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Avadon-Shadowalker or Blademaster?


Death Knight

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Im contemplating who I will play in the next Avadon and came to my debate as to who is better at ranged combat, the shadowalker or blademaster. Ive used a blademaster my first playthrough in avadon and had a lot of success with him. Here are the benefits-

 

-Best ranged Aoe in the game

-High damage single attacks due to bonus critical chance of bow mastery

-High survivability due to blessings/regeration

 

Here are the benefits of a shadowalker who Ive used but not as much:

 

-Lethal Aoe but not as good aoe of blademaster

-Deadly ability of hitting 2 enemies with cleave throw

-More ranged attacks than Blademaster via explosive attacks with corrupting damage

 

So who really is better at ranged combat?

 

The blademaster deals more criticals but the Shadowalker's explosives are deadly all the same. It would seem that the blademaster has a bit of an edge.

 

 

 

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Shadowwalkers also get 2 area attacks early - razor spray and blade whirlwind - and because of the way the tree is set up, if you want razor spray, you need to put 6 into blade training anyways, which gives you whirlwind. They are both Dexterity-based, so you don't have to choose between pumping different stats to optimize them. Blademasters on the other hand don't get a similar area attack until the tier 4 blade sweep.

 

I also really like the free battle frenzy that shadowwalkers sometimes get when hit in melee (once steel discipline gets to 10), and the nice resistence bonuses from earth discipline.

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Of course, a Dex Shadowwalker will seldom get hit, so the Battle Frenzy won't trigger that often. I found myself intentionally placing my SW next to a pet or weaker party member, in hopes of getting cleaved (cloven?).

 

My all-time favorite SW ability is Lightning Pot combined with backstab. You can't use it that often, but when you can, watch even mini-bosses dissolve into goo. Fun!

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At high levels I like to have both a Blademaster and a Shadowwalker. Blademasters eventually get by far the best buff in the game, while Shadowwalkers have better individual survivability due to their crazy passive resistance skills. As a main character, the shadowwalker has an edge because he can pick locks, and you'll always want a lockpicker along.

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I'd say the blademaster is a bit stronger when you're not taking hits and the shadowwalker is a bit stronger when you are because of frequent battle frenzy. With Dex builds that means the shadowwalker is best against tougher enemies, which is of course when you most want the edge. But they're both completely solid.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the battle frenzy is especially handy for the few times when your main character has to act alone. You get hit three times as often and have three times the chance to frenzy!

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Its not true that Shadowwalker and Blademaster are the only ranged combatants that work. I came across a bow for my Sorceress in my playthrough that gave a nice 50% bonus ranged combat damage and used it when I was waiting for my aoe spells to come back.

 

I bet all classes can use ranged combat to a least some degree.

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Originally Posted By: GoodOld Jack
Its not true that Shadowwalker and Blademaster are the only ranged combatants that work. I came across a bow for my Sorceress in my playthrough that gave a nice 50% bonus ranged combat damage and used it when I was waiting for my aoe spells to come back.

I bet all classes can use ranged combat to a least some degree.


A javelin-using shaman who pumps Dexterity and uses healing spells and Earthshatter is a slightly gimmicky build, but can be effective. The problem with using missile weapons on the Sorceress is that she has no spells that key off Dexterity and no passive bonuses to missile damage, so you have to sacrifice her spells in order to make her bow attacks moderately effective. Against anything that isn't immune to fire, it's better to just forget about bows and rely on her firebolt attack.
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I'm always tempted to pump some dexterity points in my Sorceress to make them more bow effective (specially with that cool bow mentioned). But... its just too much to sacrifice.

 

Anyway, probably it could be a very interesting experiment to play her as pure dexterity ranged combatant laugh I wonder... it is really viable? I don't see how that build would work in the hard areas...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I actually started playing the shadowwalker class as a melee major class and I gotta say its been fun. Ill admit that I cant use melee in every part of all battles, but thats where having a high dex takes care of for ranged weapons.

 

The way I see it-Melee's main use in the big fights is that you should use your melee in the beginning of the big fight before everyone gets separated. By doing that, you can deal more damage to the mage boss (moritzkri) or other characters and take advantage of melee's benefits early on (like 3 rounds). Once the battle is past the beginning, you can then switch to ranged weapons to take down the weakened foes.

 

This works really good for the shadowwalker because he can poison the enemy and hit with disarming blow right away which will really make a difference.

 

I think the reason Avadon is a little more pro ranged combat is because if Jeff made melee d1-4 then he would just be making another geneforge or avernum where melee 'totally' dominates.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I prefer the Shadow walker. The Shadow walker often doesn't get hit because of his high dexterity, and even if he does get hit, his high dexterity helps ease the pain quite a bit. Plus, you won't have to pump any points into another column in order to have stronger attacks since dexterity makes the razor disks much more effective. When I was done with my game, my Shadow Walker had 41 points in dexterity, the ability to heal himself, and a self heal scarab. He was pretty much indestructible, even when fighting Redbeard and kept hitting at around 100-225.

 

I haven't played as a Blademaster, but Sevelin in both playthroughs of Avadon was never extremely effective at killing monsters. He was always better as a meat shield while I either blasted enemies with a Firebolt or pierced enemies with a Razor disk.

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This is partially related to blade masters and shadow walkers. Ive completed the game with 2 missile users (Blademaster/bows and Shaman with javelins/call the storm). My last character to use for this game will be a shadow walker. Because this sounds like a weird idea, will beating the game be possible if I have-PC Shadowwalker, Shima and Sevelin. I thought it would be cool if I had 3 warrior type classes to take down enemies.

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That's actually not a bad party for most of the game: your party will have good damage output, good survivability, buffs and self-healing. However, a very small number of enemies are immune or highly resistant to physical attacks, so you'll want a plan to deal with those. The shadowwalker pot skills can work, although their damage output isn't great.

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