Before the 1.0 balance update, the Shadow Class was, after the Guardian the least used Class in the game. Why? Well, even fully geared Shizu could not survive more than two hits on first stages of legendary because of her low defense, imagine Kai with even less defense? The best possible faith available for then to truly shine is Hera or Ares, but those two faiths lowers theirs DEF status, definitely making then even more fragile.
The AI of this game ALLWAYS targets the hero with less defense if its within range (that’s a problem from my perspective, as it should’ve be a little more random), so, unless you have some mystics to spare on the mid or back lines as sacrifice, your shadows will die a lot in the first or second enemy turn in a battle.
That leaves me one big question based on the game design, I don’t really know why the choose to make Critical a Status, it could be Dexterity in his place, and with Dexterity they could implement the chance of Evasion. Raise your DEX and the higher you raise the higher will be your chances to do a critical attack or evade an enemy attack. A higher Dex could also lower your chances of receiving Critical attacks from enemies. If they did this with a chance to evade an attack the Shadows would be able to survive a lot more, even with that low defense. Hera 5*+2 Shizu had less than 1500 base Def!
Some point to be noticed, Magebanes have the best Mag in the game after Mystics and Healers, so they can survive skills damage, if they survive till that.
Talking about the attack pattern, it’s really original and cool, the combo attack works really well too clear some back-row enemies with low defense. Paired with one champion that raises attack they can truly shine at clearing enemy’s waves.
One area the shadows are really useful are farming the Gold Mine and the Capitol event, as the combo attacks helps a lot.
Talking about Skills, Samurais and Magebanes were the most used, Samurais to debuff enemy’s status and Magebanes to AOE Stun for two turns. Assassin had a role to help kill bosses with three turn damage and stun/silence, but Ninjas never anything worth.
Climbing my way in the arena I’ve used Shizu Magebane but as mid row so that she could not die on the first or second attack from enemies. Below Magebane, no other class was really useful for arena, you were better using a mystic if you had one.
After The 1.0 balance path:
The status boost really benefit the Shadows Class as they’ve gotten DEF and MAG boost to make then survive a lot more. They are now a lot more useful in Legendary and can help you kill a lot of enemy’s formations, principally those two melee in the front and Rangers in the back
Magebanes lost the AOE skills that made them so special. Now it’s a + (Plus) area of attack. Samurais have gotten better as their Skill range didn’t chanced. Assassins stays practically the same. Ninjas continues to not be that useful.
Stilll on Magebanes, the problem here is not exactly the skill area that changed, is about you can’t target an empty grid, so this can be a problem when you are trying to target a group of enemies in Arena.
With the buff on survivability the shadows can stand a little more in arena, still not very useful thought.
Well that’s were my thoughts, share yours on this Class.
