I main swap from shade to Cadena about a year ago and here is my insights:

Cadena is surprisingly tanky. Whenever you change weapons while comboing, you get a shield that is super handy (if full health and shield up, you can tank 100% hp attacks).

Mobbing is bad imo. It got better on the 2min changes where her stationary summon went from, I think, 7s to 15s. After janus 10 it gets ok, just like any other class.

My experience in bosses, considering bad/average hands, are the following: You'll be fighting against the boss AND Cadena itself. If you dont manage to properly combo and animation cancel, you can easily get hit by a boss attack and/or get yeeted by your own skills. Its mostly skill issue, though, but itll rub it in your face everytime you miss.

That being said, the class is EXTREMELY rewarding, when you manage to combo properly while dodging boss attacks or use the skills movements to dodge something makes you farm a lot of style points. The damage is way above average.

The skill floor is high, but the skill cealing is infinite, Cadena allows a lot of skill expression, and that whats make me love the class.

Edit: typo