Personally i would consider the Afflictor as the second best frigate in SS vanilla, even higher than the Tempest but lower than the Hyperion. Like DR said, phasing in and out just to let enough time to fire your AM blasters is the key, most enemy weapons won't reach you in time when you're vulnerable.
The most important thing with the Afflictor is to max out the flux venting and then the capacity. I very rarely use the 5 weapons slots on my Afflictors, i just need the twin (i prefer them linked) AM blasters and the two missiles mounts (sometime i even skip the missiles and add a 3rd AM)
The only thing that can legitimately scare you early game are Alastors swarm because of their speed, firepower and good shield but they should be less common in the next SS+ update. But even then no ship is totally impossible to take down for the Afflictor, it all depend on how many shots you have.
Here's a video of Nemonaemo showing how to pilot one reasonably well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym5DWOxtX_E&index=23&list=UUKq4a_AJig1x-826Z8Kc3tASpeaking of phase ship. I think the Shade should get a buff. As a phase ship it only get three roles, striker, disabler or flying decoy. By itself the Shade isn't that bad, it's just that the Afflictor perform better in all those roles.
The Shade can't perform the Striker role as well because it lack the flux capacity/vent and the ordnance points of the Afflictor. As a striker, your job is to fight like a ninja, phasing in and out between each shots. The Shade can do it, it's just not as good as the Afflictor due to its flux inefficiency.
For the disabler role. The Shade have the disadvantage of having its EMP emitter. Yes, a disadvantage, because it need to stay un-cloaked to use it to its full power and an un-cloaked phase ship is a dead ship, even with the slightly heavier armor of the Shade. If you really want a disabler ship, an Afflictor covered with ion cannons can do it much safer.
And then for the decoy role, just like for the Striker role, it need as much flux stats as it can and the Afflictor will always have more.
On top of that, most of its stats are slightly lower than the Afflictor.
So i thought about a possible buff to the Shade. My idea would be replace the two universals mounts with a single medium turret. The Shade would still be "weaker" than the Afflictor but the medium universal would offer more customization options and possibly some new roles that the Afflictor can't currently fill.
The first thing that comes to mind would be to strap a Typhoon reaper launcher on it. Could also work with some of the SS+ weapons, the heavy ion cannon would be very scary, the lightning gun would make the Shade an infuriatingly un-catchable long range fire support. Just an idea.
edit: Here's what i have in mind.