As much as it appears everybody loves and plays AO purely to go into BS and grow epeens, the majority of people I know in game only went for those great pieces of pvm armour.
Playing ao for enjoyment to me, and many others means teaming up with org and friends and going on a challenging pvm raid. As with many of these rebalance efforts, in order to satisfy what takes up very little of active game-time, even less now the armours have been made yes-drop, pvm mechanics are being serverly steam-rolled.
PVM this really is a huge kick in the teeth for shades of all levels.
The first problem which may be planned to be circumvented else where would be the new ncu cost.
Between the run speed buff which after losing the rs in our evade buff actually only adds 100pts, for an additional 30 ncu, to having evade and agi buffs split forcing an additional 60 ncu, the healing element of shd in proc form at 55 ncu, the concealment buff doubling to 80 ncu, at a rough look that's an additional 225 ncu, now I'm endgame with prety much the best available ncu, and there are still times that without a fixer I can struggle in raids when osbs are coming in, let alone how this would have been for the previous 219 levels when ncu is tight.
Next problem i see for solo leveling shades, would be stun procs. Stun procs from when they first become available up until 216ish are one of the most useful tools in our kit. they keep the our targets just at the edge where we can heal using TR and deal with prolonged fights. After 216 as more and more encounters are stun resistant and we gain shd to keep us topped up it is used less, over the init proc.
Now i see the logic in pvp, stun procs make over players cry nerf. Well before getting out the gigantic nerf stick could you perhaps consider the option of a .target = monster flag.
Finally there's shd. In the original plans it was mentioned this would possibly be looked at to be extended to all level ranges. Rejoice I was thinking the tool which completes our playability and sits as our reactive heal, to be extended to those difficult as hell mid levels. SHD is not a game breaker we are the vampires of ao to leech the life out of our opponents is obvious. To replace what is atm a min 900pt heal with a 200 pt proc which costs an additional 54 ncu is game breaking for us pvm shades. Again were you listening to the cry's of the pvpers? ofc they shout the loudest that comes with the territory.
I fundamentally still do not understand why the need to rewrite every aspect of every class ig, to rebalance what are designed as a mixture of assault, support ,and trade skill classes, to be able to fair equally in fighting. Why on earth would it be right to balance support classes to fair one on one with tanks and dd's? that's why they are support classes, there is already balance available to them, role a pvp set toon. The only reason the entire situation has arisen is that all classes have been thrown together in BS to grind, and ofc if support classes don't team they get pawned.
It comes down to why break the game for BS, many many of us may go there, but we still think think it sucks donkey balls.