This is just a summary post to outline some of the issues that shades have in pvp.
Offense and Defense based on offensive perk actions
Offensive and Defense perks like Spirit Phylacerty and Totemic Rites and other health drain perks require the target to be perkable. This means we have a severely limited toolset (offense and defense) versus evade professions.
A lot of shade's don't want to be able to DD perk splat evade professions, but we would like a working defence and a bit more offense when fighting them. Sneak attack has a long recharge and regulars are easily avoided and don't do much damage.
Roots and Snares
Apart from Spatial Displacement (for a shade this is a big sacrifice perk wise) and average Nano Resist, shade's are very suseptible to roots and snares (as they are at the moment). With no first aid in spirits we also don't have access to spirit purges. With no skill lock modifier in spirits MoTR and other such tools are at their full recharge time.
If Disorientate was moved to SR 1, this would open up more perks for SD for pvp shades.
Token Boards
Does the reason for Shade's not getting token boards still apply ?
Health Drains and PVP Damage being halved
No other profession has a significant portion of their healing halved in PVP.
Low level shades and a lack of perk actions
Because of the amount of perks needed to get a complete shade toolset, low level shade's only have access to a small portion of a shade toolset and thus suffer in pvp. This is similar to Keepers.
Possibly open up more perks early on in the perk lines and then boost their performance as more perks are put into the line.