[sadbot]

This post will mainly be talking about power to the people, but also shadow moshes in general. As it stands, they're both pretty rough around the edges for a few reasons. Right now it looks like this.

A parry skill with two unique and powerful mechanics, in that it also applies at reduced parry chance to your allies rather than just yourself and (as far as I can tell) can parry all attacks without much exception rather than just some types of weapons or attacks. Below average mitigation that increases from 35% to the usual solid 50% if the attacker is confused, with one of the better shadow mosh placers in obey your master inflicting confusion, if only for two rounds. Parry chance scales with shadow moshes in 1 range, 25% per for yourself and 15% per for allies, removing a 1 range mosh on each successful parry. On paper, this might just be the strongest parry skill we've ever had. In practice however, it falls short due to missing or lackluster dark bard tools, as well as shadow mosh mechanics that work against you in making this parry work well.

First of all, that lower mitigation that increases to the often used 50% mitigation against confused enemies. Given that your entire team can take advantage of this parry, this seems very reasonable. Unfortunately, dark bard really doesn't have much in the way of confusion. Obey your master is a good shadow mosh placer that can inflict it, though a 2 round duration makes it less than stellar for that purpose. The only other option is getting into it, which again is 2 rounds (3 with volume up) and also won't come into play in most fights. This means you're getting the lower 35% parry most of the time, which is definitely one of the lesser problems but a problem nonetheless.

The main issue with this parry is not so much its own mechanics but the mechanics of shadow moshes. This is a twofold problem. Firstly, the lack of tools dark bard has to create them. Secondly, Their own mechanics being counter productive to what the parry skill wants from them. Your only shadow mosh placing skills are dark stage, the pit and obey your master:

• Dark stage as a skill is very strong, but the shadow mosh placement is an issue for the parry. It's very random and not to your advantage at all unless you're at the edge of the stage, and even then you can only have 1 mosh spawning in 1 range of you before they go back to randomness, 2 with specific placement on the 'corner' tiles of the stage with 2 non stage tiles next to them. This essentially caps your parry chance at 25% or 50% with very specific placement in most cases, pretty low for a parry that's usually going to be a 35% reduction.
  
• The pit is just terrible outside of drawing aggro in pve. It makes a lot of shadow moshes at once, but it can't make them in 1 range where you need them and it does nothing but make said moshes, making it a pretty terrible idea when there's an enemy around you. Even as a skill to just throw out there when you have some breathing room and little else to do, it falls pretty low on the priority after the likes of dark stage, crazy riff and likely most options in your second class as well.
  
• Obey your master is actually quite good, making moshes in 1 range of you (depending on where you're aiming it) and possibly inflicting a short confuse as well. My only gripe with it is that aiming it diagonally means no dice on the moshes being in 1 range for the parry.
  

As for the mechanics of shadow mosh itself, it's a pretty volatile tile that works counter productively to the parry skill. You lose one when triggering the parry, which is a perfectly reasonable way to balance the parry chance scaling to 100% when you're surrounded by moshes, if only that was a position you have any reasonable chance of getting into. They also pop for a little bit of damage when they're walked over, attacked, or when they're in 1 range of an enemy and you play a song, which most of dark bard's skills are. This means that they have very little longevity, making it very difficult to build up enough of them to get good parry chance, let alone maintain it.

My solution to the issues here are to just give all aspects mentioned a little bit of a push, to make the parry skill actually good if you decide to lean into it. It has potential to be very powerful if you do with the right tools, but I find that bard and dark bard don't have much going for them in terms of main class otherwise. Some general ideas are listed here:

• Give dark bard one or two more ways to confuse enemies, and/or extend the duration of those confuse inflictions by 1 round.
  
• Make the pit damage enemies in its targeted tiles similarly to obey your master, and/or allow its range to be reduced down to an 8 tile square directly around you. I think this is reasonable enough given that it has a 2 round cooldown and can't completely surround you with 4 moshes while also hitting an enemy in those tiles.
  
• Make dark stage able to spawn moshes on stage as well as around it, though still randomly unless you're at the edge of the stage. If this were to happen though, dear lord please make shadow moshes easier to distinguish on stage tiles.
  
• Decrease the parry chance per shadow mosh, perhaps 10/20 rather than 15/25, but either make it count moshes in 2 range of you or at least directly diagonal tiles, for parry chance and removal of a random mosh on successful parry. This would make obey your master more consistent for setting up parrying, and would also make dark stage more usable with or without the idea above if it also prioritized diagonal tiles from you while at the edge of the stage.
  
• Make shadow moshes not pop when hitting a 1 range enemy when you play a song. They would still pop when being 'attacked', either through being moved into by an enemy or actually attacked, but not popping when they damage 1 range enemies on song use falls more in line with the moshes being the attacker in that situation and gives them slightly more longevity.
  

I'm not necessarily suggesting that all of these should be implemented at once or exactly as they are here, just spit balling different ideas to tackle the various issues currently holding back power to the people. It's worth remembering that this is a parry skill with the potential to be incredibly powerful, but right now it just doesn't mesh well with dark bard's kit or shadow mosh mechanics.