Bonus power evo of cloak doesnt work

Very little of it with the Shadow build in question, however.

i will not say melee SS build is top tier in terms of efficiency, but u still can easily take a spot in the gold solo speedrun HoF with it. And i find it quite efficient personally, while pretty boring at time in team games.

One of the most damaging power, with a sword, every 2.5 sec ...
Put a sabotaging partner in the equation, and you out dps everything but flamers/nade/reegar (that s a wild guess )

No, although I usually am on some level.



You keep saying inaccurate things about the build as proof that you know how it works.

I doubt your Valiant is comparable because of two reasons: 1) I'm using ES on the Atlas and 2) I'm using a Hurricane on the Atlas. The build can easily carry a Hurricane sidearm and most people who use it carry some equivalent. I keep telling you that using extreme and specific examples doesn't reflect any understanding of how the game actually works when you play it as a Power/Melee Shadow. If you play that build like a Valiant Sniper, it won't work well, but that's because of how you're playing it.

It does not "take forever" to kill things with the build. Especially not a brute. A brute takes a Shadow Strike + your choice of many things that take about 1 or 2 seconds, in practically the order of your choice. Paladin, Hurricane, Melee, ES, another Shadow Strike, whatever you want to use will work. Melee will come with some blowback, but it's easily survivable.




With Tactical Cloak and a Hurricane, it takes about as long as it does for most kits. Maybe a little longer, but for the sake of one enemy taking an an extra 5 seconds or so, I'm not going to abandon a kit I happen to like. Besides, the Praetorian messes up most kits that I use way more than it messes with the Shadow (or any infiltrator.)



And yet I do it effectively with several different melee builds. I guess I'm just magical.

But do play whatever you like.

It's possible (in fact, likely) that you will filter everything I say through a lens that interprets it all as attacks on something of which I am a "fanboy." It makes for a convenient way of dismissing my arguments, because I'm using facts, and it's hard to argue with facts. It's easier to dismiss everything I say with "you're a Shadow fanboy" than actually address any of it.

But, in reality, it is a subject about which I am knowledgeable. You are are making incorrect or inaccurate statements about game mechanics and kits in a thread about sorting out those very things regarding the Shadow. So all I'm doing is countering the misinformation with facts for the benefit of people reading the thread. Edit: Oh, and obviously I am also separately disagreeing with your opinion about the Shadow, but I honestly don't care about that part. Hate the kit all you like.

I've played with the Shadow a fair amount and have mostly had fun. Can't say I recall consistently scoring particularly heavily with her (not that that matters terribly, though I do like to hold my own) but that could be because I'm off-host-lagging, the other players are either better than me  or they're using heavily cheesed-up characters (Harrier TGI, Venom AIU etc.), or whatever other excuses I can come up with at the time.

When playing with her, I take 'Duration' and 'Bonus Power' in Tactical Cloak and then Shadow Strike whenever it's safe to do-so. For a weapon, I like the Wraith because I can equip the Omni-Blade and the High-Velocity Barrel without the extra weight (it's light in the first place) affecting my cooldown as it's non-DLC. Lovely stuff.

Of course it's essential to cloak out of the enemy's LoS or else they'll likely gang-up and rip you a new one. She needs, IMO, to be played decidedly tactically because she's pretty squishy and therefore can't bite off as much as, say, a KroGuard without getting quickly hammered. All in all, the Shadow isn't a favourite character of mine but I'm glad she's around because she brings variety - in the form of her unique power (Shadow Strike) - to the game. It annoys me that she can't SS an Atlas: not fixing that particular bug was I suppose another example of Bioware/EA's couldn't-give-a-shit attitude and/or them just being as LAZY AS FUCK.

I've pretty much settled with the duration bonus power build. Didn't really notice difference in damage of to shadow strikes, but I'm no scientific player. And I pretty much complement the kit with maximum consumables geared to melee damage. iirc, every mook goes down and phantoms sometimes take the dot to die. And what isn't dead gets a shotgun-melee-shotgun combo in the worst case and THEN they're dead.

Could never figure out to reliably kill ravagers with shadow strike, tho.

You gotta pop their sacks, make sure there are no swarmers and make sure you will not die to the goo. Might as well just shoot it to death and run past 

Oh, yeah I'm playing a Shadow with SS build. I...MUST...SHADOW...STRIKE! Oh noes, A swarmer and I'm all out of missiles!!! Drops ded   

Of course I don't really like the Shadow, because she sucks. Shadow is the Argus of kits. You need to sacrifice so many things and specifically tailor the build to make it halfway decent. 

Argus needs a kit with accuracy or stability boost and either stability or scope or stability gear or ALL of that to make it work okay. But then you lose damage or capacity or piercing. 

Shadow needs omni blade or pistol stunner, that means no capacity or piercing or damage. Or she needs another weapon and switch around like an idiot. She has to take either melee and be squishy or health and suck at SS. She needs to take either sword damage or speed. She needs to take either damage in SS or durability. The Cyclonic mod is nearly mandatory for her which means no Adrenaline and no speed boost, which would be amazing. She has to gimp her cloak damage for Duration. She needs to either take weapon damage or power damage and suck at one or the other. 

All these sacrifices and compromises to make a build that's decent. 

With most other kits you can easily slap all the things that enhance their already powerful abilities and go to town as a beast with little to no loss in damage/usability. 

That's why I don't like the Shadow and never did. 

From across the map. With a shotgun. While I have a teleport ability handy. I usually leave them to others in this case.

When you SS, you lose control in Shadow Strike and for about 1.5 seconds after SS. Those split seconds are everything. With other Infiltrators you are ALWAYS in control and you never lose sight of enemies.  

It's at this point that I have to conclude that you're on the Red Sand, or at the very least being a mischievous little Volus embarked on an ultimately doomed wind-up mission. The Cyclonic is the biggest clue, but bringing the Argus into the debate is simply discombobulating. SURELY YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS?!? 

Said it before and I'll say it again (and again) - Melee Piranha Shadow has none of the weaknesses you continually bring up. I'm not saying it's the only way to play her, as it clearly isn't, but she is not the character you describe. And Swarmers kill more than Shadows btw.

As a semi-serious question, I'll ask you what you do when you're playing your Valiant build and suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself with two Possessed Abombs bearing down on you...... while you suspect two of the other BSNers in your lobby have maneuvered themselves behind you? I can cloak and heavy melee them both simultaneously and almost instantly, while you either gel or wait to be revived. Amirite?! Oh no, I forgot - you hate the Shadow so wouldn't be playing her in the first place. Missing out on the fun.

Also, I remember you originally talked about variety, but you don't seem to recognize that having a single Infiltrator with Duration Cloak is in itself variation, and she is not hampered by it in practice, especially if you actually know what you're doing....