PVE Combat Shadow Stepping

Always thought shadow form should have been more like..

Shadow Form
5e 1/4 cast 30sec

Elite skill Shadowstep to target foe with no aftercast delay. If that foe dies within 15 secs SF is instantly recharged.

I want to play pve as an effin ninja! Um, yes, yes please.

Always thought shadow form should have been more like..

Shadow Form
5e 1/4 cast 30sec

Elite skill Shadowstep to target foe with no aftercast delay. If that foe dies within 15 secs SF is instantly recharged.

I want to play pve as an effin ninja! You can't do that! If you do that, then the assassin would be doing exactly what it was meant to do!

Shadow Form
10e 1/4 cast 20s

Elite skill Shadowstep to target foe. You cannot be attacked or the target of spells for 2...7 seconds, or until you successfully land an attack.


This would still keep Fow Manlyspike going, but would require a better class of sin to pull it off.
Enough of the godmode crap.

Shadow Fang is really fun to use in assassin AP builds. I don't want to use any spell over 1/4 sec cast so AP is out.

I'm a ninja, not a wizard!

Deep Wound cannot kill someone on it's own; the health loss must first be triggered by a change in health (not regen/degen though). Shadow Fang doesn't do damage and so cannot kill.

Wastrel's Collapse is sometimes a little useful, but that tends not to outweigh gains from Way of the Assassin or even Moebius Strike. I will admit that WoTA is deadly useful, but in PVE, I already benefit from Critical Agility well enough that IMS is good enough for energy/crit management, while enemies die too fast for me(mmm, splinter/strength of honor) to capitalize on a moebius blossom loop.

Fair enough. Question though: Would it be considered redundant to run WotA and CA at the same time?

Secondly, regarding the shadow-step-away skills like HoS and Viper's Defense - are they useful in the middle of PVE fights, aggro risks notwithstanding? I wouldn't advise running CA with WotA.
Defensive shadowsteps are of minimal use to a melee physical and almost certainly aren't worth the skill slot outside of very niche situations. Untargeted are even worse.

The crit boost is more important than the IAS; crit rate drops dramatically when hitting higher level foes and having to auto-attack is less than ideal. Critical Agility is also a little clunky at times. Not really. Crit rate goes up on YOU, but your crit rate on enemies drops very little. I suspect it is more observational bias that people think their crit rate drops dramatically because against high armored enemies 4 damage -> 8 damage isn't noticeable as a crit, whereas 30 damage -> 60 damage is obviously a badass attack. IIRC, a lvl 31 enemy attacking you goes up something like 6% because of their level (they go up another 6% assuming they have r20 in their weapon instead of r16), while your crit rate changes by about half a percent.

I can dig up the crit formula if you like, but it will make your eyes bleed. Suffice to say that your crit rate is always at least as high as your weapon skill and the level-dependent factor is added on to that afterwords (and its ugly, trust me).

IAS is, of course, always amazing.

I wouldn't advise running CA with WotA.
Defensive shadowsteps are of minimal use to a melee physical and almost certainly aren't worth the skill slot outside of very niche situations. Untargeted are even worse. I would advise running CA with WoTA.

CA gives you 33% IAS and a hefty armor boost. WoTA gives you less IAS (18% at 13 CS) and a hefty crit bonus.

Together you get the 33% IAS, armor boost and Crit bonus making you a killing machine.

Thing is, with both, your killing speed and efficiency are not as greatly reduced if, say a Necro Rends your CA, or a Warrior Wild Blows your WoTA off. There have been plenty of times where either happens, but very rarely do I encounter both simultaneously.

So really they complement each other.