Returning Player help

Hey all. I stopped playing AO about 7 years ago and have decided to give it another go around since it still seems to be active enough and I am completely bored with everything else. Back when I used to play I was never really into endgame raiding content at all and my highest level character (by choice) was a 210 Shade. I played for the amazing in depth character building pvp. I played to see just how much I could push my toons to the limit in twinking and lower level pvp mostly. This go around I have decided I want to push to full on endgame content and finally see everything in the game I never did before.

All of that being said. I’m having a lot of trouble deciding what character I want to play through to end game. I absolutely loved playing my shade back in the day in pve. It was just about the only character I ever played that I enjoyed in pve other than an MA. I know that back then shade was definitely not a great choice for a starting character and am not sure if that still holds true today? I also enjoy pet characters for pve content, MP, Engi, Crat and would love some input on their current states? I have forgotten so much about this game, but really look forward to digging back in and making it all the way through to endgame content this time. Any advice and knowledge you guys can drop on me would be a huge help.

Edit: I suppose I should add that this is a fresh account as I don’t even remember the e-mail address I had linked to my old account and have gotten no help in recovering it. I do have a paid sub and all expansions though.

Thank you!

Welcome back :blush:

One of the difficulties with shades back then used to be getting spirits. Other professions can buy implants from the store, but shades used to need to hunt spirits in shadowlands.
Now they have a nano called Spirit Siphon which you can cast on any mobs you happen to be killing, e.g. cultists in ToTW, hecklers or Tarasque, and this will make them drop a Soul Capsule which has a 25-50% chance of dropping a spirit.

Additionally, many items that used to not be usable by shades, such as tokenboards and almost all helmets, may now be used by shades.

So it’s mostly up to personal preference, but shade is a lot more playable without high level main support than it used to be.

Yeah under about lvl 210ish Shades still aren’t so great

It sounds like spirit siphon alone will be a world of difference in leveling a shade. Hunting spirits was a pita back in the day. How are the various pet professions doing these days?