The first question I'd like FC to hear is: Is abusing sync exploitation or should it be henceforth viewed as part of ranged users toolsets?
Some months ago sync being fixed was promised. It's still just as broken as ever. The 'lag' in AO known as sync is, in my experience, the worst lag in any game on the market. This affects primarily all melee users who must be 'in range' and affects Shades quite severely due to being easily rooted and thereby prevented from even attempting to be in range to attack, and by attack I mean contribute in any fashion.
Is abusing sync in fact exploitation? It's been considered such in the past in other games. This was done so by exploiting the way in which games were networked to cause sync issues. Players would be banned for doing this. AO has this same sync issue but it's on the devs to fix it. It was promised that it would be addressed a long time ago. It was better for a small time, now it's as bad as ever.
There are some players in the Shade community who have mentioned my name in nominations for the professionals program. I personally do not see the value of such a program when this dev team has yet to even make good on their own promises which affect not only Shades but all melee classes.
I believe any balancing done will be pointless unless it addresses the imbalances and frankly, the absolute retardation which occurs when sync is abused.