Claws

So we are gonna get ES leeching.

this wont fix claws. Its not enough even with the unique.
At the moment with claw shadows your defensive options are ES and chaos innoc, or hp and iron reflexes (which is verrrrrry far away). The inherent benefit of claws is the leeching, but its too tough to get high enough life to have survivability, given shadows only viable AOE attack is lightning strike. Whirling blades gives problems in confined maps and rubberbands like hell.

I like ops ideas but shadow also needs some life regen node suchas golems blood or more life nodes nearby. Evasion is still so busted you need to be able to take a couple of hits.

Claws will never work on Shadow. But I've devised a Ranger that should work, once we get a decent claw AOE:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQIABdzTvQbARM8HPN1QCNty1w2QyGYTFdppFFL5CBbCV_wZYlP-HIlmsR8RkCMhI8l8I-9IrDJyBFY1ASd2Ne5g-jnagDI6q_InO5DIZETGMulIWfzzUll5yVL8hARV-IAxV_IrxlqxDsNa415yXj0mgF6y-Nxf-eCoYPDWrWNqPDJlp-7KaYVs3Gwg-OtuMY_6cCN34HGEKRx0-a9E4CAnKagUcPGyIUh6v1I5rt6BFAXvHhJf7fZ5Fv1oCW2F_S_8iWl-lsAM3GGSsmK2srORA5Ma4mWMnwtqmjrizfJDP36Cee3u2N1Fzc2oYW-4ZfYJqpft46OBgxP-_H8O9XwvUdXDN3vvU0xB3eLIJo4NLQrrgAcCmMMI9_GtjPPoba8X_3On88XbVUKAzTfQzpa4QtuX49vXYELJhuaFD7-C8a4=

Basically, claws are innately good at life leech. Evasion is good with high life pools (but not with low life pools, hence why evasion tends to suck on rangers) and life leech -- because when you fail to evade an attack, you take damage, but you can quickly leech your life back up before the next hit comes.

Shadow, on the other hand, has almost no defensive options. He's a terrible idea for life leech. But the ranger has tons of available life and gets enough intelligence and evasion that the build should work in theory.

my ranger wields this with viper strike and shield charge. Doesn't look mcuh like that tree though . It's a really strong build, I think, I prefer it to a ranged ranger build. You know, the rangey kind.

The only problem with your build is they're nerfing double dipping with IR next patch :(

well that fills me with trepidation...would you be kind enough to provide a source or at least more clarity? IR/Grace is only overpowered on a build that doesn't need to manage the mana to use it *cough*path of marauders*cough*

Fates, he's specifically referring to the "Leather and Steel" passives cluster. Currently it's bugged and provides more bonus than it should. After 0.9.12, it will be like everything else (i.e. evasion% and armor% stack additively with Iron Reflexes).

Oh, thank goodness. I thought something was changing about the way iron reflexes worked and I was preparing to spell out a list of complaints. haha. I'm a subsciber to the school of thought that evasion isn't adequate defense because no amount of misses can counter-balance the one-shot hit that gets through. In order to be melee I think a character should have at least 60% damage resistance and I don't think the leather and steel change would affect that too much. I can see how an ES/EV build could be good but I wouldn't try it without some serious CC and other aggro sources besides my own character.

I am glad to hear. Claws are different. And cool.