Shadow Outlander kinda blows, man. I'm not sure if other builds are better but for real, it kinda sucks. I mean between Shadowlings, Shadow Shot, Repulsion Hex, and Stone Pact, you can definitely keep shit under control, but it requires so much more care.
So far this is how I play in nasty dungeons with big crowds:
1) Carefully proceed forward, constantly fighting with the edge of the viewable range and enemy fade-in.
2) Find group of enemies and shoot the weakest ones first with crossbow (longest range) hopefully generating some Shadowlings to start a contained mess.
3) Use the distraction to move into closer ranges for Shadow Shot and dual pistols (this could easily be shotgun in a different build, but dual pistols has better damage output in the end due to Akimbo)
4) If there are a bunch of enemies activate Repulsion Hex before moving forward.
5) If things really go to shit, drop a Stone Pact and make sure to have at least one point in Glaive Sweep and Rune Vault to back up crowds the hex can't control and GTFO.
It's super annoying compared to the other classes, which have far more direct means of dealing with crowds. If I don't follow these steps I can get killed pretty easily even though my dodge is 44-61% depending on charge. Yeah, that will only go up as I level up (33 now) and max dodge mastery (lvl9 now) and Shadowmantle and Shadowing Brute will help more, but I have seen how crazy shit gets later. There is no dodging 5 stacks of persistent magical AoE over the entire area you're standing.
Compare to my other games:
My Engineer barely feels a thing, has a healing bot which also boosts armor, has a shield to deploy, can use dynamo field while that is active to safely generate charge in the middle of a crowd to then upgrade the shield, has 2 protective bots plus spider mines, a massive and wide shield-destroying cannon blast, homing missiles, and a dash move. I'm pretty sure nothing has lasted even one minute under my full wrath, and I haven't come close to dying.
My berserker has insane damage output in himself, 20 dodge (at level 28), passive retaliatory damage, passive chain damage, passive health absorption based on percentage, and a healing dash move that can be infinitely chained.
My frost mage has the most brutal crowd control powers in the game, being insanely damaging, stunning and freezing large groups of enemies over a wide area, and now having an ice prison/shield I can pass through but enemies cannot. Aside from these, which tend to immobilize and kill everything outright, she also has an instant, infinite-chain, far-reaching teleport move to GTFO of the whole dungeon in about 20 seconds if she wanted to.
So with my Outlander, comparatively I have to be soooo slow and methodical about everything, and yet because the game likes to spring traps and the camera limit means you often can't see projectile-firing champions until you're within their range, you can still die pretty easily. There is also little defense against the bosses that like to ignore all your shadowling friends and just rush you down to fuck you up. You can't backflip forever and there isn't a massively armor-stripping move like icy blast w/ staff mastery.
Do non-shadow builds have a better time? I think I might have to respec this character to have any fun with it.
