How are you liking Shadow so far?

I finally jumped on board today. I normally play caster classes, but I just played Wiz to death on D3, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to go "pure" caster with a Witch. I know that the skill tree allows you to get pretty crazy no matter the start point, but I thought Shadow might be a good spot to branch out.

I ran up to lvl15 tonight, and played around with a bunch of different skills. I do like that overall, there don't seem to be any pure trash skills, like in some other ARPG's. Some are certainly more effective/easier to use than others, but they all seem to be at least usable.

I branched out with 1 handed dmg and crit, but I'm thinking maybe I should have gone dual wield.

I started looking more closely at the skill tree, and I'm having trouble deciding if anything looks interesting to me.

So far this class just isn't clicking for me. All of the skills I've gotten so far are more or less usable as I mentioned above, but none of them are really very much fun to me. The game itself has been fun so far, exploring, depth, learning the mechanics, etc., but I'm just not having a lot of fun with the actual class and skills themselves.

Do the skills get more fun/interesting as you level them, or would I be better off trying a different class/build?

Has anyone else had the same trouble? I know this is my first day and first character build, so I'm not making any judgements other than a very vague first impression.

I know with a game that has this level of depth and customization, you really need to collect a lot of gear, and spend a lot of time becoming familiar with everything before you can really start to specialize and build a "fun" build.

Hello.

I'm LvL 22 on my Shadow and from what i can see now you could go 3 ways.

1. Caster with a bit of melee damage like viper strike (hit and run)
2. 90% melee skills lots of crit and evasion

3. Necro Build - let the minions do the job.

I'm playing melee Shadow as I wanted to play a assassin type class. To be perfectly honest I enjoy it but it feels like something is lacking. Maybe should have gone Duelist full dex class and maybe you (Vindemia) should be playing Witch. :)

Bow shadow isn't an impossiblity either. I recommend considering it.

I built dual wield daggers, and I would say that it wasn't a bad decision. The melee skills are nice and there are enough of them to give a choice.

The only downside I'm having, building mostly melee, is the lack of non-magic AoE Attacks. There's fire trap and ice mine, but other than those, I haven't discovered anything to stop me from being surrounded. Flicker Strike is nice since you don't have to target, but when it's linked and costs 20 mana a shot, it drains quickly, and only hits 1 enemy per cast.

If you're not feeling the lovin' as a Shadow, then I suggest you try out the other characters. You have 24 character slots for a reason :D

"

Targuil wrote:

Bow shadow isn't an impossiblity either. I recommend considering it.

Bow Shadow is very viable. My highest level character currently is a Bow Shadow (I have a lot of alts at various levels). He's about half way to level 47.

For bows you start out pretty much the same as the Ranger for passives, I didn't really have to do any node jumping to get to the skills I wanted.

The only thing I would change would be while leveling I would have put more points into health, regen and defense because stacking pure Evasion doesn't work, you need a more hybrid build of Evasion + something else. Otherwise the one or two hits that do manage to not be dodged will almost kill you in one hit if you don't have a large life pool. I'm still personally refining that build to make it more survivable in Merciless. It can crank out the dps like no tomorrow but it requires a lot of kiting as well.

So long story short yes Shadow with bows is easily viable, get the appropriate gear and passive nodes you'll be fine.

I'm playing a Shadow with dual claws (Dual Strike, Flicker Strike, Viper Strike atm) which is a lot of fun. At level 34 I'm trashing through most mobs on Cruel without problem. High evasion/dodge keeps me away from danger most of the time.

I'm also using Fire Trap/Temporal Chains as a "combo" and then use Flicker Strike/Phase Run to create some distance and heal up.

It's probably not the best build regarding survivability/DPS but as I said above it's really fun :)

Thanks everyone for the responses.

"

SN0flux wrote:

I built dual wield daggers, and I would say that it wasn't a bad decision. The melee skills are nice and there are enough of them to give a choice.

The only downside I'm having, building mostly melee, is the lack of non-magic AoE Attacks. There's fire trap and ice mine, but other than those, I haven't discovered anything to stop me from being surrounded. Flicker Strike is nice since you don't have to target, but when it's linked and costs 20 mana a shot, it drains quickly, and only hits 1 enemy per cast.

I'm also missing AOE, in fact I think that's probably the main reason that I'm not clicking with the class.

I wouldn't go as far as to call myself an AOE spammer, but when you have a light class that relys on ranged and stick-and-move/kite tactics, sometimes you REALLY need a powerful AOE to get yourself out of trouble, even if it has a long cooldown.

I do really enjoy using the traps, but they are somewhat limited in scope.

The only times I died last night, was when I was in the vicinity of a necromancer, and another necromancer would sneak up on me from behind/another room, and start resing the mobs I'd just finished killing. Next thing I know, I have a pack of ten skeletons including casters, boxing me in on both sides. Pretty much insta-death unless I get lucky, or using a jumping skill like leap slam (I think that's the name).

Purely aesthetic decision, I'm a rapier-wielding Shadow. Level 43, doing okay. I should probably ditch the sword (level 7 unique rapier that disables off-hand) in favour of a shield to get my evasion into the 70-75% range with a bunch of evasion nodes...

Today I'm going to bite the bullet and test Iron Reflexes, though. I'm so utterly against it as a skill I made a thread saying just how much I dislike it, but I suppose it's time to test if the conversion of this much evasion to armour really is that godly.

I also have a level 20 something fireball Shadow and a low level trapper/dagger. I think he's a glorious combination of Dex and Int, really. Just a bit squishy at first.

i hate my shadow. lvl 71 elemental flicker, CI.
maybe i just dont like flicker for its lack of aoe, but i think shadow's starting location is a good spot for elemental builds. 5.5k shields, ~9.5k dps or something. 51% to block but i still find myself unable to handle crowds in chaos, even when i cc them with temporal chains. maybe things will change once i get more links