Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-26636534-20150710195521/@comment-26275777-20150711195030

People can and do get killed before they can pull out their last lines of defence, you know.

And that jutsu and Shadow Clone aren't similar when it comes to use in battle. In one case he's safe miles away. In the other he's right there and he's orders of magnitude weaker for every clone he produces. One shadow clone, he's fighting at half chakra. Two, he's fighting at 33%. And so on.