Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – Shade Build Guide: The Shade is Kerillian’s third unlocked Career in Vermintide 2. This Career is the archetypal assassin class, enabling Kerillian to vanish into the shadows before eliminating elite and special foes who represent high-value targets.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – Shade Build Guide
Compared to Kerillian’s first two classes, this Career is much more challenging to play, but the reward is well worth the effort required to master it. Everything you need to know about this Career, including its basic playstyle, weaponry, talents, and some building advice, will be covered below.
Career Overview
| Ability | Description |
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| Career Skill – Infiltrate |
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| Passive Ability – Assassin’s Blade |
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| Perk – Dagger in the Dark |
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| Perk – Blur |
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| Perk – Murderous Prowess |
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| Perk – Grim Fortune |
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General Gameplay
One of the finest Careers for quickly taking down important targets like specials and elites is The Shade. Usually, your buddies will be clearing hordes of adversaries as you take care of these foes. Your best method for securely approaching specials before backstabbing them is to infiltrate.
The Shade may deliver a ton of damage to monsters and bosses as they spawn thanks to her exceptionally high single-target damage. You can swiftly build up the damage by stacking it with the Hunter or Barrage weapon passives before moving in for the kill with an Infiltrate-powered critical backstab. Any enemy you come across will suffer severe damage from this strike combination.
Weapons
Melee Weapons
The Shade can use the following melee weapons.
- Sword and Dagger
- Dual Swords
- Glaive
- Two-Handed Sword
- Sword
- Elven Spear
- Elven Axe (Back to Ubersreik DLC)
- Dual Daggers
Your choice of melee weapon will slightly alter your playstyle since melee is the focus of this Career. The Sword and Dagger or Dual Daggers work best for the Shade’s specialty: swiftly dispatching foes with a lot of health. Other weapons can still accomplish this, but in this situation, you will typically be eliminating more horde adversaries before concentrating on specials.
Ranged Weapons
The Shade has access to the following ranged weapons.
- Swiftbow
- Longbow
- Volley Crossbow
- Moonfire Bow (Forgotten Relics DLC)
- Briar Javelin (Sister of the Thorn DLC)
- Hagbane Shortbow
Although the Moonfire Bow is a fantastic ranged weapon with endless ammo, it is only accessible after purchasing the Forgotten Relics DLC. Hagbane Shortbow or Longbow are excellent ranged weapons for your purposes as a Shade if you don’t already have this content. Generally speaking, you will only use ranged attacks when you can’t reach an enemy to melee attack them or to stack power using the Hunter or Barrage passives.
Talents
Level 5 Talents
| Bleak Vigour | Khaine’s Thirst | Blood Kin |
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You must choose the type of Shade you want to play for your first talent. Bleak Vigor will consistently give you temporary health if you want to utilize the Career as a general high-damage wave clearing. This will let you survive longer battles with monsters and waves of opponents.
Khaine’s Thirst will provide you significant bursts of temporary life when you kill elites and specials if you want to play the traditional assassinate high-health targets Shade game. Due to the greater health pool of these monsters, you will recover a significant amount of temporary health after killing them, allowing you to survive until you can fight the following high-health adversary.
Level 10 Talents
| Cruelty | Exploit Weakness | Exquisite Huntress |
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Cruelty gives your strongest attacks a very significant damage boost. The Shade will be even more effective at killing foes with high health thanks to this talent, which also enhances overall damage more than Exploit Weakness does. Exquisite Huntress is a viable option if you want to play a ranged-focused Shade, especially when combined with the Hunter or Barrage weapon passives.
Level 15 Talents
| Smiter | Assassin | Enhanced Power |
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Your critical strikes’ damage will rise considerably more thanks to the assassin talent, especially when combined with cruelty. This Talent is far more valuable than Smiter or Enhanced Power because it increases the damage of your critical hits against monsters and bosses.
Level 20 Talents
| Chain Killer | Focused Slaying | Bloodfletcher |
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Your critical strikes’ damage will rise considerably more thanks to the assassin talent, especially when combined with cruelty. This Talent is far more valuable than Smiter or Enhanced Power because it increases the damage of your critical hits against monsters and bosses.
Level 25 Talents
| Blood Drinker | Spring-Heeled Assassin | Gladerunner |
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You should play to your skills and counteract your flaws because the Shade is often a high-risk, high-reward Career. In light of this, Blood Drinker can offer a little amount of damage reduction following the delivery of critical hits, which you will already be performing a lot of.
You may perform better at what you do best by moving about the field swiftly to take out foes with high health thanks to Spring-Heeled Assassin. The boost is twice as large as Gladerunner if you can maintain its effects when it counts, but it is less reliable.
Level 30 Talents
| Shimmer Strike | Hungry Wind | Cloak of Pain |
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The two best choices for your last Talent—Shimmer Strike and Cloak of Pain—will slightly alter the way you play. As long as you can consistently kill elite targets, you can maintain the stealth boost of Infiltrate with Shimmer Strike. This Talent is ideal for dealing with patrols of elite adversaries when combined with the level 20 talent Chain Killer.
The added damage effects of Cloak of Pain, on the other hand, allow you to conduct a second Infiltration after the first one has expired, allowing you to benefit from them a second time, usually against the same target. This talent is ideal for taking out bosses and monsters.
Due to Spring-Heeled Assassin or Gladerunner, Hungry Wind offers redundant bonuses and loses the most significant component of Infiltrate—the enhanced damage bonus. Choose this Talent only if you wish to move extremely quickly.
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