[Guide] Career Guide & Definitive Shadow Warrior stat bonuses

[MysterioussouL]

Hi, this guide started off as a reply to a thread about shadow warrior item choices, but I ended up spending about half an hour going into class details, so I decided to morph it into a guide. It should provide mostly useful information, and is written on a fairly introductory level, but should still provide insight for the intermediate to advanced player, especially the re-roller. The layout is definitely boring atm, I'll work on that later if anyone reads this.

Shadow Warrior's role in a balanced party:
the SA is a ranged DPS class with less DPS and AOE than a Bright Wizard, but more utility, survivability, and range. The SA should primarily disable and focus healers, as well as punish anyone who overextends. The class has fairly balanced growth through 40, and competes during endgame. This guide will give you many insights as to your role in a party, so continue reading for more info on that.

Item Choice

First off, when choosing items, when trying to pick between stats, use the following as a guideline.

1. Ballistic Skill - You are a DPS class. This is the largest booster to your DPS

2. Disrupt - While mostly unavailable, since you spend a lot of time focusing casters, this is useful for survivability(vs. sorcs) and kills(vs. healers).

3. Toughness - No matter what you say, point for point, toughness is way better than wounds. Even while the example of "You have 1000 health with 400 Toughness or 2000 health with 100 toughness" is awful because 1000 health= 100 wounds and 400 toughness = 500 stat and 200 wounds + 100 toughness = 300 stat, Toughness is still better point for point. Toughness is rarely reduced by a skill, whereas armor reduction is present in almost all physical damage classes, and resistance negation is present in virtually all caster classes, therefore, toughness at the end of the day is the only thing that is going to save you vs a spike. Also, like previously stated, toughness is way more beneficial to healers. Assuming you have someone healing you (lol), if you have 500 wounds and 100 toughness, they are going to have a 5x harder time keeping you up than if you have 1k hp and 500 toughness. I promise. Really. Toughness is so imba. its just SO good.

4. Weapon Skill/Willpower - Weapon Skill for dps-ing tanks. Don't tell me that shadow warriors shouldn't be hitting tanks. Thats ridiculous, in any organized guild group or party, you will definitely want a shadow warrior hitting a tank AT LEAST with acid arrow. If you and your bright wizards are doing your job correctly, once you focus the healers down, the black orcs and chosen are still going to be harassing your backline, and the faster you kill them the better. Willpower is a great SECONDARY damage mitigator vs sorcs. (Secondary to Toughness, ofc)

5. Initiative - Mediocre when compared to toughness. If you're going to spec it, you need to REALLY spec it, otherwise the chances just arent worth it imo.

6. Wounds - A damage buffer is still a damage buffer. When combined with high toughness, a big pool of hp is even more devastatingly resilient.

7. Strength - If you aren't spec-ing Scout, you're probably a moron. If you aren't spec-ing Skirmisher OR Scout, you ARE a moron. if you want to play a melee DPS class with utility, go play White Lion. Better DPS than Assault, and more utility(Pounce, Toss, etc). Having said that, strength is good for those times you're caught out with a harassing melee class who won't break with you, and you need a little melee DPS to punish him. If you spec'd Weapon Skill as advised above, most melee classes who you've dotted and harassed previously will go down if you switch to assault stance and whack them a couple of times, assuming you have support. Just general playstyle advice: if a melee class closes you, chances are if he has a snare breaker, you should switch to assault and just dps and wait for him to get focused, as the increased armor will benefit those healing you, and give the rest of your party more time to kill the guy who is obviously overextended if you're positioned correctly. Also, lategame, if a marauder hooks you into the destro ranks, immediately switch to assault, hit flee, and pray. Early game, (pre-1, if you have your snare, snare, kite, and continue to focus the healer, as your opponent won't be able to break snare unless you continue to hit him(which is why you dont).

8. Intelligence- lol @ intelligence.

Melee Weapon Choice : Don't choose for DPS, Speed, or Str. Find a melee weapon that gives you 1,2, or 3.



Career Camp.



For career path, tbh, you're wasting your time if you're not playing Scout. here's why:
1. You have light armor. (Yes, I am aware of what assault stance does, your armor rating that is easily reduced is doubled, wooooo)

2.You have light armor. If you're melee DPS-ing, and you want to be squishy, why in the hell aren't you playing witch hunter? and if you're making a case for the 100% armor boost, why aren't you playing white lion?

3. You have light armor. If you're playing skirmish, congratulations, you have traded 110 foot range for the ability to circle your opponent at a maximum of barely over half of that. Unfortunately for you, sorcs do more DPS than you do, and will wreck you if you're as pushed in as you have to be. And if you're really moronic, you'll pick up that tactic that requires you to be within 45 feet for a damage output boost. But Dan, you ask, why not pick up the tactic that gives you +20 foot range for skirmish? I would have to say, because then you're trading 20% crit chance for being able to do the same exact useless thing. Circle your opponent from a longer distance, only now, you crit less. And besides, the whole point of skirmisher is to be able to kite melee and perhaps get a charged shot on them while they chase you, or the same on a caster while a train chases you. Really not worth it.

4. Scout gives you massive range. You have light armor. The only thing that can hit you toe to toe at 110 feet is a squig herder. How many of you think your guild's healer is so incompetent as to not be able to outheal a squig herder? Really, they don't even LOOK imposing. Not to mention all the amazing skills and tactics scout has to offer, like

5. Guerrilla Training. You know what 35% less costing skills equates to over a long period of time? About +35% dps. imba anyone?

6. Fell the Weak. Oh, you have less than 20% HP? guess what? you're dead! Say you have a tank. a big, beefy black orc. He overextends into your midline. You and your other dps classes just start to wail on him. He realizes his mistake, defends himself as well as possible, and runs screaming like a baby back to his little shaman buddies. You're like, well oh eff that, I wasted AP on you already, you're dying. You hit vengeful, then use takedown (knockdown 3 seconds, gg). Said black orc is now on the floor crying and dying and praying for a morale heal. He has maybe 10% hp left. You're pissed off that it just might happen, so you throw down some fell the weak on his big green . Bam, huge spike, 50% heal reduction for the remainder of his pitiful life, as you and your bright wizards nuke the out of him, perhaps with a vengeful rapid fire, or a nasty festering arrow. Of course, you had previously used Acid Arrow on him, to reduce his armor to probably about medium range. And you might have a tactic like

7. Bullseye, which would basically ensure that your damage was about doubled over that period of time, when used in conjunction with vengeful and acid arrow. Of course, since you're sitting 110 feet away, you dont give a damn about the increased chance of being critically hit, something you could definitely not say if you were a skirmisher. Now that your good friend the black orc has been thoroughly sodomized, its time to wreck his shaman buddy. So, you fire a cruel little

8. Throat Shot, which eliminates the usage of whatever AP remained after attempting to anti spike the tank, which you again follow with acid arrow, flame arrow, corporeal arrow, and another quickly recharged fell the weak.

9. Scout Stance gives you increased Ballistic Skill, your most important stat.

10. Steady Aim and its corresponding tactic. Steady aim is such a useful skill. If combined correctly with other tactic choices, you will crit almost every time, never run out of AP, and crit all the time. There's a mathematical side to correctly using it, and I'll probably post a mini-guide to it later, but its really just so good.


Top Reason not to play Skirmisher

-You have to be so talented, you literally have to be a video gaming god to take full advantage of what this tree offers. I mean you need to know positioning, group positioning, push and pull, and have an excellent grasp of LoS, be totally aware of your surroundings, be able to predict exactly who your enemy will target and when, how they will move, etc etc.

Who should definitely not play skirmisher
-People who came from WoW. No, I'm not insulting WoW, it just is a terrible training ground for PvPers.
-People who were not amazing DoTA players.
-People who don't know what GvG or a champion title is.
-People who want to be a lone, ganking badass.
-People who want to be a badass
-People who have trouble with excessive death.
-People who don't have extensive experience in coordinated PvP combat. (Kind of a ridiculous precondition considering almost everyone who does have said experience will probably choose Scout)
-People who think they deserve more heals than Bright Wizards.
-People who think they deserve more heals than Tanks


Reasons not to play Assault
1. You have light armor.

2. Positioning bugs, collision errors, body blocking, rubber banding, etc.

3. Your dps sucks when compared to WL or WH.

4. (Unconfirmed) You're wasting your left hand. You don't get to dual wield or use a shield.

5. You are one of the best ranged classes in the game.

6. You have LIGHT ARMOR, and virtually NO escape mechanism. (What are you doing closing with anyone?) Sorceresses will laugh at you as they snare you, dot you, nuke you, klll you. And you didnt do almost anything to them. Sure you could disarm them! (LOL) or interrupt them if they were standing right next to you (also lol).

7. You have one AOE on a ten second cooldown. (Which you don't get till lategame, compare to razor strike on a witch hunter, or Lileath's arrow in the tree to your right, gg)

8. Opportunity for melee classes in most high end scenario's is virtually nonexistant, especially with SW's survivability. You don't have stealth. You aren't a tank. Stop pretending, just go scout and be useful.

9. Spec-ing assault on a shadow warrior is the equivalent of spec-ing damage on an IB, or damage on a WP (And people do it. God. No pun intended), or damage on an archmage. Its really that dumb. Even a partial spec is wasting opportunity.

Here's what I humbly suggest for a career tree, tactics included.

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=...21:14169:14167

Explanation-
Enchanted Arrows- You don't really need this because Flame Arrow isn't really that great in the first place.

Glass Arrows- You're not an aoe class, stop pretending. This isn't guild wars, this isn't a useful skill.

Leading Shots- You may choose this in place of your rank 4 morale. just preference. its decent party support, you just have to sac another tactic slot for it. Doesn't seem worth it to me.

Festering Arrow- Just a really solid damaging skill overall tbh.

Guerilla Training- See above.

Fell the Weak- See above.

Rain of Steel- Ok, so maybe you do have some AoE potential after all... 2400 area based damage is just too good to pass on regardless of class focus.

Sub-speccing skirmish- The core skills in skirmish have some serious usage, and are really worth getting the small buff from your remaining career points. Besides, you really don't want to pass up on

Shadow Sting- Because 50% heal reduction is great. Especially when stacked with Fell the Weak. (No 50% + 50% doesn't stack to 100%, but you're still getting a good return at about 75% heal reduction. If you stack with a buddy on a third such skill, you get 87.5% heal reduction, which is usually enough to wreck 90% of healers)



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credit to Danimal @ warhammeralliance

[Aelus]

This was useful for a player like myself who is new to warhammer.

I'll be sure to +rep when its off CD

[Palumir]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaayeeee!

[Ezikielth]

+Repx2, used it

[Ellenor]

nice one. plus i rep u for ur hard work u did on creating the banner of my request!

Ty bro!

[Kaosu]

As a Shadow Warrior, I must thank you on this very helpful guide.

[idur]

Very nice guide which was helpful for me.
Just one question:

What exactly do you mean with "Disrupt" as a stat on your items.
I only know this stats:

Statistics

Thanks a lot

lg

[jester_im]

Willpower increases your disrupt chances against spells.