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After 50+ solo casual games played with shadowblade i decided to make a small guide about him as he offers a lot of possibilities.
First some math considerations :
40 str = 760hp + 12 dmg in Q = about 4000 gold
40 agi = 40 ias + 6 armor = about 2500 gold
40 int = (520 mana) + 44 dmg in E = about 2500 gold if you ignore the mana value
all give 40 damage
So as you can see, it's way cheaper (in gold or even slot) to go for offensive items with str R than defensive items with agi or int R. You should only build a agi R or int R when your hp doesn't matter (ex a jereziah dedicated to protect you or your team have a large cc advantage or your opponents have nothing to counter shrunken head or genjuro..)
The damage bonus :
Q give u 12
W give u a 40% drain (lets say 30-100)
E give u 50+ magic damage from lvl 14+
R give u 25-40 damage from lvl 16 and also ias if in agi R
So as u can see, sb get a lot of damage bonus but almost none in IAS and it gets worse with levels. This means sb will get more dps by getting ias items to compensate than getting +damage items.
Also, because of this, agi R will usually be the best damage attribute in a full slot configuration with 40 ias and 6 armor vs int R which give only 44 damage in E form.
Picking screen:
You need a str hero in your team (even midas) to cast R on him. U cannot rely on hunting opponent str heroes to R them while being a squishy agi R hero.
Early game, he is bad at last hitting cannot jungle but he is good at harassing with just 1 point in E. Note that he has the advantage of having 1hp/sec more regen over other ranged heroes.
After that his very strong skill is Q which make him one of the tankiest hero at lvl7. So until lvl12+, you bread and butter will be W+Q to deal 420 damage/10 sec + slow + damage drain with ulti on strength.
You just cannot beat this combo with an early maxed E build in casual. Keep in mind that going E from Q form basically increase your damage taken by about 50% at lvl7(less after the tanking bonus of Q doesn't growth while you get more stats and items).
The best way to gank, is to W + Q then hit walk your target while he is slow, then follow him 6 sec then W + Q again knowing you are comfortable with turret diving while Q is up. Only use E if enemy is at 1-2 hits from death. 820 damage over 10 sec + 7+ auto attack should kill any non str hero without escape mechanism. Also, if u don't fear counterattack, u can use Q + W combo for a better chasing(slow then +40 ms) by flanking your opponent or coming out from invisibility.
In early team fight, the enemy team has 2 options against W + Q:
-focus you down and waste so much dps/cd on you that your team should have an easy time wining the fight.
-target your teammates first, so you will be able to auto attack then W + Q again.
At this stage, only use E if you are hunting down low health target or if you are low health/mana and can just help from safe range.
So as a skill build, i usually go :
EWQQQRQWWWREEE_R
But you can delay R up to lvl10 to level W earlier knowing that :
-R is only good early on str heroes and you need one close to you to use R
-1 lvl of W instead of R give you more ganking damage but less survivability (good option if you are dominating your lane)
Also, u can just take stats instead of maxing E, if you don't foresee enough opportunity to use E or if you are the main tank of your team, but 40 activable magic damage are usually more valuable than 6 stats as it gives you more flexibility.
Items:
Early on don't aim on big items because you are not a great farmer.
There are a lot of items thats works well on sb so it will really depends of each game.
I will list all items that could be used on sb and explain when they could be suited.
Core :
I like getting boots bottle vestment tp and 2 minor totems early on. Because of Q, you often get more than one round of fighting. Thus, you can use your bottle to quickly regen mana/hp then jump again into fight. Once your bottle is dry and you are low hp/mana either get a rune to refill or tp to fountain. This hero doesn't need anything more to gank.
Strider before thread : if the game is very gank oriented early on in different places far from base, this item can be handy. By going striders before selling them for thread you are wasting the price of 3 tp scrolls. So you have to balance if it is worth it early on.
Thread : the best fighting boots from far. You don't need that bad the 70 movement + 12% sprint because W + Q provide already blink and slow (at bit like night hound with blink cloud).
battery or grave locket: instead of bottle or in complement, but only if you have mana problems.
Hobl : not core. If you go hobl first, you risk to lack of utility because if you are still high hp but oom you are fairly inoffensive. This can be solved by other heroes going ros and rot. But keep in mind you are not like ra or zephir who just need to survive to produce ton of aoe dps. You are already one of the last priority target for opponent team by going str R + Q so this item can easily become overkill.
Icebrand : same problem as hobl, make you very tanky while giving you very low additional utility (26 dmg and insignificant slow)
Sol : the best option if you are the going tank vs a physical team because the +4 armor aura is very useful for your team even if you are the last focused.
Tablet : should be on a support but we are in a casual pub. This item gives you both more survivability and offense than icebrand thanks to the 500 blink. It strongly help your mana pool. It really enlightens your gameplay by giving you an ideal transition between Q and E : you W + Q take some focus, back in safety with tablet, bottle yourself while going E form to help from range until your WQ cd are up to combo again. And you can also help teamates and get a 800 range stun to interrupt tp/channeler. Definitely my preferred item when my team is CC dominated or when we are forced to defend vs a stronger team.
Warpcleft : given your lack of ias, it is your best early damage item. Only elder parasite can do better for this price.
Elder parasite : To buy this item, you need to be able to activate it in team fight after W + Q without being cc or focussed down. This can sometimes happen if your team has cc advantage, or you have shrunken head against no physical cc... Still note that a sb with ep activated in Q form is more tanky and produce more damage than sb with warpcleft in E form. So it is not that bad but sb with warpcleft in Q form is 15% more tanky for only about 20% less damage, isn't limited by a cooldown and can be upgraded later in a bigger item.
Frostburn : For the same price, you can get tablet and warpcleft, which are better in almost all of the case.
Frostwolf : Only go for this item if you are the main tank vs a magical team. While the orb is very good on you, it doesn't really help your damage and you get almost no utility from the components until the item is completed. Still way better for sb than behemot heart as a tanky item.
Harkon blade : like any other carry, only get this item when your targets stack physical armor (25+). Going Int R or E will greatly enhance your damage with this item but will decrease even more your ehp. Definitely not core.
Hellflower : you can't initiate by surprise with your 600 blink into silence like a pharaon, revenant, doctor... So rather get this item against key squishy carries with strong escape like magebane...
Charged hammer : core big damage item. Only demonic is better if nobody in your team is building it. You benefit directly from the active with W + Q. Always go warpcleft before charged claw when building it.
Demonic : natural follow-up after sol and warpcleft if you are going sol.
Insanitarius : the problem of this item is that you need to have something to heal, to avoid kiting and cc. If you add elder parasite and shrunken head, it make a very good combo but it cost you 3 slots and require 3 additional activations in the heat of the fight. So I would only recommend this item when you are defending your base against a stronger team.
Shrunken head : you are not squishy so only go for it against team with a lot of magical aoe cc. To make good use of the short immunity you need to combo it with risky damage item like elder parasite, else you will simply be ignored during the 5-10 sec.
Genjuro : This item suit to sb gameplay a bit like tablet and grant 45 IAS. But it is a lot weaker in teamfight than other options so only get it if none of the team wants to push but rather farm/gank until very late game.
Wingbow : nice IAS item, but you are STR R and it doesn't have useful components for your dps until finished.
Savage mace : is just bad on sb unless anti evasion is needed (wingbow users or night hound cloud). Also no miss chance from low ground in casual.
Kuldra totem : is never a bad pick. But like most carry, you are better suited to get big damage items first.
Null stone : after a big damage item to counter strong mono target skill, why not, but as a str carry, this item is less important than for squishy int or agi carry. When you face opponents using this item, never forget that you can disable it with your ulti before W + Q them.
Balance :
Shadowblade is critiqued for his bad attack animation, bad farming ability and his lack of utility.
Indeed, he hasn't a real ultimate that can make him stronger at key fights (like dark lady, chronos, hammerstorm, predator, maliken...). He is more a short cd hero who will try to adapt his development to the 9 other heroes. Without his ultimate, he would only get 2,1 primary attribute per level giving him pitiful base damage at lvl25, so his ultimate only rectify this by giving about 3,7 primary attribute per level.
His lack of utility was a design choice to avoid giving stuns to all new heroes, so if sb had to be buffed, his ultimate and attack animation could be a good choice. I would also double the speed bonus from the agi form (from 40 to 80 at lvl4), because as it is, even when you don't need the blink into slow, W+Q ie 12 str 8 armor and 4 magic armor are almost always better than Q+W ie 12 agi and 40 speed.
reserved
Making a strategy guide based on casual mode is pretty bad idea in itself.
Although i didnt had strenght to read threw all of the informations i found couple of bad ideas.
Skill build order.
Since Q/W does rly low dmg maxing them first is making this hero completly useless. Although Q gives decent bonuses W is just useless early on. While maxing your E-int form at lvl 7 you gain +40 magic dmg on hit. Basically the bonus magic dmg that you get from maxing Q gets outnumbered by bonus from E after 3 hits (which you will land if you will kill smb). Another story is that E because of low mana cost and great dmg on auttoatacks makes your last hitting a lot more effective.
Items.
Never go for bottle on a non-mid hero if your not a heavy ganker/roamer. If you got a hero like magmus whos job is to make a gank and usually go back to base to regen later bottle is fine, but when you camp 1 lane to get as much farm as you can (like shadowblade) bottle is just waste of 600 gold since 2 hp pots and 3 mana potions for half of the price will give you 2times more hp regen and same mana regen.
Basically when you play wiht shadowblade you should decide at begining of game will you need to build up a nullstone or not. If yes get sustainer, if not get ring of teacher and potions or lifetube if you play on making black legion.
Bout core items, steamboots are obvious, rot, second item i would advise getting mightyblade for increase of hp and +10 dmg when using ult on str hero. Later on harkons/hellflower (dependant on how big magic resistance enemy heros will prob have).
As for 3rd item it depends, if enemys cant kill you due to your insanly high hp pool or low disabels count i would go for hellflower/harkons, after that if enemys got a lot of disabels finish SH from mightyblade that you already got, after that its mid to late game and i would suggest getting behemoths heart and switching your ult on a int hero. Behemoth will solve your hp problems after losing +800 hp from ult, and switching to int attritube will increase your dps greatly because of all that int that you got form hellflower and harkons. Later on sheepstick is a great pickup as well.
Thanks for the first answer ever to a casual guide. I know that every normal player has to show condescension for casual mode to not look like a noob. You are welcome anyway.Originally Posted by Fen__
Maxing E first can probably be a better approach in normal mode where laning phase is way more important and longer. In casual, you are more focussed on getting kills/assists thus 1 point in E for harass/last hit then 4 point in Q for the slow/+150 burst bonus/tank bonus is better.
Btw, you need 5 hits of E lvl4 (+40) over a E lvl1(+10) to get the 150 bonus damage from Q lvl4 over Q lvl1. The 4 attack cooldowns between those 5 hits last at lvl7 5.15 sec(4.33 with thread). But it isn't a problem if your lane partner is monarch as you mentioned it in another thread.
This half price that you can get back anytime by selling the bottle. You are right in normal, but in casual, it is better or at least more fun to gank/roam than staying in lane even for shadowblade.
Ok some math now :
lvl 16 shadowblade with : INT thread hellflower harkon BEHEMOTH and 40 INT from ulti in E form :
dmg 412(126 magical) as 218 dps 528
lvl 16 shadowblade with : STR thread hellflower harkon CHARGED HAMMER and 40 STR from ulti in E form :
dmg 369(106 magical(40 coming from hammer)) as 288 dps 625
Conclusion: as stated in the guide it will always be better to buy dps items and go str ulti than buying hp items with int ulti.
This is even more true if you factor the damage drain buff from W (THAT LASTS 5 SEC EVEN IF YOU CHANGE FORM AFTER, i think i will need to put it in my signature)
Shadowblade 2nd ability : Feint's syphon drained damage buff lasts 5 seconds and remains even if you cast another form.
Myguide :
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=395453
Actually.. I for one Mostly play casual mode and am a casual mode lover, I "can" play normal mode but I don't like it and find it inferior to casual. I can name you a number or reasons why normal is worser/inferior, but I will stop at it here.Making a strategy guide based on casual mode is pretty bad idea in itself.
I am happy to see, what seems to be a first guide to casual mode and also to a hero that I really love! I wish there were more guides to Casual. I can assure you, casual has a player base too and as the name suggest we are CASUAL players.
I'm personaly sick to see the hardcore Normal mode players devaluing and humiliating anything to do with Casual. I got enough arguments and facts and reasons to do just the same to "Normal" mode. If u don't play or like it, don't, I see it almost as stupid as commenting negatively on "any" game that u don't like, just cause of ur own taste or mindset.
It looks to be very long guide (wall-o-test style) so I haven't yet read it, I will do so shortly when I find a bit more time I will also comment it and give a few suggestions or oppinions on the subject. This also from what I've seen, looks to be the most long/in-depth Shadowblade guide.
Good job on doing something different!
P.S If u get negative comments and replies, that will base themselves around the fact that this guide is written for casual mode. Then don't let that let you down or ruin ur mood in any way, that will just prove and show how rotten or terrible this games community is. There're people like myself, who will definetaly value ur contribution and time.
Firstly I'd like to ask if I could add you as a buddy, to discuss more in depth about these concepts. Since "forum" discussion is rather difficult and Swiftblade in itself is VERY complex hero. There're adleast 3 parts to him ( AGI, INT, STR ) and each one requires a different approach and optimal items build and then THOSE 3 must be compared for results.
First I'd like to note that 40 stolen attribute aint anymore the limit ( there is none ) but for comfort of math let's keep it at 40.First some math considerations :
- No idea where u get the gold cost from but okay.40 str = 760hp + 12 dmg in Q = about 4000 gold
40 STR gives indeed 760 HP AND 1.2 HP/s ( it's small, but I'll note it anyways )
As you pointed out, Q-skill also gives 12 STR, but "every" form-skill gives +12 attribute, W-skill gives AGI and E-skill gives INT. So the thing is that we're already comparing ( the ulti ) on which stat ( AGI, STR or INT ) is better.
Items that give most STR:
Frostwolf ( +30 ) ; Symbol of Rage (+25 ) ; Heart of Behe ( +35 ) ; Insanitarius ( +?? )... We Should NOT have Frostwolf and Symbol of rage at the same time, so basically there're only 3 "direct" +STR items that we can get, the other 3 slots can be anything like daemonic, riftshards and savage mace combo. Basically this would we be what I would call a DPS-tank. Depending on the last 3 items aswell ofcourse.
Alright Agility now. ( I still don't get it where u get the cost from, since Dancing blade that gives 30 agi costs 3000 ) Also 40 Agility gives us 40 AS(Attack speed) and 5.6 Armor.40 agi = 40 ias + 6 armor = about 2500 gold
Items that give most AGI:
Wingbow ( +30 ) ; Genjuro ( +30 ) ; Nullfire ( +26 ) although not that good of an item. and Geometer's bane ( +26 ). Since the best time to use Geometer's bane would be RIGHT after leaping, this item falls out, since it removes buffs, it'll be retarded to remove the damage buff that u just "stole". So it's BAD item to get imo. Nullfire aint that good either but Wingbow and Genjuro as items for AGI heroes give a HELLOVA lot of bonuses ( aside of their attribute ). So we have 2 items that give Survivability + damage and we have 4 extra slots to go with. Also since we don't have an attack modifier, we can not only go with some other one but we can also go with symbol of rage or frostwolf, only thing is we loose a bit of the damage that we get from +STR. So Imho Genjuro + wingbow in Agi is better than Beheheart+Insanitarius in STR.
Actually. if u have 40 INT + your base INT .. and do 80% of it as BONUS damage... you do +72 + 80% of base INT in bonus damage in E form.. ( and if u play INT-shadowblade, I don't see any real reason to use any other form, E-form should be on most of the time. )40 int = (520 mana) + 44 dmg in E = about 2500 gold if you ignore the mana value
Items that give most INT:
Hellflower (+20 ) - Great item for both DPS and utility. Frostfield plate ( +30 ) and also gives armor equal to Daemonic. Kuldra ( +35 ) - also gives a disable and some other stats. HARKON's ( +35 ) - and this turns u into a monster at it.
Ok here we have 4 items that ALL can be gotten at the same time ( i.e no attack modifier problems ). we get +120 INT ... 80% of it is +96 bonus damage in E. We get +216 bonus damage in E from INT stat alone in the items! That's not counting are basic INT + our growth from levels + the INT that we stole with ulti ( can be well over 40 ). Problem with this form is... YOU'RE HELLOVA squishy.. and if u go anywhere near the centre of the fight ( Leap in with W ), you're dead meat before u can even do the E->Q->E combo. INT form Shadowblade with these 4 items.. get boots and riftshards and that is what I'd call a GLASS CANNON. You'll do 500+ Magic damage to enemy heroes ( not counting criticals ). but u will also have no survivability whatsoever... Very "fun" build but I haven't yet won a game with it.. U just get focused down Ultra fast with it. It has however 1 Major advantage... Nullstones won't make u cry ( unlike STR/Agi, where u can't even get close cause of that item.. unless u can ult each time to take it down ).
INT-stat shadowblade is so hard of a carry because that he scales with INT-items more than any other INT hero ( maybe Vindi could come close with his 50% true damage )
AGI-stat shadowblade means that ur enemies MUST get nullstone, if they do things become difficult for you.. if they DON'T however.. u just steal 100+ of their damage and before the 5 seconds are up they're already dead.
STR-stat shadowblade means u can be THE TANK of ur team... Hopefully you will have the damage to make your enemies shudder in fear and focus u in teamfights yet the survivability to actually stay alive long enough for ur team to clean up afterwards even if they manage to bring u down. +4 Magic armor +8 Physical armor in 1 skill/form is A LOT. Think Devo's cadavier armor ( +4 magic ) and Moraxus's passive ( +8 phys armor ). Also u become nice and RED and just Taunt the enemies to attack you.
If I built an INT shadowblade... I would in no way buy a HEART under any circumstances..B'sides it has absolutely no use if I don't have any armor to back up all that "extra" hp. I much rather get a frostfieldplate if I needed survivability +15 ARMOR .. +30 INT ( as damage ) + 80% from it extra, totals +54 damage OR daemonic ( costs as much as ur charged hamemr ) and get like +65 AS and +15Armor, sure u might argue that I don't get any benefits from -armor aura of daemonic, but guess what.. my teammates do.. I bet not everyone goes harkonOk some math now :
lvl 16 shadowblade with : INT thread hellflower harkon BEHEMOTH and 40 INT from ulti in E form :
dmg 412(126 magical) as 218 dps 528
lvl 16 shadowblade with : STR thread hellflower harkon CHARGED HAMMER and 40 STR from ulti in E form :
dmg 369(106 magical(40 coming from hammer)) as 288 dps 625and I am getting it for survivability, remember? the added AS boost is just an added bonus. However I would agree that Tankiness wise, ur "STR" build/form would be more tanky than my INT form, but as INT I'd be ranged so I don't have to get into people's face to deal damage.
Last edited by GrafSky; 07-11-2012 at 02:25 PM.
In casual or midwars I would just go harkons+doom+doom+doom+doom+riftshards,,,now that's what u call a glass cannon/laser-turrett
Sadly... One game I played today as Shadowblade, I had Frostfield plate AND shaman's.. and I still "melted " ... I wonder if that was due to that Emerald warder feeding handing out abnoxious amount of gold to the enemy team and then AFK'ing at base... Meh.
That being said u can get/do harkons+doom+doom+doom+doom+riftshards on any hero... ( preferably ranged ) and u will be a glass cannon, u will however also loose 4x 5600 worth of money once u die ( 4 dooms ) and be worthless after ur first death. U will also actually have to collect 20 000 coins before u buy the dooms... since having 1-2 dooms u can just end up dying even before u get the other 2.
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