I love Shadow Maul in the dark set. I know there are some folks who hate it — largely because of that prolonged “whiff whiff whiff whiff” when it misses — but I love it, and hitting that perfect cone and seeing multiple numbers bubble up is the next best thing to — well, things that you can only effectively do outside of the game.
There’s been a lot of talk about SM of late, largely because of its unbuffable cousin, Sands of Mu, becoming a Veteran Reward (I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t rename SoM). And here’s an interesting note from Castle on the power.
Numbers-wise, Shadowmaul is really a single target attack. In fact, it actually does MORE damage then the formula stipulates for a single target for a variety of reasons. The fact it is a cone and can hit 2, 3 or even 5 opponents is strictly a bonus.
That said my highest level scrapper is DM/Regen, whom I have played since about 3 weeks after launch. I rarely ‘try’ to get multiple critters in the cone — the extra damage is probably worth it over time, but it detracts from my fun to focus on it.
I’m a ‘recovering power gamer’ — I’m the guy who, in Champions would try to get a multipower with mutually exclusive attacks in them (a ‘Killing Attack’ which the target has to have resistant defenses to defend against and a ‘No Normal Defense’ attack which only worked on targets with no Resistant Defense, as an easy example). So, believe me when I say I understand the temptation to focus on maximizing performance. I understand that stepping back and seeing something as a bonus can sometimes be hard. This power,
however, is possibly the best example in City Of Heroes/Villain of a power which you have to fight that temptation with.
Margie is a lot better than me in setting up that perfect cone (probably all that Amorpha practice, but she’s just better at maneuvering than I am). I’ve learned to seek small opportunities for it, but not to make it a be-all/end-all of my attack chain. If nothing else, someone like me can really frell up his DoT by taking multiple seconds to try and set up the cone, vs. just going in and beating the snot out of stuff.
There are also a couple of comments in the thread from others on how to get mobs to line up more effectively. For what it’s worth. 🙂
I dimly recall a discussion of Shadow Maul on an earlier CoH Forum thread.
“…If you get two or three mobs in the cone, then you’re doing great! If you get more than three, celebrate like it’s your birthday– and it will happen about as often…”
Of course, the poster said this better than I can recall– isn’t that always the way of it?