The Shadow "knows"

[Crystalion]

Assassin Shadows do indeed get skill synergies. The way in which this occurs is rather convoluted. I don't believe it has been worked out in detail, correctly, before, and the consequences highlighted.

This post is an attempt at a human readable version of my brain bending tests and conclusions in The Workshop about Shadow Warriors.

The underlying mechanisms for Warriors and Masters, re: the discovery, are probably the same. However the techniques for making use of the consequences are a bit different. Masters are more complex, so I won't discuss them at this time.

Here I'll give a simplified base build plan for a Shadow Warrior loving Assassin variant, so you can get the idea of the importance of the "discovery" if it interests you.

In a nutshell there are two key parts to the discovery...

a. The skill level (slvl) a Shadow casts a skill at, is indeed based on a simple formula using both on her slvl (i.e. your slvl at which your cast her) and the current slvl of the player for the skill the shadow is casting

b. The skill the Shadow casts can indeed be synergized! This is because anytime the Shadow casts a skill, she remembers the level she cast it at (from the formula alluded to above). Thus she "learns" (or "burns in") skills, whose slvl then becomes helpful as a synergy to other skills she may cast.

Here is the formula:

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.

This slvl value is then remembered. If your shadow dies, or you summon a new one, that memory vanishes.

If the shadow casts the skill again, the old memory is irrelevant (as far as I know) and is overwritten.

If the shadow casts a skill that has synergies, then the shadow wil either consider the synergy skill level to be zero (if she hasn't cast the synergy skill before) or she will consider her synergy level to be the value she has remembered.

This is very generous of the game! This partly accounts for some of the feelings reported by Assassin players like "my Shadow destroys whole legions of enemies".

The biggest things you can do to take advantage of this, when planning a build, are to:

a. summon your shadow at the highest multiple-of-three skill level that you can
b. help her to memorize useful synergize skills and not forget them (i.e. don't let her die or resummon her).
c. encourage her to cast her strongest, most synergized skills

While extreme gear helps this build can become silly-uber, as do many v1.10 builds, but you can get very good results with ~50 base skill points, as follows...

prereqs:
1 claw mastery
1 weapon block
1 psychic hammer
1 cloak of shadows

synergies:
1 shock web
1 charged bolt sentry
1 lightning sentry
1 death sentry
1 wake of fire
1 wake of inferno

key skills:
20 shadow warrior
20 fire blast

50 total points (this build is for illustration only)

As a bit of trivia, for a rushee, getting all 12 quest skill points "early", you can complete this "build" at clvl 39.

Let's assume your only skill boosters are +1 shadow skills, +1 traps (perhaps dual claws, one each).

Your Fire Blast at slvl 21 will do 95-125 fire damage, with (6x9%, that is) +54% synergy, for ~146-192 net.

Your Warrior's slvl when cast will be 21. She will always get 21/3 = 7 points of slvl into her casts due to this, so long as she lives. When she casts a Fire Blast, she also gets half your slvl in FB truncated, so 21/2 ~= 10. So her Fire Blasts will be only slvl 17 (7 + 10).

If you haven't put her through her paces, she won't "know" any synergies, so her damage will be 55-77, which is very disappointing compared to yours.

But let us assume you help her to "know" each of the six synergy traps, by encouraging her to cast them. For each of those her slvl will be 7 (from her slvl/3) plus 1 (half your 1+1 adder skill in each trap), thus totaling 8.

With 6 synergies, each at slvl 8, times 9% damage bonus, we get a net synergy for her of +432%.

This makes her FB damage ~293-410. This is rather better than you do, eh?

For your synergies you only benefit from base points in synergy skills. But for your Shadow, your +skill adders to summoning her, and to your traps when you help her to "know" those skills, are actually applied (at her 1/3rd and 1/2 reductions, respectively) thus boosting her synergies!

If you have a *lot* of +skill gear at the appropriate times, her FB damage goes through the roof. All without costing you any more skill points than the sample build here, provided for your illumination. :)

...

So you can potentially have builds in which your Shadow Warrior will obliterate things for you while you have ~50 more skill points to go into whatever you want.

I focused on traps, because the synergy opportunity there is very easy to see. But the same principle applies to charge-ups that are synergized (though far less spectacularly). Of course Fire Blast isn't the only trap you can focus on synergizing in this way.

As far as I can tell, the Shadow Master gets the same benefits outlined here, although she might be a bit harder to coerce into learning and doing what you wish her to do.

I do not know if Act 3 hirelings benefit from this "remembered" synergy skill level, or if it is only a property of Shadows. Certainly those of you that were jealous of the huge boost to Valkyries in v1.10 can now see that Shadows were not neglected. Both Valks and Masters get good equipment at umpteen+ slvl.

Both Master and Warrior use your base armor for torso and headgear (you should consider donning high-end elite armor for torso, perhaps with Hels socketed, before summoning, and similarly the highest you qualify for of: circlet, coronet, tiara, diadem, since those will skyrocket the potential affixes the shadow rolls for headgear, afaik). Warriors particularly benefit from this torso trick, as they have an insane bonus to DR%. If she also rolls Godly on the torso, and you are using a Defiance merc, she might be very hard to hit.

If you're going to play with this build, in single player by -act 5 or some such, you should know that a Shadow Warrior, even when you have both left and right mouse buttons set to Fire Blast, will often run up to melee. So you have to be prepared to pull her back, to encourage her to FB instead. This can be done with waypoints, town portals, teleport and simply running around. My personal favorite to "reset" minion/hireling behavior is to use charges of teleport. Dragon Flight might be made to work here, but I'm dubious.

...

I'm sorry I'm not giving more details, but I'm trying to keep this post relatively simple. There are many other factors to consider and many technical questions still unanswered.

But it has bugged me since beta that I'd not seen more info on this topic, so I hope you enjoy the "discovery" and the questions that are answered, finally.

p.s. Though I suspect I've seen the 1/2+1/3 answer before, there are so many "answers" to the recurrent asking of this slvl for shadows question that I didn't have any reason to believe any of them, sans testing, and thus my use of "discovery" for the results.

...

edits: fyi, repeated attempts to clear up typos and language, and to clarify points.

p.p.s. "hiya" to GFRAlZER, aka gfraLzer ;) of uswest ladder trading... haven't used the Ormus I traded ya for yet, sadly.

[LiquidDamage]

Thank you SO MUCH. I am just now rebuilding my assassin, and I have officially decided to max shadow master and put 1 point into every skill (I will have +7 to all assassin skills at level 64). This will, from what I understand, add 4 points to each of her skills that otherwise would have been only at 1/3 her slvl (which will be 27, so slvl 9 skills).

So, she will have slvl 13 in every skill except for those which I have higher-- which will be death sentry and lightning sentry at 27 each.

In my experience, shadow master uses a wide variety of skills, so she should synergize near fully after an area or two.

So I'd like to ask you your opinion on this build, based upon what you have learned in testing. Do you think I will, as a Blade fury/DS trapper that will never use martial arts (especially because both of the claws I will be using are ethereal), be wasting points if i put 1 in each martial arts skill, purely for the purpose of giving my shadowmaster +4 to all martial arts skills? Would I be better off sinking those 10 points into other traps, considering how she likes to use shock web and charged bolt sentry on occasion? How about putting a point into WOI? I figure if she is going to cast the stupid thing, she might as well do it at a higher level, but if its so bad that the level doesn't matter, I am not going to waste the point.

I guess the real question is, will spreading my skills out to help my shadow master really benefit her enough to justify not spending those points in skills I would be using myself?

[Crystalion]

I guess the real question is, will spreading my skills out to help my shadow master really benefit her enough to justify not spending those points in skills I would be using myself?

A reasonable question. But from my (inexpert) point of view, it seems to me that this question is hard to answer without understanding the ai of the shadow master pretty thoroughly.

Even then, her equip (random) rolls and (random) combat decisions will make her effectiveness vary a lot.

The bane of the Warrior is that you have to tell them what to do (and this cuts into what you want to do, most likely). The blessing of the Warrior is that they (often) do what you want them to do.

For all I know, however, the behavior of the Master can be influenced.

You certainly influence shadow target selection by ranged/melee attacks (for example, what you target with Blade Fury is very likely to become the focus of your shadow's anger the next time she makes a targetting decision).

A great deal of "investigation" needs to be done here in practice (and, as I say, I am inexpert).

Good luck with your build. Glad the post helped shed some light for you.

[Kevin]

Another thanks.

This is the first time I have seen the 1/2 + 1/3 and I have gone looking for it occasionally.

This is going to change my strategy for my grenadier variant (my main skill is a synergized fire blast) somewhat, as I was planning on getting a one point master to help tank, but now I think I'll put more into Warrior so the 1/3 part helps her out more. Since I will have several of the synergy skills at 20 base I should be able to get her some really insane damage numbers on both fire and lightning damage, which will allow me to handle just about anything.

Even with poor gear, I should get her fireblast up to around 562-764 damage range pretty easily but it might be more that was a really quick calculation and it might be worth it for me to max her instead of stopping at 9 on her.

Neat.

[Crystalion]

This is going to change my strategy for my grenadier variant (my main skill is a synergized fire blast) somewhat, as I was planning on getting a one point master to help tank, but now I think I'll put more into Warrior so the 1/3 part helps her out more.

On topic: Amazon Basin Shadow Master AI question thread, recently started. The first reply there matches my (limited) experience. I personally believe that Masters can be influenced, just not as obviously as Warriors. More info on this from practictioners and code-readers would be helpful.

I'd also have linked to one of the good monequip.txt explanations, but I can only find the one for Valks, not Shadows (I remember the explanations myself, but it would take too long to type up). In short, the Master, at higher slvls, gets much better random equipment than a Warrior. However the Warrior gets that nifty +armor% factor from skills.txt. Neither matter much if you're keeping them both out of melee, I suppose (well, resists on the armor, eh?)

I should point out here that the value of using a shadow vis a vis resists can be high, because, if they have Fade up, you'll get her to be quad immune at reasonable slvls (slvl*4 resist f/c/l/p, to 75 for warrior, diminishing returns formula to 85 for master). Since you can "force" a warrior to put up Fade, you can pretty much plan a build where only physical and magic will hurt her (edit: and open wounds, and ? ;) ). If you manage to keep her out of melee and use CoS to stop ranged attackers, then she is probably not going to be dying very often. :)

Of course, at regen 3 (vs. the Master's 2) a warrior will recover from physical and magic damage pretty rapidly (though nothing compared to a valk!). Tempting to use her as a tank... So the question of whether she can be made to cast Fire Blasts while in melee range of monsters is important. I suggest experimenting with blade fury on left mouse and fire blast on right, then directing BF at a target that is not next to her to cause her to redirect her efforts while she probably remains in place like a psuedo-valk/tank.

Another factor there is that Shadows have base 40% physical resist, iirc, so it only takes them slvl 10 fade for them to max. their physical resist at 50% (assuming they are affected by that cap, that is).

Seems to me that though making an uber-valk build is straightforward, uber shadow builds have more potential.

As I've said, lots of questions and research left on this general topic!

[Raziel]

Great post!!

Let me see if I figure this out right..

If I have 20 points in trap x and Shadow Warrior..

And I cast SW while wearing 2x +3 Shadow skill claws, and switch over to a blade fury weapon..

The Shadow will cast at 20/2 + 26/3 = slvl 18, and remember that slvl for synergies.

It gets even better if i'm a decked out trapper.. traps can be above level 30, meaning you're looking at 30/2 + 26/3 or even higher, which leads to traps being laid > level 20 by your trapper!

Sweet!

EDIT:

I was just thinking about this further and it seems this can benefit an MA build qutie nicely, given that a Shadow Warrior's weapons and equipment are going to be plain magical and not very high damage..

[Crystalion]

It gets even better if i'm a decked out trapper.. traps can be above level 30, meaning you're looking at 30/2 + 26/3 or even higher, which leads to traps being laid > level 20 by your trapper!

Yes.

But keep in mind that you need to train/"burn in" the shadows memory for synergies. I still don't know if it is sufficient to do something less involved than having the shadow cast a skill, I just know that that works.

But I've neither done the testing or code-reading to be aware of any slvl caps that might be in place.

That is, the supposed "20" cap for synergies--which actually doesn't appear to exist, given the whole marrowalks cheese--and perhaps a cap for shadow skill levels, ala caps for hirelings.

But there is also no evidence I know of to suggest these caps might exist, so, as usual, more testing is needed. ;)

[Kevin]

She will fire blast when in melee range. I keep FB on my left, and the trap of the minute on my right. Warrior almost never melee's in this case. She generally stands by me and whips the "grenades" out. Though I think her AI is tuned or at lesat biased for highest damage ability. Since I never have a melee skill up she generally doesn't melee. I will have to look at it again, but I don't seem to recall her using melee attacks unless she got hit. I don't recall being able to get her to retarget if she has gone into melee without doing a disengage move. Walking helps with this as well. If you walk your minions walk, so making sure to toggle back to walk in combat slows her down and she will start trapping and bombing for me.

I was only thinking of master for a tank because I wasn't sure if either of them could do much in the way of real damage and having a recastable tank had some appeal. Now that I know that I can get them to deliver good damage, and since I will have a lot of high level traps as well, it seems that investing some in Warrior as opposed to a bugged WoI for the minor synergy bonus, makes more sense. I am playing a variant with FB as my main skill and the other traps only for support and synergy bonus. :) Mercs can tank pretty well when used correctly and a fast swinging barb might be the way to go as the aura's don't seem to complement to much in this case.

I had been debating Warrior or Master for other reasons as well, but knowing how the skill mechanics work (and I read your original thread) simply made the choice simpler. :) I always planned on being the main damage source, but having a minion that can keep up will be nice. :)


As for the AB thread (last post specifically), I didn't think that shadow traps counted in the limit. I know that in 1.08 you chould have out 5, and she could have 3. I am pretty sure I have screenies of 8 traps on the screen in a single player game. I guess I'll have to get my trapper out and confirm this again. Of course I haven't really played a trapper too much since then so I could be wrong. If this is true Warrior removes that problem as well since any of the traps I put out she will have doing nearly the same if not more damage, if I put enough points in her.

I'll just have to keep playing and see. But seeing how my grenadier is part of a party, it may be a bit before she gets played again. :)

[LiquidDamage]

if they have Fade up, you'll get her to be quad immune at reasonable slvls (slvl*4 resist f/c/l/p, to 75 for warrior, diminishing returns formula to 85 for master).

Whoa. LCS strikes again. I see in skills.txt that Shadow Warrior gets those resists, I was wondering where you got that from. Suddenly... I am not seeing much of a reason to use Master beyond the fantastic AI and the rare equipment she gets. The number one reason I always chose Master was that she got resists and the warrior didn't.

Are we sure those resistances are used? Shadow master also lists a resistance bonus in the params section, while the warrior does not.

[Crystalion]

Suddenly... I am not seeing much of a reason to use Master beyond the fantastic AI and the rare equipment she gets.  The number one reason I always chose Master was that she got resists and the warrior didn't.

Are we sure those resistances are used?  Shadow master also lists a resistance bonus in the params section, while the warrior does not.

The warrior gets resists. They could have coded it as something like ln12 with par1 & 2 being 4 & 4, but they chose to keep it simple... master uses the diminishing returns formula, so she has to have the matching params.

This means that a master at low slvl has better resists than equiv low slvl warrior. But the warrior quickly catches up. I suspect that, even though the master caps at 85 and warrior at only 75, that the dm formula still makes this a win for the warrior, for most builds... because neither 75 or 85 is immune, but low level Fade will push them both over.

Still, if you're using a shadow for melee damage output, the "fantastic AI and the rare equipment" are significant factors.

But yes, the LCS™ can be annoying even when it doesn't say anything (i.e. sins of omission) that you can claim it to be "lying" about.

I would certainly prefer to have an "identify" spell or npc in the game that you could ask for detailed information on items, skills and entities (hires/minions/monsters). Any game of this type is largely about information, which most designers ofpopular MMO games seem to have overlooked, atm.

[Crystalion]

She will fire blast when in melee range.

If you walk your minions walk, so making sure to toggle back to walk in combat slows her down and she will start trapping and bombing for me.

These kinds of observations are good to hear, as we begin to build a picture of what makes these girls tick.

I will have to look at it again, but I don't seem to recall her using melee attacks unless she got hit.

I can assure you that her ai will make her run into melee even when nothing has hit her, she is at range, and I have both mouse buttons set to Fire Blast.

I don't recall being able to get her to retarget if she has gone into melee without doing a disengage move.

The Shadows do "fixate" on targets. If something happens to them or to their target to cause a new decision, however, they will suddenly take an interest in what you've been attacking.

IIRC this means there is actually a difference, with skills that attack with a target and those that don't, in what you "communicate" to your shadow about priorities.

I suspect this also means, with an AoE spell like Mindblast, that there is a difference between you targeting the ground and targeting a monster (i.e. in what the Shadow thinks in response).

As for the AB thread (last post specifically), I didn't think that shadow traps counted in the limit.

Well, I've seen that issue raised before, and I tested it myself... and then forgot the result! :D I don't think either Blade Fury or Fire Blast count as traps for the trap limit (not sure of course) but I can believe that the shadow shares your trap limit. If someone tests these issues it would be nice to know for sure. My recollection is that (disappointingly) Blade Sentinel does count toward your trap limit. As such, what with NextDelay, pumping that skill for duration and spamming them is probably relatively ineffective.

[Raziel]

Still, if you're using a shadow for melee damage output, the "fantastic AI and the rare equipment" are significant factors.

What about Phoenix Strike, though? This is where I think the real advantage of Shadow over Master lies, because you can very quickly (three fights) "teach it" how to use fists of fire, then claws of thunder, then blades of ice, and then switch it over to phoenix strike.. pretty much permanently. Physical damage doesn't matter much as she's all elemental (of course leech will keep her alive!)

Shadow's traps interfere/supplant your own, which is my big fear in terms of a trapper. But a shadow warrior/master using PS? Yeah, bring it on..

[AtomicKitKat]

I haven't touched my 1.10 trapper in a while, but I believe the shadows use their own traps to set the limit(ie, you can have more than 5 on screen) Easy way to test would be to set the warrior to put up traps(the master sometimes does this too, especially if there's no visible enemies in the vicinity), then put up 5 in a row, very quickly, and listen for the distinctive sound of a trap collapsing.

Synergies ARE "capped" at slvl 20, but it's an (artificial?) cap that only works on players BECAUSE players are limited to 20 points per skill. HOWEVER, because of an oversight on Blizzard's part, the bug with charged items exists, resulting in higher slvl synergies.

[Crystalion]

What about Phoenix Strike, though?  This is where I think the real advantage of Shadow over Master lies, because you can very quickly (three fights) "teach it" how to use fists of fire, then claws of thunder, then blades of ice, and then switch it over to phoenix strike.. pretty much permanently.

It's an interesting thought. Might work.

But again, the A.I. is so important! The shadows are apparently completely clueless about even releasing their charges appropriately, much less a finer distinction like choosing how many charges to build up for Phoenix Strike to thereby select a situationally appropriate elemental finish.

I have to wonder if the A.I. for the shadows is run serverside or clientside. A truly intelligent shadow would be really something (regardless of which skill tree they favored).

[LavCat]

Both Master and Warrior use your base armor for torso and headgear (you should consider donning high-end elite armor for torso, perhaps with Hels socketed, before summoning, and similarly the highest you qualify for of: circlet, coronet, tiara, diadem, since those will skyrocket the potential affixes the shadow rolls for headgear, afaik).

Thank you, Crystalion, for the research! Can I conclude from this that for casting, putting on a plus three shadow great helm of restoration, rather than a plus two assassin skill rare diadem is probably a mistake?

In the first case the shadow master level is 28 and in the second it is 29.

[Crystalion]

Can I conclude from this that for casting, putting on a plus three shadow great helm of restoration, rather than a plus two assassin skill rare diadem is probably a mistake?

In the first case the shadow master level is 28 and in the second it is 29.

AFAIK best would instead be any +3 shadow tree Diadem, whether rare or magical, worn just for the summon.

While 29 is better than 28 for the SM slvl, for various stats (DR, HPs, AR, resists, etc.), it won't help with the shadow_slvl/3 factor, as both are the same as 27. That is, all have a "bonus" value of 9 when the SM later casts skills.

Don't forget that skill shrines (+2) and Battle Command (+1) can bump your SM slvl "permanently" when used at the time of summoning.

Whether giving up slvl 29 stats for slvl 28 stats is worth the possible random affix goodies is unknown.

As the ilvl of the rolled great helm is pretty high, with that high a level shadow... 24+29*3 = ilvl over 99! Whether this is capped at 99 in v1.10 is open to question (Ruvanal and I determined that items are indeed sometimes over ilvl 99). Even if it was capped at ilvl 99, the old v1.09 affix calculator suggests an alvl at that point that is effectively unlimited. So the difference would amount to the fact that the set of possible affixes allowed on circlet class helms is much bigger, and includes various +skill stuff that can't occur on the great helm.

Whether the Shadow would benefit from these affixes, if rolled, is subject to game mechanics (many probably don't have an effect) and also to your opinion as to their value. Some of the differences I see listed for v1.09 at least, include Magic Find, life stealing, life everlasting, +trap skills, fast cast rate, substantial resist all, etc. There could be quite a difference, potentially, in the effectiveness of the shadow, from these affixes. But this looks, to me, even harder to judge this at time of casting the shadow, than for a valk.

If you were planning on a long play session it might be worth it to summon a number of candidate shadows, and test them, carefully ;D , PvP. Life Everlasting, for example, can be readily discerned this way. Her resists can be probed (you might just be able to cast repeatedly until you find one that, by testing, proves immune to desired elemental damage, even without Fade...the diadem sure looks to me more likely to achieve that).

But generally speaking, you should do what is fun for you.

The case is a bit different for low slvl shadows... one should prefer the circlet..diadem strongly in those cases (because of the high net affix level, e.g. a slvl one shadow still has access to all affixes on/via diadem).

[Caaroid]

AFAIK best would instead be any +3 shadow tree Diadem, whether rare or magical, worn just for the summon.

+3 shadows rare would be a neat trick ;)

lovely thread, I guess i have to make a slave-grenadier.

[Crystalion]

+3 shadows rare would be a neat trick ;)

Yes, I wasn't thinking about +3 tree not being allowed on rares.

The irony here is that for claws the +3 skill tree are readily shoppable at Anya (I just picked up several in under half an hour in fact).

Fire Blast is too low to get on a claw with +3 tree (though I don't know if any cubing finesse can overcome that), but Shadow Master/Warrior and many of the good specific trap skills ought to be shoppable with a lot of patience, looking for +3 tree/+3 skill.

For the traps one could be super-duper patient and also insist on the +3 traps/+3 trap_specific claw being a greater or runic talon of quickness so you could then double socket with Shaels... but I have no idea where the attack breakpoints are for Fire Blast and trap setting or even whether, as reported, FB uses IAS rather than FCR.

As uncommon as this is, I'm pretty sure it is more attainable than the "Holy Grails" for some other classes. And +12 to your fav skill from just your left/right hand is pretty studly (er, pardon me, Miss 'sin, I meant: studettely ;) ).

I guess i have to make a slave-grenadier

That's easy, just be sure to take off your clothes before casting her, and she'll get that kinky black leather look. :D

[LavCat]

Anya was kind to me tonight, and the shadow master is now up to 31 -- with the diadem. The helm has been relegated to a mule. A shadow master of 33 should be within reach next shopping session.

Thanks again, Crystalion! Anya also sold us some Myrmidon Greaves of Acceleration.

[jahcs]

My own experience with trapassin Snapyertoe and her master is that the maximum number of traps out is 5. If the master throws a trap (not FB or BF) and then I throw 5 more the master's trap will self-destruct. If I have 5 traps out and the master throws out a trap one of mine will self destruct.

This is ladder play on USWest with patch 1.10.

This is very obvious when the master uses a wake of fire or wake of inferno since I have no skill points in either.