So the AoE+1 orb condition was bugged and the orb was dying really fast.
Now not only it is fixed, devs also changed it to +2 instead of +1, so the IW became easier in terms of orb conditions.
(Note: The AoE condition is for HP dmg, not BRV hits/dmg)
And because of this AoE orb change, Shadow despite primarily a ST dmg dealer, he is the key to triggering a series of AoE based off-turn dmg, so somehow he went from not really good for this IW to being really good at keeping the orb alive with certain characters and grant you a lot more active turns.
Shadow + Garnet is no doubt a very potent combo, but Shadow + Laguna on top of that is icing on the cake. Not only does his consecutive turns trigger Laguna's Desperado explosion, but his counter during enemy turns also does. Since hitting any one of them would trigger an AoE-wide HP dmg regardless, having 3 targets (2 actually attacking) means you can trigger it multiple times. If you wish to you can also selectively delay one of them, saving the condition for triggering it even if the others have fallen off.
This also gives you the freedom of choosing whether you want to be hyper aggressive with spamming shadow LD and turns to kill it faster, or dodge & counter and trigger them multiple times and sort of taking the more scenic and natural route. Having Garnet's off-turn also triggering ensure the orb pretty much breaks even.
The good thing about using Shadow over some others is that his ST allows you to have tighter control over the HP of different CPUs. If it is all just AoE, then most likely the middle or the left orb would be left alive and it gets messy from there.
Since it is possible to complete the fight with one set of Laguna Desperado debuff, he is not needed in the party. You can put a 4th member in there and get him as a friend sub just for fun lol.
Maybe I should have got a CoD friend just for a laugh.
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