Optimizing a Ankou's Shadow (Slayer)

[Lloyd-Starbuck]

Hi everyone, I have just recently purchase the Pathfinder Player Companion Legacy of the First World and have came across the Ankou's Shadow Slayer archetype and thought it was very interesting, my first thought was this would be a good base for a aid another or flanking build, but then there this line about the shadows "they do not possess teamwork feats or special abilities that alter the effects of flanking or aiding another", so no maxing their bonuses. I guess it would still work for normal aid another or flanking, but I would like to see some ideas of how to optimize this class and its class level dependent abilities without multiclassing and with paizo only books.

[Geddy2112]

The flanking is nice, but it does not say that the shadows can use acrobatics, and will provoke AoO's as normal, getting them killed. YOu can use them to waste AoO's, and if enemies don't attack them you setup sneak attack.
If nothing else, these make excellent defenses and you can just spam them at will. Even a ranged slayer is perfectly fine just making free mirror images AT WILL. You can also move them our 50 ft as scouts to trigger attacks and see if enemies take the bait.
Mainly, you want to use them to flank and just as raw at will defense. They last forever, so just constantly have them up unless you need to move or full round. Melee makes better use of these, but free defense copycats are totally fine.

At higher levels, you can hide yourself and use stealth, making all of your attacks from your shadow doubles, making you the ultimate scout-just run into a room as a shadow, and kill everything. Repeat until all enemies are dead. At 15th when they can do tasks like unseen servant with decent strength they can even drag the bodies back to loot, hide them in closets, what have you.

It lacks some of the raw killing power of slayer, but is very strong defensively and at higher levels with proper stealth, utterly absurd.

[Florian]

Didn´t try it yet, but the shadows seem to be good at reach/control builds, meaning glaive, stand still and combat patrol.

[upho]

Didn´t try it yet, but the shadows seem to be good at reach/control builds, meaning glaive, stand still and combat patrol.Exactly my thought. Enlarged with a reach weapon, you'd threaten 228 squares instead of only 76. That's an enormous advantage. And yeah, on a Dex build with a glaive and Bladed Brush (http://archivesofnethys.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Bladed%20Brush) this can pretty darn fantastic, granting tons of AoOs.

Add Fox Trickery (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/fox-trickery-combat) or Kitsune Vengeance (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/fox-trickery-combat) plus Dirty Trick Master and maybe some sure-fire AoO triggers, and you'll be the undisputed king/queen of melee lock-down, potentially even in higher levels.

And this is besides you personally not even having to risk being in melee in many cases, and having a never-ending supply of expendable short-range scouts.