My Personal Guide to Shane and Aurox

The Dynamic Duo, Shane and Aurox, were the first brawler (brawlers?) that I really fell into while playing in the Beta. An old favorite and a great disrupter, S&A are great for keeping enemies on their toes and have a hit and run style of gameplay that is just downright fun. One of the classic counters to camper style players, and an absolute Marquis nightmare in the right hands, they have good CC with evasion, inherent tankiness and deal some good damage. The thing is though that while Shane may be able to do a lot of things in the melee role, the dynamic duo don’t really excel at anything. They’re a great flexible pick, but don’t expect them to dump damage like Rath, or pour out CC like Kelvin.

Abilities: Let’s start off with a brief overview of S&A’s abilities:

Stealth Strike

Shayne cloaks for 5 seconds. When the cloak expires or is cancelled, Aurox crashes down, dealing 133 damage to the area surrounding Shayne. Cooldown: 20 Seconds. Shane’s initiator, escape, and debuff all in one, stealth strike is a great tool with a lot of utility. If you can get into combat without using it, you’ll have an excellent tool to get you out of trouble, you can also use it to get you into trouble, letting you stealth up to hard to isolate enemies before pouring on damage.

Fetch

Aurox charges forward and pulls the first enemy he encounters back to Shayne, dealing 133 damage. Cooldown: 17 Seconds. Shane’s main source of CC, Fetch has her shooting Aurox off to grab the first unfortunate sap he runs into and brings them back to Shane. Do not forget that this ability can and will hit minions, so make sure you take a second to check your line of fire. This may not always be a bad thing as you may want that minion to move where you are, or you may want to grab a quick OS off of a fetch pull, but always keep it in mind.

Tag Team

Summons Aurox at target location, dealing 418 damage over 5 seconds. After ending, nearby enemies are knocked into the air. Cooldown: 65 Seconds. The dynamic duo’s ultimate ability (and I’m using the term loosely here) is an AOE attack where you send Aurox in to do a little dance number. I’d file this in the bin with other characters with almost (but not completely) useless Ults like Ghalt and Toby. It deals a piddly amount of damage, takes a long time to fire off, has a small radius, and it reduces your damage output as shane while you’re without the big guy.

Now that’s not to say that it’s completely useless, but it’s not going to contribute much to your game. It can deny a zone from your enemy if you drop it on a tight choke point, it can help you take less damage (since you have a smaller hitbox without Aurox) it can panic clear a wave, add some damage to a sentry, or clear out a bothersome turret, but it’s not going to be earning any awards for ult of the year. People will mostly just walk out of it before the damage really goes off.

Fleet Footed

When Aurox is disabled, Shayne moves +30% faster for 2.0 seconds. A fairly sizeable speed bonus that triggers whenever Aurox is “disabled.” Meaning when you dispatch him (using any ability or taking damage and having your shield drop) the ability does not stay in effect the entire time Aurox is gone, it triggers for precisely 2 seconds each time he leaves, meaning if he comes back reeeeeeally quickly, you’ll still have the buff, and if he’s gone too long, you’ll be back at normal speed for a while. It’s nothing earth shattering, but it does help you stick to people during a fight.

Shayne's Boomerang

Shayne’s secondary attack hurls her trusty Boomerang that damages enemies on impact. A lot of new players will overlook the boomerang, don’t, it’s actually one of the better ranged abilities on a melee character. While it may not do phenomenal numbers, it’s a great tool in your arsenal and can let you reach out and touch a fleeing foe.

Helix Choices: [My recommendations] (http://battlebornforum.com/pages/battleborn-helix-build-editor-shayne-and-aurox/?rows=1,-1,0,-1,-1,-1,1,0,-1,1,)

Level 1: DON’T TAKE AURA OF ANNOYANCE!!! It doesn’t sound bad at first, but it constantly ticks your enemy’s damage meter… meaning they will always have an arrow pointing to where you are while you’re invisible. Never pick it. Ever. Welcoming committee is much better, and quite useful letting you grab an OS almost at will. Really though, even if the other helix option did nothing at all, it would still be better than taking aura of annoyance, just forget about it.

Level 2: Wait for the Drop plops a 3 second slow onto your enemies when you pop out of your stealth, a great tool for quickly ambushing enemies or even mid-fight to slow someone you’re already swinging away on. Even if the slow just nets you one extra swing on your enemy, that’s still going to be more damage than %25 more damage off of the other option.

Level 3: The Power of Two. Increased damage? Yes, please. This one is a no-brainer to me, with all of the shield regenning tools that Shane has in her kit the shield requirement will rarely not be met. That said, until you get it unlocked, go ahead and rock the shield recharge. The boomerang bounce is just underwhelming, and the shield recharge speed can help you out in a pinch with all of those shield tricks.

Level 4: What’s Mine is Yours is the helix option that steals enemy shields and gives them to yourself and it’s my go to pick here. However, level 4 is going to be a big decision for you. Do you stay with the pull or do you go with the stun? Personally, I prefer the pull, it lets me pull someone out of position, but the stun is certainly viable. The phase mutation here is weird, pulling everything you hit when you throw Aurox, including minions and other enemies. You can get into some real trouble by accidentally pulling multiple enemies right into yourself or your team when you didn’t notice how many were in that line-up.

Level 5: The Immortal Aegis. Shield tricks! Like I said, I’m a big fan of the shield tricks in the kit, and the immortal Aegis lets you instantly pull shield regen whenever you want. This will make you an engagement nightmare.

Level 6: Sneaky and Resilient is really the only option I take here, if you’re fighting any good team, they’ll be pretty good at tracking you while you’re invis, and even a bad enemy will be able to track you if there’s any status effects on you, taking less damage while being smaller and moving faster will make you extremely hard to finish off and kill. The 60% shield pen is a viable option I suppose, but I don’t find that fetch does enough damage to really warrant it.

Level 7: Bigger Badder Djinn. In my opinion this one really comes down to Boom Goes the Boomerang and Bigger Badder Djinn. Do you want to deal more damage with your boomerang (are you whittling away at range a lot) or do you want more shield? The health regen requires you to have your shield down for over 10 seconds to regen as much as BBD gives you right up front, and with all of your shield tricks, you’ll rarely go that long without your shield.

BBD lets you suddenly become very tanky, and it helps keep the DPS off of level 3 flowing with that monstrous shield you’re rocking.

Level 8: Long Arm of the Lawless increases the radius of your stealth strike (letting you slow people a little further away) but you could also get a lot of mileage out of Sustained Stealth, since it’ll let you camo for much further. The two benefits are pretty self-explanatory, I honestly just pick this one on a whim most of the time, but if I’m having to deal with a particularly obnoxious Marquis, I’ll lean more toward Sustained Stealth.

Level 9: Quite Fetching reduces your cooldown on fetch by %20. I normally take this over the mutation which increases Aurox’s speed during fetch just because I don’t normally have problems hitting fetch at its default speed, and honestly the times I have taken it, it’s actually made it harder to hit pulls since it’s so late in your helix tree that you won’t have much adjustment time.

Level 10: Aurox Beckons will drag enemies into your ult. The pull on this is actually pretty good, causing some decent disruption. The shield steal perk can be useful as well (I know, I’m not taking the shield trick; weird) but realistically it’s just too situational to really be a benefit. Go with Beckon and call it a day.

Gear:

Now that you’ve got a good handle on your helix path, let’s talk a bit about gear. With S&A you’re gonna want to focus on a few things: Increasing your damage and capitalizing on all those shields! For attack damage, good old tried and true attack speed will always pay off, attack damage certainly won’t hurt either.

For survivability keep in mind that you’ll spend most of your time behind a shield, meaning max health increases aren’t going to pay off as much for you, nor will any healing buffs really, however damage reduction does help out by decreasing damage dealt to your shields. I would normally recommend staying away from shield delay reducing gear since it’s mostly pointless once you hit level 5, but shield regen per second gear slots in perfectly, as well as shield increase gear. A good pair of boots isn’t a bad pickup either.

It’s worth noting here that there’s one particular legendary that I absolutely love on S&A: Executive Insurance Policy when your shield charges to full, you get a free OS, with all of the shield tricks you have running around, it can really shine if managed right.

My Playstyle

Shane and Aurox are all about constantly poking and disrupting the enemy. You want them to have no clue where you’re coming from or where you’re taking them. Don’t be afraid to lurk around the less-used portions of the map, coming from weird areas, pulling people into those areas, and just generally being unpredictable.

If you find yourself mostly milling about behind your team, you’re not playing to the character’s strengths. You have a great escape and initiation, you can even run right through the enemy to get at a pesky character, and with all of her survivability, you’ll still frequently get right back out. A coordinated enemy push can easily fall apart to some back-line Shane-anigans.

Shane is a great initiator, both abilities letting you isolate enemies and cause tons of confusion, remember though that both of your abilities will bring you more benefit during a fight than at the beginning of it (by way of your shield tricks) so if you can engage without them, then always try to. If you dump a pull and a slow on someone, then they’ll usually already be turning to run, but if you save those abilities, they won’t be able to run, while your shields will be popping right back up to full.

Also remember that whenever Aurox is off of Shane that your melee attacks do less damage. This includes when he’s out for his ultimate dance contest, and if he’s giving people a bear-hug with the stun. The boomerang doesn’t suffer this problem, so if you send Aurox out to play, remember to fling boomerangs until he gets back. And never forget the boomerang, it’s great for getting you XP off of minions, and whittling away at enemies when you get the chance.

When it comes to your ult, just remember what it can do for you, it's one of the longest ways to be rid of Aurox for a while (which drastically reduces your hitbox) it can deny an area from your enemy (giving you somewhere to escape through) and it can cause a huge, noisy distraction. It's also pretty good at blasting an incoming wave when you're in a pinch. I tend to throw this out if I need to make a quick getaway, or I want to make sure we hold back a set of minions.

There’s no real wrong or right way to use your abilities with S&A, just remember that they do a lot once you get all of your tricks up and running. Juggling them successfully can make you feel indestructible, letting you tank a lot more damage than most people will expect. And don’t be afraid to instantly trigger your cloak during a fight just to get that slow+fleet footed+shield regen trigger. It’s a great tool that can turn the tables in a fight or stop an enemy from getting away.

Always remember that the team up is going to benefit from being sneaky and unpredictable. Pick off weak links in the enemy team comp, pull squishier characters out of position and strike from odd angles and let your tankiness see you back to safety.