Shathra vs Spiral
Polygon
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Now that we've had them both for quite some time, who do we think is the better attacker?
Shathra vs Spiral 120 votes
Shathra
65%
79 votes
Spiral
34%
41 votes
2
Comments
Shathra on the other hand is great with her insane power gain.
Shathra is much better when not facing serpent, spiral is decent for hazard shift with high sig, has access to ruptures which is helpful in pdp nodes and is the best serpent counter but thats about it. Shathra is much more versatile.
Hehehe
I got both spiral and shathra r3, I use both. They both have specific rotation. Spiral got the looks.
I have been enjoying both. Spiral was a bit annoying to learn at first I give you that. But the experience is satisfying.
But spiral, she's good at what she can do, that's it. She's not a everyday champ you can use, and apart from serpent and HS, there are many better mystics who you can use for regular fights compared to spiral.
For me, the most emblematic thing in the Shathra and Spiral comparison is:
Shathra's kit is built around her heavy attack, which has fantastic reach while also benefiting from unblockable specials.
Spiral's kit is built around her dancing blades, which most players ignore because of it feeling bad or glitchy.
While Shathra lacks in explicitly defined utility, the way her kit works allows her to handle a wide range of fights. Easily accessible power steal and easy accessible buff control grant her a ton of flexibility.
Spiral can cheese Unblockable fights, but beyond that her buff control is very specific. She has no way of handling a bunch of buffs, including the very common Footloose node, which means there is also the additional penalty of losing her fervor or losing her damage. Shathra's Atrophy is extremely powerful (with pretty much 100% uptime after the first SP1), which means that any common or uncommon disruptions (unblockable, unstoppable, evade, etc) simply don't last very long. Shathra also can choose to nullify any buffs if she chooses.
Spiral is functionally immune to shock/incinerate/poison, but Shathra can theoretically take those fights by being able to regen between fights due to her dupe, or use her SP3 to regen all energy DoT effects (especially because Shathra can choose to minimize her hits after that first SP1, and because of how easy it is for her to reach her SP3).
Spiral has power steal, but it doesn't work at 3 bars, which is essentially where we want it to work (since that is the most dangerous). You have to hope to get the KO with combo extenders and specials. Shathra can try and go for the KO or she can also choose to relic stun into heavy or parry heavy (if the AI is compliant!) and remove the danger.
Additionally, Shathra doesn't rely on buffs or debuffs. So she is not limited by debuff shruggers, and her damage is not decreased if the opponent has no buffs.
Spiral is stupid easy to manage VS opponents with power gain buffs, permanent or not. She destroys specific buffs, permanent or not, and replace them by rubble (buffs). Shathra control buffs by reducing their duration and can somewhat deal with (few) permanent buffs with 1 nullify in the 4th light, BUT it cost wasps (damage).
So both WANT opponents triggering buffs, but Spiral wants the opponents to KEEP the buffs, the more and the longer the better, she gains damage from them. Shathra wants them GONE: she removes them fast with atrophy or nullify them, and she gain eggs (damage) when they expire.
Spiral's damage is wider range: mostly physical if you focus on ruptures (sp1), mixed/energy if you use sp2's (beam damage with extra attack/rupture). Shathra's damage is mostly energy (wasp attack) with some physical dmg in her contact hits.
...And so on...
I like both but personally prefer mojo more out of all the atrophy-mystics, he has that je ne sais quoi. On the other hand I have been using Spiral the whole war season taking hazard shift, every Serpent, most Maestros etc with no deaths and no issues. I absolutely love her.
But I guess that's not a sexy take and we need to pick one and bash the other.
Firstly she has 70% Atrophy which shuts down basically any buff with a duration. Serpent’s Death immunity: gone in like two seconds
Sersi’s and Maestro’s glancing? Gone in a few seconds
Secondly she doesn’t rely on debuffs or buffs, so she can take any class she wants, even some science champs. Plus no one’s immune to her damage, only champs that can midigate it are high energy resistant champs
Of the 2 champs, spiral needs the rebalance more, and that can be 1 of the things they change
I will start with damage types Shathra deals in mostly burst of red dmg as her power source and places passives debuffs on the opponent so that it can’t be shrugged unlike Spiral who debuffs that are just ruptures. This allows a lot more versatility in matchups which Spiral simply cannot do. Like the current BG meta with the annoying cleanses after every bar of power.
2nd is how they go about dealing there damage. Spiral damage scales with how much fervor she has built up which requires an aggressive playstyle of being able to spam different actions. This is mostly user error obviously if you can’t maintain her fervor but this also means she doesn’t have a lot of room for error especially in matchups where the opponent doesn’t have a power gain buff. Shathra in the other hand doesn’t have these handicaps so your rotation can’t be compromised by poor ai.
3rd is just straight up speed when played in the right hands Shathra can take down Serpent as fast as 37 seconds that I’ve seen. So even in Spiral best matchup Shathra can beat her if not be around the same time. What really separates them is that Shathra can steal a great deal of power in every matchup while Spiral simply cannot.
In conclusion Shathra wins in versatility, rotation and speed. This is also just really contingent on the player. She definitely is a high risk high reward champ. Being able to understand spacing and be aggressive with her heavy is what separates her from being a good attacker to a great one. I often see people take 60 seconds to take down my serpent with Shathra. So I say it comes down to who playing who.