WAR Guide on Shadow Warriors Part 2

So you're thinking about becoming a Shadow Warrior?
A first glance at the class and what it brings to the table:

- Dedicated to everyone who feels compelled to ask the silliest, yet most common question, "Which is the best stance/tree?" Just about every single person will actually answer this with a single answer, their reasons for it, and then they'll put down the other two stances. The dead truth is, there isn't a single best stance. No matter how you swing it. If there was a single best stance, everyone and their grandma would be it, and there'd be no need to be the other two. While yes, you can get all the way to r40/rr80 in a single stance, you will not be the most effective Shadow Warrior you can be. All three stances are essential, no matter what mastery you choose to specialize in. For reasons I will state later, just because you're Scout-spec'd does NOT mean you can ignore the wonderful benefits of the other two stances completely. Well, you can, but you shouldn't. If you're looking for a class where you can stand still, spam dps, and get top numbers, I'd recommend looking into a Bright Wizard or Sorceress. Once again since I cannot stress this enough, no matter what you end up specializing in, if you stick to only one stance, you're not going to enjoy a Shadow Warrior nor should you become one.

- Yet another myth that gets thrown around quite frequently, "Shadow Warriors are weak and/or have absolutely no survivability." This is NOT the case. This simply means you're using the wrong stances and skills at the wrong time. Positioning, stances, targets, and snares have to be under constant regard at all times. If you're dying, you're not playing the class the way it is intended in order to reach full potential. Now, this does not mean I'm calling you all bad players. There's always time to improve and change your understanding of the class. That being said, you will not have the armor of a tank, you will never get any healing skills, and you get no speed boosts setting aside Flee - so try to avoid "zergs" and keep distances from sketchy situations. Your numbers aren't as high as a BW/Sorc, but you have a MUCH better chance of survival against classes that absolutely tear BW/Sorcs to pieces. If you Stance Dance correctly, you should have absolutely no hard counters to your class. Meaning, no single class will ever be the rock to your scissors. On the contrary, I do wish to point out that you are also not a Rock to anyone else's scissors. There will be no class that you can encounter and have them screaming uncle in under 3 seconds flat. If you were looking forward to such an event, you will also suffer having a hard counter. So keep that in mind when picking the Shadow Warrior.

- Yet another common newbie question, "Can Shadow Warriors get top damage and/or kills?" The answer to that, for anyone new and old to this game, is every class has the potential for top damage. (With the assumption your class' role is damage-focused.) Now I'll admit, since players always seem to compare all damage to that of a BW/Sorc's, we have to try much harder to hit the top damage charts, assuming we're comparing an equally geared, skilled, and ranked BW/Sorc to a Shadow Warrior. However, if damage is really your passion, as opposed to focusing on the objectives and supporting fellow players, if you master Scout stance and spam as many AoEs, DoTs, and AoE DoTs as possible -- it's very easy to become top damage in a scenario. This doesn't guarantee a high amount of killing blows, but you can get a decent amount of renown and sense of pride being on top in the damage dealin', if that's what floats your boat.

- And the last common myth I wish to address, "_______ Stance deals more/less damage than _______ Stance." Not only is this absolutely not true, and that all 3 stances have an equal opportunity to deal an equal amount of damage, as stated earlier in so many words, the single, most determining factor on which stance can deal the most damage is the situation and setting. This is a good way to transition to my next topic, which is on Stances.

Going down the Rabbit Hole.
An in-depth look at all three stances:

If any of you are a number nerd like me, I'm sure you've figured out by now that certain stances deal more damage than other stances, except not all the time, but some of the time. While leveling, I came across an interesting discovery, which actually led me to writing this guide. The sole reason being, people don't understand the full potential of the stances. The discovery was that I found when I used Eagle Eye (our bread-and-butter Ranged DPS Skill), Assault Stance actually hit harder than Scout Stance. Except there was one, even weirder twist. I realized that this was only the case some of the time, meaning Scout Stance's Eagle Eye sometimes did do more damage than Assault Stance's Eagle Eye. How could this be? I researched this for quite a while before coming to a final conclusion. The short answer, for those of you who don't like reading, is that in some cases, the armor penetration bonus from Weapon Skill (Assault) outweighs the DPS bonus from Ballistic Skill (Scout).

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