Tarisland Shadow Swordsman Duel build – talents rotation, and stats

The Shadow Swordsman is the rogue-type class in Tarisland. Like most rogue class types, you’ll find that you can use poison to deal consistently high single-target damage, or a more ambush and high burst playstyle.

If you’re looking for that thigh crit and burst playstyle, then the Duel specialisation is the perfect Shadow Swordsman build for you. In this guide, we go over the rotation, talents, stats and Inscribed Stone runes you need to master the Tarisland Shadow Swordsman Duel build. We also have all the latest Tarisland codes for some freebies to help you along the way.

Shadow Swordsman’s Duel skills explained

The core playstyle of the Duel Shadow Swordsman build is that you are very critical hit-oriented and bursty. You’ll need to be aware that you are very reliant on using your cooldowns effectively, alongside having a decent critical score in your gear. The better your critical score gets, the better the build will be. You may not see results with this spec straight away, so keep that in mind as you level towards level 30. Moreover, players need to be aware you need at least 6 talent points before the spec can even functionally work due to rotation limitations. This is because of the 5-point requirement to make Swift Strike functional, alongside its next talent point upgrade, Rapid Charge. So, avoid using the spec until then. When you do reach that point, you’ll find that the Duel build is very strong for dungeons and PvP playstyles, as you can see in our Tarisland Tier List.

Once you have those, you can properly work out how the spec plays. In essence, you have a priority system, where you use stacks of your “Assault” skill, aka your first skill, and your “Swift Strike”, aka your second skill. You use these skills to primarily rotate your abilities around the build’s main mechanic, the “Roulette Wheel”. On the Roulette Wheel, you’ll find a marker in red. This indicates the point at which you get bonus effects from your skills. Ideally, you want to be using your third skill, “Furious Atk,” or fourth skill, “Frenzy Throw,” on those markers to get the most out of your burst damage and critical strikes.

Your fifth skill is an AOE skill that does very high damage, which you can also use as a filler spell off cooldown. It does little damage after hitting the same target multiple times, but its upfront damage makes it a strong 5th option off CD or very strong on AOE packs.

When it comes to your final two skills, you have Thirst Battle, which grants more ATK boost for the duration of the effect, and you get reduced cooldowns for your skills outside of Frenzy Throw. Your Inscribed Skill also completely reduces all CDs on your first and second skills, and after two attacks during this effect, Furious Atk is reset and you hit with weakness.

Duel rotation explained

For the most part, the Duel specialisation of Shadow Swordsman is all about rotating your skills off cooldown, trying to line up your third skill or fourth skill for a huge weakness hit.

If you have all your cooldowns up, then you want to open your rotation as follows:

• Frenzy Throw – (When it is at weakness.)
• Furious Atk.
• Swift Strike.
• Swift Strike.
• Assault spam.

When Frenzy Throw is not on cooldown, you want to line up Furious Attack as your weakness hit. Spam Assault as often as possible, and then use your Swift Strike on cooldown to help you get to the next weak spot.

When you get more critical chance on your gear and Inscribed Stone, you will find there’s a priority system in your rotation. In the core passive tree, your Assault critical hits have a chance to make the point on the Roulette Wheel it crit on a weakness. If that happens, try to use the second or third skill to get the maximum damage proc from it on your next rotation. It shouldn’t be an issue if you have a decent CD reset and a fairly fast recharging Swift Strike charge via the Swift Strike+ talents. Doing so means more cooldown reduction, which you’ll find from end-game talents. We’ll go into more detail on this in the stats heading further down the guide.

As for cooldown usage, use Thirst Battle when your Weakness Wheel resets. You can either press it when all cooldowns are up to maximise your ATK damage for your third and fourth skill damage, or you can use it on another rotation wheel for better roulette wheel rotations. The first option offers more bursts. The second option works better for your late-level talent options like Best Apprentice talent.

Talents

These are the talents we recommend getting for leveling to the end-game. Don’t forget to complete the talent unlock requirements by completing raids and dungeons on elite mode, alongside the Shattered Hall tower levels, and the dungeon achievements. You won’t be able to reach the bottom talents otherwise.

• Swift Strike x5 – Swift Strike deals 40% more DMG with a 100% chance to move the Roulette Wheel twice.
• Rapid Charge x1 – Swift Strike’s cooldown is reduced by 33% and it has two charges.
• Assault+ x3 – Assault deals 15% more DMG. Upon impact, the second hit of a Base Attack has a 100% chance to reduce the remaining cooldown of Assault by 13%.
• Duel Master x3 – Crit rate increased by 3%.
• Gift of Opportunity x3 – Assault reduces the remaining cooldown of Furious Attack by 12%.
• Furious Atk+ x3 – Deals 15% more damage and has its cooldown reduced by 34 seconds when not hitting a weakness on the target.
• Evade x2 – Triggering the core passive talent, Weakness Insight, will make your next Swift Strike deal 80% more DMG.
• Sustained Zeal x3 – Each Crit hit of Furious Atk increases the critical damage of your next Furious Atk by 100%.
• Frenzy Throw+ x2 – Frenzy Throw lasts 2 seconds longer and its base cooldown is reduced by 12 seconds.
• Best Apprentice x3 – When your skill has the Roulette Showdown weakness bonus, the remaining cooldown of Thirst for Battle and Frenzy Throw is reduced by 0.5 seconds.
• Well-prepared x2 – Thirst Battle now makes your next damage skill 25% more likely to deal a Critical Hit.
• Thirst Battle+ While the Thirst Battle effect is active, you also deal 9% more DMG and your Haste effect is increased by 10%.

The general idea of the build is you want to ramp as much damage into your Swift Strike. This increases your maximum DPS threshold over going Spectral Swipe build, which is more movement and burst-oriented for highly mobile fights, or useful in PvP. In addition, you’re also trying to get more charges, meaning you can move around your Roulette Wheel for more damage procs for your main skills. This helps to cycle more weakness burst attacks, which means more cooldown reduction and more bursts for your main class cooldowns.

Duel Shadow Swordsman stat priority

In terms of your stat priority, you need to do the following:

1. Crit
2. Omni
3. Cooldown
4. Dex
5. Hit
6. Stamina

Crit is by far the biggest stat for you to acquire. It is how you deal the most damage with your extremely bursty playstyle. Moreover, you get synergy with the core passive, Weakness Insight. When Assault lands a critical hit, you get another red marker for the Roulette Wheel. You also have a chance to improve weakness damage when a skill hits a weak spot. With more critical chance, you also improve weakness damage for 8 seconds, so you definitely want to hit 50% critical chance to get a huge weakness damage increase. Moreover, more weakness means better synergy with your talents and more consistent damage overall. So, it is absolutely needed.

Next is Omni. Omni offers the Duel build a damage increase to Furious Attack when it triggers a weakness by a percentage of Omni. It also offers a damage buff to your next Swift Strike or Spectral Slash skills. This is fantastic because it’s more consistent damage and better burst on Swift Strike, alongside better synergy during your Inscribed Stone effects. It’s also perfect for your 4-3-2 rotation when you land Frenzy Throw on a Weakness hit and all spells on the Roulette Wheel become Weakness nodes for a brief period. All in all, it’s a great stat to get.

Cooldown is the next important stat. It synergizes with the core passive of Fast Duel. Frenzy Throw reduces the remaining cooldown of Swift and Furious Atk by cooldown percentage. The more cooldown you get, the more remaining cooldown you get for Frenzy Throw. Get 26% if you can, and when you compare it with Best Apprentice talent, you’ll find that you can cycle your skills more through long boss fights.

Dexterity is your stat that increases your ATK value. Hit is also important to ensure you can actually land your burst against bosses in instances. Check the attributes menu for each dungeon and raid by opening those menus up. It will tell you what Hit target you need for the content you’re going for.

When it comes to Inscribed Stone builds, you can follow the recommended route, as it will take you towards your Crit, Omni, and cooldown needs over time. It will also grant you rune slots for other boosts to stats and damage modifiers. Ideally, you can get the following runes:

• Crush: Crit rate is increased by 2.2% every second after combat starts. The effect resets when you crit and begins counting again. The effect can stack 99 times.
• Overload: Each crit dealt by your direct damage increases critical damage by 1.2% for 6 seconds, stacking 4 times.

These two are your most important stats. The bonus critical damage is very important for furthering your damage ceiling, and the critical chance rune makes the build more functional early game, alongside making sure you crit almost all the time in the late game with better gear.

Outside of that, we recommend Tribal Ode for Stamina and main stat improvements rotating through combat. You can also grab things like Strive for more Dex and a chance to deal damage based on your ATK power. Burst is another decent option for stacking effects that burst for lots of ATK power once it is finished stacking 23 times.