In one of his recent videos he listed off a bunch of proposed changes that I largely agreed with, however at one point he goes on to say that the Shadow Clone is completely useless and should just be removed from the game.
He wasn’t wrong about it not always being in the right position etc., however I’ve been tinkering with a build that at least so far has gotten me very comfortably to Torment 2 and it’s not even close to being optimized - I should however note that I am rocking a Ring of Starless Skies that is absolutely crucial for what I intend to do, which is replace my basic skill with Dash to abuse Shadowslicer.
That brings me to a burning question - does anyone know if Shadowslicer Aspect affects works with Disciplined Dash ? Or even if the Shadowclone can benefit from that upgrade.
My build will be Flurry, Dash, Concealment, Shadow Step, Shadow Imbuements and Shadow Clone. Glyphs are Closer, Exploit, Fluidity, Versatility and Nightstalker.
The general idea is the Ring just lets me cast Flurry with impunity while also constantly spamming my agility skills and dipping in and out of Stealth, all while the clone wails away on any big targets. I’m also running Victimize because AFAIK the clone can trigger it? The proc rate is still too low though if I’m being honest.
Where I’m torn is if I want to go ham with Dash and even Temper for it, try out Shadowstep Cleave or possibly dip into stun grenades I really don’t know.
It’s been a fun journey so far.
tbh this just sounds like the typical attitude of most players, i.e. “anything less than the peak performing meta option = trash”, but that in itself is a garbage attitude 
I respect what you’re doing more! Find your own fun. I just made it to T4 with my yolo smoke/grenade build… I barely scaped through Pit 65 in time, but hey, it’s been a blast. I’m happy, even if I can’t progress much further.
Victimize didn’t do much for me, but may I didn’t have enough Lucky Hit to make it sing. I’m just running Momentum anyway because let’s be real, I always run Momentum (it’s HC, so I want the damage reduction!)
I’d be interested to know what you come up with. I thought about taking Concealment when I got Shroud of False Death, but unfortunately it seems like the ‘Stealth’ on that doesn’t benefit from your Concealment bonuses (fair enough I guess, but it’d be rad if it did work together).
I do want to try Opportunist’s Aspect with the Shroud and Pitfighter’s Gull; hard decisions though, since I’d have to sacrifice an item and aspect for that. There’s too many good options!
Have fun, I haven’t tried Shadow Clone in a long time, but they do seem to eventually get around to buffing underused and underperforming stuff eventually. It wouldn’t surprise me if it works out well (now or in the future).
Shadow Clone is essentially a useless ability because of the way they designed rogue. Once you attempt to push into torment 3 and 4 you will need to rely on your passive abilities to improve your damage. These passive mostly boost the damage you deal to enemies based on certain situations and NONE of them affect the damage that your Shadow Clone does. So while all the multiplicative bonuses from things like Malice, Trick Attack, Weapon Mastery, Frigid Finesse, etc are applied when you attack they are not applied for your shadow clone.
My current DoK build can consistently hit in the hundreds of millions with occasionlal knives breaking into the territory of 5-9 billion. My shadow clone will never hit for more than 500-600k which is completely useless. He hits for less than Raheir.
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Imitated imbuement is by far the biggest boost I notice that I can give to my poison imbuement. My PI will tick for more than twice as much with clone and imitated imbuement. Whether or not that tick damage can be made up otherwise and better is irrelevant. None of those other options make you permanently unstoppable.
As far as direct damage goes, it is totally not working as advertised.
currently ShadowClone is useless, but do not think shall be removed from the game but instead just to be fixed. it need really to do same damage as player did with a core attack.
Shadow Clone for me is just to have on my action bar, so I could trigger Aftermath and to proc Preparation to reset my cooldowns. Took me the longest time to get that effing Bac rune but once i got it, I don’t bother with Shadow Clone.
The damage it does and related aspects do not provide much benefits other than something for Preparation to work with. Even the No Witness dmg bonus is not much use for Shadow Clone; the benefits for your other skills is great.
If SC was like a minion or like D3’s necro’s Simulacrum, where it could attack separately and in of itself be a target, that would make SC more useful. But this doing exactly what your char does i.e shoot in the same direction but parallel is only useful against large crowds or bosses with large hit boxes.
Yeah I honestly wish it functioned more like the Amazon’s Valkyrie skill.
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…shadowclone is useless and i feel the devs don’t want to play with it too much as it can potentially be broken on Rogue if it actually copied everything. Honestly, it should be replaced with something like Vengeance from Demon Hunter or be a skill like Centipede on Spiritborn
Shadow Clone will easily get you to T3. It gives you unstoppable and a fairly decent damage boost. It’s not the best but it doesn’t need much to support it, making ideal for builds that don’t focus on ultimates.
Barrage especially loves shadow clones.
I’m not sure how I missed this post. Shadow Clone, Shadow Step, and the Momentum aspect are the three ways a Rogue can attack while being unstoppable. By combining them, you can essentially stay unstoppable indefinitely. This explains why Shadow Clone has a higher cooldown than the other two ultimates, and there’s no option to temper for ultimate cooldown—unless you use a Necro to temper.
I agree the damage could use improvement. Maybe they could rework it as a companion skill, with a shadow that follows us around long?
If you play prep rogue, you can eventually cast shadow clone every other core skill. It’s fun. But it’s held back by the fact that it is damn near impossible to get it down to ~10.5 seconds which is necessary to reset it with one core skill (which is easy with death trap)
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I think it would be super cool if they reworked it to be a low cooldown ultimate that just makes your next core skill stun and hit twice with some nice % modifier.
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What if Grasp of Shadow trigger Shadow Clone instead of just the shadow? 
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If they combined THIS change to shadowclone, with THAT change to grasp of shadows and made it so the shadowclone core skill could proc grasp of shadows for the ^2 that would probably be a serious nerd build.
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Yeah I want my Naruto build already
EDIT: DEAR LORD this update Giga buffed my build, absolutely destroying everything and I don’t even have my tempers done. Will post details later.
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Glad they are buffing Shadow Clone. IMO, even with the niche uses it just sucked and was more of a filler skill at best.
OMFG I have to know, with these new summon changes does this mean Shadow Clone can proc Grasp of Shadow ??
IS THE NARUTO BUILD ABOUT TO BE REAL ?!
So for next season definitely going all in on Dash tempers then, because Shadowslicer is already a pretty strong aspect as it is - but with the Shadow clones now benefiting from that properly on top of the passive that makes it knockdown and do another 350% that’s insane.
Throw grasp of shadows on top of that and just wow…
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Finally went over the campfire chat. Next season will be the Season of Ultimate and Preparation. Rogues can already trigger ultimates almost non-stop, and with the new ultimate bonus aspect, next season is going to be insane!
Unless they nerf it after the PTR…