Shiradi Shuricannnon

The students in Teacher Syncletica's dojo have learned a great deal from Teacher Firewall's innovative training.

Teacher Firewall's training, including specific gear that greatly benefits the discipline, is not easy to acquire. There can be many variations you can choose to accommodate your play style. As this guide favors how to utilize a build without requiring the best gear possible, as beginning players, discussions on gear and training in this chapter might differ from Teacher Firewall's build to accommodate the more casual player.

If this chapter's advice contradicts any teaching from Firewall, you may do well to side to what Teacher Firewall recommends if you have doubts.

The Shuricannon is an Drow Ninja Spy that solely uses the shuriken for attack. As a Drow Ninja Spy with 20 Monk levels:

• Drow gain the Shuriken Expertise feat for free. This adds a chance for an additional shuriken thrown per attack.
• Drow also gain competence bonuses in shuriken damage and attack rolls.
• Drow also gain the Venomed Blades enhancement. This Poison attack is greatly augmented by Ninja Poison and Ranged Power.
• From Ninja Spy training it gains:
  • DEX-to-Damage for shuriken and shortswords.
  • Sneak Attack training forshuriken damage.
  • Sting of the Ninja, which applies Ninja Poison, a Poison damage-over-time effect to all shuriken. Ninja Poison accumulates and increases Poison vulnerability on all enemies, including Red Names, who aren't fully Poison-immune.
  • Poison vulnerablity, which magnifies Venomed Blades as well as Ninja Poison or any other delivery of Poison damage, such as from the Quiver of Poison.
  • High Hide/Move Silently and Faster Sneaking for easier mobility, and Diversion or Flash Bang for easy escapes or tactical attacks.
  • Shadow Veil at-will silent Invisibility and 25% Incorporeality through ki.
  • Ninja Master, the final core, delivers Vorpal to shuriken attacks and increases critical hit threat range and multiplier.

As a pure Monk, the Shuricannon's defenses are strong from Earth Stance and Ocean Stance. Miss-chance defenses are superior with a little Blurry and Dodge gear. Training passive ki regeneration allows use of Ten Thousand Stars to throw additional shuriken. Thrown and Ranged feats complement the build for high speed shedding of enemies, especially with Improved Precise Shot active. The Shuricannon is the closest thing to a ranged tank as you'll find in-game.

Challenges

Shuricannons have several requirements.

• You must unlock the Drow race, fairly easy to do with Total Favor (400).
• You'll need to run through Pay-to-Play quest chains to get most of the named shurikens and specialty crafted shurikens.
• Obtaining and/or crafting some shurikens early on is problematic.

The original Shuricannon thread discussions details why other races, such as Halflings, are less suitable for this build. While Teacher Firewall also leverages other skills that Teacher Syncletica generally discourages, such as Use Magic Device, you may find resources on the forum threads where points to UMD may be beneficial, at the sacrifice of other skill training.

Finding Shurikens

Starting off, you'll find that returning shurikens (as opposed to the one-shot types often found in loot-generated chests or in the House Deneith ammo vendor) are rather rare to find.

Even if you find these returning shuriken, they are often simple in abilities. The most preferable use of returning loot-generated shurikens is to use Cannith Crafting to build a few that aid with damage reduction and alignment bypassing for special targets, such as undead, constructs, Outsiders and Aberrations. Loot-generated returning shurikens with an augment slot have been reported and are rarest of all.

For example, a young Shuricannon in "Delera's Tomb" will find their stars are worthless against the "Ghostly Skeletons." They require a Good-aligned weapon to inflict any damage (that's why everyone gets that Club of the Silver Flame as a weapon on running the quest time and again). Even low-level Cannith Crafting skill in the Divine category can make a Righteousness returning shuriken. Advanced Cannith Crafting can later make Cold Iron, Adamantine and Metalline returning stars from loot-generated returning stars as you find them.

You can't craft non-returning shuriken. Thankfully, with Update 25, all loot-generated ammo (arrows, bolts, darts and shuriken) now drop in packs of 100, allowing you the option to stock them up until you can find better weaponry.

The recommended first step is to gather four named shurikens from quests that have very good damage and will keep you fighting in most situations. All of these, naturally, are returning. These are:

• Shadow Star: Chain end-reward from "The Seal of Shan-To-Kor." High damage, Deception (bluffs enemies) and Keen (higher critical threat) makes for a good starter weapon. Bound-to-Account on Acquire.
• Snowstar: Chain-end reward from the "Cult of the Six" quests. An Icy-Burst weapon with higher base damage than other stars. Also Bound-to-Account on Acquire.
• The Morning Star: Unique quest reward from the Wheloon Prison quest, "Friends in Low Places." The only named star that is Bound-to-Character on Equip (making it available for trade from the Auction House/Shard Exchange), comes in several Heroic and Epic versions and variations, and is the only named star with a Red augment slot. Comes in BtA or BtC on Acquire.
• Dawnbringer: From "The Devil's Details" end chest. A named Vorpalling star with potent untyped damage in Heroic and Epic versions. Bound to Account on Acquire.

You may also unlock House Deneith favor for "sturdy" shurikens of various metallic damage reductions for Heroic quests and raids below level 16.

The most useful crafting option is found in Eveningstar Challenges. This requires the "Menace of the Underdark" expansion to access. There, a series of relatively easy combat-only challenges (no kobold mining or scavenger hunting) will give you ingredients to make highly powerful returning shuriken.

Cormyrian crafted stars have many advantages and may become your weapons of choice until very late in your Epic life:

• Cormyrian stars (and all weapons made there) come in level 16, 20 and 24 versions.
• Cormyrian stars have a special hidden feature called "spellplague." These are often additional weapon effects, from Manslayer, Improved Paralyzing, elemental damage, ability score damage and more, that occasionally release from the stars. Only shuriken have this feature and not other Cormyrian weapons. (It was originally a bug that the developers thought was a great side feature.)
• Ingredients from Eveningstar Challenges are bound-to-account, making it easy to farm if you have other characters at any qualifying level.

The final star you should get is a Thunder-Forged Shuriken. This is the ultimate take-down weapon with the strongest weapon damage of any star you can find or craft in game. Like all tier 0 and tier 1 TF weapons, this weapon remains unbound and doesn't require a lot of ingredients to make and upgrade for tiers 0 and 1. (Beyond that is another matter.)

Off-Hand Weapons

The Shuricannon places a weapon in their off-hand--not for attack (you'll only be able to throw a shuriken from the main hand slot) but to benefit from weapon effects from the off-hand that affect the whole character and thus the shuriken.

As a Monk, you're limited to carrying only one-handed weapons that keep you Centered. As the Shuricannon is a Ninja Spy, you can carry shortswords and kamas.

There aren't many effects that work from the off-hand, but what few are available are handy. The chance of finding that effect is noted below as well.

• Deception: (Easy) This causes a bluff effect, spinning the enemy, slowing their approach, redirecting or delaying their attacks, and making them vulnerable to Sneak Attack damage. Different Deception effects increase the potency (Deception with Improved Deception).
  • Forum discussion suggests that this effect may not be working any longer from the off-hand. However, the effects from items such as the Golden Guile and the Seal of House Avithoul do continue to work.
• Seeker: (Easy) Increases your damage on a confirmed critical hit. Keep it as high as you can find.
• Devotion (Easy): This spell power boost won't help your weapon damage but will improve the effectiveness of any healing spells cast on you.
• Celestia, Brightest Star of Day: (Difficult) This is not an effect but a raid weapon reward from "Caught in the Web." A bastard-sword sized shortsword, the Celestia will cause Fiery Detonation and Greater Sunburst effects to work on the main hand. The lesser version of this weapon, the Star of Day, obtained from Eveningstar commendations from the Clerics of Amaunator, might work in a pinch but has not been tested by anyone in the dojo at the time of this scribing. Virtually all Epic Shuricannons use this weapon.

The Builds

So as not to corrupt Teacher Firewall's information, we have posted his original and 2.0 builds here without any adjustments using Character Builder Lite format for easy import.

For information on how the original Shuricannon fared in gameplay, you can visit The Order of Syncletica blog to find posts and videos on Teacher Szyncletica, a Shuricannon 1.0 that could solo most Epic Elite adventures and raids, including tanking one of the dragons in the "Fire on Thunder Peak" raid. Szyncletica has done something that no other student or teacher in Syncletica's dojo has ever completed: Soloing "The Shroud" raid.