Why does Shadow use life steal?

I can guarantee my rapier Shadow will be taking advantage of life steal (even though it's not a Shadow-centric skill) as well as balanced ES/Ev/Life (yes, I still have some misplaced faith in evasion and refuse to just convert it to armour).

On the matter of energy shield-leeching/regen, I may have heard tell of a unique on the sparkly grapevine that does something not entirely unlike that.

That said, a passive that grants energy-shield regen per melee hit would be very nice indeed. Sort of reminds me of the Necromancer's bone armour tactic -- you'd load your Meleemancer up with mana leech, get in there swinging like crazy and recast BA as much as necessary.

Flicker strike is obviously great for hopping around, but when it comes to getting out of combat entirely to get that ES back up, I find phase run preferable, combined with other run speed buffs.

Maybe the Shadow should have introduced some sort of evasive withdrawal skill. I can imagine it being used in conjunction with Ethereal Knives quite effectively. Until then, Phase Run.

This is all in aid of restoring lost ES -- a vain attempt to drag my post back on-topic.

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

Also, I'm fairly certain I've never been killed in 1 hit, even once my shield is down. Of course, I don't stand around when that happens, but that should be the standard rule for anyone playing this class. I'm sure it would happen in Maelstrom of Chaos, but that's not going to be in the game at release, anyway.

Can't we expect Difficulty 3 Act 3 to be at least as difficult as Maelstrom currently is, though? It would seem strange if they suddenly lowered the difficulty of the endgame. A lot of players would be disappointed at the removal of the challenge, I'm sure - it just wouldn't make any sense to do so.

So I am truly expecting Chaos to be a rough test of build viability, just because anything less may be seen as too easy.

I'm the shadow, I don't get hit often but when I do I tend to get REALLY low. If that hit goes through my shielding then I need to heal.

That basically sums it up. Theoretically a dodge+LS tank works. However it requires a few things to be true that are relatively hard to manage (high enough HP not to get one shot, ES coming up frequently enough to bleed damage). A non CI build suing ES+Lifesteal and high evasion with a couple +life nodes (read enough health from nodes and gear not to get stomped in melee) would be deceptively tanky.

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Autocthon wrote:

I'm the shadow, I don't get hit often but when I do I tend to get REALLY low. If that hit goes through my shielding then I need to heal.

That basically sums it up. Theoretically a dodge+LS tank works. However it requires a few things to be true that are relatively hard to manage (high enough HP not to get one shot, ES coming up frequently enough to bleed damage). A non CI build suing ES+Lifesteal and high evasion with a couple +life nodes (read enough health from nodes and gear not to get stomped in melee) would be deceptively tanky.

That's my plan, give or take.

I mapped out two strength heavy claw builds, one as a Marauder and one as a Shadow. The Shadow actually has higher strength in the end, with the same amount of +health and 2.0% regen as the Marauder.

That lifesteal will be huge for strength-heavy shadow builds (as long as claw skills are actually useful).

Passive Keystone: Dark Capacitor: Consecutive hits/kills with melee grant ES charges, when their timer runs out they instantly convert to -ES recharge time.

Example:

You fight 3 guys, lose 90% ES but gain 3 charges.. the next wave is coming... charges expire and reduce your ES recharge time to 0.3 seconds which begins your ES recharge almost immediately.. combat resumes.

You fight 10 guys, down 90% ES but kill 3 and have 3 ES charges... you let them expire and dodge your way to safety for a second or two, they expire and ES begins to recharge soon thereafter.. combat resumes.

They would not have a long expiration timer, so you have to balance using them in safety through skilled retreat (damage would stop ES recharge) or you could attempt to rely on them to boost your ES randomly during combat via evasion.

So the shadow seem to be my dreamed character...

the point is that if you're going melee, pure, big pool of HPs is mandatory.
a frail melee character was never valid in the long run in every PnP RPG I have done (a lot), a fortiori in an ARPG where you are facing bazillon's of random brutal strike you need to have brute HPs.
you're melee, you are into the hell, you'll bleed...

the only "frail" build i believe possible is around a Chaos Innoculation build, with a lot of stuff and highly specific passive build.
First game where I see this possible.

wouldn't the high life steal combo well with righteous fire? And since you are using daggers or claws, one assumes, you are going to be balls deep in combat insuring a lot of burning.

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Wootness wrote:

wouldn't the high life steal combo well with righteous fire? And since you are using daggers or claws, one assumes, you are going to be balls deep in combat insuring a lot of burning.

That sounds fun. Good call.

Damage from righteous fire is based on a % of your total health, and will bring you down to 1hp at the same speed no matter how large your health pool is.

Edit: lifesteal is a great way to extend the duration of righteous fire.