"Add the fact you can't shoot while charging and there you have it: battle sprite can only be used outside of battle."

You can't use your secondary weapon while charging your primary one. Conclusion, according to your logic: your secondary weapon can only be used outside of battle.

Not every ability for every Battle Sprite is made for the purpose of increasing your DPS against Vanaduke, believe it or not. Despite that, Maskeraith is still able to do just that, and very effectively so. Take caustic quills for instance. It synergizes really well with the charge attack of Blitz Needle. The problem is it won't synergize as well with your own Blitz Needle. This is perfect, actually! Drakon was made for the purposes of offence. Seraphinx was made for the purposes of defence and Maskeraith was made for support.

Try a little thing called teamwork, and you will find that it's still possible to synchronize a caustic quill burst with a Blitz Needle burst. This increases the damage dealt by said Blitz Needle by a couple of hundred damage per shot.

There are many uses for the cloak as well. For starters, a regular combo with Gran Faust or Acheron is often plenty to kill Gremlin Menders. The cloak is also all-around good at avoiding combat, which I heard is a thing you can do.

You mean, using the cloak to go smack that pesky mender in the middle there is a bad idea?

My playstyle needs reworking...

>teamwork

Don't you know? Teamwork is more trouble than it's worth now since you can't help your party members in any meaningful way beyond hacking at monsters that they also happen to be hacking at. You can't even split up effectively now that loot is instanced.

Shiv is actually a terrible teamwork tool. Try the vortexes, especially the electron. If you were to freeze enemies that weren't grouped together, you've effectively lowered the dps on everyone who can hit multiple targets at once. I assume you were referring to the quills for the poison. Well, when you max out quills, they do a fair bit of damage when you trigger them. It's not for groups of enemies, the nature of that skill lends itself to single targets with high health. Lichens, lumbers, the such.

This game does not revolve around 5 floors. There are other parts of it. By that logic, shadow weapons and other low dps weapons are useless and should not be called weapons. It's called a battle companion because it assists you in battles that can also occur outside of fsc.

Exactly, a support tool. By using cloak effectively, you can neutralize the more annoying enemies without them all swarming after you. By being able to kill healers first, you remove a good amount of effective health from the monsters you are fighting. Is this not aiding you in killing faster? I don't see how the game would be enjoyable if you can just cloak charge everything. I really don't. Might as well make all the enemies stand still while you kill them.

You can cloak to lose aggro, like when you are low fighting vana. You can also cloak before an unavoidable hit comes though, because of the defensive component.

For the description, "perfect choice for those that like to hide in the shadows" refers to the knight, not the sprite, although that's just semantics. What part of the description says you have to hide? To run away? To sit in a corner? if these are the only uses you can find for it, then I pity your imagination. Use it to unleash a combo before the enemies can detect and thus turn towards you. It gives you a hit advantage. Or you can use it after you combo something to hide from retaliation.

Poison is a cripple. I realize that some people don't see it as such, since the damage doesn't seem to be reduced. But you stop them from healing.

We were doing fine before sprites, just because they were added doesn't mean everything is somehow harder and requires you to use a sprite to pass. Elite doesn't count, because its just hitting a couple more times before they go down.

Tl;dr We've never needed pets that helped in battle, we did fine without them. OOO added things that don't work for you, don't use it then.

I seerusly wish they buffed stun to make it disable shields.
o_o why would you want it to do that?
2 reasons:1 if you are stunned or staggering it would be rather hard to defend your self, thus making it seem more like being stunned aaaand
2: It would make stagger storm arguably the best mist bomb for LD, the thing that it is connected to. Imagine going in as a guardian and just canceling out all the berserkers dashes. It would make you actually useful and makes some seance!

I would be using one if I had one... stupid ld, requires so many tokens.

Just found out :)

I think the initial problem here is that you're arguing that battle sprites as a whole are completely useless in combat, based off only one ability.

And then a suddenly revelation by everyone in this thread.

The maskerwraith isn't the offensively oriented battle sprite. No wonder its damage seems to be low.

I think as well that you should be able to do a charge attack in stealth without breaking stealth till you release. Just makes sense, makes the ability worthwhile, you should also for that matter be able to pick a vial out over your head.. only breaking stealth when you release the vial.

"I tried hiding away from enemies while being pushed in a corner. Nothing happened - they still were bashing me down in that corner. Either they broke my cloak by hitting my knight, or simply refused to move just because I disappeared, I do not know. The outcome was simple - nothing happened. Nothing outside of expected knight's death."

-Here is the thing about invisibility: if an attack is taking place, then the attack will finish. But as long as you shield, you'll be fine. If they refused to move because you disappeared, that is exactly what you want it to do! There is something called "Shield bumping" where you can bump enemies away. Shielding does not break invisibility, and neither does shieldbump. It works. I know it works, because that sprite ability has saved my life many times. For an example: frozen, three lumbers are around me, and I've been hit once and stunned. In any other situation, I would have died. But no. With invisibility, they completely ignored me. I had a level 32 pet at the time, and my invisibility was maxed out for focus and duration. Either way, I had 15 seconds to wait until the ice broke. Of course, the stun/ice wears off in about 3 seconds, so i was also able to wait for my shield to regen, heal up, and bump my enemies away from my ghastly situation.

"As for menders: I never had a problem with them. I finish off my targets before they can be healed. I remove menders out of the picture if I believe they could cause any sort of trouble. Neither poison nor cloak help with that, just brute strength."

-Then this isn't the sprite for you. If you prefer brute strength over subterfuge, then you have picked exactly the wrong pet. And yes, the cloak can help that. For example, menders in arenas often sit in the middle while hordes of monsters defend them. Wading through a shitload of enemies to get to some menders can be deadly or sap a lot of your life away, and by the time you reach the menders you may as well have killed them. Sure, brute strength works, but sneaking up behind the menders and releasing a shadow-weapon combo is often more than enough to kill them, and it isn't as difficult to do.

"Agressive monsters are a part of my plan - I get them together when I release my DA charge attack. Hiding away to release a combo won't do - combos are too weak to compare. No combo can finish off a monster. Charge can do that in many cases. If cloak won't allow me to use charged attack on, say, Trojans, it is useless where its needed the most - against stronger foes."

-Combos can't take down any monsters? Are you ridiculous? I seem to have no problem, are you equipped with a proto sword or something? The idea of the pet is to weaken them before killing them, and you'll have to include some effort of your own. Pets aren't supposed to be the main weapon, they are support. Against weakened trojans, a nice shot from a pierce sword/gun should kill them without any problem. The idea isn't to destroy the monsters with full HP. It is to take down the monsters that have already been weakened.

"750 damage while moving? Nice.
Most monsters in Tier 3 have 3k or more health. How many hexing hazes you need to kill someone? 4-5 minimum. Thats 5 minutes for a group of enemies, I finish most rooms much faster. My charged attacks take a few seconds and do significantly more damage. And they can be used every 5 seconds, not once a minute or two."

-Wow... This is a really, really stupid paragraph. For starters, you aren't supposed to use your sprite as a weapon, nor consider it a weapon. It is support, end of story. Especially with a sprite like Maskeraith. Maskeraith is only supposed to dehabilitate and cripple before you get off your butt and end their sorry lives. It certainly isn't supposed to be a replacement to actually fighting.

"While potentially helpful to weaker players, my Battle Sprite either does nothing, or gets in my way. I still can't find a real use for it as I continue to upgrade it."

-I beg to differ. Ask anyone, even veterans, if their pet helps them or not. I think the response will be unanimous...

.

the maskareth is probably the HARDEST battle sprite to use, but has the best benifits if used correctly.
Example:
There's a silkwing a bit away that you want to kill.
You cloak so no one finds you, walk up to it, kill, dash away, then shield bash through the crowd.
Result: dead silkwin, slow and damaged enemies.
It's only useful to very quick thinkers.

Battle Sprites were meant to help us, not do a ton of damage. That's what our weapons are for. I don't know what you think helping is, but sprites were not meant to be our main source of damage. They were meant to simply help us while we played. In my opinion, comparing the pets as they currently are is like choosing between an Elemental Brandish line... do you want lots of damage, some damage and some protection, or lots of protection. Drakon is meant to give us lots of damage, Seraphynx is meant to protect us. But then there's Maskeraith, who has abilities that are damaging (but not as damaging as Drakon) and abilities that are defensive (but not as defensive as Seraphynx).

So I'll go through a quick run-down of why I myself think Maskeraith is the best of the three pets we currently have...

Caustic Quills

This is a very helpful move. It poisons the target, and the quills work like a Catalyzer. They stick in the enemy, and once the enemy is hit the quills "explode" and add even more damage to the enemy. Which is further boosted by the fact, as said earlier, that it poisons the enemy. This attack makes your team do more damage, and it makes the enemy do less damage. Then there's the real kicker... enemies that are healed while poisoned actually TAKE DAMAGE instead of being healed. This is extremely useful. For example: If a Mender casts his healing circle, you can poison the enemies inside it with this attack and instead of being healed extremely quickly, they will simply wither away. Not to mention this attack has an extremely low cooldown if you decide to invest into the "Focus" part of the ability.
Now compare this to the other two starting abilities. The Drakon has a Firebolt that does a lot of damage, but can be fairly easy to miss with. The Seraphynx lets out a ray of light that damages anything that moves through it, but it's not really helpful for outright damaging an enemy, just protecting yourself. The Maskeraith's ability does damage (assuming you hit something shortly after using it), and gives the defensive bonus as enemies will do less damage. The difference: it also stops healing.

Shadow Cloak

Probably the best ability of all 9 that we have at the moment, this ability makes you completely invisible to enemies. Not only that, you get a defense up. If used properly, this is easily one of the most useful abilities. Everything that is currently attacking you will de-aggro, so you can move around, heal a bit, and get in position so that you have the upper hand when you uncloak. It may sound like you don't have enough time for that, but you do. This ability lasts for 15 seconds if you invest into it, and any proper player will know that you can do A LOT in 15 seconds. So you can now move around and get ready every time you use it. You can also use it to sneak past enemies. Take a look at the dreaded Candlestick Keep level, those Grimalkins can be brutal. But they can't see you if you use this ability. That means you can just activate it, run through the dark to the next flame, light the candle, and you'll still have plenty of time to get ready for the next attack.
And on to it's most useful feature: Saving your life. The only other ability that can do this is the Seraphynx' third ability, but you need to have a Level 50 Seraphynx for that as compared to only needing a Level 15 Maskeraith for Shadow Cloak. If you're cornered and about to die, you can use this ability, shield bump enemies away, then as said above move around and do whatever for the remainder of the cloak. The cloak also doesn't break when you use a shield bash, so you can stun your enemies and still continue doing what you were before the cloak expires. Just my opinion, but I consider this one of the most fool-proof and useful ability thus far. And if you think it's bad, you're obviously doing something wrong.

Hexing Haze

What is there to say about this ability... except how overpowered it is. This ability makes a field around you that marks any enemy that is inside it. After a few seconds, the enemy takes damage. Not only that, the field follows you around, so it's not just in your immediate vicinity, you can grab every enemy you see. You can even mark enemies more than once for even more damage. Now, that's pretty powerful, but its most powerful feature is the fact that the more enemies that enter the field, the longer it lasts. Every time a new enemy enters the field, it will last for a little bit longer. This means that not only can you constantly remark enemies, but the more enemies that are around you, the more damage you'll deal. This makes this ability pretty much extremely useful in situations where there are a ton of enemies. Think the Compound levels, all those Bunnies/Drops/Scarabs will increase the time this ability lasts, and you can just constantly mark the enemies. It builds up very quickly. While it may not be as powerful as the Drakon's abilities, this is more fail-safe since the area it covers it HUGE and it follows you around instead of being stationary.

Now, putting these three amazing abilities together, you get what is in my opinion the best pet thus far. It's tactical, it does good damage, and it can save your life if you need it.

That's about it.

I'm just trying to point out that each of the abilities are actually useful, not just some cool effect you can use every so often to make it look like you're being tactical. In my opinion Maskeraith is the best of the three because it's basically a hybrid of the Drakon and the Seraphynx, so you're not limited. Obviously, the other two pets have insanely good perks to them as well.

You can mark targets three times. Maybe not all the targets, but you have something like 1 second of the duration if you're quick to get a third mark in. It's true however, that the duration has nearly zero difference between fighting four zombies and fourty grave scarabs.

I've been playing all wrong, I just instinctively push them out of it xD Last time I truly used the vv for anti healing purposes was for the gauntlet.