Difficulty you play most

Ah, yes. "Off topic." The immortal race of sentient shitposters allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed that claim.

wood

The one with the Phantoms.

Says the guy who plays only on gold.

What gets left out for the melee Shaman? Passive? Barrier? Some of both?

You say that like it's a bad thing, instead of a showcase of having some little salt in the head...

Mostly Gold, still. I think it's nice balance of difficulty, fun and rage inducing moments that make you want to look for whoever designed this piece of crap and beat him with console so hard their mother's womb will give her cramps.

Lately, I've been quite regular to Platinum as well. I'm mostly using OP setups, but not in the traditional way, aka, TGI Carrier, Reegar AIU and similar. My favourites include Reegat batguard, Raider Valkyrie, Wraith vanilla AA, Javelin/Piranha(one of them) GI, Black Widow DAI and similar. Once you get used to it and if you're a part of good team, I actually find Platinum more fun then Gold. But if Platinum is much fun with good team, it's equally tedious with a bad one. Caution needs to be exercised.

Silver for an occasional shit and giggles. Pick Reegar QME, preset Glacier/Cerberus and run around, giggling like a maniac as you listen to panicked reports of goons and centurions of casualties being taken, engineers frantically pleading for support(only for them to get a grenade to the face) and orgasmic death throes of phantoms and nemeses as they suffer under the DoTs of both incinerate and arc nades and you just know you're gonna need five minutes for yourself once the game is over.

Too much info?

Bronze is a guilty pleasure of mine that I'll do every once in a while. Respec vanilla AA for max melee damage, give her Claymore with omni bayonet and batarian gauntlet and send her to hatesurf her way through Reaper and Cerberus forces.

You've never seen manlier asari... krogan loose two balls out of their quad, because they wish they were half as awesome/manly as she is.

Passives in my experience, or some Barrier & some Passives, since as a BE & Melee kit neither benefit from passives. 

I pick Gold because i have the most time on eckbawks and mostly played Gold on eckbawks.

On PC with less time i prefer Platinum, because of 144hz 27' monitor with 1ms latency, KB+M, 60FPS, 2560x1440 and adjustable FOV. On eckbawks if i was worry about Banshees or sniping Geth Prime then the Phantom + Hunter death squad is creeping in and no teammate watch my back. Playing on PC with better FOV and more responsive controls is easier for me to avoid certain death trap and team wipe.

Not really a problem if i can see things and better positioning, i can't do a 180 turn while running on console. If the death squad of Phantom + Hunter is within melee attack range then 95% of the time i will get rekt no matter platform, more then often i run straight into them on console because i couldn't turn around to peek while running or the FOV is limiting my view

Hey, so was I

It was all in good heart, from me