Sunday, June 7, 2009

[Guide] Soul Shards


Soul shards (aka Soul fragments) are staple of Corruption specced assassin: they are needed basicly for everything in your tree. I will be calling them SS for the sake of this guide.
Check the window on the left of your health bar: as you go into melee you will notice that white little shards will start to build up - those are SS.

How to get SS?

a/ Stance
SS will be caputured when you are in unholy stance.

Exception: the single exception is using "Soul prison" in poison stance, with that feat active you will have a fair chance of getting SS even without unholy stance on. This has virtualy no applications, its just a "fun" fact.

b/ Melee
You get soulshards from melee attacks.Your every combo and even white hits has a chance of caputing the SS. Usually every combo willl grant you atleast one. Grim Corruption combo is know to be a best way to get more than one SS from single combo. You are not guaranteed to get SS from your attacks,

Exception: "Relish in death" feat will grant you SS if a member of your team performs fatality. You don't have to do anything, you just have to be a member of a group that did fatality.

Exception: Death Whirlwind combo will not only NOT caputure any SS, but it will also consume your SS for damage

Exception: From the Darkness, when succesfuly used, will always award you one SS

c/ Stealth attack
Attacking from stealth will grant you one soulshard.

Spending your SS

a/ SS as requirment for feat usage
Feats that need SS won't work without them. Corrupting strikes, life leeach, Avatar of death etc., when used without any SS avalible, will not work and a there will be a message on the top of your screen informing you that you need to get a SS.

Exception: Death Whirlwind combo will still do damage without SS

b/ Feat/skill usage cost
Almost all feats/skills will use up ONE SS

Exception: Death Whirlwind combo will use up all shards that you have collected

Exception: Consume Souls will will use up all shards that you have collected

Shard managment

a/ SS decay
You SS will disapear after short period of time (couple of seconds). It's best to move for another kill while you have advantage of having few SS already.

b/ Non combat SS usage
The only skill that is non combat and still benefitial is "Consume Souls". When activated it will transform your shards into instant stamina gain. Consume souls is usable in both in and out of combat

c/ Boosting your SS gaining rate
You will notice a HUGE diffrence in SS gaining rate when you have specced in "Spirit of nightfall" feat that is 3/3. This feat is MANDATORY for any corruption or hybird build and there is no valid reason to not get it.
Soul prison feat (2/2) will grant you boost every 2 minutes - it is a solid feat, but often not used in builds other than corruption/general. It's best to get soul prison later on (at least lvl 50) because until then there aren't many things to spend shards on. Do not get Soul prison too early, its a waste of points.





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