MapleStory Shade Skill Build Guide

Shade is a MapleStory class that is part of the Heroes group of characters. Shade wields the spirits to help deal damage to monsters and bosses. If you like a class with some cool animations for it's attacks, Shade might be the perfect MapleStory class for you. They have some great bossing utilities to help with survivability and they are arguably one of the easiest classes to play in MapleStory.

Shade Overview

Shade was released as part of the MapleStory Update Rising Heroes: Echoes Of Darkness. As well as being a popular class to level up, Shade has a very interesting and sad story to follow. Players starting out will have to get to second job (level 30) before they can leave their hometown area of Fox Point Village. Luckily, Shade has some decent mobbing skills in the early levels to help with grinding and getting through the beginner stages of MapleStory. Once you hit level 30, you can then venture into the rest of Maple World.

Shade is part of the MapleStory Heroes classes, which include: Aran, Evan, Mercedes, Phantom, Luminous and Shade.

Training a Shade is very fun and one of the easiest classes to control. There are very few mechanics you need to be aware of and they have very few buffs you need to micro-manage. Levels 1-200 will breeze by and getting to fifth job will further enhance your overall map control. Shade has some very cool animations for its skills, making it one of the flashier classes to play. All the mobbing skills of Shade are very good, so you won't struggle training this character through any of the different job advancements.

As a bossing class, Shade has some useful utility skills that can help survivability. They have an early level bind skill called Spirit Trap that will stun an enemy for 10 seconds. Summon Other Spirits gives up to 3 seconds of invincibility to help dodge those fatal attacks and you also have an 8 second i-frame with 120 second cooldown called Spirit Incarnation as your Hyper Skill. Their damage sits in the middle of the pact as a bossing DPS class- which is really where you want to be.

Check our our MapleStory Training Guide to help find the fastest maps to level up your characters.

• Weapon: Knuckle
• Job: Pirate
• Class: Hero
• Shared Cash Shop Inventory: Heroes: Luminous, Phantom, Aran, Shade, Mercedes
• Legion Block: Critical Damage (1%/2%/3%/4%/5%)
• Link Skill: Close Call (10% chance to survive fatal attack)
• Primary Stat: STR
• Inner Ability: +1 Attack Speed

Shade First Job Skill Build

You can max all of your skills in first job. Follow this build:

• Flash Fist (+1), Vulpes Leap (+2)
• Vulpes Leap (10)
• Flash Fist (MAX)
• Vulpes Leap (MAX)
• Cosmis Balance (MAX)

First Job Shade only has one attacking skill called Flash Fist. Enjoy using this for the next 30 levels because you're stuck with it. Vulpes Leap is your double-jump skill so maxing this early on helps with mobility. You also have a beginner skill you can use called Fox Trot, which teleports you to nearby enemies. As a first job Shade you need to complete the story quest up to level 30 (second job) before you can leave the area.

Skill Description & Overview

Shade Second Job Skill Build

You can max all of your skills in second job. Follow this build:

• Ground Pound (+1), Spirit Bond 2 (+1), Knuckle Mastery (+1)
• Spirit Bond 2 (MAX)
• Ground Pound (MAX)
• Knuckle Mastery (MAX)
• Strength Training (MAX)
• Fox Spirit Mastery (MAX)
• Back Step (MAX)
• Blade Imp - Downward Slash (MAX)
• Blade Imp - Forward Slash (MAX)

Second job you get a new mobbing skill called Ground Pound. If you're new to Shade, attack speed is very important to make this class fly. So get some Green Attack Pots from Monster Park and also max Spirit Bond 2 to increase your attack Speed. Blade Imp attacks are great for pulling mobs towards you from other platforms- but you may find you can mob just fine with Ground Pound. Fox Spirit is a toggle skill that you'll want to turn on as it will generate Fox Spirit attacks whilst you normal attack for better mobbing.

Skill Description & Overview

Shade Third Job Skill Build

You can max all of your skills in third job. Follow this build:

• Shockwave Punch (+1), Spirit Bond 3 (+1), Spirit Frenzy (+1)
• Shockwave Punch (MAX)
• Spirit Bond 3 (MAX)
• Spirit Frenzy (MAX)
• Weaken (MAX)
• Blade Imp - Spin Slash (MAX)
• Harmonious Defense (MAX)
• Spirit Trap (MAX)
• Summon Other Spirit (MAX)

Shockwave Punch is your new mobbing skill. Its got great range and deals some nice damage so you should find 3rd job training a breeze. Spirit Frenzy is a cooldown attack skill, but it is a really good mobbing skill when you hold it down. Spirit Trap is a bind- probably not very useful at low levels but should be good for bossing later on. Likewise, Summon Other Spirit gives you an iframe to dodge fatal attacks.

Skill Description & Overview

Shade Fourth Job Skill Build

You can max all of your skills in fourth job. Follow this build:

• Bomb Punch (+1), Spirit Bond 4 (+1), Advanced Knuckle Mastery (+1)
• Bomb Punch (MAX)
• Spirit Bond 4 (MAX)
• Advanced Knuckle Mastery (MAX)
• Critical Insight (MAX)
• Spirit Claw (MAX)
• Fire Fox Spirit Mastery (MAX)
• Death Mark (MAX)
• Maple Warrior (MAX)
• Soul Splitter (MAX)
• Spirit Ward (MAX)
• Hero's Will (MAX)

Bomb Punch is your main mobbing skill and Spirit Claw is your main Bossing skill. Spirit Claw isn't totally useless for mobbing either- since it can hit up to 3 enemies. If you're training in an area that doesn't have many mobs, Spirit Claw may work better. Bomb Punch is a good mobbing skill though and has a great area of attack. You get lots of passive damage buffs with your Spirit Bond 4, Critical Insight and Advanced Knuckle Mastery. Maple Warrior is one of your very few buff skills you need to keep up too.

Skill Description & Overview

Shade Hyper Skill Build

Hyper skills are available at level 140. You get Hyper Skill Points as you level towards 200, but not enough to max all the skills, so choose wisely. These skills mostly help increase the damage of your current skills.

• Spirit Claw - Reinforce
• Spirit Claw - Boss Rush
• Spirit Claw - Extra Strike
• Fire Fox Spirits - Repeated Attack Bonus
• Fire Fox Spirits - Summon Chance
• Spirit Incarnation
• Heroic Memories
• Spirit Bond Max

Shade Fifth Job Skill Build

Upon reaching level 200, you will now have access to the V Matrix, which acts as your new fifth job skills. Each class gets their own skills to use, along with boosting nodes to increase the damage of existing skills. To obtain new skills, you open up items called Nodestones, which drop from every mob in Arcane River. You have limited number of slots in your V Matrix, so you want to obtain perfect nodes for maximize your character's damage.

Shade's Nodes should include:

• Spirit Flow
• Spiritgate
• True Spirit Claw
• Smashing Multipunch
• Trinode: Spirit Claw, Bomb Punch, Fox Spirits
• Trinode: Spirit Incarnation, Spirit Frenzy, Death Mark

All 5th Job classes should try to also obtain these:

• Decent Holy Symbol
• Decent Sharp Eyes
• Decent Speed Infusion
• Erda Nova
• Rope Lift
• Weapon Aura
• Freud's Wisdom
• Impenetrable Skin
• Maple World Goddess Blessing

Skill Description & Overview

Changelog

26/02/2021 - First update