Techies are cool. But it seems like Melee tech shield techies are reheaded step children.
Why Melee? I'd have said Ranged Shield Techs.
Even after the nerf, Charge Weapon is still one of the best abilities in the game. And significantly better than Overcharge.
Custom Shock Gear was the best Melee weapon for a long time. The new best weapon is probably
Magma Crusher. Both of which are Energy. (I don't know how long you've been playing, but Burn DoT was changed to actually be good.)
Custom Psi Weapons are Melee-only and can also be really good, depending on what properties you get, and if you're willing to save-scum for good stats. (Don't let the name fool you. They're good for all classes and even make good Stat-Sticks for Ranged characters.)
I don't even know what to use for a Ranged Tech in the endgame. Heavy Slut Ray, probably, but what else? XTR-8 Peer? Ice Lance? Deep Freeze is good, but Ranged Tech can't make best use of it.
Another way to look at it is, Drone Techs don't really have much choice for the Accessory slot. You
will have a Drone in it, and you really only have 3 options. You're also almost certainly getting the Combat Tail implant.
Drone tech get all kinds of missable and irretrivable super drone buffs for almost every occasion, where shield guy never get exclusive super shit. Its honestly to the point where you alway want ot be drone tech and then cheat you perks so you have everythng.
Which is funny, because back when I started playing, Attack Drone was considered a waste of a Perk, because you lose bonus Shields if you had a Drone Accessory equipped. If you wanted a Drone, take Shield Booster and use the Drone Accessory anyway. It wasn't well known then that Attack Drone did boost Drone damage, and I don't think Drone Control existed.
Drones also only get 4 damage types:
Electric: Default, Tam-Wolf 2.0
Kinetic: Tam-Wolf, Tam-Wolf 2.0, Siegwulfe, Combat Tail
Burning: Laser Sentry Note: You lose your bonus Shields, because it's an Accessory, but it doesn't have the Self Powered flag, so it turns off if your Shields are down.
Tease: Bimbo Siegwulfe, Bimbo-Domme Siegwulfe. Note: Does not scale with Level or Perks. Very powerful early on (even for non-Tech Specialists), nearly useless later.
Also, Deployable Turret doesn't scale with the Drone Perks.
really it seem like everyone is lacking in exclusive super shit. like Mercs not getting super power armor bonuses as drastic a the difference between tam wolf and super tam.
Power Armor is weird for Mercs. Melee doesn't need it, because they'll have 40+ Physique ASAP. Ranged has Bigger Guns (and Lunge does little-to-nothing for them).
Would love to see something like Shield tech customising all shields to level X and buffing their stats the level of the strongest shield while retaining their traits.
More specialty Shields would be cool, though the bonus Shields (up to 130) really does a lot to make some of the lower tier specialty shields more viable for Shield Techs.
Or Mercs getting power armor advantages. Like the negative evasion point that often outweigh armor being negated then inverted.
Melee Mercs do have Riposte, which gives (admittedly invisible) +15 Evasion after normal attacks. (Maybe Sturm & Drang, too. It's implemented as a basic Melee attack, but I'm not 100% sure.)
They fixed it so lupine eyes count/give points towards the lupine score, but worg eyes still don't.
I still maintain that worg eyes should count. And also the alpha scent perk(seeing as it's one of those "need a certain amount of points in the corresponding racial score to even get in the first place" perks).
So file a bug report. I've done it for things like this.
Elf I can understand, but it's weird how there's no Fairy-morph/dark fairy-morph racial score, considering those Sylvanol variants atleast have enough unique parts to justify the races existing.
Vampire-Morph got added not long ago, so you could ask.
On the other hand, Jacques00 just replied on the same page...