Daggers or Claws or Swords for a Shadow

dagger obviously, shadows how more crit nodes than any other class. alone with the massive buff they are getting after this patch dagger crit shadows are going to be broken. seeing as they already are pretty OP with the right build.

Daggers just better scale with gear. If you gear is great, daggers are OP, if your gear is bad - claws are OP. The only way to solve problem is to make claws worse in early and mid game, but improve their scaling in late game.

or nerf crit scaling in late game. For example, the crit weakness curse makes 100%more dmgs from crits in addition to the other effects, this is completely insane and I don't understand how someone could design such a spell.

Get CI, high ES, Ghost Reaver, Vaal Pact, dagger passives, a Power on Crit gem, and crit nodes. Use LS with LMP and it's pretty sustaintable. I used life leech and mana leech when I wasn't gear-ready. You can make this build work through the levels, as it's been my build all the way through 80. I go higher strength than most. My LS dps is very high self buffed now, but I've definitely braved through some frustrations.

Running away when overwhelmed is really important, but getting away with Whirling Blades while very important as a skill, will kill you because desync on this ability will kill you once you get good with it. You have to know when you can and can't use it, and instead use Arctic Armor + Granite flask. Basically if you try zipping around obstacles like walls, they still haven't fixed the issue where you're "stunned on the server but the client isn't aware," which is an extremely difficult bug to fix and they're not quite clearly admitting to it, but they at least acknowledge it. So what happens is you'll be crowded by 20 mobs, use WB to get away, and 3 seconds later you'll rubberband back to the mobs. The irritating thing is that this ONLY happens when there are lots of mobs due to the nature of the problem. The server gets overwhelmed with too much going on and that bottleneck is what causes the desync, but that bottleneck also means you're going to die. In minimally cluttered environments like open spaces, WB is easy to use, just try not to get too close to obstacles if there are many mobs.

Flicker strike and Double Strike are good for leeching life, especially with Vaal pact, but use LS as bread and butter. If you don't have a quality LS, use pierce with it or Projectile Weakness (even better than the crit debuff if you don't have pierce).

Be sure to always max your resistances, because you're weak enough as it is. Keep your distance. Use WB at the beginning of a fight, and not when things get hairy so as to avoid the desync bug. Be sure to get a staunching flask (Removes Bleeding) and grounding flask (Removes shocked), because puncture and shock will absolutely shred you. Learn to use Arctic Armor when you stop, and put it and Blood Rage in a link with Faster Casting. Arctic armor will allow you to withstand tons of damage from physical and fire attacks. Those damned dogs in docks won't even move your health bar. AA+Granite will allow you to stand and pummel groups of physical mobs and easily tank a boss. You want mana leech gem + Double Strike + Multistrike (or Melee Damage gem) so you can stick to melee bosses and keep your arctic armor up even as they move. I suppose you can swap Double for Dual Strike, but as crit, Double is better since if the first crits, so does the second. You can contact me in game at Cymric if you want anymore advice.

On Blood Rage, once you get CI: be sure to keep it up as it provides a ton of Life Leech, and to keep the buff up easily, use Culling Strike on your LS to make sure you're the one who gets the killing blow (which refreshes the buff's timer). Also get the extra frenzy charge from Kraityn if you can. I have 5 frenzy and 5 power. With Conduit, that's going to help groups you're in a ton. Don't forget that LS is half physical damage, so just stand back and fire projectiles and you get 1/2 your leeches.

That's about it. Also, I have some gear that I used through the levels if you'd like to take a look at it and see what you can use of it.

Here's my tree:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYABX0OSBB7ES8RlhXXFr8Z1xzcHhooKio4Kwospiy_LOEtHzBUNj03ZjeDO-FBh0ZxRwZMs1AwVmNW6lb1W_RfamNDbPZtGXBScFZ6uH3jfll_xoLHguSGrofbiEKIa4qvi3qOipARkBuTJ5Ugl9CZV5mamhOdo6Kjpcumf6brpyunNKxmrpOxs7QMtMW1SLb3uT65fL46wQDBxcHzwuzDbdeG2HbbGttu29Ti9-OE6f7quutj7BjtQfLh8-r1S_yr_5M=

And my gear (note that my dagger, shield and chest are the pieces I've focused most on. the other pieces are pretty cheap in comparison):