Hi All:

Leveling up a nightshade. Have a farmer and legendary Tailor/SCr/Alch/WCr so template isn't going to be a problem...

Just have several questions about playing the class.

1. I was thinking it would be smart to open with critical strike from stealth with a slow staff weapon (poisoned of course) for maxing damage. Then switching to dual wield with a button press. Is this the right plan?

2. I understand that once a fight is under way, may player "switch out" weapons to reapply poisons. Is there a way to bind this switching to your keyboard, or do i have to drag and drop the weapons from inventory?

3. Piercing points raise your average damage with thrust weapons and CD raises your chances of both weapons hitting. Obviously, the consensus here is that points are better spent in pierce with CD ending up at 18 or so and the pierce at at 35+. Is this just assumed to be correct or has anyone tried high CD and low pierce and tested dps?

4. I am of course auto training stealth, but plan to use a stone to respec at 26, 34, and 41 to have some fun in the bgs. Respecing back of course before hitting the next level. Again, money isn't a huge concern. What do you think I should spec at 26? with the 20 bonus pts from autotraining, I can go:

20 (+6) Stealth - max stealth
19 (+6) Envenium - for the level 25 dot poison
21 Crit Strike (for PA)
10 pierce
12 CD (for snowshower)

does this seem reasonable? I was thinking of dropping the CD down and bringing pierce up?

1. Most likely, this would be a wash. The PA/BSII damage formulas are fixed bonuses per CS skill level added to the weapon damage. So you'll get a larger opening hit, but not proportionally. Meanwhile, you'll lose damage from higher variance. On the plus side, these styles are supposed to be un-missable, so you don't need to worry about missing your opener from lower weapon skill.

2. You can put a 1-handed weapon into the 2-handed weapon slot, and wield it at the same time as your offhand. For more weapons, you'll need to mouse swap. You will eventually need to have a healthy pile to mouse swap, but you'll be able to do at least an initial in-combat switch with hotkeys.

3. A point in CD raises total DPS approximately the same as a point in pierce. The reason CD is usually much lower is because of styles, reaching a specific style or getting more style damage.

4. If you train stealth and later respec out of it, you do NOT get the autotrain points back. The only way to get the full benefit of autotraining is to absolutely not touch stealth until 48.

Thanks or the info man. FYI, your answer on #4 is incorrect. I have a nightshade and ranger that I did a full respec on for the BGs at level 26. I upped my stealth to 25 for the nightshade (for climb walls) and maxed out my bow on the ranger. I made sure that I didn't level or anything during my time there. I was indeed able to do another full respec back to just the auto training amount of skill in stealth/bow respectively for each toon. The auto training kicked in at level 28 as expected.

I think this post from Nixian that explain autotrain very well is still valid