Warhammer Vermintide 2: Shade Career Guide (New Patch 4.6 Updated)

Guide for Shade mechanic/talent and some build theory.

Career General Overview

Career Orientation

A melee focus career with strong melee burst damage.

Pros: High melee burst damage. Has escape tool that does not use resource built-in.
Cons: Low crowd control ability as a melee focus career. Low Health/Damage Reduction as a melee focus career.

Basic Stats

Base HP: 100
Career Skill Cooldown: 70 sec
Has 10% base Critical Strike chance
Unusable Weapons: Spear and Shield, Deepwood Staff

Perks

Dagger in the Dark

Melee Attacks from stealth are always critical.

Blur

Parrying an Attack and quickly Dodging grants Kerillian Stealth for a short period.

After blocking an attack with Timed Block, dodge within 1.5 sec grants you stealth for 1.5 sec.
You can walk through enemies during stealth.
The extended stealth will instantly break after one attack.

Muderous Prowess

Charged Critical Backstabs instantly slay man-sized enemies.

Man-sized enemies include all enemies without health bar except Chaos Warrior and Wargor.

Career Skill & Passive

Infiltrate

Kerillian becomes undetectable, gain bonus damage and can pass through enemies. Lasts for 5 seconds, or until she attacks.

Landing an attack on enemy breaks the stealth.
The first attack during Infiltrate is a guaranteed Critical Strike, no matter melee or range.
Only melee attacks benefit from the bonus damage. For dual-wield melee attacks, both attacks receives a damage bonus.
The bonus damage can be boosted/stack with all types of buff like Strength Potion/lvl15 talents/Headshot, except her passive Assassin’s Blade.
The bonus damage amount is dependent on which melee attack it is applied to. The stronger the original attack is, the higher bonus damage will be applied.

Assassin’s Blade

Double damage when attacking enemies from behind with melee attacks.

Providing 100% additional damage when backstabing.
Damage increase is only related with attack base damage. It is not affected by Headshot/Critical Strike/Strength Potion/Infiltrate

Weapon Infiltrate Damage Tier List(Against Monster Enemies)

Damage Rank

Weapon/Attack

Dual Daggers – Heavy Attacks
Sword & Dagger – Heavy Attack 2

Elven Axe – Heavy Attacks
Sword – Heavy Attacks

Elven Spear – Heavy Attack 2

Javelin – Heavy Attack

Dual Swords – Heavy Attacks

Great Sword – Heavy Attack 1

Glaive – Heavy Attack 2

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part I)

LeveL 5 Row

Bleak Vigour

Melee critical strikes and headshots restore 2 temporary health. Critical headshots restores twice as much.

Should be used if you have consistent headshot rate or you are using a high crit chance/fast attack speed weapon.

Khaine’s Thirst

Melee killing blows restore temporary health based on the health of the slain enemy.

Should be used if you focus on bursting elites.

Blood Kin

Healing yourself with a First Aid Kit or a Healing Draught also heals your nearby allies for 20.0% of their maximum health. Clears any wounds.

Should be avoided most of time as a melee elite killer.

LeveL 10 Row

Cruelty

Increases critical strike damage bonus by 50%.

Consistent boost for Infiltrate
Same as 50% Crit Power.
Since Infiltrate grants first attack 100% Critical Chance, it is a very good consistent damage boost for Boss bursting purpose. And thanks to Elf weapons’ high average base crit damage, it also provides a decent DPS increase in other situations.

Exploit Weakness

Increases damage by 20% to poisoned or bleeding enemies.

Consistent damage boost for few builds with specific weapon choices
The attack that applies the Poison/Bleed effect also benefits from Exploit Weakness.
The poison/bleed effect on the enemies does not need to be applied by Shade. But only Shade benefits from the damage boost.
The 20% damage boost can increase Infiltrate damage similar amount compares to Cruelty. However, due to the nature of Infiltrate, it requires the player to apply Poison/Bleed effect before using Infiltrate, as all strong melee attacks that receive the most amount of Infiltrate damage do not apply bleed/poison by themselves.
Overall only builds that utilize Dual Daggers and/or Hagbane Shortbow can benefit from this talent consistently.

Exquisite Huntress

Headshots increases headshot damage bonus by 10.0% for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 10 times.

Extremly high damage boost that requires good execuitations
The damage bonus is applied to both melee attacks and range attacks.
Both melee attacks and range attacks can refresh this talent’s duration.
Since Elf weapons have high average base headshot damage, with a decent headshot rate this talent can provide the overall highest amount of DPS in all situations on the level 10 row.
However, it is can be hard to set up 10 stacks and then land a headshot while using Infiltrate, so even though its Boss burst potential is the highest, it is also the hardest to pull off.

LeveL 15 Row

Smiter

The first enemy hit always counts as staggered.
Deal 20% more damage to staggered enemies.
Each hit against a staggered enemy adds another count of stagger.
Bonus damage is increased to 40% against enemies afflicted by more than one stagger effect.

Increase your melee single target DPS.
However, with a high base Critical Strike chance & decent headshot rate,
it is inferior to Assassin most of the time.
Plus Assassin provides a much higher horde damage boost and Infiltrate damage boost.
Should be avoided most of the time.

Assassin

Deal 20% more damage to staggered enemies.
Each hit against a staggered enemy adds another count of stagger.
Headshots and critical hits instead inflict 40% bonus damage,
as do strikes against enemies afflicted by more than one stagger effect.

Increase your melee single target DPS.
With a high base Critical Strike chance & decent headshot rate,
it is better than Smiter most of the time.
Plus Assassin provides a much higher horde damage boost as the critical strike damage boost work on all enemies you cleaved instead of the first one.
It also gives a higher boost to Infiltrate, as the first strike after Infiltrate is always a Critical Strike.
Should be picked mosf of the time.

Enhanced Power

Increases total Power Level by 7%. This is calculated before other buffs are applied.

Increase both your melee and range damage. Does not benefit a melee focus career as much as other talents.
Should be avoided.

Talent Mechanic & General Usage (Part II)

LeveL 20 Row

Chain Killer

Successive Charged Backstabs increase Backstab Damage by 25% for 5 seconds. This effect can stack up to 2 times.

Low use case damage boost
The Backstab Damage increase does not work with the charged backstab that triggers it.
Dual-wielded attacks can get 2 stacks per attack.
Due to the nature of enemy agro, it is hard to pull off backstab except during pacing or horde fighting. Even if trying to use backstab from stealth or with Shimmer Strike, Shade can already instant kill man-sized enemy with her perk. Plus this talent doesn’t provide any meaningful backstab kill breakpoints, this talent is only useful for long last single target fights, like Boss and Lord.

Focused Slaying

Killing an enemy with a Backstab grants Cooldown reduction for 3 seconds.

High use case utility
After killing an enemy with melee backstab, grants 100% of cooldown regen for 3 seconds. Duration can be refreshed.
Regenerate an extra 3 sec of cooldown during that 3 seconds window.
A good cooldown talent to increase both your damage output and survivability, especially when paring with Shimmer Strike.

Bloodfletcher

Backstabs return 1 bolt or arrow. Can trigger once every 2 seconds.

Good ammo sustain for special sniping purpose
Does not work with Moonfire Bow.
Can farm ammo fairly consistently during pacing/Boss fight, or when paring it with Shimmer Strike.
Dual wield attacks like Dual Daggers heavy attacks cannot refund 2 ammo.
Enough to farm ammo sustain for special sniping weapons like Longbow or reduce the recall pressure on Javelin. But it doesn’t give enough range resources to spam some horde clear weapons like Volley Crossbow/Hagbane Shortbow.

LeveL 25 Row

Blood Drinker

Critical hits reduces damage taken by 20% for 5 seconds.

High consistency damage reduction during engage
Due to Shade high base crit chance and fast Elf weaponry, this talent has basically 100% coverage during fights.
Damage reduction gives you more leverage when fighting horde and tanking special damage like gas/blight. However, even with this talent activated Shade is still very squishy, still cannot tank an Elite overhead with full health on Cataclysm.
High floor, low ceiling. Good for complicated fighting senerio.

Spring-Heeled Assassin

Critical hits increases movement speed by 20% for 5 seconds.

High consistency movbility during engage
Due to Shade high base crit chance and fast Elf weaponry, this talent has basically 100% coverage during fights.
Movement speed gives you an easier time at evading enemy attacks, as you can move out of their hitbox or move to a more favourable fighting position easier. However, if the fight does not allow you to move around easily or you fail to evade attacks, this talent is close to useless.
Low floor, high ceiling. Good for fighting at the open area and experienced players to evade & position better.

Gladerunner

Increases movement speed by 10%.

All time consistent movbility
Like Spring-Heeled Assassin, it’s a talent made for mobility. However, it has a lower movement speed bonus but 100% uptime, making it worse at evading enemy attacks during massive fights and better at finding backstab/items during pacing or speed run. This talent can also bring the side effect of being out of position/far away from your team too easily when there are no horde fights.

LeveL 30 Row

Shimmer Strike

Leaving Infiltrate grants Kerillian Stealth for 3 seconds. Killing an elite or a special enemy extends this effect by 1 second.

Mass man-sized elites/mass special focus
Stealth can be extended by melee/range/bomb killing special or elite enemies.
The extended stealth will instantly break if the next attack that lands on an enemy fails to extend the stealth duration.
With the perk Dagger in the Dark and Muderous Prowess, this talent allows Shade to execute as many man-sized elites or specials as possible in its duration. Combine with talent Focused Slaying, you can do it very often on high difficulties. You can also use this talent to snipe multiple specials from safety but it requires you to oneshot kill them.

Hungry Wind

Leaving Infiltrate grants Kerillian 10% movement speed and 15% Power with the ability to pass through enemies for 10 seconds. Infiltrate no longer grants bonus damage.

Horde focus
As a power boost, it increases your damage/stagger/cleave. Provides good horde clear DPS boost. The movement speed and phase walk also allow you to evade enemy attacks, move to favourable horde fighting position or pick up elites inside horde without dropping agro easier.

Cloak of Pain

When the initial Infiltrate ends, a second(and final) Infiltrate is triggered.

Boss and Chaos Warrior focus
Allows two attacks being buffed by Infiltrate damage bonus. Can deal huge Boss/Lord damage, or delete at least two Chaos Warriors with ease.

Day 1 Cataclysm Build – Sword & Dagger + Javelin/Moonfire Bow

Talent

LVL 5
With high crit chance weapon and high attack speed, THP on crit/headshot is more consistent than on kill, especially when you have multiple range careers in your team or on a Skaven map.
LVL 10
Very powerful damage boost. The 10 sec duration is long enough to keep it full stack. With a high headshot damage melee weapon, this talent is your best horde clear boost and general damage increase on this row.
LVL 15
Assassin provide a 40% increase in melee crit/headshot. Although Enhanced Power can increase your damage more against staggered horde, the flat damage boost against Monster/Lord making Assassin a better choice.
LVL 20
Reduce your career skill cooldown by a decent amount during pacing or when clearing up low density horde. When paring with Shimmer Strike, you can easily get your second career skill back in Skaven/Beastman patrol.
LVL 25
Damage reduction helps squishy career like Shade to stay at front line and focus melee damage.
LVL 30
Allows you to go behind and chain heavy attack to delete Skaven/Beastman patrol. You can also snipe multiple specials while in stealth if you can oneshot kill them. Best talent at dealing with man-sized patrol or mass specials.

Melee weapon

Sword & Dagger has the best balance between horde clean, elite damage and easy to learn. It also has low default block cost and extra crit chance on multiple attacks, synergize greatly with all kinds of damage buff.

Range weapon & Charm – Javelin

Javelin range attack has ok special sniping breakpoints and good trajectory, it also has good cleave and very strong stagger, enough to stagger all elites overhead. Unlimited ammo also helps a non-ammo regen melee career, though recalling the javelin takes quite a while. Its most unique part is its melee attacks. The chain light attack provides one of the strongest monster DPS in the game, and heavy attack also does decent armour damage when you land a crit or headshot.

Due to the increased amount of elites patrol and high Boss health, Decanter will have a better time dealing with them. However, if your team has other careers that can utilize concentration potion, consider taking Concoction instead.

Breakpoints: 20% skaven, 20% armour
One shot-bodyshot all trash units except Marauder
One shot-bodyshot Assassin/Gunrat/Firerat
Two shot-bodyshot Leech/Blight/Gas/Hook/SV
One shot-headshot Leech/Blight/Gas/SV

Range weapon & Charm – Moonfire bow

Moonfire bow has ok special sniping breakpoints on Cataclysm. The benefit of it over Longbow and Javelin is that it has infinite ammo and can regenerate arrows back without reloading. It is, however, does not have any horde clear function, and slightly clunkier due to its fairly long charge time.

Breakpoints: 20% armour 20% skaven
One shot-bodyshot Assasin/Gunrat/Firerat with full charged arrow
One shot-headshot Leech/Blight with full charged arrow
Two shot-bodyshot Leech/Blight/Hook with full charged arrows

Necklace

BCR is way superior to stamina if you have enough shield to perform push. Extra health is critical.
With high THP farm speed and fairly consistent damage reduction, Barkskin is very decent for heavy-melee focus career. If you struggle with farming THP or hit trade a lot, use Boon of Shallya.

Trinket

Crit chance provides more damage. Stamina regen provides more push to crowd control/survivability.
Due to the massive Monster health on Cataclysm, Sharpnel works best on monster burst down. It also the best option for Patrol kill if a team can focus their fire.