Help me with my Swordsage Dip

[Shining Wrath]

I've got a 9th level Warforged Warblade, and I want to take the Master of Nine Prestige class, so I'm going to dip two levels of Swordsage. My Warforged is a mithral body type, and I'm a two-handed fighter build using a greatsword. Just ordered my Strongarm Bracers so I can use a size large greatsword. I have full skill ranks in Concentration and Tumble, Jump will be full ranks soon, and Balance is pretty strong.

Stat array: 19, 16, 18, 15, 12, 10.
Current preferred disciplines: Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, little White Raven.
Going to take 2 maneuvers each from Tiger Claw and Shadow Hand, 1 each from Desert Wind and Stone Dragon. Then one more, either TC or SH. IL = 5 so 3rd level available.

I've got a good idea of what maneuvers I want; I'm going to focus on utility, not adding a few 6-siders to an attack. So it's going to be stuff like Shadow Jaunt and Distracting Ember, and Stone Dragon will be the awesomely useful Mountain Hammer.

The advice I seek is regarding which stances to take. There are lots of good choices. I've looked at the handbooks and they don't always agree, and are more general in their discussion.

So, herewith, a list of what I'm considering. I already have Hunter's Sense and Punishing Stance.


Assassin's Stance. Gain Sneak Attack for 2d6. The 2d6 is meh especially since conditional, but the Sneak Attack ability might open a door. Not thrilled.
Child of Shadow: Concealment = 20% miss chance. Miss chance is a very good thing. But I have to move 10'. But I have tumble and high dexterity. I like this one.
Dance of the Spider: Spider Climb at will with infinite duration? Nice.
Flame's Blessing: As noted, I have max ranks in Tumble. This means that at level 11 I would gain 20 DR to fire. At level 16 I would gain immunity to fire. Lots of things use fire.
Leaping Dragon Stance: I mentioned I'm taking some Tiger Claw. And there are lots of combat situation where being able to treat a standing leap as a running leap would be helpful.
Pearl of Black Doubt: I do have occasional moments where I charge into crowds of mooks - comes from being a mobile front-line fighter. Also helps if you run into a fleshraker.


So, players upon the playground, what say you?

[Hunter Noventa]

Assassin's Stance. Gain Sneak Attack for 2d6. The 2d6 is meh especially since conditional, but the Sneak Attack ability might open a door. Not thrilled.
Child of Shadow: Concealment = 20% miss chance. Miss chance is a very good thing. But I have to move 10'. But I have tumble and high dexterity. I like this one.
Dance of the Spider: Spider Climb at will with infinite duration? Nice.
Flame's Blessing: As noted, I have max ranks in Tumble. This means that at level 11 I would gain 20 DR to fire. At level 16 I would gain immunity to fire. Lots of things use fire.
Leaping Dragon Stance: I mentioned I'm taking some Tiger Claw. And there are lots of combat situation where being able to treat a standing leap as a running leap would be helpful.
Pearl of Black Doubt: I do have occasional moments where I charge into crowds of mooks - comes from being a mobile front-line fighter. Also helps if you run into a fleshraker.


So, players upon the playground, what say you?

Island of Blades is one you should actually consider, at least if there's other Melee in the party, especially if there happens to be a Rogue with sneak attack in the party already. It's basically never NOT useful.

Assassin's stance is solid, again never NOT useful, and can qualify you for odd things.

Dance of the Spider won't be of too much use to you, if you read it carefully, you're only allowed to have one hand free while using it, since you use a greatsword you can't attack while wall-crawling.

Child of Shadow would be a good choice, if you're using lots of maneuvers, a lot of them are standard actions so you can move and use one to gain your bonus.

I've never personally run into fire being common enough to use Flame's Blessing, but it seems a bit more campaign specific.

Leaping Dragon Stance is pretty great, it also applies the running start bonus to the Jump checks for various Tiger Claw maneuvers after all.

I've never used Pearl of Black Doubt, so I don't know what to tell you about it, it really does depend on how solid your AC is I guess. But not it's not something you can rely on 100% of the time to boost your AC.


Just also remember even with two classes you can still only use one Stance at a time.

[Shining Wrath]

Island of Blades is one you should actually consider, at least if there's other Melee in the party, especially if there happens to be a Rogue with sneak attack in the party already. It's basically never NOT useful.

Assassin's stance is solid, again never NOT useful, and can qualify you for odd things.

Dance of the Spider won't be of too much use to you, if you read it carefully, you're only allowed to have one hand free while using it, since you use a greatsword you can't attack while wall-crawling.

Child of Shadow would be a good choice, if you're using lots of maneuvers, a lot of them are standard actions so you can move and use one to gain your bonus.

I've never personally run into fire being common enough to use Flame's Blessing, but it seems a bit more campaign specific.

Leaping Dragon Stance is pretty great, it also applies the running start bonus to the Jump checks for various Tiger Claw maneuvers after all.

I've never used Pearl of Black Doubt, so I don't know what to tell you about it, it really does depend on how solid your AC is I guess. But not it's not something you can rely on 100% of the time to boost your AC.


Just also remember even with two classes you can still only use one Stance at a time.

Thanks!

At Mo9 level 3 you can be in 2 stances at once for a little while, and at Warblade 20 you can do that permanently ... not that I'm going to be WB 20 unless we get to level 27.

I was thinking of Dance of the Spider as more of an out-of-combat thing - climb the walls of the cavern to reach the hole at the top / climb castle walls. But since we have a Druid who can wildshape the party has that covered most of the time.

We have no rogues. We do have a Paladin / Crusader / Cleric / Fist of Raziel, and a Knight - Knight can't take advantage of IoB. We don't have that many battles where we form a wall - our DM tends to send the enemy in from multiple directions. Or to have a wall of his own, and a caster behind them, in which case my mad Tumble skills let me get behind the line.

[avr]

Do you face enough big creatures that Setting Sun's Giant Killing stance might be useful? Even if you don't, consider Counter Charge and Baffling Defence as maneuvers. IIRC Mo9 gives a small bonus based on the number of disciplines you have maneuvers readied for, and both these maneuvers are useful.