A friend of mine is trying to get into the shadow lab and has 53 recordings so far yet when he tests his shadow it is almost completely inept. He uses combo assist so i don’t know if this affects the quality of shadows or not. Any help would be appreciated
It shouldn’t make a difference if your friend uses the CAM opposed to not using it.
What matters is how you play and what recordings you use. So if your friend is only doing heavies, both autos and linkers than it will be easy to break. Even with the CAM, mixing strengths into a combo make it slightly difficult to break, especially with lights. Open combos using different strategies, i.e. empty jump lows, overheads, crossups, etc. Throws, tech throws, counters, and shadows also help increase the strength of your shadow.
As for the 53 recordings, that really comes down to what your friend recorded. But, see it as this…
More Recordings ≠ Stronger Shadow
More Varied Recordings = Stronger Shadow
So, let’s say you record about 30 recordings while playing the CPU on Medium against Jago and the rest on Glacius. Sure you have a balanced and zoning recording, but it isn’t varied. What happens when a Jago player spams fireballs, do you block, jump or counter? Shadow won’t know unless it’s recorded. What happens if Glacius spams Cold Shoulder? Your shadow won’t know how to properly punish. Play online, play offline, play with friends, the more data the better.
My mistake, was recording only “good” matches. As crazy as it sounds, even if you lose or barely win, the Shadow should ideally have those recordings to take into account comeback factor and how to properly balance inconsistency with characters or unusual means of playstyle.
I believe the devs also mentioned there is a bug that affects sparring against your shadow. When testing, they don’t seem to do much of anything, but that’s not how they behave in actual matches.
Did some experimental matches against his shadow, it plays a lot better than when he tested against himself so I think that may be it. Thanks for the help guys.
My shadow use to give me trouble before I could “read it” and now just stands still and do nothing… -____- (I’ve become so bad??? 
)
Hope is a bug and can be solved =)