Melee Shadow Help

I usually never touch Shadow because i just don't like relying on RNG evasion or minimal ES for survivability, but i recently discovered the new Energy Blades skill (new to me at least); and i really wanted to try to make a build around it. It seemed to me that Trickster was likely the best candidate for a good Energy Blade build (using Wild Strike or Lightning Strike, etc).

However, i am noticing that it feels terrible to play. Maybe i am just attempting to convert into melee from my leveling style (Cobra Lash) too early? But it just feels like i have no way of preventing being stunlocked as a Shadow. Not enough evasion midgame to rely on dodge, and not enough health to not get stunlocked (relying mostly on energy shield).

How do people generally play these Melee builds without just being obliterated from needing to literally walk into the group of mobs?

I usually play Duelist or Marauder and i can just use Unwavering Stance to solve this problem, but i am at a loss of how to melee as a Shadow until i can get like 80% evasion and even then i expect it will still feel bad against rare/unique/bosses.

This class has always just felt really out of place to me. It doesn't seem to have everything it needs to succeed well in the playstyle intended for it. It's why i have always stayed away from it. Duelist has all the Increased Strike Range around his tree, and yet the Shadow feels like he needs it more than the Duelist does, and yet there is very little to be found.

This probably seems like a really newbie oriented one but even though im almost at 1k hours in the game i still am unaware if there are any easy answers to the stun problem other than Unwavering Stance. I expect i NEED to be stun-immune, as even with a 5% chance to be stunned in true-melee, thats still a 5% chance that i will just die when it eventually happens.

My first suggestion would be, don't play shadow if you want to go melee. The class just doesn't have what it takes for working melee builds since it's the most squishy class of them all.

If you want to go with it anyway, there is an energy shield mastery that sets your stun threshold as 60% of your energy shield instead of your life. Since energy blade builds should aim for really high energy shield valeus to begin with this should work your stun problems for the most part. Brine king pantheon and ES inherent stun negation do the rest.
Alternatively you could go with presence of Chayula as your amulet, it provides ES and stun immunity so it shouldn't be a bad choice.

The reason i chose shadow is because it has the most energy shield related ascendancies, most notably, the Soul Drinker. I expected since i am in melee, i will never get the chance to "Recharge" my energy shield, and therefore will need to rely on leeching it for survivability; also the 20% spell suppression makes it a bit easier to hit 100%.

The only other choice i would consider is Scion but she doesn't get the "Energy Shield Leech is not removed when Energy Shield is Filled" effect from her Trickster Ascendancy so it could be dangerous to rely fully on leech with her, at least i assume.

I forgot about Chayula. It was already planned to be in my build, but i just forgot it has stun immunity. I suppose i will just pick up as much stun resist as i can in my tree while leveling and undo it later when i get Chayula.

I wish there were more "Ranged" melee skills like Lacerate for use with an elemental build. But for Energy Blade, Wild Strike seems to be the best choice as my main attack. I suppose Reave could work but i never really liked it.

For now i guess i will go back to a ranged playstyle until i can solve the issue.

Well, if we take energy blade and melee as a set in stone thing then trickster is indeed the "best" choice, just that going melee with energy blade is already bad to begin with.
If you check POE ninja for energy blade you will see that while it see's quite a bit of usage, it's almost entirely inquisitors with battlemage abusing it for their COC whatever spells. Hardly any of them use it for the intended purpose because of the problems that come with doing so.

The improved Vengeant Cascade... that should make LS, WS and Splitting Steel fun to play.