Just out of curiosity, in other post @infilament said this:
So I asked myself, what is the best shadow move of the game? I didn’t consider Shago’s Surge or Fulgore pip cancels for this poll, since these moves don’t spend a full shadow bar by itself, just “pure” shadow moves.
I choose some shadow moves and put them in the poll, maybe I’m forgetting something. There are some shadow moves that I really considered to add to the list, but since I see some of them clearly improved by an already present shadow moves, I ultimately didn’t include them. I would put a full list with all the shadow moves, but the polls only allows 20 possible options, so here we go.
Yes, it’s a nice whiff punish, but deals low damage, and some moves here lead to great damage or setups, or are great defensive tools, utility, or everyting at the same time!. Is a good shadow move, without any doubt, but I can’t place it over shadow form, minions, shadow CotE or shadow sand spike, just to name some
My vote goes to Sabrewulf’s shadow leaping slash. If used durring a combo lock out, it comes out fast enough to get it and a few heavy rabid doubles. Great option for piling on the damage after a lock out. It’s also great for recapture after a juggle or a combo opener after a manual hit. Last, if your reaction times are good enough, it’s a good tool to catch an opponent from jumping away from you or going through a projectile at close or semi-medium range.
My vote went to other since I didn’t see Aganos’ shadow natural disaster listed. It comes out fast, can be delayed, is projectile invulnerable during the hold, pushes the opponent towards the corner, and is reasonably hard to break.
I also think shadow ruin is pretty good, because it also comes out fast, is a great counter on wakeup, pushes them to the corner on hit (and does massive damage through subsequent walls), and is invulnerable to just about everything but throws and successful jumps that avoid it or successful blocks. Furthermore, unlike most other shadow moves, it can’t be broken in the traditional sense, since it only hits once.
IMO, all of Sabrewulf’s shadow moves are really satisfying. It feels like the build up during the freeze gives them so much impact. The sounds alone make them worth while, and the animations feel like a moment of John Wu esque slow motion. IMO, Shadow Ragged Edge has the best EX Freeze in the game.
The fact that they all deal decent damage helps too, especially EX Leap Slash.
Oh, hate to double post, but Tusk has some really good contenders with his Shadow Sword Specials (alliteration ahoy!). S. Skull Spliter/Web of Death is somewhat difficult to break, hits like an atom bomb, and looks really cool. Shadow Conqueror is another on with good build up into a nice flashy fiery uppercut.
Raams shadow grab. Not only can he use it when he himself is still negative, but he can also use it when the opponent is plus on their pressure strings. Basically unless you have something that’s +4 or better, you can’t pressure raam without doing something gimmicky, and you can’t freely take your turn back after raam pressures you. Add to that the great damage, and that it leads directly into raams flip out/hard knockdown mix ups, and the fact that you can make it zero frames with instinct, and the fact that raam builds meter fast enough for it to be a present threat for the majority of the match. The only thing weak about it is that it doesn’t help when getting zoned out.
Jago’s Shadow Wind Kick is a very solid Shadow Move, but at the end of the day, Saberwulf’s Shadow Eclipse has been the bane of my existence for 3 seasons.
ARIA’s shadow allergo. Has a massive hitbox, 3f, high priority and deals 14% damage and unblockable after the freeze (if not already blocking of course). It’s one of the top 3 dp’s with a huge hitbox.
This would be a good discussion if you didn’t include hype beam.
Hype beam is the best use of shadow meter in the game and I don’t think it’s close.
Not counting hype beam, I think you could make reasonable arguments for Gargos minions, wind kick, blood seekers, sand spike, and maybe Raam’s command grab.
This is no longer true since they changed it to be 3+0 instead of 1+0.
In other news, testing that took me like 15 minutes because my (PC) game crashed 10+ times trying to select characters on character select. The “loading” logo would just spin forever and the game would hang, and I would have to manually close it in task manager. When I finally got it to work one time, I was able to test this once, then picking “restart” in training mode crashed my game again. What the heck? I’ve never had problems like this before.
