As a response to veeb's post...
Serious concepts:
-TR life taps definitely need to be more reliable in terms of healing, and also need to be broken into groups the way that PM perks are. Additionally, only the damage buffing perks of TR do melee damage to the target, with the lifetaps doing cold damage. This should be changed to do 100% melee.
-Backstab not landing is a ludicrous concept. The whole point of the backstab attack is to position the shade in an area and situation that guarantees a successful attack, but on evade profs particularly (obviously) backstabs miss with an alarming regularity
-Stun Procs: I'm not aware of whether stun procs are able to be removed with FM stims, but if not, then they should be. As far as completely removing stun procs goes, I believe that while stun procs add an element of chance to fights, this is entirely ok. The game of thought, numbers, and time spent twinking obviously means a huge amount in fights, but a random element to battles is not necessarily a bad thing, and removes a bit of monotony in some cases.
-Spirit Phylactery debuffs should be applied for the same duration of time that the DoTs/nano DoTs from that line are, 30 seconds. Why this wasn't originally the case is a mystery to me. This would mean that in order to keep the target debuffed constantly, the shade would have to reperk them as soon as the perks unlocked, instead of being able to debuff at the beginning of a fight, and have it last all the way through
-Other procs are not generally used in pvp, and therefore don' t necessarily need to have such a low % chance of going off. I personally am not using the highest level init debuff proc in pvm, and my targets are usually continuously debuffed. That having been said, there are cases in which the debuff hasnt landed for an annoyingly/dangerously long amount of time, and to fix this, the % chance of non-stun procs should be raised significantly
-As far as range issues goes, really the only thing that needs to be fixed is the client-server lag problems that result in a visual of someone being next to you, and being unable to perk them. No hard-changes to range really need to be made in this area
-The tattoo cocoon is a valuable part of any shade's toolset. While this could be theoretically obsolete with better lifetaps, extremely strong lifetaps would be required. The absorb from the tattoo is only 5k, which will get eaten by a single AS, SA, FA, etc... If a shade with evades up and coon up is able to tank several other people, this is only because they have enough def that the stray hit is absorbed, not that the tattoo is enabling the shade to have supernatural tanking abilities
-With shades being the profession supposedly most at home in the shadows or whatever, it would be nice if they could move faster while in concealment. This is not, however, a necessary change, it would simply be nice. As far as the *amount* of concealment goes...shades need serious concealment buffs. The only concealment buff that shades have is an endgame buff, and even that is only semi-sufficient. Shades need more concealment buffage, throughout all level ranges. Agents are the ranged concealment-attack profession, and shades are the melee concealment-attack profession. It therefore stands to reason that shades should have similar, if not more powerful, concealment buffs that agents have. I'm not advocating shades getting shrinking buffs, thats just annoying, but strong concealment buffs are a must. Not being able to do sneak attacks in pvm for 205ish levels while watching agents pop in and out of sneak with AS all the time is extremely aggravating.
-Computer literacy buffing: This topic deserves its own section. Currently, when trying to buff computer literacy, shades are, in a word, screwed. The lowest computer literacy buffing spirit that is non-xan that exists is a level 215 locked head spirit available from a dustbrigade quest. This needs to be changed. Shades are already in the whole as far as comp lit buffing goes due to not being able to use token boards, although that is supposedly going to change eventually. However, the big problem is that every other profession can toss on 3 computer literacy buffing implants, while shades can't do anything. This makes computer literacy buffing at levels under 215 a nearly impossible chore, requiring huge amounts of effort and expense. I recently am trying to put alb bracers on a 214 sloob shade, and while it IS possible, it requires nearly every computer literacy bufifng item available for use in the game to break 1800 computer literacy, while other professions just toss on a board and a couple ql 200 computer literacy imps and are done. Not only do lower level computer literacy buffing head spirits need to be added, but also computer literacy buffing eye, and rhand spirits. While some of the skills that are missing in spirits are not really necessary for shades, such as treatment, computer literacy is 100% an essential skill for shades, just like everyone else, and so should be addressed as something that can be buffable from spirits.
Radical Ideas:
-A temporary concealment buff + vanish ability for shades would be conceivably extremely useful in PvM, sort of like *forget me* for NTs, except on a shade. However, any ability like this would be highly overpowered in pvp, unless the vanish time was less than 2 seconds or so, which would make it very useless in pvm. Even a 2 second vanish time could be extremely overpowered. Consider a zerg of 3-4 people converging on a shade, shade gets debuffed with whatever theyve got, and is at about 50% hp dropping fast. Suddenly the shade dissappears, all the attacking players lose their target, and 2 seconds later, the shade reappears a bit away from the group, hauling ass in the opposite direction. It would make actually killing a shade an extremely tedious and difficult chore. A possible solution would to make this ability only usable in pvm, where any player attacking a shade would make the ability unable to be used.
-While shades do not really need more attack rating or defense at tl7, this does not hold true in the slightest for lower level shades. Due to the level lock on spirits, and other factors as well, both defense and AR on lower level shades is extremely difficult to come by, and even the most extreme twinks (twink being used loosely due to level locks) are barely able to compete with so-so geared other professions. This needs to be completely overhauled whether by spirit changes, nano changes, or other equipment changes.
-Spirits definitely need to be easier to come by. With symbiants, while droprates from pocketbosses may be ****ty, you at least know that this PB will drop such and such symbs. No such assurance exists with spirits. Additionally, high level spirits have to be obtained via spirit siphons, which are just a pain in the ass to use in general. Spirit droprates from spirit mobs need to be increased, and either higher level spirit mobs for higher level spirits, or other methods of obtaining high level spirits need to be added.