Shadowdancer ED suggestion for T5 Greater Shadowform

[Czekojin]

Hi there,
I am semi-returning player and first of all I wanna apprciate the great amount of job done on epic destinies U51, I really enjoy some of them while playing with my sneaker trapper assassin.

BTW, playing with my sneaker trapper assassin is incredibly hard on reaper difficulties because of reapers who can see me all the time. What number of Hide/Move silently do I need, if any at all? You can say that I should not play reaper but there are rarely any parties who run less than reaper diffs. So I join others on R+ with some cool guys who can get me through (take aggro, dps big guys and know stuff lol). Well, it is a way but is very limited way and not exactly what I would say as real fun made by my build. But it is fun to run with others, tho and at least I can contribute by disarming some traps.

I am also sad that clickie Consume from old ED is now gone, or at least I did not notice it would be there...?

On the main note of Greater Shadowform - middle of T5 in Shadowdancer ED.
It is great but it has feather fall always on. Could there be some toggle to immediately activate/deactivate it? Because, you know, there are situations where you absolutely do not need FF and you need to get fast somewhere in the bottom. Just a suggestion.

Anyways, have fun guys!

[DYWYPI]

Reapers possess: True Seeing and will see through Invisibility and concealment, such as Blur or Displacement. If you are running in a party, you don't need to bother being in Sneak overly much.

U51 did not really deliver anything beneficial for tactical stealth play style. Albeit it managed to remove; several features, from Shadowdancer, which were useful when soloing sneaky Assassins.

[Wraithkin]

I specifically don't play reaper for that reason. Tactical stealth game play is being sidelined more and more with U51.

[Czekojin]

I specifically don't play reaper for that reason. Tactical stealth game play is being sidelined more and more with U51.

It is true that last update took much more fun from stealth characters away even though it was hard to play that before U51 too.
Would you play stealth if it was more balanced?

[Czekojin]

Reapers possess: True Seeing and will see through Invisibility and concealment, such as Blur or Displacement. If you are running in a party, you don't need to bother being in Sneak overly much.

U51 did not really deliver anything beneficial for tactical stealth play style. Albeit it managed to remove; several features, from Shadowdancer, which were useful when soloing sneaky Assassins.

That is extremely sad. But thank you for the info.

[Blerk]

Gen 1 Reapers can detect you when you are in stealth regardless of how good your HiS and MS skills are. Gen 2 reapers cannot.

But, this detection radius was reduced a little while back and very significantly for stealth play it is now less than the range of bluff. So now we do have the option of bluff pulling them away from other monsters without needing terrain to hide behind, dealing with them when they are alone, and then getting back to sneaking around.

With your feather falling issue, try toggling off your mantle if you need to drop down quickly.

[Czekojin]

Gen 1 Reapers can detect you when you are in stealth regardless of how good your HiS and MS skills are. Gen 2 reapers cannot.

But, this detection radius was reduced a little while back and very significantly for stealth play it is now less than the range of bluff. So now we do have the option of bluff pulling them away from other monsters without needing terrain to hide behind, dealing with them when they are alone, and then getting back to sneaking around.

With your feather falling issue, try toggling off your mantle if you need to drop down quickly.

Ah? Good to know, thanks. In Claw of Vulkoor, it is hard to tell but I guess I will check it again.

Toggling mantle is actually great advice, I did not think of that

[Wraithkin]

Gen 1 Reapers can detect you when you are in stealth regardless of how good your HiS and MS skills are. Gen 2 reapers cannot.

But, this detection radius was reduced a little while back and very significantly for stealth play it is now less than the range of bluff. So now we do have the option of bluff pulling them away from other monsters without needing terrain to hide behind, dealing with them when they are alone, and then getting back to sneaking around.

With your feather falling issue, try toggling off your mantle if you need to drop down quickly.

The issue with the solutions that you are providing is they are a work around, obviously this is not the way that they are encouraging people to play. They took cool toys away and gave them to other people. I now need to make MORE accommodations to play the style of play that is not the meta.

[Blerk]

The issue with the solutions that you are providing is they are a work around, obviously this is not the way that they are encouraging people to play. They took cool toys away and gave them to other people. I now need to make MORE accommodations to play the style of play that is not the meta.

No argument there, just trying to help a fellow player get by under the system we have now.

If you've been following the discussions about stealth on the forums you'll see that they went almost nowhere despite the efforts of other posters to make reasonable arguments as politely as they could. The sad truth is no amount of friendly engagement or frustrated hectoring is having any effect.

Same with the shadowdancer ED tree. Lots of feedback from people who understand stealth play very well, which was largely ignored by designers who apparently don't understand and don't care, then most of their effort apparently devoted to making SD into a caster tree. Pretty disgraceful but here we are.

[Wraithkin]

No argument there, just trying to help a fellow player get by under the system we have now.

If you've been following the discussions about stealth on the forums you'll see that they went almost nowhere despite the efforts of other posters to make reasonable arguments as politely as they could. The sad truth is no amount of friendly engagement or frustrated hectoring is having any effect.

Same with the shadowdancer ED tree. Lots of feedback from people who understand stealth play very well, which was largely ignored by designers who apparently don't understand and don't care, then most of their effort apparently devoted to making SD into a caster tree. Pretty disgraceful but here we are.

I appreciate it. I honestly do. I mentioned it in the rogue forums but I'm starting to look into work around that are more enjoyable until hopefully they give us a new epic destiny for tactical stealth players. Any feedback from others would be greatly appreciated. I'm starting with master of flowers, I just need to get some cloth armor at cap. >.<

[Czekojin]

Thank you guys for the insight I do not have.
I play pure stealth rogue Shadar-kai, currently trying to farm epic past lives so I can be more resilient with higher survivability (4th life and 6th epic TR atm). I do not have many points in reaper tree but I am aiming to get more and more although it is not really easy. However with all those casters and pew pew users around me the quests become very fast. I am usually left behind, getting trap bonuses and hidden locations while the others zerg forward. When I am in non stealth action, my only chance to survive is when others grab aggro lol. Otherwise I still feel a bit squishy, in non stealth combat lower dps (working on my sentient dagger from Citw). But maybe there is a bit of fun in this challenge.

However, it is true that I do not find many useful things in current Shadowdancer ED. Some of the better stuff is locked by level 30 but that is the moment I epic TR again so I do not use it at all, although the floating shadow looks cool. I wish I could have reach it at least on level 29.

[DYWYPI]

When provided with constructive feedback, from knowledgeable stealth enthusiasts, with firsthand experience of "stealth play". The Developers' negotiation skills were lacking and that's putting politely.

I think part of the problem was they didn't have anywhere near the appropriate resources and time or want to improve things in regarding 'stealthy play'. The developer Shadowdancer focus was on damage dealing aspects, i.e. combat. For sneaky stealth play style: we got silly fantasy-film-like emulation features that were near useless rather than applying solid stealth tactics. :-/

Neither does it help when solo stealth play isn't something the DDO Developers are particularly interested in supporting or only do it grudgingly.

Perhaps in contrast the office cleaner actually plays Assassins in stealthy fashion albeit their input was mostly disregarded.

Ironically the pre-U51 Shadowdancer actually had some useful features for stealth play, not even damage output related, which unfortunately got removed for U51. There were several of us that were trying to talk sense and prevent further erosion to stealth play - you cannot say I didn't try.

If they're planning on giving us a new Epic Destiny for Stealth play, it would possibly turn into a complete disaster. Assuming they followed the same types of judgement and mindset as they had for U51. In fact it'd be better if they didn't; at least then they couldn't damage it any more than they already have. :-)