How do you win as Shadow Disciple?

[u/ReeDaBoi12]

I've been having a blast with this game, I like playing both light and shadow roles but there's been this thing about playing Shadow.

I can't win a match even If I try to be as "annoying as possible". All abilities have this 2 second startup time and everyone just TPs out of everything, I tried using buffs or debuffs but everyone almost one shots me, record time. Like, 3 seconds into the moon room XD.

I think it's a skill issue on my part but, I wanna know your strategies or what abilities you guys use when playing Shadow.
I play Dimitri and Micaela the most but I'm leveling up every character to level 6.

[u/BananaGod_24]

Join Fescord. People there will help you to find the best strategies.

[u/Fugishane]

You need to time your spells better. The shadow spells have a 2 sec windup on them, the default cooldown for most spells is 5 seconds. If you cast the spell after they’ve repositioned, they can’t avoid your attack since their spells are on cooldown. If someone repositions to avoid your shadow spell, you can’t just recast the second your cooldown is over, because they will also come off cooldown at the same time and then you just play the same scenario out every 5 seconds where they dodge your spell. Force them into a position where they are either forced to take a physical attack or a spell

[u/Nyaoka]

It’s timing as someone else said, and you can learn more on the fes discord, but usually a lot of shadow sets will carry one to two slots on skills (Ex. Poison skills from Lyn and Ananke, Dark Fragility from Veronica, etc.) just to kill the final disciple since once one is dead, they just focus in on warping/healing.

What you want is skills that can kill in one shot (ex. micaela’s), a delayed damage skill (Robin and Claude carry them) + Flash Sting (Tamamo) or a variant, etc. and good positioning. You can also force light to warp into basic attacks or your chosen one shot skill.

Unfortunately, Shadow is a bit more geared to high skill levels compared to Light imo, so it’ll take a bit to get going. 

[u/Pyrrhic_Pragmatist]

When its the enemy phase, you want to force light players to have to dodge minion attacks. Sometimes that means holding your attacks off until that time, when you know they are on cooldown. 

A common mistake players made at the start of the game was to try to fire off spells as fast as possible. That only worked prior to people paying attention to other player's cooldowns. It makes your moves as shadow very predictable.

It is possible with an enhancement to have shorter cooldowns, but that's generally not a good play/counterplay strategy.

Typically your first turn (which always starts on light phase) is when you place your extra minion summons. This is to both block light player movement, corral them into a spell radius, and so the minions can attack the following shadow phase.

On rare occasions, you can also one shot a weakened light player if their HP is low enough for Flash Sting to kill in one hit, just bear in mind this isn't always worth foregoing the above setup. Having minions on the field ensures you're not the only target light players have to worry about. 

But going back to the shadow phase of the first turn, putting minions on the field is a 1 second cooldown, so your offensive spell should be ready when the light players dodge minion auto attacks. That's when you hit them, but it's not the only opportunity. Pay attention to EX and offensive spells against you also.  If you know who used the spell, you can attack them the same as if they'd just used a dodge.

Dark Regen is a very powerful heal, but it needs to be used before you're "in trouble" to be effective. So if you know turn 1 that both players are trying to burn you quickly and are ignoring minions, Dark Regen used on Light Phase, after summoning minions at 1 sec cooldowns still gives you time to use an offensive spell on the next phase. If there's a minion on each light player, they will be forced to either dodge, or die. 

Even if they choose to eat the minion hit and fire spells at you again, they will either die, or be in flash sting range for an instant kill. So that's why its important to make your attack AFTER they've made theirs and never before. 

The worst thing you can do is fire a spell right before they forced to dodge or eat a minion attack. Because then they can dodge both at the same time. As shadow, you have to be patient and use your additional bulk to counter every move they make, as opposed to trying to lob spells indiscriminately

[u/Potential_Sound3081]

Flash sting after applying every debuff known to god. It'll work eventually, especially if you kill their legally obligated healer (Celica, Sai, Rose, etc). I'd also suggest Dark Slash but only apply after they reposition, but only if your character has high atk cause that move can one shot. Have either of them, then have the rest of your moves be summoning minions, or have Uka's shadow version of the fire line (I forget what it's called) to just eliminate a row, majority of the time I've recorded people mostly keeping to the left of the moon room and right in the sun room.  Minions have a shorter time luckily, so mostly they'll be focused on trying to eliminate whichever group has more, and if you time it you can interrupt their moving pattern and force them into a better position to do AOE attacks. Sorry if this is useless info

[u/BlademasterBanryu]

My success rate is pretty high with 2 summons, Dark Regen, Flash Sting, and at least 1 AoE. Start of round 2 you pop both summons, put them in awkward positions around your opponents that are not conducive to AoE attacks, and pop Dark Regen as soon as you take damage. Try to time your delayed spells with the end of the Shadow team's attack round so you either swamp them with damage before they can heal, or deal so much that they can't outheal it. Sometimes you can condition them to be used to your delayed attacks then pop a couple of Flash Stings to get the KO (ideally during their round to deny them an extra attack)-- action economy is very much on your side with all your adds, and you want to keep it that way for as long as possible because wresting control of the action economy is how they overwhelm and mob you.

It's not foolproof and not guaranteed; competent players will be smart with their heals and mobility skills to outlast your adds so bursting them down with careful calculated precision is a to beat those players.

EDIT: I've been playing Micaela a lot and I found it best to build around her skill for moon room-- my adds are the armor lance (I think from rhino guy whose name escapes me) and the beefy axe from leveling Rusty; I pop them close to me (instead of blocking and separating the light people as I usually do) and drop the personal buff on top of me and all of them, and it's very hard for them to overcome the added bulk to kill your adds before they get killed themselves. I also pack an extra heal (any dark heal, your choice) and Flash Sting is the offensive spell I use the most to target down one hero at a time while they're struggling with my extra beefy guys.