Cloak of Shadows and Shadow Warrior

[ShadowHM]

I have been building a Shadow Tree only Bow Assassin (a Sniper™). Cloak of Shadows is a mainstay spell for her (allows her to take the baddies down one at a time and reduces their defence, thus helping her AR-impaired self).

However, the timer on the spell is a frustration. There are times, especially in party play, when I would really like to re-cast and cannot.

I have (sort of) solved this by replacing the Shadow Master with a Shadow Warrior and then immediately switching the hot-keyed spell to Cloak of Shadows, thus forcing her to cast it (normal attack is always the left mouse key, of course).

Now, it seems to me (possibly my fond imagination?) that she re-casts Cloak of Shadows much sooner than I would have been able to do.

So....is there anything besides my anecdotal evidence to support this?

[AtomicKitKat]

Fire off your own CoS as soon as she does hers, then see how soon either of you can fire it again. IMO, they should have made CoS a castable "aura" skill centred on the Assassin herself(sort of like a Conviction with curse-like attributes), instead of the monstrosity(cast and it affects only 1 spot, cannot recast again until the spell itself wears off, etc) we see today. I don't think it would have made it too "uber", personally, but then again, Buzzard has seldom used much common sense with regards to "balance issues"

[ShadowHM]

Fire off your own CoS as soon as she does hers, then see how soon either of you can fire it again.

Thanks for the suggestion. :)

I did just that. I cast the Shadow Warrior, then switched the right click spell to Cloak of Shadows, waited until she cast it and then cast it myself. We mopped up that group of monsters, moved on and she re-cast on the next group. I, however, could not yet cast. So, yes, her timer is not the same as mine.

However, after taking a careful look at Crystalion's post here: http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...t=ST&f=7&t=2776

I realized that this makes perfect sense, after all. :blink: According to Crystalion, the slvl that she casts at will be:

shadow skill_level for when she casts skill X =
half of the player's current skill_level in X (including +skill adders *now*)
rounded down, plus
one third of the shadow's skill_level when she was summoned (including +skill adders *then*)
rounded down,
with a minimum skill level of one.

So, since my (adjusted) slvl for Cloak of Shadows is 16 and for Shadow Warrior is 6, she should be casting at: (half of 16 plus one third of 6) or slvl 10. According to the Arreat Summit, this would yield a duration of 17 seconds, compared to the 23 seconds for my cast.

Unfortunately, although this would let her re-cast sooner, her cast only takes the monster defense down by 42% instead of the 60% my cast would accomplish. On the other hand, that is more than the zero I would get if I could not force her to cast it in the first place, and I still get the benefit of being ignored by the monsters while I pick them off. B)

I will have to give this some thought as I plan out further skill point placement. This build doesn't really suffer for lack of skill points (LOL.....it suffers from lack of damage in the first place, even if it is fun.) But it seems to me now that there actually would be benefit in maxing CoS now, because it would make the Warrior's cast worth more. Otherwise, I would not have bothered, due to the timer on it.

[AtomicKitKat]

For what it's worth, you can get some defense out of extra points in the skill. :P

*resumes whining about how CoS should have been a "castable aura" ala Thunderstorm*