Some shadow master questions

[Yogi_Baar]

Sometimes my assassin's summoned shadow master has blue armor, sometimes it has red armor, but most of the time it looks (kind of) like the character. I've seen someone mention that they just keep recasting valkyrie till they get a red or blue one, so now (as I'm getting colorful summons too) I'm wondering what the colors mean. I didn't find anything about this on the AS and a brief search on Google yielded no helpful results either.

Another thing I'd like to know is what level skills does the shadow master (or the shadow warrior for that matter) use? Does it cast them at its own level? That would make sense to me, but I'm not sure what with Blizzard's "logic" and all.

TIA.

[whyBish]

I'm sure someone will post the real answers soon, but I believe the following are roughly correct.

The colours are whatever the colourings are set in the mpq. I think blue is for frost nova/nova shield suffixed items (ie frost nova or nova when hit). Red I believe is for the +life series. Grey is for the +def per clvl series. Unfortunately, all these are relatively useless for a minion. The colourings would be more use if they told about enh def series.

Same goes for the weapons, black means +max dmg series, but no way to tell enh dmg % series (e.g. cruel)

As to the shadows abilities it is based on her level (1/2 her level for master I think, but I am getting really fuzzy here :) )

[Yogi_Baar]

Thanks for the quick answer, I think I got it now. I think I saw her in a golden(ish) frock (probably balance series?) as well. And this one time, at rogue camp (:)), I think she had a red katar before she cast venom, if that's possible (the red katar, not venom).

Can they spawn with all possible affixes or are any impossible on summonables? I mean, them having mana leech weapons would be useless.

[adeyke]

There isn't any sort of summonable-forbidden property for affixes. So they can get any affix that's possible on their items (including item type and alvl restrictions, of course).

[AtomicKitKat]

LOL@camp reference.

Red=Fire weapon.

[whyBish]

Are you sure?

I was pretty sure red also =mana leech (have no idea what 'logic' blizzard used to decide which affixes would get which colours :huh: )

[adeyke]

If it's dark red, it's fire damage.

If it's crystal red, it's life steal or mana steal.

If the weapon is rare, the first affix it gets gives it the colour. So even if it's not red, it could have fire damage or steals; it's just that the fire damage or steal isn't the first affix assigned to the item. Or it could have fire damage or steal as the first affix, but one of the uncoloured such affixes.

[whyBish]

If it's dark red, it's fire damage.

If it's crystal red, it's life steal or mana steal.

I wonder if a colour change mod would be picked up as a 'hack' on BNet. It would be really useful to colour the enh dmg% and enh def% series (and possibly ias and LL series) so that minion casting wasn't so random.

... perhaps if Foxbat could slip it in as a 'lag reduction' ;)

[Kevin]

Can we get a confirmation on the level of the skills as used by Shadow and Shadow Master?

All the answers I have searched for here have always been like what whyBish stated. They are all "I think it is 1/2 of the shadows level" or "I think it is half or your trap level", etc. I have yet to see, on the Lounge boards at least, a "Traps that Shadow casts are at 1/2 of the level you have the trap at based on this experiment (or this from the files)".

This has always surprised me, since having that information would tell you a lot about how effective the Shadows can be. I was hoping it would get cleared up in this thread, but it never did.