Paladin, Shadower or Dark Knight?

Both are very good at grinding. Shad's bstep hits 4 mobs (correct me if I'm wrong). Bucc's snatch hits 6 and does really nasty DMG if you have SE (archer skill). One caveat tho, buccs have a lot of skills to max so realistically you won't max snatch til late (anywhere from lv160-190). Buccs have another mobbing skill called dragon strike that also hits 6 which is good for grinding too.

I don't have any quantitative comparison (like eph) on who grinds better but both are very viable.

 

NLs don't really cost much more to play than a shad when you consider that a shad uses a shield too, fwiw

 

you just wait for the shadow star bug to be solved and buy 20 sets of mtk

 

MTKs overrated and they disappear too ><

 

[Change My View] Don't make a shad if you want to do damage or provide party utility.

Assassinate is a terrible, terrible skill in terms of being your main bossing ability:

• Range is too short compared to other melee classes' bossing skills
• The Dash is a gimmick that needs to be reworked, crit damage on dash is currently bugged (?)
• Has a longer cast time than other Powerblast, Spear Crusher, and Brandish. You are more "afk" when you use Nate.
• Cannot be used mid-air like the other former 3 mentioned; only if you jump and cast nate at the same time. This is why you'll see Heros doing cardio at 7F (fast cast time on brandish + mid-air usage) while Shads jerk off on the 3rd shelf on the left hand side with the occasional assaulter here and there.
• Simply less DPS ; Shit range, shit cast time, shit damage. All in one package.

Party Utility : Smokescreen is might as well not exist

• 45 seconds of party invincibility every 5 minutes. It's not a necessary skill for parties to have, it's a luxury.
• So let's see, a party "buff" that:
  • Only has a 15% uptime compared to almost every other party buff in the game that has virtually a 100% uptime.
  • Doesn't give extra damage, nor attack speed, nor defensive stats that actually allow your party to do pog damage.
  • Probably only saves your party like 15 pots per smoke, which isn't even that meaningful.

Hands down the worst supportive skill in the game. At this point might as well make it last 3 minutes, remove the invincibility, and give everyone inside smoke 500 avoid instead. At least then you'll actually have a buff that allows your ranged crew to deal constant DPS without interruption for a longer period of time.

Oh, and shad's legit don't benefit from any other party buffs either. Maybe SE on the final dash of nate, but it's hardly used unless u wanna do some extra damage on Zak or something while tanking its body. But seriously, left Shads benefit from SI down to speed 1 or some shit. Let SE affect all lines of nate.

Meso Guard : A skill that is holding shadowers back

Meso guard is just a sad crutch that allows you to get away without having to heavily wash, but this skill just assures that you will shoot yourself in the foot regardless of what you choose to do anyways. Buccs and Warriors get like 50hp (around that ballpark) something per wash, and many wash to 20k + hp clean, so they're pretty much immortal in every bossing situation; compared to how easy and how fast warriors can wash, meso guard is nothing special in this case. And as long as ranged attackers can tank just about anything you can with meso guard, this ability is obsolete. No one cares if you take half damage from a 1/1 when you can just drink a P.E. and say it's k. Damned if you choose to wash, damned if you don't. Just force shads to heavily wash like the majority of the ranged roster and buff their damage. This skill needs to be removed ASAP unless staff plans to keep shads piss weak forever. REMOVE MESO GUARD FROM THE GAME



Other things off the top of my head:

• Your cleave damage at CWKPQ is laughable (I'm doing 9.2mil at lvl 17x meanwhile a hero that is 10 lvls under me is hitting 16mil???).
• Then when you wanna have fun at HT and finally do as much damage as the rest of your crew because of how pog shads are at afk cleaving? Nah, you get slapped onto being SED for the next hour to hour an a half. You don't get dpm bragging rights. You're just a class that will be used and abused like a rag doll. Don't even get me started when you gotta move to heads, even if you're not sed your dpm falls dramatically because of nate's poor damage.
• Everything about class doesn't make sense. You have the shittiest 1st and 2nd job, then proceed onto a short lived 3rd job that relies on gimmicky skill that scales horribly and is hardly used ever again. When you FINALLY hit 4th job, only then do you find out staff describes shad as a "support class" in one of their balance updates not too long ago when they buffed smokescreen. But ironically, as stated before, shads are not as supportive as other attacking classes that also have more damage.
• High avoidability and I-frames (high survivability) -- perks that people love to tout about shads -- won't matter a few years from now when you'll have NLs and BMs with 20k clean hp swarming the server like locusts. Only then, hopefully, will shads will receive the very past-overdue rework they deserve.

Of course, I'm not a pro shad, but this is my opinion about the class.

Maybe I'm wrong, someone please correct me.

 

I have never played shadower before so I cannot comment on most of your opinion.

However this, I find it really hard to ignore.

This is a skill that literally DOUBLES your EXISTING HP, I don't see how this skill us bad in anyways.

Lets see, the clutch to survive PB based on what others have said is 15k before HB (which is 7.5k before meso guard)

So for Bucc, 14k before T10 ring. For shad, 6.5k before T10 ring.

Using chew's calculator:
For bandit, you can hit it at lvl 150, 120 base int


For Bucc, you can hit it at lvl 165, 120 base int


For reference, bandit lvl 165, with 120 base int


It's exceeds what buccs can achieve.

Don't forget, for other classes, T10 ring is 1k HP, for shad its friggin 2k HP

 

DKs are awesome but bossing can be stressful until you’ve mastered zerk. I think this is the biggest con to playing a DK because you have to spend more effort than other classes to constantly maintain 55% HP and below during boss runs without dying. You will also have to use at least 2-3 different HP pots to do this and the pot cost for DK (even with sushi introduced) is insane…. We are decent at farming though I guess

 

One underrated part of dark knight is how quickly you reach full power. You only really need 2 skills to properly boss with DK - maxed Berserk and maxed Power Stance. Beholder's a quick 10 skillpoint improvement to DPS also.

Paladin in comparison takes a bit of investment - Blast is your single target for bossing, but you also want to max Heavens Hammer pretty quick for both mobbing and bossing. You need to max ACB if you're gonna mob asap. You also need Power Stance for bossing and you're probably gonna want to max Holy/Divine Charge asap too.

Shadower - Boomerang Step, Shadow Shifter, Taunt, Assassinate.

So of these DK is the most convenient but its also the most annoying to play in the middle of a boss run, maintaining that Zerk threshold/not burning too many pots

 

Congratulations on making the only correct choice