Thief Shadower Bossing Guide

Just building onto this in HT. Regardless of whether you're jump bstepping left side or bstepping/bot right side. Bstep can only hit up to 4 targets max - as such if you're bstepping wings, arms, right/left head and mid head you're already hitting 4 targets. So if your bishops failed to aggro the wyverns and they started flying up to your range and you don't reposition, your bstep will not hit any wyverns cause all 4 hits are taken by the HT body already. You'll need to reposition.

Likewise if your bishops are struggling with darks and you go down to help and decide to jump bstep for whatever reason - if wings and both arms are still up you may just end up hitting all 3 and only hitting 1 wyvern as a result. So the play to hit and kill wyverns is to not jump and just bstep while standing still.

 

I'd like to add that if you are in the right position, you can BoT right when they spawn to catch all of them before bstepping so they're all aggro'd on you and won't be flying around.

 

The point about targeting the earliest spawned mob is also true in cwk. It seems to be random each run so you have to check which it is targetting, but if it's the thief (it rarely is, sadly), mixing Nate into the 3 boss rotation would be smart. Thief is pretty much always the last cleave boss to die, so more damage on him even at the cost of your total dpm is better for the squad. Your lost dpm gets made up for with the extra time spent brandishing anyways.

Now if only thief boss were always summoned first

 

Great guide! quick correction:

Only the party leader has to have the Magical Stone Piece

 

You can definitely hit Pap from the top left platform and also can assaulter back up for a quick recovery.
I think as a shad with an average range, it's more worth to just Bstep on the second long platform because you get knocked down quite frequently on the top left platform and waste alotta pots. You actually clear it at a similar time with the consistent Bstep damage over the constant knockdowns with the Ass spam. What I end up doing is only charge assassinate when it goes into it's idle state and assassinate until I get knocked down and go back to Bstep on the long platform.
EDIT: Similarly to what BMs do in HT; on the left platform you can hold UP+Assassinate macro so if you get knocked to the right you grab onto the rope a majority of times. This clears alot faster.
It just has an iframe during his yellow summon animation.


Just a little tech for Shads in general, you can jump smoke by Jump>Land>Smoke (good to just hold smoke after jumping) to get some vertical range on it.

If you have a good chance to smoke on the left side, this one allows you to smoke the top and Jump + Bstep on that small bottom platform and still technically be in smoke as you have iframes on the floor if you hold jump+bstep.


Same for this side, you can smoke yourself/other cleavers plus people at the top if you have ranged party members.
For the Bstep+BoT, you want to stand at the very edge so the BoT actually hits the right head and right arm.
If you're having trouble getting to the edge you can slowly jump and tap left until your BoT starts hitting the head.


NOTE : Jump smoke can fail sometimes . Might be ping related.

 

Super informative guide! Want to note that CWK EXP is starting from 125 onwards, not 135, but it's very unlikely that any class will be of much help on a CWK run at 125, when you're still maxing the first of your main core skills.

 

10/10 my favorite shad guide and 100/10 my favorite shad ilysm

all future shads and quest lovers pls dm sky for more info and general compliments because we love her

 

Great work, Sky!
Go Nimbus <3

 

Great guide! I would add one great tip, u can taunt JC summon mobs, when u see they have low hp bar taunt them for higher exp

 

YOOOO. This is great guide Sky! I hope all the young Shadowers on this server refer to this informative guide as they begin to boss.

 

Yeah the dummy dpm for using the 5th hit of nate is a significant amount higher than just spamming nate but i dont think its really sustainable in practice. You have a much higher chance of dying and sometimes you just lag or mistime your nate/darksight which can lower dpm.

I wanted to do this at verga but it was so hard since auto pot fails a lot when you get hit during nate so a lot of times after the 5th hit of nate you have to pot, then go back to dark sight + nate. One cool trick for verga is to spam nate and when the laser comes out, let go of the macro and hold the right arrow key so the 5th hit will push you into the body and then you will have iframes and will not get hit by the laser.

 

You can actually manually pot in the middle of the macro without interrupting it once you get the timing down. I don't use auto HP on my shad, and I test higher DPM in actual bossing scenarios using the dash than just standing. It's definitely more comfortable at higher levels depending on your HP and avoid though.

 

fwiw, I've ran dpm tests doing this with SE at verga several months ago and while I don't remember the numbers, it was noticeably higher than ordinary nate spamming.

other obvious use cases would be at nib and toad, and targa to an extent (also perhaps preheads at HT if you aren't sed lol).

 

Hi great guide! Learned a few cool things I did not know about. I want to add a couple of cool notes/tech for shads that I don't think have been mentioned yet.

1) Holding down to pause your ds + nate macro. This is very helpful when you are fighting against any boss where you need to pause your ds+nate macro when the boss jumps/ducks/etc.

Examples:
JC - when jc or the thief cwk bosses jump, your nate will not connect (for jc you will hit the mobs which is fine) and once the boss comes down again, your next nate might be a little late since the nate animation is pretty long, which will decrease your overall dpm. Instead, you can hold the down arrow key immediately when the boss jumps in the air (this will make you duck but will still activate dark sight, so you will be ducking in dark sight, ready to nate right when the boss comes down) and then time the nate perfectly to increase overall dpm.

Same concept applies when HT heads duck and when verga does his laser and even when the mage cwk boss does weapon cancel.

2) Understanding nates damage increments. Nate's damage increases in dark sight every 3 seconds, however it takes only 2 seconds for the 5th hit to increase in damage. So in the above examples where you are ducking in dark sight, you will unfortunately not be able to charge for a full 3 seconds since the bosses will come back to position quicker than that, however it is possible to charge for 2 seconds and then use the 5th hit of nate to get double the damage on the 5th hit. Awrien already mentioned that using the 5th hit of nate is better dmp than spamming so having the 5th hit double in damage is even better. This is very useful when doing jc, cwk mage/thief boss, verga, and some others.

 

Am I the only one that has been consistently getting higher dpm on dummies when using Dark Sight -> Assassinate -> Boomerang Step (no SE) compared to Dark Sight -> Assassinate? Or is this just a ping issue for me? (Edit: I think it is a ping issue for me)

I also found that Dark Sight -> Assassinate -> Boomerang Step gave me significantly better dpm than Dark Sight -> Assassinate when there is SE available, because Boomerang Step gets buffed by SE whereas Assassinate does not. I remember clearly that my Boomerang Step was only hitting a single target when I recorded this dpm for comparison too.

 

Generally nice guide and good read, theres a few things I'd wanna comment though.
First off your XP from bosses look like direct copy-paste from the library, know that lib shows default rates, NOT server x2 rates!
(example dukus, lib shows 5k xp but they give 10k)

For CWKPQ, a Shad, depending on party set up, can also be utalized as a Mage pinner, if there's enough cleave already and Mage pin is lacking.

For krex, first eye, you can also stand a little bit lower, to avoid dashing or getting knocked into eye (just pay attention to being knocked unto that sloping pipe or not)
(Last time I ran krex on shad anyway)


As for the pet auto HP not always working, for what I know this is because user input overwrites pet input, and user input can be as simple as letting go of a button.
And last, as a small unmentioned note, smoke covers all DAMAGE BASED status effects, EG Verga (not covered in this guide (yet)) b3 rockets deal damage and apply Seduce, smoke prevents damage and thereby the Seduce, this does not work if Seduce is applied in a non-damaging Debuff style like in HT.

 

One of the most beauty guide ever!