Tree of Savior Forum

Help me with shadow/warlock

There is anyone who have tested warlock2/shadow2?

Drain + Shadow Thorn becomes better than Demon Scratch?

The combo Mastema + Shadow Conjuration does good?

I’m thinking about this build: Wizz3, Thauma2, Marnox 1, Wl2, Shadow2.

Thauma2 would be enough to convert spr to damage or I maybe need to choose linker3 instead?

Thanks in advance!

In counterpart, I would like to give to community my feeling with testing elememe/ff, it is doing really good. The dark damage burst as hell with the drain/curse/chapparition, it gives a really competitive pvp/boss characteristic to face shadows, and the healing skills in pvm are awesome! No more red pots for real.

The main problem to consider when comparing Wlk3 (RC and FF being the best R10 “capstones”) and Wlk2/Shadow2 is whether you find Demon Scratch reliable. If we compare the classes solely by numbers and counting the skills that are unique to either build, we have the following:

Warlock 2/Shadowmancer2

Shadow Thorn 10 (with attribute) + Drain 5

3106% x 2 (attribute) x 1.5 (Drain lv. 5) = 9318% with 4 Overheats

Shadow Conjuration 10 (with attribute) + Drain 5

1589% x 2 (attribute) x 1.5 (Drain lv. 5) = 4676% with 2 Overheats and AoE no target limits
Notes: The attribute adds a DoT which applies 10% of Conjuration’s base damage per second and has a duration equal to the attribute’s level.

Mastema 10 + Drain 5

1717% x 1.5 (lvl 5 Drain) = 3863% no Overheats and no target limits

Notes: Gives a reliable (2x) Holy Debuff

while on the other hand, we have my personal build

Warlock 3/Featherfoot 1

Demon Scratch + Drain 5 + Curse (From FF)

2976% x 1.5 (Drain lv.5) x 1.5 (Curse Debuff) = 6696% 2 Overheats and AoE with no target limits

Notes: Behaves uniquely as it applies multiple hits as a function of distance travelled. You can get anywhere between 1 to 5 hits depending on the size of the target. Abbetted further with assistance from a Falconer

Mastema 15 + Drain 5 + Curse

2976% x 1.5 (Drain lv.5) x 1.5 (Curse Debuff) = 4574% no Overheats and AoE with no target limits

Notes: Gives a reliable (2x) Holy Debuff

Note that I didn’t specify the bonus from Mastema: Phantom Pain since I don’t know how it works.

Now that we have the facts out of the way, I’d say that either is actually viable but the main difference between them is utility and SP efficiency. Despite being promised that Shadowmancer skill SP would be “tweaked” I still found it quite expensive to use and given that the lack of AoE was somewhat troubling. To be fair, though, it is quite powerful. Using all four overheats gives you 36k% on a single target which is great all things considered.

Demon Scratch, on the other hand, can be equally if not more powerful depending on the situation. If the boss is particularly large–they usually are–or have a Falconer using Aiming, positioning yourself just right can help you pull off all five hits on two overheats maxing out damage at ~60k. However, that depends on how well you aim.

To be sure, you get more of the same from Warlock 3 and I’d pick Shadow 2 just for Shadow pool, Hallucination and Shadow Fettter. The first two being some of the best panic button skills (don’t quote me on this, but Shadow Pool seeems to remove all aggro from yourself acting as a very inefficient Fade unique to Shadowmancer) while Fetter is only one of two CC skills that work on bosses (the other one being Swap)

My Opinion: Go for Wlk2/Shadow2 there’s a lot to admire, but if the damage is not to your liking, you can try Wlk3 Featherfoot.

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You are amazing! I’m a fan of you replies haha.

I was about to do this calculation, and was thinking that elelock don’t enjoy that much of this all dark buff, and going with shadowmancer would give me 3 more skills to use during the 30s of drain. The defensive skills are a great plus.

Elelock will lost hail, and most people is saying that it can be saved by rune of ice, but I don’t think so, I was cryokino shooter, and the rune of ice don’t last that much, it’s much more situational than pvm/cm. This, plus the absence of darkness buff, moves me to don’t be choosing it as my final build.

I will reset my elelock/ff to test the wl/mancer build and then I came back here to share my feelings.

Now I just need to make my decisions on the earlier ranks.

I’ve tested it, wl2/shadow2 is amazing. I can use every dark skill during the drain time, the fact is that mobs just disapears each 15s, by conjuration/condesation or mastema. The boss hp goes like water, in my brief experiment thorn does the same as demon scratch, but with less cooldown.

D Scratch is really hard to hit well (if someone is reading this and have some tips on how to do this I would love to try again), with target lock you just need to press thorn4x and it will do its magic.

I’m still not assure about the earlier ranks, sorc 1 sounds good with the burst in aggro, the spr shinys to shadow and that little boss doing 100k damage during your action is something. But I’m quite sad without thauma3, and I don’t know what to choose.

Now I’m testing elementalist3 in wl2/sd2 to see if the shadow fits in the skill cicles.

Edit: it fits perfectly, I actually build two cycles that work in the each other cooldown

Start with invocation, then: storm dust, meteor2x, hail, elec4x

A lot of dark spirits on the field, it’s time for darkness

Start with theurge/drain, then: condesation, poa, conjuration, mastema, thorn4x or magic missile, conjuration.

After this the first circle is ready to be used again.

I recommend for people to test it too.

The best part about the combination is that Wlk2>Shadow2 has enough skills for an entire rotation due to its very low cd.

Consider also getting sources of CC since both classes and Elementalist besides have a lot of DoTs. I’ve noticed that in this game, DoTs are the best ways of delivering statuses and in your EleLock variant you have at least 5. Consider equipping marionnette or something similiar. Before the Froster Lord patch which changed its Freeze to Frostbite, I had 3x Froster Lord and I ended up being a pseudo-Cryomancer.

If you’re still experimenting, you might want to experiment with this admittedly strange build:

Wiz2>Link3>RC>Wlk2>Shadow2

The build is a bit weird (it’s essentially a support/DPS hybrid) but I figure it’d work nicely. My general policy for lower rank skills is to emphasize utility over power since power creep continues to be a reality. Better to have universally useful skills than skills that might be outdated with the next patch.

That’s not to say one ought to avoid it, but I prefer to err on the side of caution. The best DPS skills from lower classes in this case would be RoJ and RoD. Since Mastema gives 2x bonus to Holy, it vastly improves RoJ’s damage while the other skills are on cd. With Linker, Rune of Protection is a great addition in most circumstances. I’m certainly going to test it and I’ll get back to you when I’ve formed an opinion on it.

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IMO the best damage skills are Kundela Slash> Shadow Thorns>Demond Scratch. not because the damage bonuses but just for the CD of each skill.

anyway, now with the nerf on the elementalist tree, the best choise is tauma2+RC to fill from rank 4 to 6 so the best build must be some like

rune of destruction>meteor
rune of justice+ mastema> any skill of elementalist. ( i dont know if mastema increase the damage to 2x or 4x)
rune of protection > every knockdow/knockback buff

maybe the meta will be like:


with cryoand kino 1 for pvp cc
or

with wiz 3 just for the quick cast for a “caster build” and reflect shield its nice now

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thauma3 has quick cast attribute on Swell Brain, so there is no reason to take Wiz3 when you can take Thauma3.

Better magic missile?

Is just a filler.
Better swells for higher base magic attack make up for the loss of a few levels on a filler skill, especially against high magic defense targets.

Rune skills activate quick cast too.

To Sablecoat: link3 is worthing today? It seems, pretty inexisting in cms. Could be usefull for shadow, but won’t help that much with rc and warlock. Anyway, I will wait for your feelings on this.

To Javier: about your first build, I really think that sorc would be better than rc. 2 runes of destruction hiting 100k x a boss hiting the same forever? And rune of justice after mastema don’t become soo strong as it looks to in theory. I totally would go for thauma3 sorc1 if it’s possible. In moment I’m divided between wz3-ele3-wl2-sha2 and wz3-thau2-sorc-wl2-sha2. My principals guilties with thauma2 are the lose of swell brain and that hole unusefull points in shrink and enlarge. But to go full spr and don’t be taking that dps from sorc seems worse.

Ff is really amazing, but wl don’t have enough skills to enjoy that hole buff time. I see boss going down faster with just drain and wl2sh2 (but the flying ones resists a lit bit more, since thorn have half dmg on this). Besides that, this guys will do a lot better in pvp too, hallucination give a safe approach to cast mastema in anyone, and pool gives safe repositioning to cast thorn.

for the same reason you can’t tanke tauma 3, RC its like meta now just because the 15% of Mdeff reduction

Don’t you think that this 15% is overated? I see it like the saddhu’s transmit prana, everybody wanting the 50% more to use a few skills more stronger, when they actually could be going for druid and using chortas to do much more damage through this skill than that 50% gives.

reduce the Mddeff of targets its hard, there is some few skill who can do that and only 2 works on bosses, spirit shock from linker 3 and the debuff from rc.
with over 10k of Mdeff its more usefull 15% of magic reduction than 50% more damage

I wasn’t comparing saddhus against destruction. But I get what you said. Wow, this changed my mind, I never have really considered de mdef of monster. For real, I never face something as velcofer, the stronger ■■■■ I face was that guys from album (shame!). But I pretend to go for hard content when I finish my build.

Now I see the utilitty of linker3 rc… I will test it! Thanks!

Hi, can explain how to get the 1.5 curse debuff from FF?

I’m trying to make a shadowmancer3 and needed a rank7 filler. Originally wanted to get wl1 for the passive attribute which increases 10% dark property attacks (since sm skills are all dark property)

Curses in general now cause targets to take +50% darkness damage, similar to how frozen targets take +50% damage from lightning.

The curse comes from Featherfoot bone pointing and kurdaitcha.

Oh that is good to know. Thanks for the info!

I have just tested it with my level 371 wizard with 6199 magic attack.
I ran the Siauliai mission twice with both warlock3 and warlock2/shadow2 builds without any pardoner buffs.

Demon Scratch 5 ( enhanced to level 60 ) + Drain 5 hits around 1m to the first boss, while
Shadow Thorn 10 ( enhanced to level 60 ) + Drain 5 hits around 1.2m.

There wasn’t a HUGE difference. But I think warlock2/shadow2 is more convenient in terms of skill rotation and cooldowns. You sacrifice warlock’s strongest skill and mastema’s full potential but in exchange you get another as strong 3 skills. ( plus the passive ones, depending on your liking. )

I haven’t tested warlock’s skills with featherfoot’s curse, but my current vote is on warlock2/shadow2 \o/

I like WL2 SM2 too. Shadow Pool is very comfy to use now and I simply love Hallucination. Besides, Conjuration and Condensation are strong multi-target skills. Oh, and I can’t forget one thing: Shadowmancer has the best female costume in the Wizard tree.

Where I play, Link 3 is still pretty visible. The best part about linker in the build I proposed above is that it has synergy with the rest of the build. With Spiritual Chain, you can boost your party’s M.Atk by 30% at full attribute and give knockback protection with Protect Rune to your party when needed. Joint Penalty helps boost Shadowmancer’s DPS output and alleviates its lack of reliable AoE while sets it up for taking SM3 in the future (if we get there). Last, Lifeline is still valuable in those situations where you need to share stats.

Interesting results. Did you note which bosses you fought? There are some who are decidedly small (Nuaele and Succubus) and the rest of them very large.

The problem with Demon Scratch is positioning, really. I’ve found that it’s rather hard to achieve that solo especially against a particularly mobile boss like our very own Varle King. That, and the skill works best when it receives a lot of help such as with Falconer.

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