Valiant Force Forum

EDIT: I meant to put this in the feedback forum - was it moved here by a mod or did I misclick?

Currently, shadows are underpowered - I don't expect to see any dispute on that. I personally believe they are THE weakest class but some may argue for guardian. Let's explore what makes shadows so weak and try to figure out what could fix them.

First, lets compare Kai Samurai (highest def shadow class) vs. Cybella Royal Huntsman (highest def ranger class) just to highlight the stat weaknesses:

Lvl 30 Stats w/ Zeus faith
Kai Cybella
ATK 1489 1858
DEF 1735 1612
HP 3766 3766
CRIT 1243 751
MAG 381 628

What you can gather from above:
1) Cybella does about 25% more damage.
2) Cybella would take a small amount more damage per attack except she gets a 25%+ damage reduction from not being in the front line.
3) Same HP.
4) Kai has about 5% more crit chance (if the crit formula assuptions posted on the board are to believed). This means 5% of the time he would do about 20% more damage in a round than Cybella (single hit) assuming he is positioned right.
5) Both units will die to pretty much any spell but Kai is a little easier to kill.

Kai does get a combo attack but the damage drops off significantly between each hit, it is inferior to just plain ranged in nearly all situations.


Aura:
Kai - When others attack, 40% chance to inflict 65% of crit as poison damage for 2 rounds
Cybella - On crit (which can be brought up to perhaps 40+% if you focus on it), 70% chance to trigger others in aura (potentially 3 units) to attack with 50% ATK and knockback

Kai's seems alright at first glance but in practice it is lousy. It scales off CRIT which happens to be the hardest stat to raise - ATK focused champions can achieve over 9K ATK but CRIT focused shadows have a hard time getting over 4k... this is because it is the lowest base stat on average and gear/runes give the lowest amount of it. The damage this poison does is really low compared to the MAG scaling poisons of mystics and healers.

Cybella's may trigger less frequently but it has a lot more utility - some decent damage and knockback which could be great in an all ranged team.


Specials:
Kai - 150% CRIT as magic damage in X pattern, 30% MAG reduction for 2 turns, 35% DEF reduction for 2 turns.
Cybella - Self buff crit 15% (2 turns), force enemies to target other heros (3 turns, not in arena), 3 turn 30% damage reduction to target hero. 6 turn cooldown.

Again, Kai's special looks okay but then you see it is scaled of CRIT which we already know is low. This special glances off mystics and healers and does okay damage to others but still not 1 shot level like most other special attacks. The DEF/MAG haven't proven useful to me yet, perhaps because they last only 2 turns... I think this should be bumped to 3 or even 4 turns to give you a chance to take advantage of them. Keep in mind that 35% DEF debuff is not as amazing as it sounds with this damage formula... A 8000 ATK hit vs 3000 DEF would do an additional 1050 damage (5000 -> 6050) which is good but not amazing - definitely not better than just blowing them away with a high damage special.

Cybella's special is a rare non-damaging one and probably is very situational but I think may be preferable to a marginally damaging one like Kai's in most cases.

Conclusion:
Comparing Kai's various forms to Cybella's across the board has Cybella coming out on top. Having overall weak ATK (Kai Samauri is ranked 51 worst of all 58 5* units.) AND okay DEF (23/58) yet forced to fight melee makes them perhaps the least feared units in the game... And they don't seem to have any killer auras or specials to make up for their weaknesses either.



What can we do to fix shadows?
- Allow shadows to attack at range 3 tiles (shuriken?). This would mean a front row shadow can hit a second row oppsing unit in the arena. Keep in mind that his damage is still low, tied with healer class ATK.

- Have shadow specials cause physical damage instead of magic damage (and adjust multiplier accordingly) - this would result in more damage vs healers and mystics but less against champions and guardians... this seems to fit their theme better.

- Significantly lower the cooldown of specials that involve swapping places or warping enemies (this includes the healer warp specials). These specials are useful when they can disrupt the enemy (e.g. break an aura chain, move an enemy to melee range) but because the cooldown is so high, they rarely make a difference. The damage could be lowered to compensate (perhaps 3 turn cooldown, deals 125% damage)

I appreciate your effort for typing all the details, i got to agree that shadow class is one of the weakest class in current meta.
the reason why i mention guardian as one of the weakest class is to make it obvious that in current meta, even a tank is not a tank provided out of 4 higher tier class, 3 of which are have support skills.
to be exact melee class doesn't fits in this game at the moment because of their close range, survival ability and aura coverage. especially when you met a fully equipped ranger class, melee class probably gets one shot in arena not to mention it also applies to legendary adventure quest.

I do think they have alot of touch up on revamping melee class, let's hope something good happens in next update since they said they're working on it atm. chill~ 
 

Definitely guardian needs some work. The reason I feel that guardian is somewhat viable is because in PvE they certainly have a lot of value and in PvP they can hold the front line long enough to keep the mages alive (because of the row damage reduction) til magic time (and then they die to magic easily of course) . Whenever I match against a strong guardian it throws my plan off because my Vincent can't oneshot it (he oneshots everything else). I don't think I ever felt any danger from a shadow (except maybe magebane Shizu hidden in back row) because they don't do any damage and can't take any hits (physical or magic).

Giving guardians a passive to have a higher chance of being targeted should make them so much more valuable.
Currently enemy AI just aims the unit with the lowest def, you can try this out yourself. 

Even if you put a guardian Class in the front line it becomes pointless if the units they are supposed to protect die anyways.
Either have a Fixed % of damage taken by other heroes be redirected to guardians (i know some have a aura, but the aura slotting is quite bad for this purpose), or increase the chance of guardians getting attacked by ranged units.

About shadows, I agree atm they are quite weak. Partly i blame this on their stats their overall stats just feels weaker compared to other units
Mediocre attack, mediocre def, mediocre hp, decent crit that doesnt matter cause their base attack sucks.

Giving a buff  on their stats, or making their abilities scale differently as OP suggested is a good idea,
It also doesn't help that out 6 natures only 1 nature favours crit, and another one is ok with crit the rest are just plain bad for a crit build
(hera and ares).