Transparent slides with \uncover command

Question

I am creating slides and want to uncover text from a list in steps. To avoid having to number each \item (a pain when adding a line afterwords), I add \pause after lines that are unveiled in steps. Adding \uncover<+-> as advised instead of \onslide with pause, does not solve the problem.

I would like to uncover the whole slide transparent at the beginning as a hint of things to come. If I do this with an initial line is only shown once the first part is visible. Any solutions?

MWE:

\documentclass{beamer}
\setbeamercovered{transparent}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}{This is what I get with pause}
    \begin{itemize}[<+->]
      \item line 0
      \item line 1a \uncover<+->{line 1b}
      \item line 2 (this line should be transparent from the start of the slide)
    \end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document} 

Answer 1

The best way to solve any problems involving \pause is to not use this crude command.

You can use \uncover<+->{line 1b} instead, which will create a new overlay and uncover line 1b there. The [<+->] option of your itemisation will take care of uncovering line 2 on the appropriate slide.

\documentclass{beamer}
\setbeamercovered{transparent}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{This is what I get with pause}
    \begin{itemize}[<+->]
      \item line 1a \uncover<+->{line 1b}
      \item line 2
    \end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

---

For the case in the edited question:

\documentclass{beamer}
\setbeamercovered{transparent}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{This is what I get with pause}
    \begin{itemize}[<+->]
      \item line 0
      \item line 1a \uncover<1-+(-2),+->{line 1b}
      \item line 2 (this line should be transparent from the start of the slide)
    \end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}