Hello! Shai, what it is and what it should be, here's one chronic rerollers opinion and ideas

The class, as it exists right now, is simply half of a proper class at best. The kit is severely lacking, it's the only class you can't tag an awakening weapon to right now, apart from Drak but as of this post Drak doesn't even have an awakening. Thematically, the class is relatively mundane compared to the rest of the classes out there. It doesn't really have anything special about it. Witches and Wizards can bring down meteors and blizzards, Sage is some kind of demigod/predecessor, Zerker has tantu's wisdom and technology,  etc etc etc... We'll touch on this more shortly.

The class only supports a single playstyle per form of gameplay, and it is not particularly interactive. I don't want to take the low apm chill gameplay away from people that enjoy it, because after all, the classes current identity is some kind of vaguely passive bard with a boomerang, but what if it could be that and more?

The proposal:

First, we split the kit up into a succession and a real awakening.

The succession:

This should retain the same identity that the class has right now. Move all the current sol skills into the succession kit, and lock them to succession. Add additional protections to the damaging abilities, and add at least 2 more close->medium range ccs to the kit. Make the boomerang attacks larger aoe, with debuffs on them. Anti-evasion, anti-accuracy, etc. Pick something and align the kit with it. Increase damage in pvp by ~30% of what it is now. The goal here is to make the class more protected, and to encourage interactive gameplay. Buffs and debuffs are nice, and appreciated by other players, but the class should also be able to be somewhat interactive once it comes time for combat.

The awakening:

Here's where things get fun. This should be a spec oriented to PvP and should promote fun interaction in combat. While Shai may be relatively weak alone, there is strength in numbers. Enter the chorus. Once Shai enters her awakening kit, she is no longer just one vaguely small bard with a boomerang. Now, there are three. The book of fire, a Shai specialized in high damaging explosive fire magic, the book of thunder, a Shai specialized in striking her enemies with precision and destroying their guards with thunderous sound, and the book of the void, a Shai that calls upon dark powers to constrict and weaken her enemies. The three shais exist simultaneously, and can each be controlled by the player by switching to each unit. When units are not actively being played, they cast weakened versions of their respective Shai kits and use protected movement towards the main Shai and away from any enemies, but if they take sufficient damage, they retreat for a period to rest before they join the fight once more. Once the player swaps from one Shai to another, the one the player swapped out of briefly enters a musical state of stasis where she cannot be targeted and does not cast for a few more seconds.

This isn't particularly fleshed out, as it is more of a top level concept of what the class could be. Is this idea crazy? Is this the kind of thing you want to see in BDO? Let me know what you all think.

I'm going to stop you right there and remind you that they literally just blew up the class for mildly outperforming Striker at Trolls.

You REALLY think they are going to rework the class from the ground up so it can be like any other class? ESPECIALLY making it more protected? What indie development company do you think this is?

I truly wished that Pearl Abyss cared enough about their players to even read this post.

My hats off to you GDRMode for taking the time to at least TRY to guide the DEVS in any direction, and I personally think your ideas sound amazing!

Truth is ,PA has no idea the playerbase that yearn for some........ANY type of class that involves a more TEAM oriented approach to their current clusterfark!@#$ of a game that is---- buy pearls ---buy cronstones-----FAIL enhance, rinse/repeat.

Pearl Abyss, I am 54 years of age I have played nearly every MMO thats came down the pipe. BETA tested Everquest.

You have a multitude of players drooling for a teamwork oriented class that will BUY PEARLS if you deliver it. GET TO WORK and stop catering to your pimple faced, instant gratification playerbase that doesnt have 1% of the spending power as the players you are screwing over.

Shai was pointless to play as until it had its rework, she was super weak and didn't fare well anywhere except on rare occasion being a pocket shai. She only had balance issues at Trolls. They could have fixed this but decided to just destroy her class instead and make her useless once again. They said they wouldn't nerf classes but they just did. Congrats PA on once again lying to us.

Shai is the only class that they wanted to make unique, but because of that they don't have vision for her or give her any real purpose to the game.  She's not particularly better at any lifeskill, she can boomerang surf which is great but not enough to say that Shai is actually worthy of doing anything in the open world where 1v1 PvP can exist. She needs awakening and succession instead of this talent BS. She needs to be converted into a proper combat / support class depending if you pick awakening or succession.

Right now Shai sucks, something needs to be done. "What kind of indie dev company do you think this is?" obviously if this were an indie company they would listen to their fans and do things better. But this isn't, it's a very large corporation (started as indie) with a lot of investors and only focuses on making the game better for new players so they can drain them of their money until they find new players to replace them with their excellent marketing skills. This is alluring to the investors, not the players but hey, whatever -- people will shill by saint PA no matter how wrong they are. If you think you can provide a better alternative than OP, I challenge you to present it instead of shilling.

Yeah, instead of doing the smart thing of making high end spots HP based instead of DR/EVA based which would require no nerf at all, they figured blowing up Shai was the way to go. PA can't think critically. They do everything they can to upset their player base instead of fixing the game how it should be fixed. It's a little extra work, but happier players means more money in the end.