As someone who mains Kerillian (30+193), I agree with you on Shade. Glaive however can make any of her careers OP. Handmaiden just happens to benefit the most from it by having high Stamina regen.
Daggers seem quite strong too, I agree, but they more than lose out on horde clear, and this leaves them in a semi-balanced state imo. They’re a very dangerous weapon to use, which I don’t think fits the description of ‘low risk high reward’. You can’t take hordes head on and have to dance around them to not take any damage. Low Stamina also leaves you vulnerable. One-shotting SV still requires a headshot and stats built towards that.
Shade’s Ultimate cooldown and cooldown reduction builds seem to be the biggest issue. Kerillian already has great ARP weapons now. Adding a one-shot Ultimate that can be gained in a short amount of time makes her ridiculously strong. She has basically become the melee version of BH. Insta-kill Crits on a short cooldown.
Another issue with the ultimate is that you don’t have to build towards doing more damage. You already have a set amount of high damage that you will do on every ult, no matter which type of enemy you’re hitting. You’ll still one-shot Chaos Warriors if you’re not using any Armour or Chaos damage.
Additionally, not having to build for Boss damage is also an issue. Glaive’s damage being reduced with the Ultimate up was a good start, but you can still melt bosses with any weapon. I think this is an issue because other careers are forced to build for Boss killing, or take a Boss killing weapon. Making sure someone in your group has some Boss damage should be a thing. Being able to think “Oh, we don’t need Boss killing because we have ‘x’ class, and it doesn’t matter if they’re built for bosses or not.” shouldn’t be a thing (this strongly).
(CDR builds)