The Shadow Swordsman is one of the best and most versatile classes in Tarisland because they’re incredible in raids, PvP, and deal tremendous damage. Add the Cunning specialization and they turn into a speedy, consistent monster.
The Cunning Shadow Swordsman build focuses on high yet consistent damage. You do sacrifice a bit of damage compared to the high burst Duel build, but Duel is much harder to play— especially for mobile gamers—due to its skill management and rotations.
What’s great about this Cunning Shadow Swordsman build is that with your Specialization Aura, you get a passive skill called Sting, which grants Energy. You’ll accumulate more poison levels, giving your group a concentration bonus that increases your ally’s critical damage and combo damage by a percentage during your raid. It’s not much, but having a crit and combo boost in raids can be beneficial and make the fights a tad easier. Because of this, I find this the best and easiest build for the Shadow Swordsman in Tarisland.
Cunning Shadow Swordsman Skills and Ultimates
Like all classes, the Cunning Shadow Swordsman has six skills and three ultimates, the latter of which you can choose from a set of eight as you unlock them.
Unlike most RPGs, you’ll upgrade your skills simultaneously rather than individually. As you upgrade skills, they grow stronger, and the duration of specific skills also increases. So, it’s essential to start leveling them up as soon as possible.
| Skill | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Poison Blade | Single attack | – Deal physical damage equal to a percentage of your attack plus additional attack damage. – Gain one poison level. |
| Phantom Slashes | Single attack | – Quickly attack the time a certain number of times. Every attack’s physical damage equals a percentage of your attack plus additional damage. – Gain one poison level. |
| Poison Sting | Single attack | – Requires one poison level. – You mimic a scorpion and dash forward to deal physical damage equal to a percentage of your attack plus additional attack damage to your target. – When you have five poison levels, this skill is replaced with Deadly Poison. You’ll consume all five poison levels and 30 Energy to immediately deal a small percentage of your attack damage as damage to your target over 88 times and deal even more damage for over a minute. This lasts 20 seconds and can stack up to 40 seconds. |
| Fatal Strike | Burst/Enhance | – Immediately deal a significant amount of damage based on your attack and even more attack damage. You will also mark the target, and they’ll take even more damage from you for a few seconds. |
| Spinning Blades | AoE | – Use your throwing blades to deal physical damage equal to a percentage of your attack damage to enemies close to you. Every time an enemy’s hit, this skill is reduced by one. Hitting three or more enemies returns the Energy this skill uses. |
| Vulnerate | Enhance | – Poison your weapon. For the next short while, your attacks will be increased, and each direct damage skill adds one additional Pursuit that deals physical damage to a percentage of your attack. |
| Quickstep (Ultimate) |
Teleport | – Flash to the target enemy and boost your movement speed by 50 percent for two seconds. |
| Portable Healing (Ultimate) |
Recovery | – Drink a healing potion to recover health three times. Each time, you’ll recover 12 percent of your maximum health. |
| Shadow Step (Ultimate) |
Invisibility | – Become one with the shadows and gain the invisible effect for 10 seconds. |
Best Cunning Shadow Swordsman Talents
For the Cunning Shadow Swordsman build, you want to focus on Talents that increase your damage, poison damage, combo damage, and decrease cooldowns. By doing this, you can deal more damage and more DoT damage more often.
| Level | Talent | Passive |
|---|---|---|
| Level Eight | Poison Blade 3/3 – Poison Blade deals more base damage. The Energy required to cast is reduced by three for every few casts. – So, the longer you’re in battle, the less energy this will eventually cost to cast. |
Combo Spec – Your base combo rate is increased. |
| Level 12 | Stalker 3/3 – Phantom Slashes has an increased chance of making your next Poison Damage deal 200 percent more damage and cost no Energy. |
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| Level 16 | Weakness Strike 3/3 – Fatal Strike deals more damage. When you cast this skill, you have a chance to gain a poison level. |
Energy Control – It grants more energy when Poison Blade lands a combo. – Enhanced with combo.Increases max energy and increases the number of damage stages poison (the DoT effect) deals. |
| Level 20 | Phantom Combo 2/2 – When Phantom Slashes lands a combo, the remaining duration of your existing poison is increased. Dual Infection 3/3 |
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| Level 24 | Poison Plus 3/3 – Poison deals more damage over time, and every trigger has a chance to recover Energy. |
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| Level 28 | Phantom Slashes 3/3 – Phantom Slashes deal more base damage and can attack an additional time. |
Lasting Poison Sting – When casting poison sting, there’s a chance of returning a level of poison. – This is enhanced with Omni, meaning the more Omni you have, the more damage you can deal. – The damage of Poison Sting is increased while Poison is active. |
| Level 32 | Poison Accumulation 3/3 – Every time your Poison, Vulnerate, or Poison Sting deals damage, it will inflict one stack of poison on the target. – At max stacks, your next basic attack will deal additional damage equal to a percentage of your attack once, and reset the stacks. – This is incredible against raid bosses, where you can easily get poison stacks. |
Energy Absorption – If your target is already affected by Fatal Strike and you’re casting a skill to attack them, you can regain energy. – As you enhance your cooldown, the duration of Fatal Strike is increased. |
| Level 36 | Assassin’s Instinct 3/3 For every 300 Energy you spend, your combo damage is increased for a short duration. Vulnerate Plus 2/2 |
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| Level 40 | Toxin Test 3/3 Casting Poison will randomly prolong your Vulnerate effect by a couple of seconds. Infinite Energy |
Combo damage spec – Your combo damage is increased by 10 percent. |
These talents provide the best consistent damage. However, I will keep testing them to see if any other talents or talent combos for the Cunning build give better and more consistent damage. It doesn’t cost anything to reset your talents in Tarisland right now, so if you want to change something or test another talent, definitely do.
Best gear stats for the Cunning Shadow Swordsman
The best gear stats for the Cunning Shadow Swordsman revolve around the combo stat, as most of your abilities and talents rely on combo. After that, you should prioritize any stats that can increase your poison damage, damage, movement speed, or agility, as these are core to being a Cunning Shadow Swordsman.
For the Inscribed Stone, the best track right now is simply the recommended one. As I continue to test it and the various nodes, I’ll update this build guide.
This is my favorite Cunning Shadow Swordsman build so far, but it’s not the be-all; use this as a guide and tweak things to suit your playstyle, which I plan on doing as the devs make changes and updates to each class and specialization.
