Shade

103

###  Feature

Each time an enemy attacks the Shade and misses, they receive 150% magic damage.

**Shade** is a ranged minion that players can create, adding to Iratus' army of undead.

## Abilities

Pain Amplification | +5
Pain Reflection | +1

Grand Deception | +2
Trick of The Eye | +1

Dark Gate | +5
Dark Portal | +2

Black Radiance | +5
Black Light | +2

Voidclaws | +1
Gloom Claws | +1

- Does not miss.
- Ignores  Ward.

- Does not miss.
- Ignores  Ward.

- Does not miss.
- Ignores  Ward.
- Removes all  Wards.

Shadows Within Shadows | +4
Deep Shadows | +4

## Strategy

***Role******: Heavy magical damage dealer  - stress dealer  - Counter attacker  - Buff******, Debuff******support - Mana  support - Self-healer  - Position disrupt***

***Upgradable Stats:*** Attack , Vigor , Initiative , Armor , Resistance , Accuracy , Luck , Evasion , Block , Ward

***Best Positions:***

Shade has many utilities. He can take the offensive roles by dealing stress, heavy damage or support his allies with useful Evasion BuffBuff. and Accuracy Debuff. Shade's stats are overall decent: acceptable Vigor , Accuracy , Initiative , high amount of Block  and a very good mix of Evasion  and Luck . His way to play offensively is very unique: most of his attacks being damaging or not depends on enemies rather than his own Attack  and Dread .

Shade combines stress and Vigor  damage to devastating effects. ***Deep Shadows*** is effective against high-Vigor  targets, quickly depletes their Vigor  by percentage % of the current threshold. Therefore, it can't kill a target outright and helps Ghoul  reduce enemies' Vigor  to a suitable threshold for her to use ***Lunch Break***. ***Deep Shadows***, similarly to other traps, synergizes well with minions able to force enemy movement, allowing the trap's effect to apply multiple times before it expires. Shade himself also has such an ability - ***Black Light*** which moves the target forward.

When the Shade activates his ***Pain Reflection*** Stance, he deals stress to anyone causing harm to his squad and himself. This means that his Stance takes effect only if enemies deal damage to minions. If the enemy attack misses due to minion's high Evasion  or is negated by Block  or Ward , the Shade will not retaliate. The higher the damage, the higher the stress received by enemies, so Block , Ward  and other defenses limit the potential of the Stance. Enemies that deal huge damage to multiple targets at once (Hammerer, Mad Mage, Conjuress,...) will likely go insane after attacking a few times. Increasing enemies' damage with Lost Soul's ***Misleading Beauty*** or Vampire's ***Berserk*** might be risky but will accelerate the progress to insanity. Since the ability requires taking high damage to be effective, minions that lacks defenses but has high Vigor  and capable of healing themselves quickly are recommended. Bone Golem , Black Widow  and Ghoul  heals by percentage %. Vampire  and Fallen Dhampir  can be considered, but their self-healing abilities are very unreliable at early stages.

Once enemies' Sanity  is low enough (preferably near zero), Shade can use ***Gloom Claws*** to finish them off or at least take away most of their Vigor  if they have low Resistance  and their missing Sanity  is higher than their current Vigor . If high Luck  is not enough for Shade, use Fate spell to guarantee a massive critical hit from ***Voidclaws***, which will likely result in an instant death. As this move requires Shade to be in the back, equipping Shade with Serpent Skull item is recommended, boosting his Luck  and critical damage for one-shot kills. To complement the massive damage dealt by ***Gloom Claws*** and ***Deep Shadows***, Shade's unique item Void Flame will generously heal Shade and replenish both Mana  and Wrath  as he deals damage. For spell-focused playstyle, the high amount of Wrath  restored helps activate the passive talent Blood Magic (which requires maximum Wrath ) to boost Spellpower, while the Mana  gained can be used for potent spells such as Battle Eternal to fully heal all minions at once. This spell then can act as a substitute for "healer" minions. In situations where Shade can't effectively use ***Gloom Claws*** due to the lack of enemies with Sanity , ***Dark Channeling*** can be used to gain Mana  while ***Dark Gate*** gives Iratus a significant Spellpower boost to cut down Mana  cost of spells or increase their damage.

Shade is an important addition to squads relying on dodging hits to survive. ***Black Radiance*** removes up to 40 Accuracy  from enemies like Rock Golem or Hunky while ***Glimpse The Dark World*** inflicts additional Luck Debuff which can be combined with Mummy's feature  and ***Clinging Wraps*** or Black Widow's ***Spider Strike***. Shade's Debuffs can't stack themselves, but can stack with similar effects of other minions' abilities. ***Trick of The Eye*** is best used on minions with high Evasion  (Banshee , Fallen Dhampir , Infested ,...) in case enemies has too high Evasion  for ***Black Light*** to hit them. Shade can also use this to switch position with other minions to get back in his optimal position when moved or put them in somewhere safer when their Vigor  is low. ***Trick of The Eye*** position switch effect is not counted as real movement and thus is safe to use against Guard's Defensive Stance, but this also means it won't remove Musketeer's Baleful Eye Mark.

Having abilities that decrease enemies' chance to hit, Shade can make good use of his counter-attack feature  that works on missed attacks from enemies. With proper investment in Evasion  and a use of ***Grand Deception*** on a minion (Lost Soul  for example), a Shade should be able to reach 100%  and dodge most heavy attacks from the low-Accuracy  enemies while retaliating to kill. All-Shade party is a very interesting idea: At least 2 Shade use ***Grand Deception*** on the other 2 while they counter attack, inflict Accuracy Debuff or spam Mana  for spell and heal. Keep in mind that there are particularly many enemies with much more than 100% Accuracy . ***Black Radiance*** and ***Grand Deception*** should be combined to make them miss more consistently.

## Dialogue

* **Starting turn:** *"The ssshadowsss dance!"*
* **Killing an enemy:** *"Thisss one isss spent."*
* **Ally is killed:** *"Returned to darknesss."*
* **Receiving a critical hit:** *"Darknesss will endure..."*
* **Delivering a critical hit:** *"A tassste of your sssoul!"*
* **Enemy** **flees:** *"I will hunt you down. I alwaysss do..."*
* **Buffed by Iratus:** *"Necromancy empowersss!"*
* **Vigor** **is low:** *"Too...bright..."*
* **Using *Pain Reflection*:** *"A thousssand nightmares I shall besstow!"*
* **Using *Trick of The Eye*:** *"You are blind."*
* **Using *Dark Portal*:** *"Open the doorsss to the abysss."*
* **Using *Black Light*:** *"Your death you will not ssseee..."*
* **Using *Gloom Claws*:** *"I delight in your screams."*
* **Using *Deep Shadows*:** *"I give shadowsss a faceee..."*