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I was not disappointed. Yes At first I was trying to figure her out in term of powers and skills. Then I was talking to some people in a lobby during a game and one of them told me she can be very powerful with melee. This is tied to her power called shadow strike where she can cloak and go right behind an opponent and deliver a very powerful melee attack. So I did a little research and from that made a new build for the Shadow. The melee build.
In this build I have centered all my skills to augment my melee damage. The Key things about this build is having bonus power during cloak and martial artist where I can gain additional melee damage after a successful melee attack. That in combination of shadow strike which counts as a melee attack gave my shadow unparalleled mobility in the battlefield. Where I cloak + shadow strike..rinse and repeat. It was soo powerful at times I can kill phantoms in one hit!!
For the longest time I was rolling with that build and was content with that. Then the Retaliation came out...
Now this DLC was a bit of a game changer in that they introduced a new enemies for the different factions but also a returning enemy the Collectors.
With this new enemy I brought my Shadow as usual in the game on gold. Now something was different I was holding my own well against them but it seem a whole lot harder to beat them. There were several time we did not get full extract. Maybe it was just the fact we needed to get used to them but durring that time playing against the collectors I notice one big flaw with my build.
Yes it may be powerful at close range in dealing the smaller tier enemies but against bosses that can insta-kill you like banshees and praetorians it is no longer an option. You may shadow strike into a group of enemies that can kill you the instant you appear especially against collectors who are close range specialists. It lacked any long range capabilities.
So I went back and did a little research on this character and then I saw vid where this person was using a Shadow but using her as a sniper! That person was dealing soo much damage with this build. I almost forgot that the Shadow is an infiltrator and can get sniper rifle bonuses from that From that basis I made my new build which was a shadow sniper.
This build I completely did away with the electric slash and focused point in maxing out the other skills. First one is Shadow strike. The major difference is in the last tier instead of damage its shield drain so if there was any situation my health is low I can shadow strike a shielded enemy and take their shields for myself thus increasing survivalbility. For tactical cloak I added points to recharge speed and sniper rifle damage. For the passive skills such as N7 Shadow I maxed that out putting points into power damage for the added bonus damage when you are cloaked and for sword mastery points into durability.
Now getting used to this new build was the hard part especially as a person who is not well known for sniping. The primary weapon I used was the widow which was powerful but had a long reload time so I practiced reload cancelling with my vanilla infiltrator. When playing with this build it required a little more thinking than the melee build I needed to be aware of my surroundings as well distance with my enemies as well when to reload cancel.
I took a while but I eventually got used to it and my N7 shadow somewhat undergone a massive transformation to the Shadow Sniper!! A formidable character that is powerful at now both long and short range. To the point when I jump into random lobbies after a match people end up asking how are you doing soo much damage with the N7 shadow haha.
Recently I upgraded my Shadow to the Black Widow and with the 3 shots from the Black Widow she is even more powerful than she was before.
