Hello! Welcome to my Shadower Guide. Shadower seems to be the less popular class compared to its Night Lord or Dual Blade counterparts which personally I don't understand at all. It's a very engaging and fun class as many of its skills have multiple functions which have synergy when used together, you don't just hold down one key for a boss fight, otherwise you'll be losing out on a huge amount of DPM. I absolutely love the Shadower class and hope to get more people playing it with this guide.
Has lots of utility skills to use in boss fights such as 2 teleports that teleport you behind the boss, numerous large dashes that work like a teleport to close distance or evade attacks, invincibility frames and more. We also have high damage % skills which make you look stronger, this however becomes a drawback at endgame when you are doing damage cap as Shadower has high damage % but a low amount of damage lines. Shadower is a very bossing oriented class and as such isn't a very good mobber or a class you want to take into Monster Park. We do have large AOE attacks however they all come with cooldowns. Shadower is also one of the few (if not the only class) to be able to deal 210 lines of damage to a mob in 2.5 seconds, this skill obviously has a cooldown however. Shadowers also use shields compared to a secondary so you'll be able to gain additional stats that a Night Lord wouldn't.
Meso Guard and
Shield Mastery make you considerably more tanky compared to a traditional thief. Meso Guard will reduce damage taken by 60% whilst Shield Mastery increases your ATT by 15 and defense stat by 110% when equipped with a shield. You're probably rolling your eyes thinking "why is he talking about defense, show me the damage, defense is useless." But in certain bosses that have numerous attacks and hazards throughout their map, you're inevitably going to get hit. Your odds of surviving are much greater as a Shadower in comparison to another Thief.
Flip of The Coin is our hyper buff. It works differently in Aries compared to GMS so I will only be explaining the Aries variant of this buff. This buff gives us 25% damage and 50% crit rate and has NO cooldown. The skill is only usable after hitting an enemy with a critical hit, this sounds dumb but its really not. You can put FOTC on a macro following our main mobbing attack
Boomerang Stab. You will immediately cast FOTC before Boomerang Stab's animation is even finished. FOTC has no delay and won't slow down your attacks so putting it on a macro with Boomerang is an easy way to make sure you always have this buff up. Shadowers will effectively always have 100% crit rate because of this buff.
Just like our counterparts we have
Shadow Partner and
Last Resort which give us additional damage on our attacks just like on the others. I wont go into detail about these as you probably already know what they do.
Subsection: How To Maintain Dark Sight and Why.
Advanced Dark Sight (which will be called ADS from here on) is a very important passive for Shadowers as we have multiple skills that work with it. First of all, ADS by itself gives us a 5% Final Damage buff and also gives us a 15% chance to maintain ADS after attacking and another 15% chance to automatically put us in ADS after an attack, this works in conjunction with
Assassinate, our main damage skill which will gain an additional 150% damage when used within ADS. Furthermore, the ADS damage bonus stacks with the damage bonus from
Shadow Walker which gives us an additional 20% final damage. Shadower has numerous tools to help them maintain staying in ADS as you'll want to be in it for maximum damage output.
Into Darkness, which teleports you behind a nearby enemy and immediately putting you in ADS,
Smokescreen which not only keeps you in ADS while attacking within the smokescreen but also gives you a 20% crit dmg boost to enemies also within it.
Shadow Veil works similarly to Smokescreen but it covers a much larger area and you will remain in ADS when attacking within it, however it doesn't apply a crit dmg boost and instead does damage of its own.
Subsection: How To Output Maximum Damage On A Boss.
As mentioned previously you want to maintain ADS with the skills mentioned above for their damage bonuses, however there is even more to Shadower than that.
Assassinate as I said earlier is our main attack and works with a few of our other skills. It is a two-part attack. The first time you use the skill it will deal 550% damage 3 times, the second time you use the skill it will deal 700% damage 3 times (before Hypers Passives and Shadow Partner).
Shadower Instinct has both active and passive functions, first it is an active ATT buff that gives you 40 ATT + 10 ATT per Body Count. Well what's a body count? Body Count is the second part of Shadower Instinct. After using Shadower Instinct you will rack up Body Counts (up to a maximum of three) with each enemy you hit. Basically you want to use Shadower Instinct, get your body count to 3, and then use Shadower Instinct again to change the buff from 40att to 70att, its slightly annoying to do but its necessary for maximizing your DPM. Body counts have one more use and a very important one at that. If your body count is at 3 and you then use Assassinate, the counts will be consumed and Assassinate will gain an additional 100% final damage. This is a huge damage spike, effectively making every third Assassinate do nearly double damage.
Pickpocket which is an ON/OFF skill causes your attacks to make enemies drop mesos. These mesos are to be used with
Meso Explosion to deal damage. However, Meso Explosion is extremely tricky to use properly. You need to use it immediately after the first part of Assassinate, otherwise the animation will cause a delay in your Assassinate casts and hurt your DPM. Your ping may be a variable in this as well. It takes a lot of practice but eventually you'll be able to do it!
Think we're done? Because we're not, we still have the 3 Fifth Job skills to go over, and they're exciting ones at that.
Shadow Assault can either be used as a mobbing skill or a utility skill for boss fights. It is a long ranged dash that works like a teleport and deals damage. It has 4 charges and has a 45 second cooldown. The cooldown starts after using the skill once and it wont go on cooldown again until all charges of it are used. You can effectively use Shadow Assault once, wait 45 seconds and then use it 7 times if you need to. Its not ideal for doing damage but its great for avoiding attacks or closing distance while simultaneously maintaining some type of damage output on the boss.
Trickblade. This is without a doubt my favorite skill for Shadower. After it came out Shadower rose from being a class nobody played to overtaking its Night Lord and Dual Blade counterparts on the DPM charts. Trickblade is an attack that has two forms, a mobbing version, and a bossing version both of which share a cooldown of 14 seconds. First ill go over the mobbing version, at level 25: deals 1100% damage 5 times on up to 10 nearby enemies. And the bossing version: Teleports you behind the enemy and deals 3800% Damage 7 times. (+ Shadow Partner's additional 70% damage) to a single mob. Another huge damage spike for Shadowers. Well how do you use it and pick which form you want? With each use of the second-part of Assassinate that hits a mob, the mob will gain a Wound debuff. You can see how many wound debuffs an enemy has based off a blue skull and counter that will appear on top of the enemy. Once you've hit the same enemy with the second-part of Assassinate 3 times, the counter will raise to 3 which is as high as it will go. Trickblade must be used immediately after Assassinate to initiate its bossing variant. This will teleport you behind the mob dealing massive damage and consuming the wound debuff. Keep in mind if you're fighting a boss that moves a lot, for example in Phase 2 of Lucid where she is hard to stick with since she flies everywhere fairly quick, you can use the second part of Assassinate and immediately cast Trickblade to teleport behind her and deal damage. Assassinate does not need to hit the enemy to use Trickblade, you only need the enemy to have 3 stacks of Wound. Trickblade also gives you a 1 second invincibility buff immediately after casting its bossing variant. It is a great utility skill for dodging attacks, ignoring damage with its iframe, and closing the gap between you and a boss.
Lastly,
Sonic Blow. This is the skill I had foreshadowed in the intro of the guide. At level 25 this skill deals 865% damage 7 times continuously for 2.5 seconds, The skill is used a total of 15 times in the 2.5 second time frame. With Shadow Partner this skill deals a total amount of 210 lines in 2.5 seconds per mob. Here is the Battle Analysis after one use of Sonic Blow:
The skill itself has a 80 second cooldown, however while it's on cooldown for every body point you gain the cooldown of Sonic Blow will reduce by an additional 0.5 seconds . Basically use this whenever its off cooldown so you can use it as often as possible. Sonic Blow is however the one skill that doesn't work well with ADS as the skill is technically being used 15 times your ADS will typically wear off after the first or second use. So you'll want to be prioritizing using your ADS with Assassinate and Trickblade instead of Sonic Blow. Sonic Blow will only work well with ADS if you are using Smokescreen, Shadow Veil, or Shadow Walker which will maintain your ADS throughout the entire use of it. Because of this i typically like to open up with this skill and immediately put it on cooldown since I will have all my big buffs popped such as Shadow Walker and Last Resort at the start of a fight.
TL;DR, What do I do. The Ideal Combo:
Use
whenever its not on cooldown. Use
2nd Part ->
whenever you have 3 Wound stacks.
If the above skills are on cooldown, use:
1st Part ->
->
2nd Part and repeat.
Shadowers ideal trio of enhance nodes will be ones with Assassinate, Meso Explosion, and Shadow Veil as these are the only three non-fifth job attacks that you will be using in a boss fight. However having one of your trinodes have Boomerang Stab to help with your mobbing instead of Shadow Veil wont hurt at all.
There are two shields that are for Shadowers. Dragon Khanjar is the shield you want to start with and will be good until you are able to star force past 16 stars as a Dragon Khanjar can only have a maximum of 15 stars. The endgame Shadower Shield is the Deimos Shadow Shield as it can have a maximum of 20 stars which will ultimately be better than the Khanjar when nearing endgame. The only thing better about the DK compared to the Deimos is that the DK has 15att when clean, whilst the Deimos doesn't have any attack and wont have any until you get it past 15 stars. You could opt for the +1att armor scrolls from Monster Park. But you'd have to get very lucky with multiple mchaos scrolls to justify going that route compared to just using your standard super scrolls for luk on it. Because of this, I recommend starting out with a DK as it will higher attack in the beginning in compared to having a shield with 0att until after 15 stars.
And thats about everything! I hope people are able to make use of this guide and are able to appreciate how fun a technical class like Shadower can be. Thank you! If you have any further questions about Shadower I will answer them to the best of my ability, feel free to leave a reply or whisper me ingame (IGN: Zryn) Good luck and have fun!
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Brief intro about Shadower:
Has lots of utility skills to use in boss fights such as 2 teleports that teleport you behind the boss, numerous large dashes that work like a teleport to close distance or evade attacks, invincibility frames and more. We also have high damage % skills which make you look stronger, this however becomes a drawback at endgame when you are doing damage cap as Shadower has high damage % but a low amount of damage lines. Shadower is a very bossing oriented class and as such isn't a very good mobber or a class you want to take into Monster Park. We do have large AOE attacks however they all come with cooldowns. Shadower is also one of the few (if not the only class) to be able to deal 210 lines of damage to a mob in 2.5 seconds, this skill obviously has a cooldown however. Shadowers also use shields compared to a secondary so you'll be able to gain additional stats that a Night Lord wouldn't.
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Main Attacks and Skills:
Just like our counterparts we have
Subsection: How To Maintain Dark Sight and Why.
Subsection: How To Output Maximum Damage On A Boss.
As mentioned previously you want to maintain ADS with the skills mentioned above for their damage bonuses, however there is even more to Shadower than that.
Think we're done? Because we're not, we still have the 3 Fifth Job skills to go over, and they're exciting ones at that.
Lastly,
The skill itself has a 80 second cooldown, however while it's on cooldown for every body point you gain the cooldown of Sonic Blow will reduce by an additional 0.5 seconds . Basically use this whenever its off cooldown so you can use it as often as possible. Sonic Blow is however the one skill that doesn't work well with ADS as the skill is technically being used 15 times your ADS will typically wear off after the first or second use. So you'll want to be prioritizing using your ADS with Assassinate and Trickblade instead of Sonic Blow. Sonic Blow will only work well with ADS if you are using Smokescreen, Shadow Veil, or Shadow Walker which will maintain your ADS throughout the entire use of it. Because of this i typically like to open up with this skill and immediately put it on cooldown since I will have all my big buffs popped such as Shadow Walker and Last Resort at the start of a fight.
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TL;DR, What do I do. The Ideal Combo:
Use
If the above skills are on cooldown, use:
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Nodes:
Shadowers ideal trio of enhance nodes will be ones with Assassinate, Meso Explosion, and Shadow Veil as these are the only three non-fifth job attacks that you will be using in a boss fight. However having one of your trinodes have Boomerang Stab to help with your mobbing instead of Shadow Veil wont hurt at all.
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What Shields Do Shadowers Use?:
There are two shields that are for Shadowers. Dragon Khanjar is the shield you want to start with and will be good until you are able to star force past 16 stars as a Dragon Khanjar can only have a maximum of 15 stars. The endgame Shadower Shield is the Deimos Shadow Shield as it can have a maximum of 20 stars which will ultimately be better than the Khanjar when nearing endgame. The only thing better about the DK compared to the Deimos is that the DK has 15att when clean, whilst the Deimos doesn't have any attack and wont have any until you get it past 15 stars. You could opt for the +1att armor scrolls from Monster Park. But you'd have to get very lucky with multiple mchaos scrolls to justify going that route compared to just using your standard super scrolls for luk on it. Because of this, I recommend starting out with a DK as it will higher attack in the beginning in compared to having a shield with 0att until after 15 stars.
And thats about everything! I hope people are able to make use of this guide and are able to appreciate how fun a technical class like Shadower can be. Thank you! If you have any further questions about Shadower I will answer them to the best of my ability, feel free to leave a reply or whisper me ingame (IGN: Zryn) Good luck and have fun!
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