18.7 Shade guide

[Hyde]

Pardon if this is covered elsewhere but if so, I'll just emphasize my agreement.

Ya, I agree with your prognosis on fighting, but I also find that waiting until "someone" else has aggro can retard progress because sometimes people aren't keen on DPSing like shades are (or they just lack impetus). So I generally just rock up and sneak/sneak attack, then start unloading damage, if I arrive a second late, spam sneak and SA and backstab.

This is what makes Smoke Bomb worthy as soon as you can cast it. Even though expensive (though often cheaper on GMI than @ Greedy) it is very handy.

Even while leveling, once you have Smoke Bomb (and heal nanos):
Smack the crap out of something, keep yourself alive with Acro perks and heal perks, don't use detaunt perks yet. When your self-healing and/or Acro is about to wear off, pop Smoke Bomb ... immediately all of your aggro is wiped. Tank finishes off whatever it is while you cycle your detaunts to keep aggro off.

Shades die.

Shades that die OFTEN are bad shades.

Good shades can still do massive damage and not die often

[bitnykk]

Shades die.

What i've noticed (e.g. during new/old Inferno missions) is that Shade seems to be a profession where you early get huge DPS/AR compared to the actual level of Def/Heal that would be needed to survive most aggro keeping. That seems to make Shade tend to die more often when there's no Tank nor heal in the team ; the damage they take seems also erratic, sometimes they evade near 100% of several mobs, and suddently they die in few seconds (e.g. vs a Vortexoid or such nasty mob). But i guess that's also an individual symptom of too much confidence in a toon capacity

[Mysticwoolie]

This makes me want to roll a shade.

[Chrisax]

Yes, fantastic guide by Noobas. Shade is a very specific and not at all cookie-cutter profession but it can be very enjoyable if you're up to the challenge, and you can end with a very nice damage-dealing character. You can see it in the guide. I wouldn't recommend it though to relatively new players, but you never know... That said I will recommend first to have a fully operational 220ish able to fund new characters.

[Mysticwoolie]

I know
But temptation is a cruel mistress. So many great classes in this game, so little time.
Currently leveling still, and its going fairly well so far.

Shade is defo on my list tho - its seems to be a funky and cool class.