any source of Blind will make you actually ~unhitable by attacks.

burn/burning ground immunity comes next, then poison and bleed. EV/ES builds have 50%+ chaos res so poison is easy, bleed - use flask

spells - spell suppression,'just dont get hit', run-and-scoop is perfectly enough for early maps. after that you kinda are expected to buy items so no excuses here. noone does T16 with Act5 items, not anymore, not even in SC.



it works, ofc it works better with a shield (Viper Strike dual wielding is just.. a weird idea) but if you insist on dual wielding, so be it - it still works, but just bit worse

these are build issues, crippling build issues and have NOTHING to do with if or if not this archetype works or not. give it a proper, informed chance, before that it is like claiming archery doesnt work because arrows thrown dont go far enough

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sonicphi wrote:

I completely agree with you on the challenge aspect, but what most people are arguing here is not that all builds work, its that the "default" build works.

Lets put it this way, you buy a single player game and you select the tank character, then you reach the later stages of the game and you find that you cant progress because the developers only made the mage powerful enough to progress, do you think that is good design? you would expect that the developers at least tested the base aspects of the game so that you could play the base game in a competent way right? or do you think that only some classes should be able to finish the game?

I mean, pretty sure you can 'beat the game' as a melee shadow, assuming the playerbase ever agrees on what exactly beating the game entails. As long as you're strong enough to farm endgame reasonably fast, you're able to accumulate enough cash to buy the gear that will carry you anywhere.

Will it be anywhere near as easy, fast, cheap, convenient & accessible as a mage build? Hell no, but that isn't really a shadow issue, a viper strike shadow works just as bad as a glacial hammer templar, the amount of elbow grease you have to put in them to do high content is sad but that's the tunnel we ended up in and no light is to be seen at the moment.

So, badly they work, but they work, and the same can't really be said of some other archetypes that should be possible if you look at the tree. With the higher focus on gearing that we're seeing lately, pretty much all true hybrids are more dead than they ever was, and they were never overly alive.
Even something like the death knight (melee + summon) builds that were kinda decent once don't work anymore because even summoners now have a ton of summoner gear that you're supposed to use if you want to get anywhere, and the investment in making melee work isn't exactly low either.
And it's a shame, because the game is now at a point where having a strong single target skill to deal with the souped up rares and bosses to go along with your clearing skill isn't such a dumb idea as it once was. It isn't really enough of an excuse to deal with all the hassle of building a hybrid, but convincing yourself you have one is often all that one needs.

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raics wrote:

Will it be anywhere near as easy, fast, cheap, convenient & accessible as a mage build? Hell no, but that isn't really a shadow issue, a viper strike shadow works just as bad as a glacial hammer templar, the amount of elbow grease you have to put in them to do high content is sad but that's the tunnel we ended up in and no light is to be seen at the moment.

excuse me, excuse me

im doing it at this very moment. and to be frank - it is comparable to 'regular' spellcasters.

Viper Strike scales well enough with gem levels AND does NOT require melee splash if you can get Bino's - and it seems to cost nothing despite being ~10crit ~380pdps dagger. all you need is +strike (i boost it with Ancestral Cry). because you get damage for free from several sources you can afford to run Ancestral Call and Splash early on for pretty effective experience. it isnt enjoyable because you have to facehug every mob, but it is very, very efficient

getting to T10 maps was MUCH easier than i expected and im still using 10c items, lvl19 gems and have 8 empty gem sockets that i have yet to fill with Wither, Guard skill, curses and stuff

if i had to level for a living i would much rather do Viper Strike Trickster than Fireball Witch.. endgame ofc casters are better due to ranged nature but leveling till reds? Im not so sure anymore

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sidtherat wrote:

excuse me, excuse me

im doing it at this very moment. and to be frank - it is comparable to 'regular' spellcasters.

You aren't exactly helping the grand cause, Sid. Do you mind reducing the fish size at least to an uncommonly large trout?

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sidtherat wrote:

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raics wrote:

Will it be anywhere near as easy, fast, cheap, convenient & accessible as a mage build? Hell no, but that isn't really a shadow issue, a viper strike shadow works just as bad as a glacial hammer templar, the amount of elbow grease you have to put in them to do high content is sad but that's the tunnel we ended up in and no light is to be seen at the moment.

excuse me, excuse me

im doing it at this very moment. and to be frank - it is comparable to 'regular' spellcasters.

Viper Strike scales well enough with gem levels AND does NOT require melee splash if you can get Bino's - and it seems to cost nothing despite being ~10crit ~380pdps dagger. all you need is +strike (i boost it with Ancestral Cry). because you get damage for free from several sources you can afford to run Ancestral Call and Splash early on for pretty effective experience. it isnt enjoyable because you have to facehug every mob, but it is very, very efficient

getting to T10 maps was MUCH easier than i expected and im still using 10c items, lvl19 gems and have 8 empty gem sockets that i have yet to fill with Wither, Guard skill, curses and stuff

if i had to level for a living i would much rather do Viper Strike Trickster than Fireball Witch.. endgame ofc casters are better due to ranged nature but leveling till reds? Im not so sure anymore

Un private ur profile, tell us how many times you died on your character, stop ignoring the point of the thread.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

What can you can do is use the 'assassin' ascendancy to make some incredible builds. For sure. And Trickster. And Saboteur. Especially Saboteur. But you won't be building EV/ES because life is much more important and EV/ES is, by its erratice nature, an inferior primary source of EHP compared to good old life (but a perfectly decent secondary), and for that you need to path down to Ranger and/or Duelist in which case, why aren't you just playing one of those?

thats not actually true. people play ev/es shadows, they even play ci ev/es shadows with 1 life and dont path down to the ranger/duelist. these builds can be incredibly powerful defensively. i play ev/es ci witches, its straight up better than plain es in a lot of cases, more cases than not imo. if im playing a shadow or a witch my default mindset will be to take ci and use es+ev, if i use something different its because something about the build has presented an unusual opportunity cost in the planning stage that has moved me away from that default setup for an endgame mapping character.

the truth is the reason most people would pick life isnt because its more tanky, its the opposite, theyre playing softcore glass cannons that want to deathzerg content so they get 3-4k life and throw everything else into damage. they do not want to invest in defenses that will provide more of a deathless play style at the expense of having less deeps.

thats not to say you cant build life tanky, some people have really tanky life setups that also will invest in defenses. but if everyone played hardcore youd see more es/ev ci builds than we currently do.

I would say it's more of an investment issue. EV/ES or just ES simply costs more to get the same durability. This was esp true when Immortal Cry + Enduring Cry stacking was a thing.

There's also the issue that Divine Shield is objectively better than Ghost Dance.

My person hybrid EV/ES is transforming SS to Dodge cap which is quite an investment. Ghost Dance, Dissolution of Flesh and Prettified Blood. Degens can be countered with Lethe Shade or Wind Ward and you get pretty durable. LoH/Leech or Damage to Life nullifies the backend of PB damage.

It's a good little combo that helps Ghost Dance keep up with Divine Shield. I would generally try this with any Shadow, Trickster can prolly do fine without it but even Ranger makes good use.

That all being said. It's a good example of how "Class" is more in the itemization than the passive tree these days. Even though you can fix Assassin defense this way. It doesn't change the play style.

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sonicphi wrote:

This is wrong, in hardcore you pick life because its a million times easier to manage and to sustain unless you are rich which most players are not. Once again you come to the thread with softcore perspectives which dont help because everything works in softcore even the worst of builds you just have to die enough times

youve got ghost reaver on an ev/es dot melee build that has low amounts of energy shield, so your understanding of sustaining energy shield is questionable. i dont think its necessarily a rich thing, but it is a game knowledge thing which tends to have a relationship with economic capability.




the reason you dont see a load of people playing ev/es melee shadow is because they dont want to play it. they can blow up a whole screen with other skill architypes and survive doing it with far less hardy defense investments. theres no incentive to play it, it demands better gear, a better build and more skill to end up with a less effective character.

the reason you struggle to play ev/es melee shadow is because you dont know how to build a character like that effectively. thats not a dig, im not aiming to put you down, its a relatively high game knowledge demanding architype to pull off and you play hardcore where its very hard to learn from your mistakes. most players are probably gonna struggle to put together character like that just off the top of their head because it has a lot of complex mechanics/gearing involved and its rarely been high in the meta so its not an area where the larger community has discovered and shared a lot of conventional wisdom, people are not bothering to pick up the item bases it requires, people are not crafting them so the supply isnt there.







that can be a valid criticism btw, that a melee shadow with the ev/es core defense combo is simply too gear demanding, too game knowledge demanding and even if you meet these relatively high demands you are rewarded with a character that is less effective than relatively easy to gear, easy to build, easy to play alternatives that are essentially playing the shadow like a witch or a ranger spamming projectile skills from a distance.

its a fairly expert mode demanding character that delivers quite an underwhelming performance. as one of the core shadow fantasy architypes it should probably be a lot more straight forward to get up and running to a viable state and should deliver a lot more of an effective output if you get it right.

i think theres a fair argument that the way the game suggests a character should be played, the architype its presenting, should be fairly beginner friendly to make work and when done right should hold a decent position in the power ratings. i think that makes sense as a design goal and i would agree the melee shadow falls short of that, significantly. as does a lot of melee atm btw.




thwts a perfectly valid criticism of the game, and accurate i think, i would agree with that statement. sid, would you agree with that statement?



i dont think theres nothing to what you are saying, i think theres definitely big problems in this area that are being highlighted here. but if you say that melee shadow or ev/es combo are not viable options youre gonna get pushback against those particular statements because theyre factually untrue.