For those who do not know:
Shrouded Dance now requires: Skill Focus (Hide), Skill Focus (Perform), Hide 12 ranks, Perform 10 ranks.
The perform investment and feat cost of skill focus perform are steep and mean if someone wants to take shrouded dance there's a cost to their build. This seems balanced and fair to me, and is not the point of this thread's resurrection. As far as I can tell, Shrouded Dance is completely irrelevant to the ressurector's point.
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As to the resurrector's point:
I play a shadow dancer. I have for some time. I fukken love the roleplay of it. HiPs isn't really worth the cost to a build from a strictly mechanical perspective, and it is not a class for those intent on maximising competitiveness. You have to waste feats getting it, then lose out on extra sneak dice of going pure rogue or the spell casting of an assassin. I know it can seem like this isn't the case a lot, but any buffed and properly equipped detector will completely nullify a shadow dancer's HiPs. My shadow dancer has hit the skill cap and is small and they still get detected. Especially if the detector is a Druid. I am okay with this. If any buff pushes them out of range of that sort of counter they become far, far too powerful. Stealth is, unfortunately, an all or nothing system. I have also not felt underpowered in PvE or PvP. Like all rogue based classes, it requires careful use, and is deadly in experienced hands.
What I would kill for is some kind of change to the summoned shadow. If not mechanically, I would like to see the summoned shadow reflect the dancer's model. Visually, this could be the character's model with shadow shield VFX. It wont make the class stronger, but every time I use my shadow in RP the giant human sized blob face really kills immersion.
TL;DR - The class is weaker than it seems. Not as weak as Crypt Raider (although Rhea managed plenty of murder despite that). If we as a community are striving to balance it could do with a buff. But this server isn't remotely balanced and never has been. I do think SD right now remains perfectly viable.
