When playing, the enemy will face his target. If the enemy starts to turn away from the tank to face the DPS, then the DPS is going too hard and needs to throttle back. The tank should pull aggro back at this point while the DPS throttles back. This is why it can be useful to have the tank position the boss to not face the rest of the group.

Did you correct any of the errors in Gankstah’s calculations when you did this spreadsheet?

This equation isn't quite right. The problem with the original equation is that it doesn't appear to handle the 2nd roll correctly. Once your are hit with the first roll, it doesn't properly calculate the possibilties of how you are hit with the 2nd roll. Currently the chances are: B (The chance to shield) 1-B (The chance to not shield) X (The chance the enemy crits) If you add these up you get: 1+x or simply put 100% plus the enemies critical hit chance. However, these values must equal 100%. Therefore the current equation is only correct when the enemy has a 0% crit chance. These 3 values need to be calculated as: Enemy Crit Chance: X (leave it as is) Shield Chance: MIN(1-X,B) If the sum of the shield and enemy crit chance is over 100%, all of the enemies crit chance is taken into account before adding the shield. This value will take all of the shield chance if it fits or simply as much as is left after the enemy critical is taken into account Normal Hit Chance: 1 - (X + MIN(1-X,B)) The normal hit chance is always the left overs after critical and shield chances have been calculated. With this in mind, the equation should actually look like: (1-A)(1-D)((X*(1+Y))+(MIN(B,1-X)*(1-C))+((1-(X+MIN(B,1-X)))*1)) This give you: Chance to be hit: 1-A Damage not reduced: 1-D Enemy Critical Chance: X Enemy Critical Damage: 1+Y Shield Chance: MIN(1-X, B) Shield Damage: 1-C Normal Hit Chance: 1-(X+MIN(1-X,B)) Normal Hit Damage: 1

This happens in other classes too. Sometimes you only need the companion for certain conversations and you can simply switch after the conversation.

Sorry to disappoint you but I don't even use the phrase "Back in the days". However, that is largely due to the fact that that isn't the phrase. Every once and a while I will pull out a "Back in the day". Grammer policing aside, I'm against dual specs because I feel that a character has a task that they should perform and they should be focused on that. The only useful suggestion for dual specs I have heard of is to separate PvP and PvE specs. If Bioware implemented dual specs so that you have your PvE spec when you are leveling/raiding and are automatically switched to a PvP spec when you enter a warzone, I could live with this. This would prevent the whiny PvPers from crying about tuning and ruining the PvE specs.

These visual cues would be nice, but as a Shadow Tank, I don't find it that hard to keep track of everything. I enjoy watching the fight as it happens and still have plenty of time to manage my skills and procs. If Bioware adds something, more power to them, but this is hardly the most critical of issues for Shadows.

I believe power scales slowly but doesn't suffer from diminishing returns. It can be useful to normalize your damage per hit instead of having low normal hits and high critical hits when you stack crit/surge

FiB only hits a maximum of 3 players, not "everything within 8m".

For Kinetic Shadow, secondary stats are usually stacked 4:2:1 or 4:3:2, so I think jedifather has the right idea.

As upset as you might be, Kitru is dead on. I'm sorry if this hurts your feelings.

Kinetic shadows are meant to stand toe to toe with the enemy and take a lot of damage. Infiltration and Balance are not. They are built around picking your spots and taking advantage of targets of opportunity. Yes, some hybrids may have to change their playstyle but this change was designed to ensure the different shadow roles were realized. You can still be quite effective as a pure Infiltration or Balance spec. Look at Powerr's guide for shadow bursting. Kinetic can't do anything near that. Yes it sucks that you have to learn a new playstyle. However, this was completely expected. As Bioware has stated since before the game launched, they don't want hybrid specs becoming the norm because they are so much harder to tune and then everyone whines.

This sums it up perfectly. You level your character up to a certain role. That character should be devoted to that skill. If you want to fill another role, create an alt. It really isn't that hard. Also, just because many advanced classes have skill trees that can fill multiple roles, it doesn't mean you should be able to do both. It is just one more level of choice. The concept of a character becomes pointless if you can change everything about it back and forth.

This makes sense. They are trying to stimulate the economy. You can use a never ending Rakata medpac if you want to save money. If you are willing to spend money, you can buy an even more effective medpac. Now people will sell more of these high end medpacs and new players won't feel like they are forced to go biochem.

Yeah, I saw that right after I finished my nice math. Epic fail.

Actually if you do the math, with two hits, your probability to proc at least once it 56%. The chance to miss is 2/3. So the chance to miss both would be 2/3 * 2/3 = 4/9. If you miss both 4/9 of the time then you will hit at least once, 5/9 of the time (9/9 - 4/9). 5/9 = .55555555 and so on. So basically this provides a 6% proc buff for your double strike. On you free hit, which hits 3 times, you have a 70% chance to proc ( 27/27 - (2/3 * 2/3 * 2/3) = .703703703 and so on) which is a 20% proc buff. I fail to see how this is a nerf.

Does Slow Time proc Harnessed Shadows now? I know the tooltip has shown that but it hasn't worked in game before.

You may be right overall, but with 33% Critical, you still have 67% chance to shield or take a normal hit. Wouldn't it be advantageous to try to turn most of that 67% into a shielding chance? If you somehow had a shield chance over 67% without Kinetic Ward, then it would seem useless, but otherwise it still seems like a good idea.

I'm going to say this is probably a gearing or ability rotation issue. Personally my Kinetic Shadow is 40 and I have finished Quesh and Hoth without a problem. Keep mods up to date make the most of your chained skills.

Bam!! Kitru strikes again. Well put, though.

This is true, however, many of your arguments revolved around poor partners for a raid. Using this assumption, I would rather add the extra DPS to the tank, since the tank should be attacking an enemy all of the time. Let the healer focus on healing. If you have a bad group, it is easier for a healer to get caught DPSing and let the tank die. Ultimately, TrevNYC broke this whole issue down perfectly.

OP, First of all, which build are you using: Kinetic or Infiltrator? This will make a big difference I am a kinetic shadow and you start off slowly. Your first bunch of skills in your tree are geared towards giving you passive bonus to your defensive style. Things start getting more interesting at Level 20. This is when you will pick up Kinetic Ward in the skill tree. You will start to feel more tanky and you will start getting a lot more useful skills. When you hit level 30, then your character really starts to get fleshed out and your really get to see how the kinetic shadows tool set works. Kinetic can be challenging at times so it isn't for everyone. However, if you can master it, it is a lot of fun. If you are Infiltrator, then ask someone else. I prefer a straight fight to all that sneaking around.

I loved SWG crafting. It wasn't perfect but it was much more epic than this game. Crafting actually took time and effort. I remember how long it took me to RE to get my top level mods for my gear. In the end, it felt like I really accomplished something. I have heard some people describe SWTOR crafting as a mini-game which is essentially true while SWG was a profession itself. Ultimately, SWTOR needs to do the following: 1. Make crafting more involved 2. Create dependencies between classes (e.g. Biochem needs to buy an injector from Cybertech to make an adrenal) 3. Make high end crafted gear better than looted or store bought gear. 4. Instead of high end ops dropping gear, have them drop limited use schematics. This ensures crafters of all types will have a use

Project should not be an opener for kinetic combat. Things like Slow Time, Force Breach, and Kinetic Ward should all be up before Project. Generally I try not to use Project unless I have a Particle Acceleration proc since it is such an expensive skill.

I haven't tried this, but it would be a much much simpler rotation. With enough proper gearing each project would probably do a lot of damage. I just wonder how much this will eat up force especially since you don't have the extra force regen in the Kinetic tree.

Personally, I thought I would never touch a double-bladed lightsaber. I was determined to have the classic single saber. However, the desire to play Shadow won out. I am glad I decided to roll the Shadow because now I love the double-bladed saber.