Visually, it looks great, but it has way too many unnecessary changes that ruins the core identity and feel about Shade, and a lot of cases just makes the class worse to play overall.
I will go over the problematic areas of what the revamp damaged about Shade and provide a solutional idea to fix it, a lot of these will be reverting or partially reverting the skill to how it used to be.
Let's begin with Spirit Frenzy and Spiritgate:
Flipping these skills around from your burst skill to main summon does not make sense, it is better and more fun to leave them how they always were and update them from there.
Spirit Frenzy: Spin-to-win is a very fun aspect about Shade and what current Spirit Frenzy offers, so a better way to update this skill is implement its burst and random proc aspect from Spirit Flow to the skill itself so that the skill is useful immediately when you get it rather than only when you reach level 200+.
New Spirit Frenzy should be something along the lines of:
Passive: When Shade attacks, summon a [visually blue] whirlwind of fox spirits for 3 seconds. This can occur once every 3 seconds.
Active: Shade will spin around forming a powerful [visually pink] whirlwind of fox spirit for up to 5 seconds dealing a massive amount of damage. 120 seconds cooldown, it is affected by cooldown resets to keep the synergy with Spirit Flow's reset.
If Spirit Frenzy is cast while Spirit Flow is active, then this damage will be doubled.
[The active portion would be roughly 40% of Enhanced Spirit Frenzy's damage and the new Enhanced Spirit Frenzy will be roughly 80% of the old enhanced damage, when you would use one and reset it for enhanced immediate second cast would be roughly 120% of the damage in total.]
Spiritgate: This skill was already a placement summon skill, and seeing the summons spawn in and attack monsters has a fun aspect about it. The update here should have been simply when Spiritgate kills a monster, extend the duration of the gate by 2-3 seconds, up to an additional 30 or 60 seconds so that the gate would have a max 60 or 90 seconds duration while hunting monsters on a 60 seconds cooldown and not affect the duration while bossing.
Bladed Imps change was what?:
This being a selection skill makes Shade worse to play as they were already three different skills, so you could just simply keybind the one skill you wanted to use and never need to do a selection skill process in the first place. Having to log in and re-select the imp you want to use is an annoyance feature that should have never been considered.
These skills when they are three separate skills can be used for mobbing before 4th job very well and offers for a much better pre level 100 experience as a result.
Not to mention, you can combo them together when they are as three separate skills.
How these skills should have been updated:
~ Vertical Bladed Imp: Increase the upwards range by a lot to make it more useful, especially as you get stronger with 4th and 5th job advancements.
~ Horizontal Bladed Imp: Increase the forward range by a lot so that it can reach monster way beyond the range of your other skills so the pull in is always useful.
~ Spin Bladed Imp: Increase the behind range (forward range remains the same) by a lot so that it is more useful to vacuum in monsters around you to be in front to be more useful in killing monsters.
Soul Split and Spirit Flow:
Soul Split: The change feels to me like a more complicated version of what it always has done.
If anything would revert this back to being a 120 seconds cooldown skill for Shade and party members and revert Spirit Flow to have a long duration again.
Spirit Flow: This skill having a giant fox spirit in the background that attacks is cool, but I would simplify and partially revert it a bit:
~ Duration, increased back to 60 seconds, increased further up to 90 seconds with the 6th job boost node. Offers 20% final damage to Shade while active.
~ While active, when Shade attacks then the fox spirit will also do an attack. The fox spirit attacks once every 2 seconds.
~ Still resets the cooldowns to most of Shade's skills when initially activated.
No need for this skill to be a true burst skill when you have Spirit Frenzy and Multi Smashing Punch.
Spirit Incarnation Addition:
Additional effect: While Spirit Flow is active, Spirit Incarnation has a chance to attack on its own for 3 seconds whenever Spirit Flow's fox spirit attacks.
Seeing Spirit Incarnation attack is both a very fun aspect while hunting monsters and really helps with Shade's hunting playstyle. Removing the random attacks of Spirit Flow for a consistent attack is fine, but this aspect about it needs to stay around since Spirit Incarnation's random procs really adds to the enjoyment of playing Shade!
Spirit Bond / Spirit Bond Max:
The fun to this skill is keeping up the uptime of the skill to become infinite duration and having Moonbeam fight along with Shade! I am fine with moving the buffs aspect to be passive throughout Shade's kit, but the core identity to this skill really has gotten lost with the revamp and needs to be partially reverted and then updated to a new style.
How this skill should have been updated:
Base duration: 30 seconds, max duration cannot exceed 120 seconds, but can keep getting extended to 120 seconds.
Cooldown: 120 seconds
Moonbeam is summoned and fights alongside Shade!
When Shade kills a monster, extend Spirit Bond's duration by X seconds.
Moonbeam attacks:
~ Attacks nearby monsters every second and marks monsters for 10 seconds. When Shade damages a marked monster, extend Spirit Bond's duration by X seconds.
~ Summons her own Spirit Frenzy for 10 seconds every 60 seconds. While Moonbeam's Spirit Frenzy is summoned, Shade's chance to summon a Fox Fire is doubled.
~ Has a 25% chance to summon her own Fox Fires whenever she damages a monster.
The first 6th job Origin Skill was a lot more interesting and better, the new one is lame just doing a cutscene for a big burst of damage, revert this back to the first original Origin Skill.
Hope this feedback is taken into consideration and bring Shade's revamp into something where most of us would enjoy and be happy with!
