So we just have to work extra hard for the 12 accuracy and extra monster that any other class would have from caphras on awakening weapon/blackstar awakening weapon, not having a T3 addon any skill, barely having T2 addons for grinding and not having the extra damage from awakening AP? cool.

Also the class is at a capable level only some grind spots and even at those spots it is worse than top classes that go months or even years without getting nerf(cough Striker cough Berserker cough) with the benefit of not being able to PvP and still get nerfed because new grind spots released with proper testing.

>Soon, all classes will be able to play instruments.

It was mentioned instruments are a unique Shai trait:

>we tried a new approach in her class development that deemphasized combat efficiency and competitiveness – and instead, placed greater focus on more unique aspects such as her musical instruments and starting life skills

Emphasis on unique, surely they wouldn't just give it away to other classes, right? That would defeat the entire definition of uniqueness, not to mention be super unfair to us. Start giving bits to other classes and eventually we'll become an unoriginal empty husk.

Could you please give us some insight into how you measure 'combat efficiency and competitiveness'? What is an acceptable level for Shai to be at, mirroring your vision for the class? Should she be limited to half the trash of the best class at end-game spots (example only, not a claim or measurement)? Should she have half the single-pack TTK of the next-worst class? What are some of your PvE and PvP balance criteria?

Shai is not just lower-efficiency than other classes; she is objectively the worst class in the game in terms of stats. We understand that this is by design, to compensate for party ability and the Misty Haze skill (currently nearly useless but immediately game-breaking again when you release the next ultra-high-DR spot, due to -%DR). Shai's other DR shreds clearly aren't the issue, as classes like Kuno are just as effective. If multi-hit skills are the problem, why not reduce hits?

I have done extensive damage testing across multiple classes in BDO and cannot find a single reason, apart from pre-nerf Misty Haze, that Shai is considered to be overly efficient. By comparison we now see talented players on other classes very effectively grinding Gyfin Underground with Season characters.

A V Blackstar  Awakening Weapon adds:
1) Extra Damage to All Species +10
2) Extra AP Against Monsters +25

#2 is a flat damage boost to base damage (once over enemy DR) until AP softcaps. It is easy to adjust Shai skill percents (which just multiply base damage) to adjust for this and bring Shai more in-line with other classes' scaling. She will still have the lowest base stats of any class. Any Wizard, via base AP & class passives, starts with AT LEAST 43 more AP (not Monster AP) than any Shai just by nature of being a Wizard. By comparison, is +25 Monster AP really impossible to adjust a class for?

#1 is the single biggest limiter for Shai PvE and is inherently unfair. Even if a Shai builds optimally, she can never get species damage on her Talent weapon. This is 7-10 base damage per hit, scaled up by skill percent, that applies over AP Caps. It is literally invaluable at low-end spots and renders Shai permanently unable to compare to any other class, especially in Elvia. This is actually far more impactful than #2 for most gear-capped players. If it's truly impossible to do anything else, consider adding this to Artina Sol and reducing the Shai class's base AP in return.

We're not suggesting these changes to make Shai broken and understand that making Sol taggable would come with other adjustments for game balance. The entire goal is to:

1) Make Shai scale more in-line with other characters, whatever that takes

2) Allow players that foolishly choose Shai as their first character to reroll to another class or to actually tag and *try* Shai for party play.

It is unfair to lock players into a class as punishment for picking that class. This is what the current Artina Sol does.

Honestly, I abandoned Shai as my PvE main after the 2nd wave of nerfs in Summer 2022, and I likely will never return. Hopefully 

'Shai players start over from scratch or just give up and quit the game entirely' was what you envisioned for Shai.

Let's just break this down, i feel spicy tonight.

"First, we want to thank Adventurer Blondiie and everyone else who took the time and effort to share their feedback. From the discussion in this thread, the common point of feedback seems to relate to how Shai's Talent weapon, Artina Sol, does not match other weapons in various factors such as character tagging and weapon exchange coupons. "

You're welcome, we've been trying to do this for 4 years now.

Wait, Really? From the discussion in the thread? So the OP wasn't even read? You're just coming in like a roomba to a battlefield? Alright, fair enough, go off.

Tagging and exchange are like the lightest terms. There's also the matter of being unable to caphras the item for accuracy, missing species damage, missing monster AP, inabilty to jetina the item, inability to buy or sell the item, inability to get Blackstar variants of the weapon, most of us imagine when/if fallen god weapons come out we'll miss that too, the tagging results in many other shitty results like needing yet another garmoth heart, reading this post is like reading a middle school's students 3 AM slight burst of energy  cliffnotes of the actual issue. 

"To give some context, when we designed Shai, we tried a new approach in her class development that deemphasized combat efficiency and competitiveness – and instead, placed greater focus on more unique aspects such as her musical instruments and starting life skills. This led to Shai being the only class with a Talent and the sole wielder of the talent weapon, Sol. And since her PvP and PvE were balanced around this fact, we believe her current PvE performance is at a capable level even without monster damage bonuses from the Blackstar Awakening weapon."

You also developed the class' talent to just straight up not work smoothly, but clearly we're here now and talent works fine, and you also initially designed the class so that it cannot ride horses, but we're here now and able to ride a horse fine. Also, you want to emphasize lifeskilling on a class with lifeskill passives that do not work, and have demonstrably not worked for the 4 years the class has been out, despite mounds and mounds of bug reports explaining the issue with data to back up the fact that the passives do not work properly and have never worked properly? The whole premise of trying to stick to some original design is so asinine, it hurts, because clearly it's easy to fix obvious issues, it's simply chosen not to or just ignored. If you actually wanted a lifeskill focus, the least you could do is fix the passives so they, y'know, work. It's also hilarious you claim you want to keep the combat efficiency of the class bad, but then artificially inflate her pve damage to horseshit levels so she can tear mobs apart without breaking a sweat, all to accomodate the fact we don't have the same stats others do, which is unfair to everyone else. Not even including the fact the class' PvP capability is far and away more than you'd ever like to admit, given it was built with skills that are beyond braindead to use yet force the pace of a fight to the shai's wishes because you've given the class a massive, AoE, SA stiff aura that makes playing the game like pulling nails if you play against it and don't have good SA rotations on hand, and makes the side actually playing Shai one of the most boring support kits I've ever seen in an MMO. That's just blatantly and willfully shit design and doesn't make any sense whatsoever with what you've claimed here. If you want to make the class meh in combat, then actually do it. Or just, you know, admit the design is shit, and actually make a genuinely functional class that doesn't rely on crutches like inflated numbers and overly oppressive zone control to the point the game is unfun.

"Of course, we do fully understand that Adventurers may not be satisfied with this fact placing limitations on selling or copying Shai's Artina Sol. However, we hope to preserve Shai's exceptional position within the class roster of Black Desert by maintaining our original intentions behind the class."

Sure, you might fully understand that, but realistically you're just saying that so as to have an excuse to not do anything about it despite the actual people playing the class have been begging for this for four years now, while alt gamers who don't care one way or another and only play because of the stupidly inflated damage will keep playing it and not give a shit. I also find the "exceptional position" one of the silliest points in this entire post, it rings the same energy of whenever she's referred to as a "unique class", as if it magically absolves all the shit design and willful ignorance of the actual complaints levied on this system.

"As a result, we hope you will understand that we do not have any current plans to change Shai's Artina Sol. Nevertheless, we will continue to challenge ourselves to try to give Shai more unique aspects that do not exist in the world of the Black Desert."

You could've just said "we don't care, we're not going to fix it" and that would've just told us what we needed to know, hell you could've formatted your whole post to say only that. Though the last line probably sums up the tone deafness best, the "unique aspects" are the things strangulating the class and are the things nobody actually likes. People like the functions of the Awakening, being a more support oriented kit, that's cool, though most wish it had more, you know, actual skills. Treating awakening like it's some incredible monumental feat of technical and design prowess and thus making it one of the worst things in the game to interact with, is not, and laughs in the face of people who just want to play the fucking game and play a support. Which, most people in other games just call it a support kit and let it, you know, play the game. 

But let's also not kid ourselves, you do implement plenty of unique features.. It may all be copypasted from DokeV (Alpaca, Dance Emotes, half the animations in the kit) but hey, at least it's unique, right? You know, until you inevitably give the feature to every other class, you don't even need to ever log on to a shai to make music or play music, which by itself is fine, but it sets a pretty clear tone that anything we get, everyone else will get at some point. 

Disappointing, but ty for the response Altin.

Regarding some specific points- starting at prof 1 for gathering and alchemy are negligable effects. Less so than even Corsair's sailing effect. I have been working on my infinite mana potion piece in recent months, and have leveled 3 seasonal gatherers into high artisan and master. Professional 1 goes so fast that it is only significant in that you need to bring green and blue tanning knives for an hour

Alchemy on the other hand.. is such a silly, broken, expensive niche that Professional 1 would never even be considered an obstacle to anyone seriously intending to pursue alchemy

On a minor note, Shai lore(f1) also clearly states that our specific class character did not care for lifeskilling, instead being a curious explorer who did not embrace the normal Shai life of making potions and picking plants

I will agree that as an end game PvE player who has reached all of their gear goals, Shai does feel sufficiently powerful at the current end game meta spots even without blackstar awakening AP. At lower gear and spots she seemed insufficient and garmoth.com numbers seem to confirm that. 

Regarding combat design, and the deemphasized combat efficiency- I haven't met a Shai who was not surprised to hear that statement as Calpheon Ball.  Ive played for 16 months and it was the first I heard of it. Sure we have all heard the memes, "Shai is an RP class" but to hear that, essentially, officially from the mouths of PA was a shocker. After hearing it, I reviewed the material available from PA to see if I had simply overlooked that aspect of our class. I even used the F1 feature for the first time to read our class lore and description. I checked the website. It did not mention a class who sacrifices combat efficiency or competitiveness. It did once like twice describe us as a support class, but did not state that we sacrificed combat efficiency as a trade for that. As other classes with powerful support abilities do not seem to make that sacrifice, it does not seem an obvious thing to assume especially considering the solo play focus of bdo.

If our class was always designed and intended as such an exception, such a thing should have been emphasized and clear to all new players and not hidden away and difficult to even find reference to when looking specifically for it.

Instead what I saw was a class intro video where a Shai literally one shots a giant crab thing that had kicked the crap out of a group of adventurers. That did not appear to be a class that lacked combat efficiency lol. The description of the class when making a Shai describes her as having a "giant boomerang, florang,  which is used for combat." No mention of it or us not being a combat inefficient. It also goes on to say "Due to their small size, they have a high basic evasion rate and are fast and nimble when evading and attacking their enemies" We dont have high basic evasion and are not fast and nimble in anyway evading enemies. Unless we stack DP meme we are one of the easiest classes to target, but far more importantly a class which is "fast and nimble ... attacking their enemies" with a "giant boomerang" that sure SOUNDS combat efficient

Also the F1 description of Shai claims that she is ranged attack type.. even though she is melee(for some reason..) 

Which is to say that not only has PA not historically described Shai to players as an "enjoyment class who sacrifices combat efficiency" but also their own class descriptions are so inaccurate that we couldnt even believe them if they did 🤦‍♂️

Maybe leadership expects new players to dig up dev diaries from four years ago and assume nothing has changed while also ignoring all of the things that have changed as well as the in game descriptions to understand the class design intent of Shai?

But then, if Shai is an enjoyment class who sacrifices combat efficiency and isnt intended for competitiveness, left completely unable to defend herself or her spot..

and as well, PA has recently confirmed on this board that they do intend and support PvP interactions to occur to players engaging in PvE(abandoned monastery thread) 

Then logically, on the subject of this thread(Sol) the Shai class should then have the easiest time of any other class in the game to tag a real class who actually is intended for combat efficiency- so that they may particpate in the PvX game as a peer instead of merely being harassed...

but instead of being the easiest class to tag in the game, we are singularly the only class in the game with additional hurdles in our way preventing us from doing so.

I dont know that there is a word in the english language that can accurately summarize that situation without breaking TOS

I dont actually believe that Shai is intended to be an "enjoyment" class who sacrifices combat efficiency and competitiveness. Instead it seems obvious to me that PA has dubbed fixing Shai to be too much work and not profitable enough, and this is our cop out

Garmoth' Heart quest is not repeatable. I have attended at least 80% of Garmoths and never seen a heart drop. Preorders on both hearts that have not filled, even during this 3 week boss event that we just finished, preorders have only gone up.

So for the mistake of playing Shai, I cannot have a Garmoth's heart on one of my tag's awak weapons... until I get 2 more somehow(kutum also stingey, though Im not sure I would use it anyways after learning that you have to remove caphras to upgrade to garmoth heart later)

This is not even to mention all of the other unique issues that Sol has

TL;DR: I think that this decision is stupid, lazy and inconsistent with good game design. Thank you to our team for putting this on the board and getting it considered, I doubt the final decision was yours to make and I appreciate you trying.

Translation:
"This is not shai desert online. - Kekw, don't say the Kekw"

Post clarification of the above:

Shai was initially made to be a life skill class with no competitiveness in mind for PvP and PvE. Since their internal numbers have determined she has an 'acceptable' role for PvE and PVP the decision to not change her has been made which means there will be no blackstar Sol or tag changes. 

Argument:
Shai was nerfed on multiple skills such as 123 and try this (~20% avg damage permament loss after the nerf, which was equivalent to losing one accessory slot - aka 289k prior > 312k after).  This nerf was due to her performance at the trolls grind spot where she was considered 'game breaking' and misty haze was placed on a 3min cd as well. Other classes eventually caught up to the old shai numbers and in some cases even obtained more but those classes were not nerfed. Instead, the spot was nerfed due to the numerous amount of classes now performing beyond the developers expectations, thus the spot had to be reduced instead. Shai skills were never increased after the spot was reduced because PA determined Shai performs acceptably; she will not get a blackstar option for the same reason. Let's not even talk about her mobility issue or DFS potential and give/take system that repeatedly left her behind on aspects such as her lack of evasion passive because PA doesn't adhere to balance in that fashion. However, In terms of life skills, which was said to be a class focus, Shai has no place because PA never gave her a good reason to be played in that type of content. Despite her passive boosts, using a Shai to life skill results in a slower xp per hour than other classes such as musa, valk, and witch. All of whom have superior combat efficiency for both PvE and PvP. This was because PA decided life skillers would feel obligated to play Shai if they made her reasonably good at life skills, which was a good decision. However, you cannot say that it is Shais purpose and then not support it. 

This implies they knew their logic was flawed at the start of her design leaving the question about why they continued to string her along this path and have even reduced her to less than she was on release through nerfs and placing misty haze on a 3min cd. The answer to that is that Shai is not a class, she should not be placed on the class selection screen and should instead be relegated to a separate RP character area. All of her in-game character synopsis should have a clear warning saying she is only intended for roleplay and will likely have reduced support and performance. To top it all off, we still don't have a donkuanatt which is immensely sad and also an RP element. 

I originally intended to sell my spare Blackstar to boost my shai gear when they informed us that the option was denied, but given the reinforcement of the ball statement that shai is not for combat efficiency and reference to both PvP and PvE. I may have to join our Donkuanatt in virtual retirement since this is the mentality of our beloved developers towards our class and concerns. Thank you for reading, and my sincere apologies to all players and staff who might have had higher hopes concerning this matter. I will only remind you that PA is a company whose statistics must imply that Shai players are most satisfied with cute RP outfits to accompany their music, dance, and inadequacy.

I can't stress enough how dissappointing this is. I'm level 66 on my Shai and have 200+ days played on her purely in combat. You're really going to alienate a portion of your playerbase because you originally intended years ago for it to be a lifeskill class. 

I want to rant but what actually is the point. 

Ugh.

Unique? What is unique about Shai anymore? 

Music? Nope - every player can summon a shai to play music for them, and the latest ball showed that you wont even need shai in the future as all classes can play instruments.

Lifeskill passives? Oh, but does that make Corsair a lifeskill class. Guess she should be barred from tagging over one of her weapons too!

The only thing "unique" about Shai now is being excluded from new PvE/PvP features in the game. But hey, at least we get a zero-effort dance emote that doesnt fit into BDO's style at all that was just copy pasted from another game, cause that is so worth all PA changing their description of shai to be an "enjoyment class" and losing out on content that every other class has access to.

Not giving Shai a Blackstar Awakening weapon, so she would have the ability to tag it, just cause the devs would have to rebalance shai's PvE? The missing stats is only half the problem with excluding Shai from this weapon, and you said so yourself, Shai can be balanced around her weapon.

The original intentions of the class havent been maintained over the years. Shai wasnt described as an "enjoyment class" on release, nor was she described as a class that would be excluded from content in the game. On her release Shai was described to be a support class that uses a giant boomerang for combat, while also having experience in lifeskilling and having a talent weapon that allows her to play music.

Just because shai had some unqiue abilities on her release doesnt mean that you should strip away the rest of the classes identity so players can "enjoy" those previously unique abilities. Should Corsair be stripped of her combat efficiency so that players can enjoy RPing as a mermaid that swims in the ocean and enjoys lifeskilling on a ship? 

Perfect! Time to ignore the community on what they wanted for Shai and instead give them even more copy-pasted content from the world of DokeV.

Extremely disappointed by PA on their decision on this one. Not only did it take them months to respond to this post, but they didnt even attempt to make any sort of compromise. Honestly I didnt expect much as PA have made it clear they will only ever see Shai in the future as an "enjoyment class", but I at least expected something to be said about the compromise that they promised regarding Shai being excluded from Jetina's content.

You know the biggest dissapointment on this, is how it took months, just to say this.
In the end, it seems it won't matter how much feedback we give them, how unsatisfied we are with this situation. 
So at least all is clear. I will still be persistent on this, but Shai is a lifeskill class apparently, so not a real class. Wanna play a real class? Reroll to one, or that seems the answer from PA.
You would think with so much feedback, one (PA) would change their mind and try understand, but the developers are too much stubborn on their view on Shai to the extent that stops them from making its Talent Weapon Sol, from being listed on marketplace, or taggable, such basic features. Even give the weapon +10 All Species Damage so its equal to Dandelion. That's how far their stubborness got them. It's both dissapointing and sad. No compensation for the weapon not having Jetina either.

If you play Shai, i wouldnt play any group content as Shai, as we are apparently not a real class, a lifeskill class, so lifeskill class doesnt get into that kind of stuff. No Shais in nodewars, Sieges, group pve spots (Oluns, Gyfin Upper, Turos etc), no Guild Bosses, group pvp of any kind, aswell as Attoraxxion. That's my take. 

If the devs don't care about us, why would we care about them?

Give shai 0.5 second gathering. 

Give shai talent accessories.

Give shai I-frame on florang surf.

Give shai a combat evasion passive.

Give shai a combo agility dodge like the one given to Maegu.