Difference between Shadow and Lightning

[Otus]

Hello all and thank you for taking your time to read my post!

I'm a somewhat newer player and I got to max level with an assassin (love it). However, I can't seem to figure it out what the difference between Shadow and Lightning is. In each spec I can do the exact same things that I can do in the other one. All of the skills are alike, all of the synergies are alike, all of the combos are alike, all of the procs are alike. What's are the differences between them and why are they relevant? 

Thank you so much for your time!

[Kaizoku95]

Light :
- no burst, but sustain dps

- u need to stay in Stealth mode ALWAYS
- rotation : V(buff) RMB+F +4(and after RMB+F until 4 reset)

- more Movement speed

 

Dark:

- high BURST, low sustain dps

- NO need to stay in stealth

- Rotation  4(choke bomb) + v(buff) +4(lighting rood, go out of stealth) -> RMB for 10 sec -> 4 -> RMB+F ( u need always 5 staks of poison on boss)

-not so high mobility as stealth

 

U can see the diference in those 2 builds when u are lvl 55 and u have Bracelet+soul+badge

 

[Kaizoku95]

Both of them are good, depends what u like :D

[eXtaz]

Hay, 

I've played lightning sin exclusively for past 2 years. About 2 weeks ago i made second set of items for shadow. In my experience lightning is kinda hard mode for sin. There are few things you have to actually do playing as light sin.

First of all you have to ani-cancel to do decent dmg. If your ping or fps isn't stable its very frustrating. While you ani-cancel you reduce CD of your 4-poison. If you get knocked back by boss or simply fck up your canceling, you won't reduce the CD enough and your rotation gets messy. 

Maintaining stealth stance is another thing. Almost all bosses in bns punish you for using stealth.

On the bright side light is amazing in mobility, clearing corridors in dungeons is very fast and easy. 

OK shadow now. I have little exp as shadow but for now I feel that it's very easy compared to light. Rotation is crazy easy, you can even use simplified mode to just hold rmb almost all the time. You don't have to maintain stealth, and keeping 5 poison stacks is included in your rotation so you don't even care about it. 

DPS :

I'm playing on high end PC (120fps on max graphics) and kinda shitty laptop (30 fps on low graphics). 

On PC I'm doing more dps as light, but i have to put some effort to actually do it. Shadow is effortless, kinda chill. But dps isn't much lower, on many bosses it's actually higher in my case. That's why im playing both builds. However, if I had to choose i would go shadow. 

On shitty laptop shadow shines for me. I'm doing twice the dmg compared to lightning. I don't even care if it's laggy. And lighting is just very frustrating to play. 

 

Please note that I'm talking from my own experience. Gear wise im on aransu6, full vt gear on both elements, true cosmic soul. About 1260ap. Feel free to ask me anything. 

Cheeers. 

 

[RavTH]

On 09/06/2018 at 4:36 PM, Kaizoku95 said:

Light :
- no burst, but sustain dps

Dark:
- high BURST, low sustain dps

Light do have burst, if you use dragon bracelet.
Dark do have sustain dps, all it needs is glory soulbadge, skyrift mystic badge(or aransu) and tiger bracelet stage 1/10 and you will do incredible dps, even with baleful 9/10/12/raven1/3
 

[brutalriff]

Funny how times have changed.

I played since release and back then I played lightning, all the way up until around when NF and BT were endgame. Back then, lightning was WAYYY easier to play, yes you had to maintain stealth, but shadow was far more tedious in comparison, given that poison stacking was a nightmare and you basically needed to have all of your HM skills for it to be remotely viable.

 

Ahhh, the good ol days of 3 > z > tab > 2 > 4/tab. My fingers have forgotten the muscle memory for normal poison stacking XD.

 

 Weird how now, lightning is actually the harder build to play, given that poison stacking has been made incredibly easy and shadow, my current element, is literally brain dead, especially with simple mode.

 

If you can anicancel, have good ping, and can play with really good skill efficiency, you should consider lightning as it is incredible not only in pve, but also pvp and solo content.  Basically the reigning king of all aspects of BNS, but you need GODLY ping and GODLY skills for this to be true.

 

If you wanna have a higher burst but slightly lower sustain, in addition to an easier time playing overall, I'd recommend shadow. Shadow is also really good in raids due to faster bb cool down, and also being able to face tank hits that lightning sins would have to fully avoid. Lots of lightning sins had to switch to shadow for the most recent raid (TT) because avoiding some attacks was nigh-impossible, and it resulted in a huge dps loss, forcing them to change elements.

 

[Mordlif]

Well I played since release to now, and I must say dark is harder even now. It is mostly because light have much better mobility. Dps is almost same but for example light have boost evasion so when you fail you have great chance to do not take dmg, also when you fail and boss kick you out of stealth, you are in stealth with one button. Shadow need charge to boss and get out of stealth in most cases(tab have long CD). When you do block you have stealth but shadow need to leave it. Here is need same ani-cancel like light (even your rotation need ani-cancel for shadow) etc. Yes for newbie should be light harder, for others is shadow harder. 

But play what you want with TT gear different on 1M dps cloud be +/- 50k for light.

Also think about content, for example mr. Hong with dark is much harder :) 

[htdexhdfg]

lightning mobility? doesnt ring a bell. must be an inside joke or lightning has some ability to stay in stealth for 20 minutes at level 55 with extra skills or w/e.
always found shadow easier since BW. Easy to the extent of regretting I made a BM lol

[RavTH]

On 26/06/2018 at 8:30 PM, htdexhdfg said:

lightning mobility? doesnt ring a bell. must be an inside joke or lightning has some ability to stay in stealth for 20 minutes at level 55 with extra skills or w/e.
always found shadow easier since BW. Easy to the extent of regretting I made a BM lol

you can stay in stealth forever you know that o.o?
he meant by lightning have more mobility cause stealth stance gives more movement speed, and lightning uses stealth 24/7 so that's why makes sense.

[LuIius]

On 6/14/2018 at 1:49 AM, eXtaz said:

Hay, 

I've played lightning sin exclusively for past 2 years. About 2 weeks ago i made second set of items for shadow. In my experience lightning is kinda hard mode for sin. There are few things you have to actually do playing as light sin.

First of all you have to ani-cancel to do decent dmg. If your ping or fps isn't stable its very frustrating. While you ani-cancel you reduce CD of your 4-poison. If you get knocked back by boss or simply fck up your canceling, you won't reduce the CD enough and your rotation gets messy. 

Maintaining stealth stance is another thing. Almost all bosses in bns punish you for using stealth.

On the bright side light is amazing in mobility, clearing corridors in dungeons is very fast and easy. 

OK shadow now. I have little exp as shadow but for now I feel that it's very easy compared to light. Rotation is crazy easy, you can even use simplified mode to just hold rmb almost all the time. You don't have to maintain stealth, and keeping 5 poison stacks is included in your rotation so you don't even care about it. 

DPS :

I'm playing on high end PC (120fps on max graphics) and kinda shitty laptop (30 fps on low graphics). 

On PC I'm doing more dps as light, but i have to put some effort to actually do it. Shadow is effortless, kinda chill. But dps isn't much lower, on many bosses it's actually higher in my case. That's why im playing both builds. However, if I had to choose i would go shadow. 

On shitty laptop shadow shines for me. I'm doing twice the dmg compared to lightning. I don't even care if it's laggy. And lighting is just very frustrating to play. 

 

Please note that I'm talking from my own experience. Gear wise im on aransu6, full vt gear on both elements, true cosmic soul. About 1260ap. Feel free to ask me anything. 

Cheeers. 

 

shadow has to keep up a very specific rythm if they truly want to deal damage. light does ani cancel more, and sure it's harder but honestly I haven't seen a single lightning sin pull it off. seems to me like it's just a huge handicap, we're already playing one of the if not the hardest pve class (surviving bossfights wise) why should one handicap themselves even more, high end raids will do alot of aoe attacks and lightning will simply not be able to pewpew since getting hit once means you're ****** for the next 5 seconds at least.

as for the whole shadow simple mode thing, yes it does alot of damage, and it would be the best dps you could ever hope to guess since it does the ruthm perfectly, except the simple mode macro is set to hold rmb during killing intent, this alone lowers an aransu 3 sin's dps by about 30k (speaking from my own experience) which is a good thing, I don't wanna become a rightclick bot

[MCWang]

I played a sin as a main at launch and came back about 5 months ago, and I've always done lightning/stealth build.  Since I could not get any BT acc after months of grinding, I reluctantly switched to shadow build, which I've made good progress on.  I really disliked shadow at the beginning as I found keeping up poison stacks much harder than staying in stealth in most practical situations (I was using Alluvion initially).  Once I got the Glory badge, it was completely different since poison stacks was no longer an issue.  Having said that, my highest DPS in Koldrak is still with the Alluvion badge even though my gear has progressed noticeably since I switched.  

 

As far as the regular rotation in lightning build (RMB > 4) vs shadow build (RMB > F), I actually find it easier to ani cancel lightning build for fights where it doesn't require me to move around much, like Moyun/Shuna.  I somehow mess up the rhythm of shadow build more and miss a few RMB here and there, where as cancelling lightning build with no distractions is fairly easy for me as I hold 4 and tap RMB based on sound.  

[Cor]

On 25.6.2018 at 12:44 PM, Mordlif said:

Well I played since release to now, and I must say dark is harder even now.

Heck no,

On 25.6.2018 at 12:44 PM, Mordlif said:

It is mostly because light have much better mobility.

Sure but lightning also needs to dodge every single attack while shadow can just facetank everything that does not do lots of dmg or cc. Any hit you take lowers your dps as lightning and if you get hit while you reduce your poison cd your rota gets screwed up which can't happen to shadow.

On 25.6.2018 at 12:44 PM, Mordlif said:

Dps is almost same but for example light have boost evasion so when you fail you have great chance to do not take dmg,

Evasion is worth ***t you rarely evade an attack unless it's old content that you outgear.

On 25.6.2018 at 12:44 PM, Mordlif said:

also when you fail and boss kick you out of stealth, you are in stealth with one button. Shadow need charge to boss and get out of stealth in most cases(tab have long CD).

Lightning needs to get back in stealth all the time when you get hit while shadow only needs to get out of stealth if you 1 behind the boss, use block or q. Yeah surely shadow has it harder here..

On 25.6.2018 at 12:44 PM, Mordlif said:

When you do block you have stealth but shadow need to leave it. Here is need same ani-cancel like light (even your rotation need ani-cancel for shadow) etc. Yes for newbie should be light harder, for others is shadow harder. 

Lightning needs to get out of stealth before using the block which is obviously more inconvenient than having to go out of stealth afterwards.

On 25.6.2018 at 12:44 PM, Mordlif said:

But play what you want with TT gear different on 1M dps cloud be +/- 50k for light.

Also think about content, for example mr. Hong with dark is much harder :) 

It's not much harder, you can dodge the attacks that also hit behind him a little bit easier because of the faster runspeed but it's not hard to do with normal runspeed either. Shadow is easier in majority of the content.