actually, this question has been on my mind for awhile…
our “Shadow step”, as several posts have pointed out, seems to be a rather odd, and unnecessarily different way of traversing terrain. It doesn’t seem to do us a whole lot of good.
other classes have leaps, which accomplish effectively the same thing (although some would argue that mechanically the leapers are managing to avoid terrain that seems to be hanging up shadow step) but most of their “leaps” also qualify for combos – e.g. the “leap combo” – skills that include a leap also get to benefit from beginning in/passing through a combo field.
as far as I can remember, NONE of our shadow step skills get any kind of combo synergy, accomplish roughly the same effect as leap as far as crossing distance, possibly mechanically suffer disadvantages, but also offer no advantages – I’m not sure – maybe we can’t be interrupted in the middle of a shadowstep, perhaps, unlike leapers? I’m not sure – but for the moment, shadow-step seems to be a visually-different-but-otherwise-identical-to-leap effect with none of the benefits of leaping, and no seperate benefits of it’s own (and again, perhaps mechanical limitations beyond that)
if all that is true, it would make shadowstep an inferior leap, and I’m wondering if I’ve missed some sort of advantage it’s meant to give us, or if it really is just a sub-par leap with a thief-ey visual effect (in which case, I’d be just as happy, if not happier, with a traditional leap)