Shadow & Myst gladiators in high brackets

... simply can't make it. There's been some time since two of the classes from the school got introduced so it's not too early for such a verdict. As I see it, the issues are:

Shadow: can't take damage. 2H Rages drop them with a single Rampage, other classes need to score a few hits and that's it. From the high tier defensive skills only Riposte works well, Uncanny Dodge does nothing more than a simple armour deflection and triggers too rarely even with Shadow Dance to deserve its position that high in the tree. Shadow Dance itself is significantly downgraded version of Hard to Hit which doesn't work well enough most of the time - that's not a War with multiple damage-reducing skills and tough armour who can skip a few parries with little consequences. No damage-reducing skill so unlike Rages which have 2, Shadows are left only with the minor protection offered by the Light armour. Offense sucks, especially vs. Wars - high initiative doesn't help vs. heavy armour and Shadow Form doesn't offer nearly enough armour penetration to drop a well-armoured defensive gladiator. Right now the only thing Shadows are good at in the top brackets is draining the opponent's endurance but that's far from enough to make them competitive.

Slayers: too unflexible and chaotic. No defensive strategy and too many activated skills in their own tree to make a decent planning. Against Wars you rely solely on Blood Bath which is just terrible - if the wonder skills doesn't trigger early enough, you simply watch your fighter getting beaten like a dummy (if it triggers it's no less annoying for the opponent because he can lose even if the Slayer sits on his ass for the rest of the fight). Juggernaut is a joke, so bad that it can compete with Down and Dangerous for the prize of worst top tier skill - you get heavy armour that can't deflect properly because of no defensive strategy and no additional bonuses, just the basic flat damage reduction. Flurry of Steel would be nice if the Slayers had any serious damage-boosting skill in their trees but right now it's just a series attacks with no punch, not very long either. Mixing Slayer with Shadow skills makes more sense, if only to reduce the amount of activated attacks but the lack of defensive strategy remains a problem even then.

Yeah, sure, that may not be the full picture but it's a fact that there's not Shadow or Slayer in top 10 in Blood Gods, sometimes not even in top 20. Your thoughts?

Yeah, Kreegan.

Slayers.
They are too annoying...
Pure Slayers are "i don't know what i'm using" builds, yes. The fact, it's the best branch for low brackets just add an annoyance: In general, Slayers don't need a management before Primus (Or even before BG), this fact already proven for me.
Why i telling about it? Because i think, high level of Slayers "raw power" compensate their disability to be controllable. And for sure it's the bad exchange for BG...
Having these Slayers as opponents at the low brackets not so enjoyable too...
So, that's enough for a verdict.

Perhaps, Slayers could get some defense via Disarm/Sweep (Unnatural Agility, Weapon Finesse too, to keep some control and gain additional Attack Power/Defense). But when we add here few of offensives which we like, we will be forced to pick average/light weapon in order to avoid "chaotic" behavior. And this choice will affect our ability to fight heavy armored opponents...
The Blood Bath way ... This skill can be maximized for using as a first offensive. But i'm sure, You don't like this way. In my opinion, this skill must be ... fixed.

Shadows.
It seems You right. They have not enough hitting power, nor enough defense to work well.
But i like this branch. And i still working with it trying to gain "defense" using off-handed whip, for example.
In my experience, Shadows are able to avoid power hits from Rages/etc. But we need drop Spectral Touch to do it (You know, it's just a fail, if You used Spectral Touch vs 2H Rage as a first hit :). While this skill is one of the best sides of a Shadow for now (Also, perhaps, relative Endurance value of an opponent affects Shadows ability to dodge).
So, i keep working with Shadow, because they are flexible enough to play with skills and because i enjoy building process, rather than rating gain process...

Both.
Too much influence of the Initiative in the game, in my opinion.
We need skills/strategies to transform Initiative for something else. And not decorative skills of this kind like Juggernaut, but something with real potential.

// As for Down and Dangerous. Perhaps, the War branch could be supplemented by skill which put at the ground both of fighters. Instead of War Cry, for example.

I remain optimistic if only because I haven't seen a fully optimized shadow or slayer in blood gods going against the top glads. I still have some glads that aren't fully built with strat/gear/skills and they are barely staying above 50% in blood gods. Seraph Zodak was like that too until I finally finished his build - that little sliver of difference made him a consistent top 10 fighter where before he was 50/50. We all know the margin of difference between a 80% win fighter and a 50% win fighter is pretty thin.

For Slayers - I agree they have too many activated skills, so it may make sense to try to minimize that in order to get the skill triggers you want. But I still think there are ways to build them with boosts, ranks, strats that will make them really tough. If you only look at their skills, I agree there isn't much to work with. But if you mix in the possibilities of added ranks like armor pen, block, crit, etc... I think they can be made to be very effective.

For Shadows - I also think they lack offensive punch and the shadow form skill seems difficult to maximize. But I think this is because managers haven't figured out the best way to maximize these skills and the right blend of stats, gear, ranks, strategies to be dominant. Think they could also be dominant with the right blend.

Both Shadows and Slayers have the essential ability to defeat tanks - shadows with spectral touch and slayers with blood bath. So the potential, at least, is there. We just haven't seen a manager creative enough to take advantage of it yet.

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Originally Posted by Adoede

I remain optimistic if only because I haven't seen a fully optimized shadow or slayer in blood gods going against the top glads.

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For the BG, this optimization just a half of work. Because You need to climb to the Top before.
And (i don't know about Slayers, and i don't wish to know about them, to be honest), but yes, perhaps, Shadows are able to work in the Top BG enviroment. But it seems, they can't reach that top...

There have already been several fully equipped Shadows in Blood Gods, none of them really shined. The highest ranking Shadow at the moment is... 34th. :( Sure, adjusting strategy and finding the best equipment is always an ongoing process but there are some flaws which don't seem fixable - not entirely at least - by player intervention. The class is way too fragile - that should be compensated by higher evasion rate but even the best Shadows I've seen so far in that regard are way worse than even mediocre Rage dodgers - which at least are guaranteed to get away from a few attacks. If you pick light weapons, Wars will laugh at your face when your guy tries to score some noticeable damage, if you pick heavy weapons much of the initiative bonus goes to waste which makes Rages happy and tanks are still hard to drop.

Slayers need some extra level of control if they are to be developed as specialists. If you want to go to the bottom of the Slayer tree, you have to pick no less than 4 activated skills which then trigger in whatever order. There seems to be some preference which skill will be used depending on the opponent but that's not helping much, there are hundreds of possible opponents out there. Slayers rely WAY too much on Blood Bath to beat Wars, in fact that's the only skill which actually does something against them - and not only tanks, all Wars. Rages are somewhat easier to handle because both classes rely on initiative and offense but one timely Rampage ends the battle just like with Shadows. Fights against Theatrics opponents are the most balanced ones, if you don't decide to go with light weapons of course.

I somewhat disagree about the ranks. When you say ranks, you probably mean Block rank, that's just the only one which work in Blood Gods (to the point of being abused) with the partial exception of small extra Bleeding Protection for tanks. It has become a bad practice to outfit fighters exclusively with Block equipment, that effectively reduces the variety in the bracket and makes the fights boring and repetitive (at the top of the bracket you fight either blocking tanks or blocking Rages - very exciting...). If the "rank bonuses" of the fabled/legendary gear get reworked and all of them start being useful, maybe I'll agree but right now I just don't think we need another coterie of blockers trying to climb their way to a position where they can challenge... the other blockers.

Mangers have had years of experience with the Arms & Armor school. I don't think we've had nearly enough time to perfect the right combination of strategy/skills/gear like we have with war, rage and theatrics glads. It's true that shadow and myst haven't been as competitive in blood gods but I'm not sure it's because they are naturally at a disadvantage. I've yet to see a fully decked out shadow or slayer in full level 55 legendary gear with a strategic goal in mind.

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Originally Posted by Dainoji

I don't think we've had nearly enough time to perfect the right combination of strategy/skills/gear like we have with war, rage and theatrics glads.

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Yes, it's possible. But we have young Rages at the first page of rating...
It's a question of environment as a part. Because Rages have comfort playing vs War, even vs top War, i think. But anyway... There are relative young Theatrics, relative young Wars.
So, it's much more looks like there's nothing "to perfect" for Shadow & Myst, or it's impossible "to perfect" at the moment.

Though, it seems, it's possible to build a Slayer, having only Blood Bath skill and feed him Block at 800+. But it's looks like an ... exploit.

Shadows. Another light armored class, Rage, have the best DPS in the game. They have also fighting style which allows sometimes fight even against his innate enemy -- Theatrics, and have a success... Shadows haven't either DPS, nor fighting style (which can be used as main), nor even such dodge rate as Kreegan already said.

To extend this comparison... At the first page every gladiator have the main style, except two of 2H Wars. But these Wars... They have at least very good defense, not to mention other things.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

... I just don't think we need another coterie of blockers trying to climb their way to a position where they can challenge... the other blockers.

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For some justice.
The second Block feature could be useful for Shadow oriented by Endurance win.
I mean, when Block happened, it forces to use triple amount of Endurance for attacker.

But the "main" feature of Block so boring anyway, of course...

The use of block at the top levels of blood gods is just a fad imho. I've been experimenting with ways to reduce its effectiveness and I think there are some ways to overcome it. First of all, heavy weapons get blocked a lot less than lighter ones. Second, I've toyed with armor penetration rank and it seems to be effective at reducing block rates as well. When I see a shadow or slayer with great armor penetration skills and solid gear/strategy, I think they will be a legitimate challenger for the top ranks.

I'm not really playing anymore...or atleast for the moment but I'll put my 2 cents in. I never liked the shadow speciality simply because they as has been pointed out seem to have a severe reliance on the stamina drain abilities due to not having enough oomph behind their skills to really compete well with the other existing classes.

Slayers however I've had more fun with and I can remember some people complaining alot about Fenrich Dreynar...which was a hybrid Slayer which had it's focus on Blood bath and hitting serious injuries. Beryll was a different slayer of mine which was a pure slayer DW speed type which worked decently although not perfect...maybe if I had bothered with tweaking his strategies more he would've been more effective but I couldn't be bothered anymore due to real life. Both of these gladiators had their orange lvl 55 gear before they retired.

Fenrich had his moments, he regularly actually ended up in the overall top 10 for the blood gods but for some reason which was most likely simply bad matchups and good competition he couldn't really hold that spot all the time so it's not like it's impossible for slayers to reach that high.

In short: I agree with Dainoji in saying that people have had years to play with the Arms & Armour school which is something that we havent had with the Shadow & Myst school. Besides that there is still 1 full class missing so there isn't enough variety to dip into other specialities for them. What I do agree on is that they have too many seperate skills, it's nice that slayers have such a myriad of choices for activated skills but I feel like 1 or 2 of them being turned into passives wouldn't hurt and that buffing juggernaut with a 2nd addition of a skill wouldn't hurt.

However I also know that Nate worked hard and ran hundreds of tests with these classes to make sure that they can compete with the rest of them and don't forget: all specialities have their weaknesses. Wether it's a buffed up 2H rage or a defensive war there's most likely a way to overcome them, even if you might not like the way to do it :p

Bah, Nate's tests also claim that War Cry isn't useless which practice disproves every day. :rolleyes:

To be competitive in Blood Gods a fighter needs to achieve a level of persistence against a wide range of opponents and particularly against the current top builds. Occasionally winning a fight or even winning regularly against 50-60% of the opponents in the bracket doesn't cut it. The current top builds are vulnerable to exactly 1 other build and that's it - everything else is beaten in at least 80% of the cases. The S&M guys can't achieve that. Slayers' problem is that they are offensive by design but unlike Rages they can't score quick wins and rely way too much on a single skill + they are uncontrollable if you go too deep down the tree. Shadows don't have a viable development path apart from endurance draining at the moment but fairly often they can't last long enough to do even that.

Sure, the school is relatively new and one class is missing. But Arms & Armour also got reworked multiple times when major balance issues emerged. Question is how long does it take before a class's performance is evaluated as low and the most visible weaknesses are addressed. You need to pay to unlock the S&M crew so I don't think they should be left unsupervised for too long.

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

Bah, Nate's tests also claim that War Cry isn't useless which practice disproves every day. :rolleyes:

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Or we just suck and Nate uses his creator cheats to supply them with exactly what they need to run to make it work well, although I can't dismiss the fact that I too think that skill is rubish :p

Nate can to use to test not the current gladiators base, but some generated variety of gladiators.
This option is more interesting for test. Because it can include any builds that we don't have so far. For example, Wars with maximized Presence.
So, the current gladiators base and testing gladiators base are the different bases. Which leads to different results...