Shade:Tips and Tricks

Shade Tips

The Shade Dance

Prior to latest Anarchy Online patches, Shades used to do what everyone called the Shade Dance. This Shade Dance involved moving back and forth while fighting a monster, in order for the perks to work while the shade faces the back of the monster. However, this has changed recently, with perk chains now modified so that the first perk to land on the monster must be activated by the shade facing the back of the monster, whereas the rest of the perks in the chain will work from the front of the monster. What this means is that you don't need to keep the Shade Dance up for prolonged periods of time giving you Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Nano and Leveling

So you're leveling your shade and you're out of the starter area and you come across these nano's and you're think "Hey +20 piercing would be sick." STOP. Stop thinking immediately. The one thing I've learned from leveling my shade is NOT to put your IP into nano in the beggining. It's absolutely worthless. Because first of all after putting IP into you're three main abilities, you're melee stats (dimach, riposte, piercing, parry, sneak attack, fast attack, mult melee, melee int.), body dev, your evades, and comp lit. You're out of IP anyway. And the low level nano proc buffs are not that great. Focus on your perks, rotations of perk abilities, and how to handle your character in solo and team situations. Wait till much later to start investing in nanos.

So you can only use Spirits...

So the biggest downside to leveling as a shade is the fact that you can't really "twink." Sure you can get really good gear, but you can't buy it. You're options are limited to getting high level people to get you the gear by protecting you in high level spirit infested areas and stealin' teh loots. Well check this out, you can kill high level mobs without gear or twinked out stats. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you, Kiting. So check it out, shades some gnarly perks that do two things that make this kiting possible. First, they activate from a range and can be done while moving. Second, they heal you, so when you make a small mistake you can recover from it. Here's my current personal setup level 44 solitus shade, run speed is max'd, and my perks are 2 in Sublime Rapport and 2 in Totemic Rites. These give you some direct damage, a small DoT, and two heals and also a hostile AC reducer. I'm chillin in Elysium kiting level 58's without much of a problem. Sure you can make mistakes, and get crit on. But when 6 kills gives you a full level? Definitely worth your time. Practice on low level mobs, the idea is to never get hit. Just run in circles that are close enough to attack with your abilities but leaves the npc without any chance of hitting you. (Holding the 'w' key and 'a' key will NOT work, you must find the 'perfect kiting circle'.) Try it out!

Another way to kite is to spec into the Damage-over-time perks and nano abilities that you have. 2 points into Spirit Phylactery and this will do the trick. Other points should be spent in healing perks so that you can stay alive when putting on the DoT's. I have also tried this method and it works like a charm, just DoT, run, repeat.

PVP Tips

When engaging in Pvp, some shades find it handing to only execute the last three perks in the third perk chain. This results in Hecatomb which can very well provide the finishing blow for some players.