This is and old Issue of mine, I see many builds take advantage of Synchronized Strike Foreshadowing node (Shadows created within 4 seconds of using SS deal increased damage - 200% inc damage for 5 points). And many use Idols or gear with “Increased damage of skill use by shadows”. I know the Sync Strike node is more used to get to the 4 shadows and the shadows have a more important purpose to proc other things, Im aware of the mechanics that relies on shadow creation, but I would like to focus the “increased damage” done by shadows.
My first question is, is there any bug related to increased shadow damage at all ? When I started playing november 2022 people used to say it did not work properly so it was not advised to build thinking too much in increasing the shadow damage.
It works 100% corretc, in the way it should work ? For both SS node and the affixes increased damage of skill ?
The reason Im questioning this is because I can not see the increased damage at all in the training dummy. At least with SS node. I think it would very noticeable the 200% damage increase… I tried umbral blade skill and shuriken skill. And the damage these skills do when shadow apply the skill is the same with no points in Foreshadowing or with 5 points. I have yet to test the affixes in gear & idol, but this thing with SS alone makes my mind messy.
My second question is about if there is any difference in these two ways to increase damage by shadows.
“Shadows created within 4 seconds of using SS deal increased damage” and “Increased damage of skill use by shadows” . The two basically increase the damage of a skill used by shadow in the same way ? I mean, 80% increased damage by one is the same of 80% increased by the other ?
Nope. The increased shadow damage per number of shadows affix doesn’t work at all, both in affix and idol versions.
The other version of just increased shadow damage works, I think.
I tested it extensively if a character with very little increased damage so the damage output is as consistent as possible. Even with the high damage variance, if you go from 40% increased to 600%, you should notice the effect quickly.
And reported more than a year ago. Still not working at all. Avoid that affix at all costs.
Also avoid shred duration on idols. On gear works though. Another reported bug never got fixed.
First of all, thanks for you report here.
I have planned to try at least 3 bladedancer builds (Ignite umbral blades // light chakram// physical shadow dagger) So I watched and read a lot of bladedancer builds available lately, from content creator , some streamers, experienced players and none of them mention this problem.
Often it’s suggested to invest points to increase shadow damage, and makes me wonder that people does not actually test the builds.
Just to clarify, would you mind to detail your experience a little more ?
I think we have 6 ways that shadows interact with the damage output, 2 of them being the damage you do with a given skill based on number of shadows and the other 4 being the damage the shadow itself does:
1- Rogue Idols 1x3 or 1x4 (ingame text is “Increased Damage with Shadow Cascade per Active Shadow”) 2- Rogue Idols (Increase damage of Attacks use by Shadows) 3- Gear affixes (prefix is the same as idol: “Increased Damage with Shadow Cascade per Active Shadow”) 4- Gear affixes (prefix is almost the same as idol: “Increase damage of Skills use by Shadows” 5- Bladedancer passive points (ingame text description is “Increased Shadow Damage”) 6- Skills tree nodes: The one I remember is the one that made me create this post, skill Synchronized Strike with its node “Foreshadowing” . (in game text is “Shadows created within 4 seconds of using SS deal increased damage”. With 5 points its 200% Increased damage. I understand that if the shadow use an ability before 4 seconds it will gain the damage, but anyone could confirm ? its not the first time we have ambiguity in skills descriptions. Could it be that the increased damage will only apply after 4 seconds ? 7- Umbral Blade Skill - “Shadows Using Umbral Blades always throw a single Shadow Blade that deals 300% more damage and has 100% increased radius.”
Need to verify if this interaction is additive to the Sword Thrower node, meaning 550% more damage… ? 200 %increased radius ?
From what I understood , your experience is more about number 1 and 2 (gear prefix and Idol affix), meaning it does not work at all to increase the damage of shadow Cascade. I havent tested this one yet. My experience is about number 5 and 6, more often the SS skill not working properly to increase shadow damage, but since one side is bugged its an indication that the other side might be bugged as well.
Can you just tell me if my assumptions are correct about what do you consider to be really bugged about shadow damage?
I also pretend to test it in a low level rogue/bladedancer with no other additional damage, no bleed, no ailments, no blessings, as soon as I start a new char, so that I can create a new report of this bug.
Thats interesting, thanks for testing.
Im getting really annoyed by all the mechanics/affixes etc. still not working after so many years.
I even had to laugh when i saw Shadow Master passive in BD tree actually giving 2% dmg instead of 20% (they fixed it now) since rogue release…
Was kinda hard to test and see because there are so many projectiles and numbers popping up with a huge range of crit numbers.
Im pretty sure most of the mechanics i used works on lightning chakram.
Your assumptions are correct, on theory shadow get a 4s buff the moment you cast sync, but I didn’t tested this one out. Underused/complex skills are sometimes broken.
Having said that, testing if a skill works, is harder than may seem. On a normal play you may stack easily 500-700% increased damage, most of it being conditional. To put things worse and for no good reason than to obfuscate our DPS, damage is always has a huge range from 80% to 120% of the average damage.
just a small correction, while editng my loot filter I realized that Idol affix is slightly different from Gear Affix.
Idol affix is " Increase damage of attacks use by Shadows"
Gear affix is “Increase damage of Skills use by Shadows”.
I guess its just a “typo”, Ill be considering the two as equivalents if noone can confirm… ( I guess not, because its probably something noone wants to deal in the moment, the whole shadow damage situation).
Since shadows can only use the following 4 skills, I guess the definition of “Attack” reinforces its a typo ? I dont remember reading anywhere shadows can do “simple” attack.
Or reinforces that its the same thing , considering the skills to be a type of attack.
By the way just found one more interaction, the more I search and read, just more doubts appear.
7 - Umbral Blade Skill - “Shadows Using Umbral Blades always throw a single Shadow Blade that deals 300% more damage and has 100% increased radius.”
Im in doubt now if the umbral blade node “Sword Thrower - Damage +250% and Radius +100%” is additive to this interaction. Meaning the shadow would do 550% more damage.
But this one seems to not be the case, must be that shadow already have the Sword Thrower activated by default with an extra 50% increased damage.
All of which are attacks. There are no spells that Shadows can use & the Rogue doesn’t have any spells (with the possible exception of the icicles & dragon song procs from their respective bows).
Someone on Reddit answered me:
"LEtools says this idol stat was updated to be armor shred effect, but kept the armor duration title for some reason. Do any of the enhanced tooltip mousovers like alt reflect this?
I confirmed holding Ctrl+alt and the blue tooltip says
“Increases the effect of Ailments you inflict”
Afterall it was just a case of mistyped information, but no less annoying, making me loose all this time.
So, it’s effect and not duration? That can be tested, is a bit hard as armor shred quickly scales and is hard to see the difference, but if you go from 0% to 300% effect or so, should see the difference in damage.
That only proves they don’t read the bugs forum, a error of this kind takes 3 minutes to solve, to update the text in the effects database (probably), or worse case scenario editing a line of code.
I finally tested it. And with a low level char & low damage gear I guess it definitely works…
There is this extensive video and it shows everytime I put gear or idol affixes with increased shadow cascade damage per active number of shadows the damage is noticeable higher.
Im glad its not bugged afterall…
decided to do another test with critical damage, also works
Need now to test the increase damage by attacks used by shadows.
Just to finish the subject;
I have tested the one thing I was firstly concerned,
increased damage of shadows created within 4 seconds of using sync strike.
And I can finally rest my case, also worked
While I am at it, I also tested the passive increased shadow damage. Everything fine.
And finally, the last test, increased damage of skills used by shadows - Gear and Idol affixes.
now I can let all this behind me, gladly everything worked fine.
Just the numbers can be debatable, sometimes one could feel
that the damage output is not what the % increased says in tooltip,
but its really hard to measure everything accurately.
Other than that I always noticed a higher damage comparing to standard shadow cascade damage.
Seen parts of your video, definitively is working there.
Another supposition, is my shadow cascade on the video I submitted, was a proc from shift, and not a direct cast IIRC. The cascade hit happens first, then all the cascade triggers from shadows, just as if you manually cast it.
I’ll check it out at some point to be sure if my tests have something weird. I didn’t see any patch regarding this issue, don’t know if it was shadow-fixed or something.
