16 Sep 2006 at 13:03 - 6
To answer your question about the two shadowstep skills might be a little more difficult than you anticipated. How often you want to be going in and out of combat is going to be your deciding factor along with energy. Lets start with in. You have basically death's charge, shadow of haste, and dash. Death's Charge gets you in fastest and seems the best but with its 45 second recharge it quickly becomes a huge irritant since you will basically get one attack per enemy group, or less. Shadow of Haste will get you in AND out but since the changes might actually leave you in TOO long. Dash forces you to run but if you wait long enough you wont have picked up aggro and it only has an 8 second recharge.
Now, for your outs: Recall, Return, Spirit Walk, Heart of Shadow and Viper's Defense. Heart of Shadow and Viper's Defense are basically the same in that they step you out when you get hit. This can suck royally since and AoE can trigger it at anytime, or if you pull aggro on the first hit of your combo. Secondly, its to a random location which could be by your team, off to the side, or behind the enemy and into aggro range of the next group. Spirit Walk is only usefull if you have a rit with you since no ranger ever actually uses their spirits. However, this skill can also get you IN to a fight since you can port to any spirit. Getting out with this can get tough because you have to have energy to use it. Return has the same problem since you need to have the energy to use it, but otherwise its a great skill. Last is Recall. Recall can be good and bad. The first problem is the cost to sustain it at -1 energy regen. Also, it can be cancelled (screws you) or the party member can die (ports you to their body, screwing you). The benefit though is that you can cast this before you go in and it lets you get out at your leisure without having to worry if you will have the energy to use it when you need to leave.
The last skill you can use to shadow step is the one most people use if they don't mind giving up their single elite to carry it: Aura of Displacement. This is a mix of shadow of haste, death's charge and recall. It's maintained like Recall so you lose one tick of energy regen and you double click it to cancel it. Like Shadow of Haste it ports you back to where you cast it when you are done with it. And like Death's Charge it steps you right to your target, but it only has a 20 second recast. As you can see it offers all the things you want, but its elite and probably the last elite you will pick up at that so get used to the other ones first.
