Musings on the State of Shadowers

Gurk · Dec 3, 2021

codiacs said: ↑

Unless we can really cut down on the pickpocket lag reliably. Even then I feel like a pp buff still wouldn't be very impactful. Though who knows, the effectiveness of #3 is probably gonna be up to public opinion
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If halving proc rate isn't enough to do away with the supposed lag, we could go even further, i.e. reduce proc rate from 60% to as low as something like 10%, though as Dan mentioned below if PP generated meso bags then only the shad would be able to loot them. Hopefully an exception could be coded somehow for PP mesos.

codiacs said: ↑

If we buffed #1, we could perhaps get closer to bowmaster numbers in PB. Which I think would make us more justifiable to consider for utility reasons in the grand scheme of things. (I believe that would put shad single target dpm numbers closer to sair numbers with really good gear in HT [Based off of your (Gurk's) single target dpm on the HT thread], which I think is fine and dandy.)
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Considering skar has gotten as high as 4.5m in PB, that doesn't seem likely
As for my shad's "single target" dpm, it still featured some minor cleaving in that I made use of nate-bstep. That being said, sairs can get over 9m in HT so even with taking my shad's DPM at face value it would still be a long way off, not that I think shad numbers should be close to sair numbers. A hero or DK in that same situation would have also done just about the same in single-target if not more, with the upside of being able to occasionally double or even triple that figure with cleaving.

codiacs said: ↑

Nameless is pretty rough, even when you get high rolls on your lines consecutively, since the boss moves pretty fast. (Unless a nate attack speed buff is on the table o_o) Once again, I don't run nameless often either. But I do have a fresh memory of trying to pin it alone LOL.

I think in general, introducing shads more into a pinner role is a good way to put some more utility into their class identity. It's already kinda feasible in certain situations. Nate attack speed would help alot with this, though you still have to be pretty strong to pin a 50k boss (scar/targ/nameless/dunas).
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Yeah, pinning nameless as a shad is a bit scuffed with how slow it is. From what I remember, as long as I was doing 50k+ consecutively and having those numbers appear early on (i.e. within the first two lines) it was fine. However, as soon as I had a nate that had no 50k+ lines or ones where the 50k+ lines were appearing last, nameless would just run off into the sunset and into all the mules. My hope was that if bstep was also doing 50k+ lines, that it would help support the pin as it would come out faster.

That being said, a QoL change and potential buff I've proposed before was removing the need to first use DS for nate, which would make playing shad more friendly for those with high ping. It would of course also make nate faster, which would probably have to take on at least a bit of the delay from DS so as to not be too strong, but ideally still faster.

Gurk · Dec 3, 2021

iPippy said: ↑

Other than terrible damage on pickpocket mesos itself, everyone cites the lag machine of pickpocket as an issue. I'm honestly not sure to what extent pp lag is true, and think at least part of it is a social misconception. It's not unheard of for a map to have tons of spawns (zak, ht), or even a map to have tons of items (any grind map), and think if pp lag does exist it isn't the fact that it places lots of money on the ground, but rather that it either generates money too fast or there's something in the pp specific code to create this issue compared to normal drops. A lower proc chance with larger bags might alleviate this issue while letting explosion actually be worth the time to cast.
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From what I can tell, I believe it is not the generation of mesos from PP that causes the lag but rather both the pile up (if left alone for a long time; some players have reported lagging as a result of all the meso bags lying around due to sweeper changes) and the continual looting of the mesos, i.e. the continual stream of messages on the side letting you know how much mesos you've picked up and/or the mesos actually entering your inventory. I have heard from friends that having two shads use PP in HT would cause their manual potting to be delayed.

Alyosha · Dec 3, 2021

iPippy said: ↑

Other than terrible damage on pickpocket mesos itself, everyone cites the lag machine of pickpocket as an issue. I'm honestly not sure to what extent pp lag is true, and think at least part of it is a social misconception. It's not unheard of for a map to have tons of spawns (zak, ht), or even a map to have tons of items (any grind map), and think if pp lag does exist it isn't the fact that it places lots of money on the ground, but rather that it either generates money too fast or there's something in the pp specific code to create this issue compared to normal drops. A lower proc chance with larger bags might alleviate this issue while letting explosion actually be worth the time to cast.
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The problem with pickpocket mesos being looted is that for folks manual potting, you get loads of ghost inputs that don't go through. If there are lines of mesos being spammed in the corner of your screen, you're simply unable to pot for a short while. It might be related to failing to go through portals while potting or being able to climb past teleport ropes by spamming potions. In HT it has potential to kill DKs if Wings are still up, so it's an added risk for anyone who relies on anything other than pet pot.

LeonardoJF · Dec 4, 2021

redux on time needed to assassinate damage to 0 or close to 0 will be a hugue dps improve

flow · Mar 11, 2022

Gurk said: ↑

Shads are cleavers.
Paladins are not considered cleavers.
Shad 3-target cleave is worse than Paladin 3-target cleave (by 10-15%).

Heroes and DKs are cleavers.
Shad 3-target cleave is over 40% weaker than Hero/DK 3-target cleave.
Shad 4-target cleave is about 25% weaker than Hero/DK 3-target cleave.
Shad 4-target cleave is about the same as Hero/DK 2-target cleave.

Sairs, NLs, and archers are single target attackers.
Sair(with 65% free fire)/NL/archer 3-target cleave is 35-40% weaker than shad 3-target cleave.
MM 3-target pierce damage is 15-20% weaker than shad-3 target cleave.

In other words, shad cleave damage is vastly closer to the cleave damage of single target attackers than they are to other cleavers. However, they receive zero compensation in the area of single target damage to make up for it, still doing less single target damage than other cleavers.

So what do shads get in exchange for its poor performance in both single target and cleave relative to other cleavers?

1. Lower pot costs
2. High survivability
3. Smokescreen

We can mull over these points to get an idea as to whether shads are getting a fair shake.

no.

1. Lower Pot Costs
Do the lower pot costs justify the lower damage output? The average end game shad uses roughly 100 honsters per HT run and then incurs an additional 200-300k in meso guard costs. Let's ballpark that total at 500k mesos.

A typical 30k HP hero/pally uses roughly 300 honsters per HT run, which is 840k mesos. A 15k HP bucc uses 200-300 honsters per HT run, which we'll also just ballpark at 840k mesos (a 30k HP bucc uses as low as 100 honsters). Would anyone in their right mind give up significant damage to save 300-400k in mesos (~2% of average 6-man HT splits)?

We could also look at the pot costs of ranged characters, but that of course varies too greatly with the amount of washing done. As a reference point, my 16k HP 19x MM also uses roughly 300 honsters per run. And it doesn't really need to be mentioned that NLs use barely more pots than shads.

2. High Survivability
What does higher survivability mean in a 2003 mushroom game? The higher avoid and shifter means shads don't get hit by all that much, but the rate at which one gets hit merely reflects how often one needs to press the pot button, or rather how often they need to deal with auto pot failures, which falls under the purview of player "skill". Dying because one doesn't pot in time is a player skill issue.

So what about situations where you can't pot, i.e. when you're seduced in HT and PB? Meso guard halves "1/1s", which in conjunction with their high avoid and shifter means they have a very high chance of surviving a sed. This is where we will focus our attention with regards to "high survivability".

With the current state and meta of HT, one is only ever truly in danger to sed if they are the sed target as mass sed pretty much never happens until all heads are down, i.e. when there is no danger remaining. Naturally, shads make the perfect choice for sed target. I ask this though: can we really count the high survivability of shads as a plus for the class here when they wouldn't have a real place in HT outside of fulfilling the role of sed duty? That is to say, shads have high survivability out of necessity to be relevant or they would be thoroughly outclassed by heroes and DKs.

As for PB- just kidding, shads aren't brought to PB.

Okay, fine. There are like 1-2 shads doing PB but sed during statues is almost entirely moot in current PB (#EndRightBirdAggroAbuse) except in rare freak accidents, and during body phase all melee characters can just tank touch or duck under platform to avoid sed anyways.

In short, it doesn't seem fair to award points to shads for their higher survivability in the current meta as it doesn't win them anything extra outside of a bit of comfort. The game would have to feature mass sed or random seds more prominently for it to be meaningful (HT rework?).

3. Smokescreen
Smokescreen, the defining skill that separates shads from the rest of the pack. And yet also a bit on the mediocre side even after it was already buffed. It is because of this skill alone that shads are pigeonholed to the role of support. Does smokescreen redeem the class and does it do enough supporting? As much as I'd like to simply and cheekily answer that with the question "are shads brought to PB, NT or CWK", I shall exercise some restraint.

I remember my time as a late 140-150s shad when no zak group would even want to take me; I would get ghosted time after time or be passed over for some int lord. Later, that mold would come to fit CWK as well all the way into my 180s. It's the origin story of how I came to create my own bossing server: if no one was going to take a shad, I decided I would just host my own runs. But enough of anecdotes. Everyone loves smoke but just how much do players value it? Does anyone ever take a shad over another class expressly because of it or is it simply a luxury?

To first answer that in a more cursory manner, I will point out that every useful skill under the sun, i.e. HS, HB, SI, SE, TL, and HH, has been muled heavily to the moon and back. And yet there was never any prominent movement where smoke saw any significant muling. Surely smoke mules would have gained traction at some point if it was actually useful enough. Now sed mules on the other hand... but I digress.

Smoke lasts 45 seconds and has a CD of 5 minutes (rip the days of badly needed pee breaks with 1 min smoke ). This means it has a max uptime of 15% (lower in practice when factoring cancels, smoke not going off immediately off CD, etc). For it to be a truly significant asset, it would have to have a tremendous effect on the DPM of a character during that small window to make up for the "liability" of bringing a shad in the first place. For non-DK warriors, smoke has almost no impact on DPM because of stance except during statue phase in PB because of the stuns (which can be largely mitigated by jumping into statue), and for DKs the impact is still marginal (outside of PB) in the hands of a skilled DK. The impact on DPM for shads and NLs, needless to say, is also relatively non-existent. Buccs spend 2/3rds of their time enjoying iframes with demo spam, which means they see only minor gains if smokes are sync'd with their ST uptime, and off ST they still at least have partial stance, meaning they only see significant gains when smoke is up while they're both off ST and don't have charge. That's not to dismiss the gains entirely but they're still relatively minor. In any case, they're usually on the opposite side in HT. That leaves just sairs and archers, the largest beneficiaries of smoke.

In a relentless fight such as HT, sairs and archers peak with about a 65% damage efficiency/free fire ratio. This means during smoke they essentially do roughly 50% more damage during that 45 second interval, which translates to at most a ~8% increase in their overall DPM across the fight. For an archer with 11m dummy dpm, this reflects about a 500k increase in DPM, and for a sair with 14m dummy dpm, a 700k increase in DPM.

These gains are of course overstated however as it ignores possibilities such as party members not being in position for the smoke, usefulness of smoke being cut short due to a cancel or dispel, the shad not smoking immediately off CD, and parts of the fight where smoke does little to help (i.e. preheads/arms/wings). Realistically, the gains are probably at best closer to half of the above numbers, i.e. 200-300k. In a average 6-man squad that features something like a bish, bucc, archer, DK and two NLs, the DPM gain a squad might see would be somewhere in the ballpark of 1 mil.

Assuming a sed mule is already present so that bringing a shad is not necessary, is it beneficial to bring a shad for smoke over another warrior or ranged attacker when both a hero/DK or NL/sair would do significantly more damage than a shad? Unlikely unless the squad is an outlier and is comprised entirely of sairs and/or archers. Furthermore, the above example highlights a fight where characters are bombarded with attacks and have to reposition the most in the game. That is to say that it is here that the gains of smoke are most favorably portrayed. Elsewhere, they are infinitely lower.

DPM considerations aside, there is also the benefit in being able to safely secure resses, though I would say this upside is rather niche. It is relevant only for mages and other shads (imagine bringing more than one), buying a bit of time for buyers in scuffed AFK runs, and in PB when someone who can't tank dies on top of body (pushing the bean aside wastes a bit of time and DPM).

Altogether, I would not say that the benefits of smoke are to a degree that bringing a shad over another attacker would be seen as desirable, outside of replacing a hero or pally in PB, which is a rather moot point as neither class is seen as desirable in PB in the first place, and nor should it hold back the class from seeing other buffs when both buccs and DKs possess superior support utility while still doing more damage.

So what could be changed...?

There are 4 general ways I see to improve shads: buffing single target damage, buffing cleave damage, buffing pickpocket utility, and buffing smoke.

1. Buffing Single Target Damage
Frankly, this one is my least favorite and the one that would probably least affect the class's position in the meta. Sure, we could buff nate damage to be higher or comparable to that of heroes and DKs, and it'd be a welcome change to be sure, but it doesn't exactly help carve out a niche for shads. In any single target situation, buccs, pallies and ranged attackers would be preferred and in cleaving situations heroes, DKs and pallies would still be superior. I suppose if shad single target damage was higher than heroes and DKs, the "jAcK oF aLl TrAdEs" meme would at least be lent more legitimacy, for better or worse . That being said, buffing nate would increase the effectiveness of shads as pinners at bosses such as nameless, dunas and scar/targa.

2. Buffing Cleave Damage
If shad single target damage is to remain low, it seems to me that a significant cleave damage buff should very much be in order. It's a bit crazy that a so-called cleaver can do less cleave dpm than a non-cleaver (pally) and also have their 4-target cleave damage only be as good as the 2-target cleave damage of heroes and DKs. I think it seems reasonable to expect that shad 4-target cleave should do at least as much damage as hero/DK 3-target cleave, if not slightly more. That would however require about a 40% damage buff to bstep, which seems a bit bonkers at first glance. Would that really break anything though? What are the implications of such a large change?

Well, for starters it would mean shads would be better at grinding early on, which doesn't seem too crazy. After all, shads were originally known to be the fastest grinders after mages before the taunt nerf. It wouldn't make much of a difference for grinding at late game as shads and warriors can already clear out everything on their respective sides before the next respawn kicks in.

It would also mean shads would be better at farming earlier on, whether that be at ML5 or at CWK doing the exchange (a scam unless you can run sku.exe). Again, it wouldn't change anything at late game as strong shads can already 1-shot chief memory guardians and nightshadows.

As for the bossing implications, it would mean shads would still be able to deal solid damage to the heads at HT while cleaving 4 parts, which would likely make them desirable enough to bring even with an already existing sed mule. At present, though the overall damage from a cleaving shad that isn't sed target isn't too shabby, the damage dealt to the heads, the most important parts, leaves something to be desired (for reference, bstep dummy dpm on a single target for an end game shad with perf gear is around 4.5-5m). And at CWK, while they would of course still be outputting less damage on cleave than their hero and DK counterparts (but finally more than pallies), they would at least be able to achieve over 20m DPM, which is respectable enough that shads wouldn't be treated as second-class citizens for cleave picks. Moving further down the line, it would also mean shads would be just as good as hero and DK cleavers at zak arms.

A 40% damage buff to bstep also has pinning implications. In conjunction with nate, shads might finally be able to pin well enough to fill the high demand role of nameless pinner, a job which usually belongs to pallies and sometimes IL mages and buccs, as nate pin by itself is bit wonky with how slow it is and doesn't always KB. It would also, somewhat inadvertently, buff shad single target damage a bit as it would result in nate-bstep once again being higher DPM than pure nate. Nate-bstep being the new go-to for single target damage also allows shads to lean further into their class identity of being untouchable as it would increase their effective avoidability through more iframes, and also allows them to benefit to a degree from SE and pickpocket in single target scenarios.

An alternative and more fun way to tackle the cleave damage disparity might be through a combination of changes to both pickpocket and meso explosion. When neckson first introduced these two skills into the chief bandit tool kit, it seemed like they expected players to actually make use of meso explosion while grinding with PP, especially since PP mesos originally could not be looted by pets. However, doing so was just awful. But what if we could make exploding PP mesos practical?

At present, exploding wads of 200 mesos (the cap for PP) yields a DPM of only ~1.5m on a single target, i.e. 4.5m for 3-target cleave at CWK. For this to actually yield a significant increase in DPM over a run, this damage would likely have to be increased tenfold (since you obviously wouldn't be bombing the entire time but rather once every ~3 minutes). This could potentially be done by rescaling meso explosion so that lower amounts of mesos would do higher damage while not necessarily increasing the top end, and/or increasing the amount of stacks consumed per use. PP could also be tweaked, which ties into the next section.

The issue with this meso explosion approach however is that it would only affect cleave damage at CWK and scarga as PP mesos don't drop anywhere useful in HT or zak. It would however help with grinding in 3rd job without having to spend big bucks bombing your way to 4th job, and in early 4th job.

3. Buffing Pickpocket
We could alternatively choose to forgo damage buffs entirely, accept our fate of forever being at the bottom of the barrel, and instead choose to foray into money-making with mesos per hour being our metric of interest as opposed to DPM. Maybe instead of incentivizing people to bring shads on runs with damage buffs, we could have pickpocket meso generation as the main motivator. At present, having a single shad with PP on while cleaving at CWK or HT puts something like 500k into everyone's pockets by the end of the run. That's not too shabby; it covers almost half of most people's pot costs and increases the average splits from a 6-man HT run by ~3.3%. But we could certainly do better. We could increase it twofold or even threefold by removing the 200 meso cap on PP.

There is a small issue however in that some people report experiencing lag from either the quick generation of mesos or the looting of it, which often discourages shads from using PP in bossing. This could be easily addressed by reducing the proc rate (currently 60%) and increasing the amount of mesos generated by the same proportion, i.e. we could halve proc rate to 30% and then have PP generate mesos equal to damage divided by 50 instead of 100 (with the cap removal). This change could potentially also tie into making exploding PP mesos worthwhile.

Buffing PP alone however would limit this meso generation in bossing primarily to just HT and CWK however as PP does not work with nate for whatever reason, i.e. no gains would be seen in single target bossing. To expand the utility of PP in bossing outside of just these two, PP could be made to work with nate (and while we're at it, #MakeSEWorkWithNate). This would allow us to keep the money printer going brrr at NT and PB.

4. Buffing Smoke
This was an approach that I was originally against because I feared it would only lead to smoke muling and degenerate perma smoke shenanigans but I've since changed my mind on it after some more thought. As some might be aware, there has already been an attempt at making use of several smoke mules in HT and the general consensus was that it was simply not worth the effort. It would require one to routinely move a char to the top on the side while making sure not to fall on their attacker, or to keep it on top at all times and frequently reposition it, in addition to having to accept and leave party or send invites and expel regularly and would likely incur some downtime or suboptimal play. It might not be so difficult if playing on an NL but NLs don't need smoke in the first place.

I also can't see muling a bunch of smoke mules in PB being any more practical either. If you kept them on the right side, they'd most likely end up dying without extreme supervision, something that would prove very difficult when already trying not to die on your main character, and keeping them on the left side would mean you would have to traverse a great distance before being able to get into position to smoke, which again would incur significant downtime. Furthermore, trying to ensure some sort of pseudo perma smoke would require dedicating 5-6 mule slots and would service just one of the 3-5 parties. It would be silly and you would be better off just using those slots for more bucc and bish mules instead. NT runs are already restricted to 6 characters so it wouldn't be feasible there either, not that smoke really benefits attackers all that much in NT.

So just where could one abuse smoke mules if they were hellbent on doing so? Zak? To save pots on CWK cleave? To cut out the archer and avoid dealing with sharks from pirate? Would anyone even care if someone was sweaty enough to bother in such content? You could do AFK runs with purely smoke but that's already possible now and no one does it. And is there any content where having 5-6 real shad players in one party perma-smoking each other that would be unfair or broken? PB is already extremely AFK for shads; they don't need perma smoke. I've also already participated in both a two-party all-shad HT run and a 5-shad 6-man HT run, as well as a 6-shad toad, and I can tell you that, as fun and memey as it was, the smoke was pretty useless for us and we would have been much better off including other attackers instead.

Now that we've largely ruled out the threat of potential smoke abuse, we can actually talk about buffing smoke. As mentioned earlier, smoke lasts 45 seconds and has a 5 min CD, meaning it has a 15% uptime. Though it was already buffed previously (from 1 min duration with 10 min CD, i.e. 10% uptime), I'm asking that we entertain further increasing the uptime to 20%, i.e. bringing back the 1 min duration (pee breaks back on the menu, boys). This would further enhance the gains in squad DPM, and hopefully to the point where smoke might be seen as desirable enough to bring shads to runs instead of just being an occasional luxury. On top of that, smoke could perhaps be changed to act as a holy shield of sorts as currently debuffs and stuns from some bosses can still go through smoke, such as zombify at PB and the whole seal/weakness/darkness shebang at HT. If we wanted to go further, we could even have smoke protect against DR damage and have shads be best friends with BMs, though that might end up trivializing PB if every party ended up having a shad.

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And that basically sums up my thoughts on the current state of shads and my ideas on how they could be buffed into relevancy. If you've actually made it all the way here without skipping to the bottom, go touch some grass. I'll meet you there.
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I really liked the 2nd and third idea, i dont even play shadower, but looks like good changes, they can made pickpocket unlootable too, remove ass charge damage and make ME hit bosses with cancel, looks good for me

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Musings on the State of Shadowers

Gurk Nightshadow

Gurk Nightshadow

Alyosha Skelegon Retired Staff

LeonardoJF Zakum

flow Slimy

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Musings on the State of Shadowers

Gurk Nightshadow

Gurk Nightshadow

Alyosha Skelegon Retired Staff

LeonardoJF Zakum

flow Slimy

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