That's like playing Final Fantasy XIV, picking the white mage, then complaining when she can't tank during raid bosses.

Well she isn't a life skill class, she is confirmed by the devs to be an enjoyment class. They didn't specify what that is though. My guess would be:

A class that you play when:

* When you don't play much at all

* You login to take screenshots and do silly stuff

* When you just want to look cute 

It doesn't make much sense though. But one thing is clear, they won't ever change their stance on the class. It is what it is, you either accept it or reroll sadly. 

When the class was unveiled and at every opportunity they told everyone what the class would be.

They continue to reiterate that this is what you are getting when you pick it.

You are the one that ignored all that shit and picked it anyway.

What people fail to realize here, that in an MMO there is no THE support/healer class, it only has multiple supports/healers. If a game demands the existence of a support class there will be more along the line to both shake up the meta, and avoid homogenizing a role. Let's take a look at other games:

-FF14: 4 classes categorized as healers and 2 support/dps out of out of  19 classes

-WoW:  7 talent specs over 6 classes from 13 classes and 37 talent spec
-ESO:  2 classes out of 6

-New World: 2 weapons out of 12, but since an actual healer support equips 2 of those 2 weapons, so i consider it a single class, making this the outlier, however NW is pretty early into it's life cycle being a little more than 1 years old.

And then we have BDO where we have 25 characters with 47(soon 48) specs, and we got a whopping 1 so called support class that is not even mandatory for the sparse viable group content that exist in this primarily solo focused game.

Now the questions are: Why do you need buffs when your skill addons, q and black spirit rage among other things already buff you to the tits? Why do you need a healer where your skill addons can heal you for plenty if you class doesn't already have healing while your fairy autofeeds you potions? Why is Shai the only class whose awakening weapon is gimped for no reason?

And while we are at it, how come there were no experimental classes since Shai and Archer in the game? Because those two turned out so well we only need the generic damage dealers yes? Notice how the most experimental they got with characters is releasing 2 classes in close proximity to each other.

So the Shai:

- should be able to defend their spot

- should be able have a an awakening weapon like the rest of the classes (buying from cm, add garmoth heart etc)

- should have a proper ability set

- should not be an "enjoyment class" whatever the fresh hell that means, fed only scraps of useless content (alpaca), or dances ripped from DokeV that all characters should have to begin with (composing is also such a feature but now everybody will have access to it), roleplaying in an online roleplaying game should not be exclusive to one class

Shai is garbage design, and garbage design should always be protested against, no matter how the lead dev brushes the problem off in 30 seconds in a highly curated enviroment, because they have no idea how to balance it. 

Like, multiple people have stated already that the class is intended and has always intended to be what it is. I dont understand why people pick the class thats supposed to be a lifeskilling/rp relaxation based class intentionally and then complain that it isnt a fully fleshed out combat character like the rest. You knew what you were buying when you paid for it. If you thought that it would be alright with you to be bad at combat and over time your tastes changed, thats what weapon reroll tickets are for.

"Hey, do you want a hammer or a screwdriver?"

Screwdriver please!

-2 weeks later-

Dude, this thing dosent hammer nails for shit. Rework this thing already.

Because Shai was an experiment, and experiments can fail, and if it fails you fix it, and not sweep it under the rug saying "this is fine".

Shai does not excel at lifeskilling:

-Musa is better at gathering, and Valk has a better vacuum skill for gathering

-Striker, Mystic, Musa, Kuno are better at hunting

-Corsair has a sailing passive

-Her alchemy xp passive is marginally better than any other class, and is useless after guru50

-She is at the baseline at every other profession

Her only notable passive is +carry weight which is a an universal passive not a lifeskill one

RP should not be exclusive to a class (and it isn't since they made composing for everyone, and so will dancing be for everyone in the future).

And what is the relaxation feature? A bad mount that is a worse horse, or a bad mount that is slower than your character running? You can relax on any class. Hell i can UwU up my Berserker.

The class doesn't deliver on anything they try to shill it as, and none of the people  delivered a single compelling argument against reworking, or any argument for that matter, all i see on repeat is "dev said so", and who woulda thunk, devs can be wrong too:

And no one cares to address Shai gearing is gimped with the sol for no reason.

If Square enix could redo a whole MMO because it was a flop, Pearl Abyss can redo a single class.

I repeat my point Shai is garbage by design, and garbage design should always be protested against.

But that dosent answer the question of, if they told you in plain english that this class would not be good at combat, why did you choose it?

The aplpaca is nto worse than the horse if what you want is a cute mount to slowly trot around on. I dont even think they marketed this as a lifeskill9ing class. they just gave it some lifeskilling bonuses so you could level it without fighting monsters.

Shai is a class that is focused on aesthetics. It sounds like you want a class that is more high performance for combat. Theres like 23 other choices you could make.

Yea this is such a dumb statement, ANY CLASS is a lifeskill class not just shai, gige shais the respect they deserve.

Your argument is completely stupid. Any new player who comes into Black Desert, has 0 idea what the game is about, and sees 26+ classes all completely different from each other. And let's say this player comes from any other MMO that has a trinity system (or expects a trinity system because thats very popular in western MMOs). That player will go through all the classes and take a look, maybe read the lore and take a look at the preview video. Now imagine with your small peanut brain that this person loves playing support/heal classes and has these options: Valkyrie, Witch, Wizard and Shai.
Oh the Valkyrie looks like a more tanky support class that maybe has some defensive buffs for the group
And Witch looks like she has a bunch of offensive buffs for the party and some damage.
Wizard looks like he has a bit more damage than Witch, maybe some different buffs.
And this Shai looks like she has alot of offensive and defensive buffs and alot of heals.

Then this person decides to play Shai, really likes the playstyle, what you can do with Shai and how valuable she is as a support class (which is not wrong, just only applies to endgame).
And now in your mind this person has to suffer through an awful midgame where he constantly underperforms while trying his absolute best just because ShAi Is An EnJoYmEnT cLaSs and he PiCkEd ShAi DeSpItE kNoWiNg HoW bAd ShE iS. In the end this person thinks this game is way too difficult or the developers don't know how to take care of their classes/players or whatever other reasons and quits the game.

This is not a problem about players deciding on a subpar class on purpose, it's a problem about PA releasing a class with faulty design and then refusing to acknowledge that they fucked it up and just keep playing along instead of reworking/fixing the class.