Shadower changes you’d want

I have to agree, a buff to shield mastery (along with defence rework), and increased assaulter range would be justified.

 

Smokescreen's AOE ought to negate dispels

 

An often overlooked feature of Assaulter is its ability to ignore wdef on mobs your level or below. I believe separating this out to its own skill in 3rd or 4th job would go a long way towards increasing Shadower viability for more content, dpm-wise. As for what %, I leave it to more data oriented Legends and Balance Team members to determine.

 

I want Shadowers to have the possibility, at the max possible sweating made from gear.

To be able to reach almost 100% avoid on any monster (even some bosses).
Would be cool to just join a boss party, sit in a chair and go out to eat something, come back and no damage.

 

Ah yes, better sed mules

 

I would like if possible a change in the hit box of band if thieves. As it is now, it’s horrid. At times I have a mob right in front of me but it will not activate the skill. It’s the same thing with the skill steal. Makes me too reliant on other skills because of how often I miss.

 

I believe it's because you have to hit the monster, right? And it's all based on Dagger range, which feels shorter than knuckle range hilariously lol

 

Peak download efficiency

 

Although some of these might've been mentioned here are my favorite ones
1. Smoke giving a crit rate/crit damage buff. This one i like since it would give shadowers an identity in groups (right now with their lackluster damage both in single target and cleave increased party utility seems like a good approach) this changed eventually made it to postbb maple.
2.Half the damage on bstep, double the lines. The whole point of this one is to increase the effectiveness of sharp eyes. It would buff cleave which is in currently not so great for shads in the scenario of having SE
3. Straight assassinate buff. Be it making it crit with a base critrate, flat damage or any other way see fit.
4. Reworking charged nate buff by changing the ied debuff for increased damage buff/critrate/critdmg (if nate crits)

Out of all of these my favorite is #1. In a game where damage is all that matters it's hard to balance attackers but i believe giving each class a trademark/identity helps solve the issue. Shads would provide the party with a sort of "burst" during smoke. Since this is a global buff on damage (specially SE dependant classes)it's definitely a slippery slope but i believe it's a cool concept.

 

I had a random intrusive thought of something that I believe could work. Perhaps decreasing the duration of the assassinate animation but keeping the delay the same. The benefits of this change include the possibility to use nate into other skills in the newly created downtime. This would make the Shadower gameplay more dynamic perhaps nate + sb on pure single target, nate + bstep in cleave scenarios making shadowers pseudo-cleavers (Single target plus multitarget skill in a combo). Also helps a bit with nate animation being too long and keeping you stuck. The numbers would have to be well thought out to keep balance in check but I have no doubt our balance team can sort through that if this could even be considered

Bonus change that I think would be pretty cool is no target assaulter. It's significantly slower than flash jump and teleport but fits the thief concept. Would make sense to have Shadowers more mobile than warriors truly.

 

I'd like to see smokescreen giving a percentage to one shot, sort of like how archers have Mortal Blow.

If anyone isn't familiar with how Mortal Blow works it,

the reason that I think this would be cool to have is because ninjas in games like Tenchu Z sort of have this ability, its called the "Izuna Drop".

Spoiler

Giving a Shadower the ability to one shot a monster using Smokescreen and Assassinate instead of Dark Sight would be a pretty cool addition, having this would also give in situations to use Smokescreen for the ability or to use Smokescreen the way it is now.

Although if no one likes this idea thats okay too since I'm just spit-balling this idea here, Zorele has a pretty neat idea towards their Smokescreen suggestions.

 

I would like shadowers to have some shadow skills and by that I mean shadow partner

 

Smokescreen's visuals should *edit* expire sooner than its effect so party members have some warning they're about to die

 

I assume you meant the reverse, that smoke's effect should last longer than the visual, i.e. the smoke visual should vanish something like a second earlier so players have an advance notice they're vulnerable again?

That was actually one of the ideas I was in favor of for addressing two minor issues with smoke, one of which you already basically mentioned, so I'm glad you brought that up. Getting "perfect framed", i.e. hit at the same time smoke visual dissipates can be especially cruel. The other issue would be that despite smoke lasting 45 seconds, depending on the scenario, players may not actually get to take full advantage of its 45 second duration if they're not keeping a timer or counting out the seconds in their head, which just about no one does. For example, if one is in PB body or Berga and they see a sed note or laser coming while they're in the final 10 or so seconds of smoke, they might start ducking prematurely as they don't know exactly when the smoke will end and the punishment for getting caught off guard is immense. Situations like these lower the overall effective uptime of smoke.