Characters - John A

Class - Shadow

Can turn self invisible and create shadow zones to hide in

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John A can move 50% faster than most characters

John A's entire playstyle relies on his stealth capabilities, which, when active cause the enemy to effectively stay put and lash out hoping to hit him. John A's Knife attacks have a backstab trait to them that deal triple damage and gain triple Extreme when John A is attacking an enemy from behind. To turn invisible, either use the True Ghost ability (2 seconds of stealth) or use the Monster of the Dark ability (8 seconds of shadow zone) and move John A into the shadow zone.

John A's Competency Nuke is an incredibly powerful attack (120 base damage) that has a very large area of effect, but requires 10 seconds to trigger. The Competency Nuke is invisible while John A is invisible, so timing True Ghost and Monster of the Dark properly can make Competency Nuke invisible for almost the entire duration of the charge time. Note that enemies that see the Competency Nuke for even a split second will be prepared to block or dodge it when it triggers, and that if John A dies or is swapped out for another party member, the Competency Nuke's damage drops to 30.

John A's attack speed and move speed are both very high, and work well to properly apply his stealth and backstab capabilities.

Developer's Take:

Stealth is a rare ability to be found in Dragooned, and John A excels at it more than Miranda and John Socrates Deepsoulington. However, this means that John A is very reliant on his abilities and waiting for their cooldown to end rather than relying on his standard attacks, as unless he is up against slow monsters, enemies typically won't allow John A the chance to land some backstabs without stealth active.

The damage from John A's backstabs are great, but the Extreme boosts from backstabs should not be ignored either. John A's Competency Nuke is incredibly powerful, and even though enemy AI characters will attempt to dodge it if they are grounded, monsters cannot block, making Competency Nuke a useful tool and priority for Onslaught mode.