About lack of reducing Defense and Protection...

I tested some things with Shadow Spirit recently (was clearing Generations 11 and 12). After I got Shadow Spirit from the Shadow Mission you get it from, I attacked the Python Knight with a fully charged Water Cannon as well as a Charging Strike at first. Both did 1 damage. After that, I used Shadow Spirit on it and tried it again. Charging Strike still did only 1 damage, but Water Cannon did 500+ damage.

Later on, I tried the same sort of thing on the Daols in Generation 12 and I got the exact same results.

This makes me believe that Shadow Spirit reduces Magic Defense and Magic Protection instead of Defense and Protection like it should.

When did you test this? After Merlin? I had a friend who hit Hard Python Knight with Rank 1 Thunder and used Shadow Spirit several times and did only 1 damage, and this was about a week after Enlightenment.

All I can say that the defense/protection changes made damage reduction pretty wacko. I'm guessing Python Knight/Daol being immune is a glitch, but Nexon's not giving concrete answers.

The Python Knight scenario was tested November 16th, while the Daols were tested November 18th, so yes, after the Merlin update.

Also, just to clarify, Charging Strike was at rank 4 while Water Cannon was at rank 1 at the time of testing.

Currently, my only guesses are that either they removed the Defense/Protection reduction and forgot to add the Magic Defense/Magic Protection reduction and at some point they fixed that, or it somehow only affects alchemy now, which is most likely not the case.

It would be nice if someone could test magic against either the Python Knight or the Daols after a Shadow Spirit. I would have myself, but admittedly, my magic is... not so great. (Rank F across the board. Shows how much I care for Druid)

What if it only reduces protection of enemies/bosses that are vulnerable to Awakened Brionac's protection reduction? Too bad I'm too lazy to bother to test

That does sound somewhat plausible. However, the main point I was trying to make was that my alchemy skills did more than 1 damage after I used Shadow Spirit while my Fighter skills still only did 1 damage to enemies that are affected by and can only be defeated through the use of Shadow Spirit, at least to my knowledge.

Macha gets her protection decreased by brionac. Maybe you could try her. My brionac is 0 dur right now from dragons, so I can't test it myself right now.

Noted. I'll take a look at it some time later if no one else beats me to it.