Shai has been a wonderfully unique experiment and before I discuss things further, I would first like to present a statement from our beloved developer:

"

Shai has gained a new talent.

Now Shai can give strength and courage to her friends with her instruments. Though we may not be able to satisfy all adventurers, we hope this patch provides you a meaningful content that will make the game more enjoyable.

As we designed Shai's talent, we focused on differentiating it from the "Awakening" of the existing characters and on creating a unique charm for Shai. We believed that by maintaining such basis, we could enhance Shai's quality as a special character. We hope Shai becomes a valuable character through which you can enjoy Black Desert, among all other ways of enjoying the game. Though Shai may differ from other characters in terms of efficiency in certain situations such as battles, her unique strengths will offset such a difference. We will continue doing our best to show you a new fun side of the game through Shai, whose charm you haven't ever seen in the game.

Also, it was your opinions that mattered the most while we were designing Shai.

Since it is the first time we are trying this, we will actively review your opinions and accept adequate suggestions as we proceed with the development.

We will not develop Shai on a short-term basis, but on a long-term one, and keep adding related contents. For your reference, the three instruments, Tring, Tute, and Tamtam, that were revealed at the Global Lab through the previous updates were removed and unified into a new single item called 'Sol'. We know that some of you were looking forward to the previous instruments, but please wait for us, since they will soon come to meet Shai with a new appearance, bearing their true meanings." 

- Patch Notes - July 31st 2019

This was a truly inspiring paragraph and it reached the hearts of many of my friends and allies who played the class. However, slowly time passed and changes with our class began to grow scarce. Shai seemed almost to be held apart from the rest of the classes in terms of design and the Shai community seemed to think it was because she was supposed to be a long-term effort. This does not seem to have been the case as we are now approaching her 2 year anniversary and she has slowly been allowed to fall behind with little changes here and there but no flesh to the bones that initially gave life to the class. We were promised that the shai would give up her combat and efficiency but that she would offset this with her own unique strengths. However, she has no unique strengths at the moment. The unfortunate truth is that Shai is nothing special in PvE, PvP, or life skills. In fact, she is fighting for last in most of those areas. It is true that she can do music composition but any other class can also summon their Lv. 56+ shai to play as long as their Shai has obtained an Artina Sol. 

Artina Sol:

The Artina Sol has become a symbol of the Shai main, and to obtain a Pen Artina Sol is one of our most cherished rights of passage. This is because there is no buying or selling of this item and as a result, it is uniquely achieved via self-investment and effort which really makes it feel like our own item. This achievement is so important that the item cannot be tagged either from another class to a shai or vice versa. Unfortunately, a Shai cannot tag another Shai and pass on their V Artina Sol either which can cause issues with Shais who would like to do multiple builds for activities such as PvP, PvE, and AP Shai PvP. This may not seem like a big deal to most classes but for PvP many Shais use a more defensive crystal build and thus need different crystals than they would use in other areas of the game. Without being able to Tag, a Shai is forced to pick and choose where to be inefficient or make another V Artina Sol which is untradable or sellable for an alt. In addition, the V Artina Sol cannot be caphras'd and it also does not give our main hand any hidden bonus AP like awakening weapons because it is considered a talent and not an awakening weapon. All of this together and it is understandable why Shai players have begun to look at this prestige item as a burden more than a privilege. This feeling only grew greater when we failed to receive a Blackstar variant or upgrade path for our current Pen Artina Sol which will undoubtedly put us further behind in our PvE efficiency than other classes.

Buffs:

On launch, our buffs use to be unique and powerful but since then we have been given succession and with it, we saw casters gain the ability to speed boost players. Likewise, our debuffs have slowly become less and less important as things like pocket haze got patched and more classes have been released with defense shredding abilities such as Sage with -evasion and Nova with their abilities which reduce DP and AP by large amounts. All in all, it seems like we have given up a lot and in return, we can now bongo while moving and apply our buffs and debuffs at greater distances. Yet we give up super armor on Misty Haze and Delusive light while also losing Area of Effect on all of our buffs/debuffs. Now might be a good time to mention that both allies and enemies can I-Frame our abilities which is a huge problem when that seems to be our main purpose.

PvE:

I would also note that in PvE we have slowly fallen behind the curve at end game content because our florang has a hard time punching through mobs with high damage reduction. I believe this is a result of us having multi-hit attacks because each attack has to contend with the monster's damage reduction stat and is thus reducing our overall DPS by a greater than intended amount. Of course, this could be another one of the things we are intended to sacrifice but I don't think her unique strengths have offset her weakness yet. Also, please remove the dead zone between shai and her florang. It makes us unable to properly apply damage to mobs that move towards the shai such as at new content grinding zones on Elvia Servers and Ash Forest.

Appeal:

Looking at this, I would not be surprised if some think that I have an issue with the entire class but I beg you to stay with me a short while longer as I haven't even begun to discuss the heart of the issue. I have not explained how Shai focusing on DP is the only viable way to play in PvP and how unrewarding it is to enhance your gear to full V and still die in a 1v1 because they have 450 accuracy which is fast becoming the standard due to all the new accuracy accessories. I haven't brought up any of the Woes of my AP Shai friends who, since fallen god released, seem to have fallen silent because their enemies have become insurmountable obstacles while the Shai players inundated by the 60% shai dmg restraint in PVP. The same restraint which guarantees that no Shai will be capable of killing a C20 DR player unless that player is afk or the Shai has full Pen Accessories.

The real issue:

None of that matters because my main complaint is that our class has no clear direction nor feeling of progression when obtaining massive gear gains. This is because you can give a shai player every V item in the game but they will still be a Shai which is bound to outdated restrictions, poor pve scaling, and lackluster buffs. Not to mention, the class is also missing a lvl 63 passive as a reward for our efforts on the class and we really ought to have a % passive to evasion or DR if it was intended for us to be a tanky class like a striker. The only reason our issues have not been called out sooner was that content took time to creep away from Shai. This happened gradually and her high hp pool allowed her to feel more durable than the class really is, giving the players a false sense of security.

Conclusion:

The world has become dangerous, and the shai class is poorly equipped to handle it. We need help from our creators, please listen and guide us to a real purpose.  Fix our scaling issues if you can in PvP and PvE so that we can contend with players in this new world of fallen gods. Breathe life back into our buffs and do not force us into the prison made by our own Forest Echo. It's no fun for either us or our enemies when we bongo, and while I'll not wish it nerfed, I would love to experience new options that do not hinder our already impoverished class. 

Now I open this discussion up to my friends and fellow Shai, what has she been to you and where would you like her to be taken?

+1

For the love of BDO, please hear this message PA!!!!

Give the Shai class some love and bring us some good development!!!

Very well said!

I am going to be here every week to war on PA to make shai a better  class. 

Thank you so much for the support. I know I wrote this hastily and without any real review but this was intended to be a flash of points and experiences for the class in hopes that some would ring true with our current development. If you have any similar experiences then I'd love to hear about them as they may help.

This post about sums up all the frustrations with Shai I really wish that I still had any confidence that she would be any more then a novelity. but 2 years of being a cripple in the game  has left a very bad taste in my mouth I do enjoy the class but I see very little point left in continuing on as the Shai or honestly playing the game these days I'm pretty much down to fishing, hitting the totem and farming. I honestly wish that posts like these would even get some kinda of offical feed back to even hint that the community is being listened to, because from what I've seen from the lack of response and the meaningless/ lack of updates to the class I really believe that there is little to no direction for the class other then a cute novelty to play song and do tricks.