That is very true, but a lot of the math needed for damage calculations is very simple, and easy to reproduce or test for yourself, just like for this particular issue. Well it is sound in this case, if you don't believe what others calculate you should at least test or calculate it yourself, before you just say or imply it is wrong. This is a very smart way of thinking, you shouldn't accept anything without checking it for yourself, but you can actually check the "calculations" while you can't check if what people "feel" is right on an objective basis. Good Pvpers tend to do well regardless of them gearing perfectly or using the perfect rotations. They also tend to 'feel' something is good because it results in bigger numbers on the screen. In all mmorpgs i played, successfull PvP'ers spread misinformations about stats, gearing, ability usage over years because it just worked for them as they were very good players. Theorycraft often proved them wrong and they slowly overcame their stubborness and actually improved through it.

You know that you can actually see your damage done by each abilities without a combatlog, right? The values they use are taken from database or ingame tooltips, or by averaging damagevalues of tested abilities in game. Not all of the calculations on this site may use valid numbers(i personally didn't check a great majority of them for myself) but this approach is far from "guesses and assumptions". A Combatlog may help to make this theorycraft more precise, but it is 10 times more valuable than what a lot of people on theses forums "feel" to be right.

Great video, awesome song, nothing more to say.

It is accurate in this case though, and while they aren't gods, their conclusions are at least based on sound math for the most part, unlike the absolutisms some of the well known pvp'ers spread on these forums.

So what you are trying to say is that you play in terrible groups, so your already extremely viable(arguably too strong spec) should be buffed even more so you can 1vsX warzones all day? Get real, kinetic combat has great survivability and also deals good damage. Its sustained damage, while being less bursty, is not so very far away from real dps specs, if anything its damage is too high for its great survivability. Shield in pvp is not completely useless but i am not getting into that discussion again, i do agree though they could rework the shield/defense system in regards to pvp somewhat to make defensive stats have a greater impact in pvp, but if they did that, it would increase kc survivability even more, and they would definitely have to reduce its damageoutput by a lot.

No offense but i think both our dps specs are in a decent place atm, not saying that they couldn't use some tweaks here and there, but they both definately have a place in all kinds of setups for upcoming rated wzs. Infiltration has arguably the best burst potential in the game(the most dependable for sure) and balance has insane utility, flexibility and still great overall damage. In general shadows are sucessfull in pvp all over the place, you steamroll players of all sorts of classes and skilllevels in pvp in your videos in a couple of seconds as Infiltration spec, and so do dozens of other players that post vids here or stream the game, and hundreds of other shadows every day in warzones, so while there is room for minor improvement(just like with any other class/spec) noone should act as if our situation was dire.

Its taunt ... it doesn't cost any force and is off the gcd, it is literally the one button you can accidently push at any time without any consequences, he prolly had a case of fat finger and mispressed it when he slowed his opponent, this ofcourse never happens to good players..... Concerning resilience; there isn't an ultimately right moment to use it, stating that just makes you look silly. Some play it safe and just remove dots with it, some tend to use it when they anticipate an incoming cc or force/tech burst. You can't allways guess right. Anyways, the video isn't breathtaking, but it is a good watch. The player is good too, propably not the best player to ever play a shadow, but until the forum heroes release videos of their own where they do everything perfectly, the players that actually release a video can claim to be whatever they want to be.

Did you actuqally use a shieldgen offhand?

A few points to what you said about kinetic ward: kinetic ward is independant of the gcd. Also your example again looks at kinetic ward(and shield in general)in a strict 1v1 scenario where you propably don't need kinetic ward, or any offhand at all, since kinetic combat shadows are ridiculously strong in 1v1 anyways. In the eye of a battle guarding someone drawing the enemy's attention to me and forcing them to attack me, my kw uses up its full stacks most of the time tipping the force used/force gained balance of kw into kw's favor making it pretty much free. Again in 1v1 neither shield nor focus make a big difference, nor would it matter due to the basic strength of the spec in 1v1. In groupbattles, adding guard, adding the possibility of white damage heavy specs present, and you actually filling your role as a protector/defender shieldgen excels.

How is stating that the hardest hitting abilities are in that list meaningless, but you stating that there are many abilities that don't hit hard in that list is supposed to mean something? Obviously a combat log would provide fix numbers, but until then using common sense and observation gives you a solid idea of how much of your and your opponents damage is white or yellow, how hard each ability hits in general and how much it would matter if any of these abilities would be mitigated by a shieldgen or enhanced by using a focus. There are many white attacks in the game hitting hard that don't require you to be below 30% like shadow strike or HIB (or anything a sharpshooter does against you for that matter), and shielding off almost 25% of one or even more of these attacks hitting for over 2k does matter, even if the majority of the respective specs attacks would be tech/force based. There are more white damage heavy specs than just combat speced sents, but you ignore that anyway so i wont get into this again. I don't know how much you think a focus enhances your damage, but you seem to overestimate its effect; on mediumish armor your projects will gain <150 damage with a focus instead of an equal shieldgen, it is significantly less on ST, and ~50 damage/tick on TKthrow. That is hardly the damagegain to eliminate damage sources significantly faster. And shielding off almost 500 damage off a shadowstrike does not pale in comparison to the damage gain of a focus.

Many of these abilities are also the or one(some) of the hardest hitting abilities of the respective specs, even for the force/tech heavy specs. White attack heavy specs get significantly reduced in damage on you using shieldgen, much more than using a focus instead would enhance your own. Against tech/force heavy specs shieldgen may rarely play a significant role(though luckily shielding some shadowstrikes and a spinning strike will make a difference against a shadow f.e.)but so wouldn't a focus. In group-or 1vsx fights shieldgens will matter more even against force/tech heavy specs and much more when multiple white damage heavy specs are involved. To sum it up, in the worst case a shieldgen will reduce incoming damage as little as a focus increases your own, but in scenarios where shieldgens shine they have a significant effect on the outcome of fights.

Actually no, the hybrid one was very slightly lower in sustained dps than the full balance spec on paper, but was assumed to wield more dps due to its flexibility and higher burst in dynamic raid scenarios. Anyways these theorycrafting results used old tooltip data iirc that might be outdated and/or skewed due to scaling etc. and I can't find the link to the theorycraft atm to check.

Well most of the well received kinetic combat guide's(the one stickied f.e.) and related thread's authors actually support shield gen use, unless you run with pocket healers, so while you are absolutely right, i don't think there is a need to emphasize this with an extra thread.

You are right about that, the shield offhand is far from useless though. There are classes/specs that rely heavily on white attacks, and even the force/tech heavy specs don't use yellow attacks exclusively. In general as kc a shield generator's defense is very much worth the relative small amount of offense you sacrifice for it.

Oh i see your reasoning, what you just don't understand is that it is flawed. But just stick to what ever you feel comfortable with and call that an 'ingame fact' and be happy with that since the difference is tiny anyways, just don't come to a thread to ask for opinions then.