Shadow Walker

* Red
* Blue

## Statistics

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 200

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54 ()

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0.95x

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1.00x

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1.00x

## Weapons

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One-handed

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None

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## Additional Statistics

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Melee Unit

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Enemy

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Full Release 1.0.0

## Characteristics

The Shadow Walker skims through darkness and teleports to the farthest enemy in an attempt to backstab them before they can react.

Every time a unit is attacked by a Shadow Walker, they emit green particles, with one more for every attack, the more particles, the more damage they take from ALL Shadow Walkers, meaning using many Shadow Walkers to attack one unit is extremely effective.

## Appearance

The Shadow Walker wears tattered clothing along with spiked boots, bracers, knee-pads and helmet. They use a bone-like dagger as a weapon.

## Unit Voice

 [[File:{{{Effect}}} HD Icon.png|70x70px]]{{{Effect}}}
 Death Vocals

## Strategy

#### Usage

The Shadow Walker is a heavily specialized unit, functioning as a high-damage but frail melee unit. Compared to the raw stats of other melee units like the Clubber, the Shadow Walker is more costly, has less health, and has a much slower melee swing speed to reduce its ability to fight large groups of melee foes.

What allows the Shadow Walker to shine is its ability to teleport. This ability warps the Shadow Walker from its current position to the area behind an enemy unit located at the back of the army. After using this ability, the unit must wait a 300 seconds (five minutes) cooldown before teleporting again. Following normal army composition of melee units in the front, this means that ranged units are quickly attacked and taken out before they can pepper the player's army with ranged fire. With their close quarters teleport, this makes Shadow Walkers an excellent choice in diffusing large ranged units such as Catapults or Ballistae.

Additionally in groups, they can demolish high health and boss units due to their attack stacking up each hit, especially The King as it attacks slower than other boss units, although high health units like the Captain can also be killed quickly by Shadow Walker groups.

### Counter

Having a small group of Shadow Walkers can cause a lot of problems for ranged units, distracting their aim and often putting a dent in the player's army before they can deal damage. When facing Shadow Walkers, it may be wise to design an army with melee units behind the ranged firepower, serving as a vanguard. Since the teleport places the Shadow Walker behind the furthest unit from the frontlines, this grants a layer of protection for ranged units. Some ranged units can also suitably fend for themselves against a few Shadow Walkers, such as the Wizard with their own sword and decently large health pool.

Which units would be best for the vanguard would depend on the quantity of Shadow Walkers attacking. Since an individual Shadow Walker attacks so infrequently, a set of normal melee units could absorb the hits and deal with the attack by themselves. At extremes, using units such as the Bomb on a Stick or Barrel Roller allow for many Shadow Walkers to be taken care of at relatively low cost.

AoE units or units that can do lots of damage to hoards such as the Pirate Queen and Reaper can be devastating against Shadow Walkers, especially with their slower attack speed, although the Reaper is vulnerable in groups and if not supported since the Reaper attacks a bit slow. Even groups of weak melee units can deal with Shadow Walker hoards fairly decently.

Do not use this unit against the Dark Peasant, as it's melee explosion can kill all Shadow Walkers near it. Even if there is about 100 or 500.

## Trivia

* This Unit may be based off of the Blink Dagger.
* Currently, it is one of the two units that can teleport. The other unit is the Void Monarch.
* The Shadow Walker has the longest ability cooldown.
* Before patch 1.0.2, their teleport ability was not available in the Unit Creator.
* The Assassin Poof is referred as "Backstab Teleportation" in the game files.
* The shadow walker's weapon has the damage buff ability; it does about 72 damage as an initial damage, and for every single next hit, it will deal higher for every other Shadow Walker, until it reaches 1000 damage after 20 hits, which makes them pretty effective against single Units with extremely high health. In total, this would average out to 72 + 46.4, until it reaches a peak of 1000.
	+ However, the dagger will go back to dealing about 72 damage once the Shadow Walker focuses on another target.
* Their helmet resembles that of *God of War* Hades.

## Gallery

The icon for the Backstab Teleportation ability.