Ideal single target DPM ranking.

What makes shadowers primarily a cleave class? They have a 4th job single-target skill in Assassinate.
Are paladins a cleave class because they have Charged Blow/Advanced Charge?

 

*watches the thread*

 

Are there additional perks that survivability grants outside of the aforementioned content where mass/random sed is relevant? Sure, but I wouldn't say they are ones that translate to in-game benefits insomuch as they are are IRL benefits as they relate to Netflix viewing and porn downloading uptime. Should class balance take into consideration how many episodes of One Piece you can get through in one run?

Ease of gameplay as it relates directly to survivability is relevant only under circumstances where one fears dying, and outside of DK/sair zerking shenanigans and the aforementioned content where mass/random sed is relevant, those circumstances have more to do with the state of how washed one is rather than the class one is playing. With the exception of being yeeted into core blaze by a stray maverick, a well-washed archer that is actually playing the game, for example, will never need to genuinely fear for their lives outside of PB and auf, the content where survivability matters most and for which we had already established that buccs (and several others) make better picks. I would otherwise detach ease of gameplay from survivability and relate it to how little one has to reposition their character as a result of avoid/iframes/stance or being ranged, or in other words the degree to which one can maximize Netflix viewing uptime before having to look back over to the other screen, which is something buccs, heroes, paladins and NLs excel at as well.

And to speak more broadly to the point of ease of gameplay dictating the terms of what level of damage output is acceptable for a class, I think a class that is genuinely difficult to play (i.e. DK and sair) deserves to have competitive damage because no one wants to undertake a difficult task that has no payout. A hard class that does bad damage when played well would just be bad design. I don't agree with the inverse however, which is to say that the relative easiness of a class shouldn't in any way constrain the range of damage deemed acceptable, particularly when the degree to which one class is more difficult than another (apart from the aforementioned two) is incredibly marginal in the mushroom game that we play and especially when NL of all classes is generally considered to be the title holder of #1 DPS.

I also find it somewhat ironic that whenever the topic of shad is brought up lately, the subject of dual client attacking always manages to surface as a pro for the class when shads aren't actually all that ideal for that purpose (T-Rex arms and lower damage output), contrary to what many seem to believe, and that buccs are actually better suited for it (ranged triple demo macro and barrage + DS macro). Ignoring for the moment the fact that neither of us actually believe that classes should be balanced by how multi-client friendly they are (unless I am wrong and you are of the opinion that NLs should be one of the lowest damage dealers), the tie-in of survivability to dual client attacking seems mostly hypothetical. By that I mean almost no one has ever bothered with dual client attacking at bosses where survivability is relevant in a multiclient context (god rest faith's soul), not to mention that shad would be one of the worst attackers to choose for dual client attacking at PB (ask any of the shads on the Pasta3 squad omegalul), for example. Multiclient attacker setups are generally done at bosses where surviving is trivial, e.g. zakum (looks at -ovv's multi-NL army), nameless, CWKPQ and core blaze, for which a plethora of classes would produce better results than shad. Think pally + sair/NL for nameless, BM + hero for cwk, bucc + BM for dunas2, hero/pally + any range at core, etc. I don't even know of anyone who regularly dual client attacks in HT, a fact surprises me truthfully.

What about shad's original design lent itself to being a "cleaver"? They have their own separate skills for single target and cleaving as with every other class apart from heroes and DKs. Furthermore, jump bstep wasn't a feature in GMS and nor could you use bstep near edges and the delay between bsteps was so high you could fit in two BoTs, all of which is to say that cleaving in HT and CWK as a shad was certainly not a thing originally.

Moreover, allow me to put forth this question: why aren't paladins referred to as cleavers if shads supposedly are when their cleave output is greater than shads? The only logical conclusion to arrive at is that it is simply because paladins also have high single target output. In other words, shads are "cleavers" not because of their cleave output but because their single target damage currently does not surpass that of hero and DK, which makes for a rather flimsy and whimsical basis for cleaver identity assignment for it would imply that buccs would be reclassified as cleavers if their single target damage matched shads and that shads would all of a sudden give up their hypothetical cleaver card if they ever got a ~12% or so single target buff.

I'm also not sure if throwing out a smokescreen once every 10 minutes (by original design) by itself qualifies shad to be support and so I take issue with the unnuanced lumping of shads and buccs. Shad is only as much support as archers are support, and if we say that archers too are support to be consistent, then I have to ask why people take issue with one single target support (bucc) doing as much damage as another single target support (archer) at certain bosses. The reasonable take to assume here would be that buccs are much closer to true support than either of the above and because buccs offer much more utility than archers they should also do less single target damage to compensate. In that same vein, buccs should probably do less damage than shads.

Anyways, I'll leave it here since I think your original post was trying to say more about buccs than it was shads and I don't want to overextend the tangent.

 

You can actually get upwards of 46-48% dodge chance at HT on endgame archers

 

buff mages

 

I personally do find it sad that shads are so rare. I like the kit and wish more people play shads but they, like me, are probably put-off by their weak dmg.

 

Shads aren't particularly rare. They are towards the bottom in class popularity but are still more popular at late game than buccs, MMs and sairs, and are only slightly behind heroes and DKs.

 

There seem to be alot of midgame shads lvl 120-180 but not many late/endgame.

 

Assuming SE + SI on Dummy targets:

1. Hyper-zerking DK (because it's expensive and hard)
2. Sair (because hard)
   
3. BM / MM (MM should do more with SI, less without it)
4. Pally vs Fire/Holy weak (because melee + situational)
5. NL (solid kit for a middle-of-the-road workhorse attacker)
6. Pally vs Neutral
7. Hero
8. Typical DK
9. Shad (IME Shad's Dummy:Real DPM ratio is much better than most, so it should be lower on Dummy rankings)
10. Bucc

IMO a class losing DPM in exchange for providing Party Buffs is not an enjoyable design. Buffs are for the party; it just doesn't feel very rewarding to main what is essentially a mule especially in ML where party buffs boil down to "press this button every once in a while". DPM tradeoff should be for features that make a class individually more powerful, versatile, easy/difficult, or enjoyable. Mobility, avoidability, durability, economics, range, mobbing, hitboxes etc. affect the active player's gameplay. Pressing SE does not make Archer more enjoyable, it just transforms it from sub-human into sub-NL.

I.E. If we disregard party buffs, BM has almost nothing going for it aside from single target DPM and minor crowd control. It's immobile, squishy, no avoid/stance, poor mobbing, can't even pot while attacking, and needs to channel Hurricane as opposed to just shooting 6 stars in 1 tap. I think it's reasonable for a class with such disabilities to be very high on the single target DPM chart. NL on the other hand, even if they were 6th on the DPM chart, would still be attractive because of Range + FJ + Alchemist + Shadow Shifter + no-cast time Shadow Star (although I think their reliance on SE would have to be re-tuned).

On the other hand of the spectrum, even if Bucc had dogwater DPM, they still have top tier CC + i-Frames, and are decent at durability/mobbing/pot costs/playability/flexibility etc.

 

Yeah true, great points

I guess I just wanted to be clear overall Shads tend to perform much better than Dummy DPM would suggest, so putting them 9th on the list isn't to suggest I think they should be weak attackers - it's more that Dummy DPM isn't a good measurement of their value.