Shady and Surge Review

[ Background Info ]

I play a 41 Warrior with near max gear (no arcane ring)
Shady and Surge is Level 41.
Current price is between 120m-150m in most cases.

[ Stat Comparisons ]

Attachment 98976
Samael Stats

Attachment 98977
Nightshade Stats

Attachment 98978
Singe Stats

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Shady and Surge Stats

[ PVE - Elite ]

Sample run in Elite Rooks Nest

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Rooks Nest with Samael

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Rooks Nest with Shady and Surge

Slightly faster with Samael

[ PVE - General ]

0 PVE kills from enemies that died in the pool. Since the pools are so huge, they may created an unwanted large pull. Even the green heal pools aggro the mobs. So in elite, if you get an unwanted pull, it may be bad results for the team.
[ PVP - CTF ]
0 PVP deaths for opponents that die in the pool. CTF is where the pet shines. The close quarters mean that many times the pools will overlap. Pet seems very good hear.

[ PVP - CTF - Clash ]

This pet works great in clashes. The problem is that many people will just walk away from the pools. If your teammates have samael or some terror/panic/stun pet and hopefully stun the opponents while on the purple pools, this is when it's most devastating. Otherwise the best part of the pets AA is the heal pools. The best build that worked for me in the CTF clash was. Axe, Horn, Jug, SS. I would generally make sure S&S was in front of me. When the enemy approaches, I would back back and axe the first opponent then call upon the S&S AA. Now my team is taking care of the person I pulled in, the 4 opponents are walking through lots of purple pools of damage, I walk up heal and stay in the green pools to hold off the 4 opponents. Most likely the pulled opponent is dead from the axe pull in most cases and the 4 opponents are struggling to get around me and the pools and are slightly worn down. This seemed to work for me the best (strategy-wise). Make sure S&S does not trail you otherwise most of the pools are behind you and may be useless.

Many times in CTF clashes I came up with 0 kills though.

[ PVP - TDM ]

So much space for the opponents to run off. Opponents are already running and they continue
to run when the pools come out. The only time I found the damage pools useful was when I cornered someone and then used the pools. The pools stacked in that case. Otherwise, the most useful thing about this pet was just the heal pools which help me survive a lot in most cases. Not the most ideal pet but not the worst pet.

[ PVP - General ]

Damage pools can be unreliable in most cases. Heal pools are very good. Especially for a rogue with Mythic Bow. So much heal for the rogue. For warrior, it will buy him extra time in between cooldowns for jug or horn of renew to cast another. Mage, not sure but perhaps good for inbetween cooldowns of the shield / heal. The biggest problem is I hardly get kills due to the AA granting 0 kills. The damage pools can take a 3900hp rogue down to 30 % in most cases if they don't move and the pool spawns on them from the start.

[ PVP - 1v1 ]

Since most people want to compare Samael vs Shady and Surge I did a few 1v1 rounds with Serancha, a level 41 rogue with near max stats and mythic bow (no arcane ring).
Samael
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Skyward, VB, Jug, Horn - Loss
Skyward, VB, Jug, Horn - Loss
Skyward, VB, Axe, Horn - Win
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Win
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Loss
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Win
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Win
Shady and Surge
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Skyward, VB, Jug, Horn - Loss
Skyward, VB, Jug, Horn - Loss
Skyward, VB, Axe, Horn - Loss
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Win
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Win
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Loss
Skyward, Jug, Axe, Horn - Loss

Samael 4/7
Shady and Surge 2/7

[ Pet analysis ]

The basic attack did 230 dmg to Serancha in PVP. Samael did the same amount. Nightshade did about 178. Singe, oddly enough did about 149 (bug?). If bleed occurred, it did 106 dmg. The attack speed of Shady and Surge is slower than Samael but has a bigger AOE than Samael. Nightshade only did 78 bleed damage but attacks faster than Shady and Surge so Nightshade can stack bleeds very quickly whereas Shady and Surge not so much. Serancha and I noticed that she dodged a lot of Shady and Surges basic attack. Other pets, not so much.
The purple damage pools did about 200 dmg average per half a second. Range on dmg was between 150-220.
The green heal pools healed about 200 average per half second as well.
The pools last 10 seconds. The cooldown is a long 30 seconds.
3 pools of each spawn upon usage.
The happiness bonus is only moderately better than Singe.
The hp regen from the happiness is useless at endgame levels (and possibly twink levels)

[ Overall ]

The pet in pvp is good is most cases although I'm left with this empty feeling at the end of matches many times. 0 kills. 0 kills. 1 kill. Most of us go into PVP for the kills Every other pet does this, so why not this pet? The AA needs to be fixed to grant kills. I did not seem to notice any bugs with overlapping green and purple pools. PVE Elite times were comparable to Samael. Samael's time was slightly faster possibly due to Samael's banish but close enough. Serancha told me it was tougher fighting with Samael and I won more with Samael for 1v1s. Perhaps this pet is better in multiples. I only tested with the one Shady and Surge I had. Madxnoob opened his Shady and Surge on his level 10 character and he regretted it. He said he runs out of mana upon 2 skills used.

- Other info I forgot to add.

The pools remain after the user is dead. Skills such as Shadow Veil will not add any buffs etc when the user is dead. So if you're an S & S user, the AA is available and you're about to die, make sure you use the AA.

The pools will only spawn from the pet's area of sight (the pools will not spawn around a corner).

The pools dmg/heal seem to be dependent on the user's level (not the pet's level or the enemy's level). So you can run around with a level 1 pet and have good pool dmg/heal but you'll lose the benefit of a high basic attack from the pet. Of course you can't be sheisty and try go to the route of having the egg, try using it at level 1 as a trial, disable xp gain and contact support to re-egg because disable xp still raises the level of the pet.

Nice review though, I will tell about this to my friend who get the SnS egg.

As a rogue,

I found him quite useful in clashes and vs. mages & rogues mainly for the awesome heal pool. However, for warrior - nothing seems better than Samael for taking him down.

This is what I like, honestly - diversity. Samael can do the job just as well but if I am feeling bored, I do have the option to switch to SnS for certain situations.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zeus:1745787

As a rogue,

I found him quite useful in clashes and vs. mages & rogues mainly for the awesome heal pool. However, for warrior - nothing seems better than Samael for taking him down.

This is what I like, honestly - diversity. Samael can do the job just as well but if I am feeling bored, I do have the option to switch to SnS for certain situations.

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Yeah the heal pool is the most reliable thing about this pet. Agreed.

Hey rav, nice review. Can you tell how much heal those green pool do? Per tick and overall heal for the tanks.

Sent from my Gpad_G1 using Tapatalk

I have seen it in action and i like it especially the heal pools are awesome :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ishtmeet

Hey rav, nice review. Can you tell how much heal those green pool do? Per tick and overall heal for the tanks.

Sent from my Gpad_G1 using Tapatalk

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I actually had it in the [ Pet Analysis ] section.
200 hp per tick. 1 tick is about half a second. AA last 10 seconds. So in best case, you may heal about 2000 hp.

Nice to hear that Samael is still very viable!

samael army +1

It was crazy how much harder Rav was to fight with Samael. I didn't worry about dying when he used S&S for the most part - the best I can describe is that he felt soft with this pet. When he changed to Samael it was like facing a different player. I had to actually work to survive, and came extremely close to dying multiple times in each fight. When I died to him with Shady&Surge it felt more like a timing error on my part than being killed outright by brute force.

• It was pretty easy to avoid the damage pools, and even if I had to cross one to get my medic pack, it wasn't a big deal.

• Interestingly the critical dot's from the pools was not noticably more than their normal dot damage.

• When a healing pool and damage pool overlap, you still take damage.

• When the S&S owner dies and the pools are still active, they continue functioning until they disappear naturally

• This pet took a long time to start hitting me when Rav brought it close. It hits slowly, and I dodged over half the hits, even without a pet on. I didn't dodge any of Sam's hits (maybe 1% if at all), and only about 1/4 of Singe's or Whim's

I can see if you had a team of S&S that were layering pools that it would be problematic, but that scenereo is unlikely for the most part. I'm not in a guild with alliences and enemies so the pvp I do is with random teams. You get who shows up, so stacking pets like this isn't really a concern.

As far as being on a team WITH this pet, the healing pools are insane, especially when combined with medic packs, samael and the mythic bow proc. You're practically invincible. However, the c/d times and chance of proc etc keep this from being a constant excessive heal, which should retain some balance.

Overall the initial scare of op-ness brought on by the bug report thread is totally incorrect. This isn't a major threat, unless people team up and use it in a gang. But then anything is dangerous when people misuse it. I want to see more about the pve aspect and the taunt Rav has seen from the pools. This is another factor that may make this pet even less desirable. Personally, I wouldn't waste the money on it. Better to get Sam and a mythic weapon and maybe save for a ring.

What is unwanted pool? The pool can heal mobs in PvE?