The Shadowknight (Witchcraft / Defense / Shadowplay)

Choices

Armor: I chose full cloth gear for extra magic damage. Our defense tree makes up for the lack of heavier armors.

Weapon: With how burst heavy certain classes can be, I like I wear a scepter and shield to survive some of the more bursty classes. You're still stacking magic damage right alongside the survivability.

Stat Preferences: Stamina if you want more survability, intellect if you want more damage.

Spells

Shadowplay

THE mobility. This can be an amazing escape or flipped for an offensive gap-closer for archers or mages that love to keep the distance.

Another gap closer that can be used for both allies (yourself included) AND enemies. Many of your attacks are short-ranged, this alleviates that issue and closes the gap, especially in conjunction with your backflip. There's a very high chance you'll reset the cooldown as well.

Stealth, what more is there to say? Acts as a vanish on a 45 second cooldown.

Your longest range spell that acts as both a 20-second damage amplification and the first step in a decent combo in conjunction with the following ability.

A ranged stun that leaps you toward your target as well. Another way to close the gap, allowing you to keep up the pressure.

Defense

Standard Health buff that also accumulates mettle as you take damage. The mettle stacks to 3000 and serves as ammunition for the following ability.

A 10m ranged ability that inflicts shaken/distressed and increasing damage depending on your stacks of mettle. This ability can crit fairly hard especially at lower levels.

Your first line of defense against melee opponents. Greatly increases your block rate while lowering your momement speed 10% and making you immune to trip. Many players will either control you or completely ignore you when you pop this so make sure you can get your money's worth.

The almighty bubble. Complete invulnerability. Often times I find the best time to use this skill is to nullify your opponents' setups. So many players rely on their controls like bubble trap or lassitude. You can put them in an awkward place by completely bypassing their burst or burst setup cooldowns.

One of the only skills in the game to completely dictate the flow of any battle. The walls of the prison serve as a complete line of sight blocker for any ranged ability, damaging or beneficial. You can cut off reinforcements and literally divide and conquer the opposition. This also eliminates all escape routes for ranged classes that rely on kiting opponents.

Witchcraft

Instant cast damage that drains mana and sets up for another devestating ability:

When following Enervate, this ability does some good damage and roots the enemy. Instant cast with passive.

Completely takes control away from your opponent and they rise in to the air. Amazing crowd control that works well for many situations.

Your debuff that also buffs. Use it on yourself and allies to gain additional magic resist AND purge negative debuffs or enemies to purge their beneficial buffs.

Makes you immune to sleep and fear for almost a whole minute with a 9 second cooldown. If this buff gets purged, recast it asap because you can expect some CC incoming.

Another ranged stun but with a slightly shorter range than Overwhelm. This one also removes buffs at the end of its duration as well. Another awesome ability.

A ranged push that deals decent damage. Without any filler/basic attacks, you are full of cooldown based spells. This is one of them.

Author

You can see this build and more live in action on my twitch, found here. Also be sure to follow my twitter found here to find out when I go live.