I am sorry for the OP that he feels his favorite class/spec combo is being destroyed by the actions of the developers, but I cannot agree with his points. First, there's no combat log, so how anyone can claim that any class/spec is "top dps" is beyond me. Second, there are probably 100 previous examples of other game studios doing things like what is happening to the Shadow in 1.1.2. This is not new. The class designers have a vision, they are expecting the three roles of our class to be X, Y and Z. Developers probably have a better big picture view than we do, being narrowly focused on one class that we really enjoy. Developers want the Shadow to operate within the pre-defined norms assigned to it, they want it to perform adequately but not overwhelmingly superior to other classes it may face in combat, and they want the Shadow to be a unique class from the other choices and still be a mirror of the Imperial version. Could player suggestions make the Shadow class better? Sure, but this game is not your game. It says Bioware and Lucasarts all over it. They get to make the decisions for the reasons I've listed above, and more. Again, I'm sorry if class nerfs are a huge and unexpected surprise for you, but that's how this thing is done. Welcome to massive-multiplayer online role-play gaming.

Nice to see others that I respect have arrived at the same decision. It is also nice to see that I arrived there on my own without copy & paste from AstralFire like I did early-game.

What kind of gear/expertise are you sporting in the footage?

This is an impressive volume of work, even if I don't agree with all of it. A pity it seems to have gone unnoticed by BW thus far. No feedback from Devs on a post of this magnitude? Sad.

I can't stand Nadia, she's so eager to please, and maybe I just hate that in real life too. I used her on the mission that required her use (no spoilers) and as soon as I could I swapped her out for Theran. Theran I have kept geared, and fostered little favor with along the way. Holiday alone is worth having him, let alone that I force him to heal me through insane amounts of damage. Since I often find myself in combat with Sith on contested worlds (pvp happens) I prefer to have a little back up in the form of heals & CC. Zenith does a large amount of damage, but since I'm Infiltration, I go down like a prom dress if we face some stiff opposition. Qyzen is a sturdy enough tank but Iresso is superior imo. And I never even used Nadia past her required stage. Mouthy little git.

There's a thread going about how to Burst as a Jedi Shadow... that has a great rotation in it. Naturally it presumes you are level 50, but you can substitute some of the abilities not available for some that you do have. I open with Spinning Kick and then 2x Clairvoyant Strike. Then I Project, not before. I don't use Double Strike because Clairvoyant Strike is superior for my spec. I rarely Shadow Strike, but when I do it I make sure I have Find Weakness up from the Infiltration Tactics talent. I will try not to use Force Breach unless A.) I have 5 stacks of Exit Strategy up, or B.) my target is nearly dead and I won't get to use the stacks anyway. Again I encourage you to look up the bursting guide on these same forums. The feedback there is far superior to mine.

Quesh was the first place I noticed this happening too... I noticed he was suddenly on aggressive, had been not shooting anyone and not healing me or himself, and instead just standing there. Right away I noticed how much harder these mobs were on Quesh than previous planets... then I realized it was Theran not pulling his weight.

Yep yep, he's a jerk like that sometimes. He'll drop healing and just stand there. I think it has to do with his offensive ability, and getting stuck trying to use an action on a target that is out of view due to terrain issues. I found that when I turned off all of his other non-heal abilities, he stopped getting stuck like that. He will still sometimes shoot at the enemy when I could really use him healing, but more rare. Also, he often turns off his healing stance when summoned/desummoned due to zoning or story events. Kind of annoying.

The Balance tree of the Jedi Shadow or Jedi Sage are very dot oriented. Shadow is still melee, but as Balance you forego things like back stabbing for ranged nukes and stealth + dots and no heals (except from some dot ticks.) Sage can cast heals, but will not be using melee and cannot stealth. Both are light armor. Sage gets the traditional single lightsaber, Shadow uses a double-bladed saber.

I'm pretty sure the events of this game take place not in the modern era, but A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY... But yes, I agree, the Consular gear selection is horribad. So is the PVP gear, which is I have no choice but to wear, unless I want to be mantouched at every turn.

I have had this happen, and I've also hit Project, watched my target vanish, and watched the projected rock/droid/junk float in the air where it was lifted, spin for a little while, and then disappear. It is possible (though unlikely) that it is still hitting my cloaked target, but since I never see them pop out of stealth a mile away with damage numbers over their heads, I presume this is not happening. I also believe that it is more common for the Project to NOT follow through the cloak and hit my target after they have vanished, as I am more frequently seeing spinning, floating rocks than I am seeing the rock fly off and hit the invisible player.

Yeah... your gear is far superior to mine, and I eat people alive. I open from stealth with Spinning Kick, use 2x Clarvoyant Strike, pop off my relic(s) and hit Project. The target is standing up again by this point, so I hit Force Breach if I have the buff for it, or Shadow Strike if I have the buff for that instead. The target is almost always below 30% at this point, but if there are NO crits at all then I might need another round to bring them into Spinning Strike range. Force Breach if I haven't used it or Shadow Strike again if I can, then Spinning Strike. If they are STILL breathing, I Force Stun (if the target's resolve allows it, sometimes it will not but usually it does) and most of the time I have the Force required to finish them. If my target is still alive, I will vanish and restart the fight with Spinning Kick again if possible. I always try to save Low Slash for interrupts when Mind Snap is on CD, and I often have to use Force Slow to keep from being kited too. None of that is what I consider to be incredibly innovative pvp tactics - in fact it is probably flawed somewhere, I'm open to suggestion, but it works for me! Granted, I'm no John Rambo and I run from fights when it suits me, but I bring my briefcase when I pvp. That's all I wanna do, all I ever have wanted to do.

Broad-sweeping generalizations are never a good basis for arguments against one class or another. You wouldn't expect me to cry for a ban on water, simply because I saw someone drown. Besides, there are some classes which will have more trouble killing a healer than others. I don't think everyone in this game is SUPPOSED to kill them. I've never had trouble killing healers, since they moved the 50s to their own bracket. Some are tough and smart about their cooldowns, and sometimes they delay the inevitable long enough for back-up to arrive. But I don't think there is much they could do against me alone, one on one. I think that's what my class & spec are supposed to do though. I'm a level 43 Jedi Shadow as of last night, which I only got right before I logged for the night, and I approve this message.

It sounds to me like Silverspar didn't enjoy the class, but to each their own. I have no issues tanking multi-pull packs on my Shadow. I do not feel squishy (especially with the healing increase from Combat Tech.) And I DO have significant experience tanking in other MMOs, which functionally are quite similar to this game. Easier, in many ways.

At level 14 you won't have much. Just Force Breach with Combat Technique, giving you a small area-of-effect hit. Keep guard on the healer in flashpoints so their healing threat does not eclipse yours, and until you get more area of effect attacks, tab target and smack with saber strike or whatever to keep the enemies on you. Ranged tanking is not easy in the game, and often I find someone standing off to the side shooting my healer. Later you will gain more tools and honestly be the most capable tank class in the game for handling large packs.

Yeah I've done that. I can't say it was NEEDED, but I do see how the change was merited and perhaps valid in PVP. As for the issue with using Meditation while stealthed, I never can use it while hidden, I must de-activate stealth and THEN click Meditation. I have never encountered an occurrence wherein my Meditation remains unusable after manually removing stealth, however. That is a bug.

My Shadow used to be able to stroll up to an objective and interact with it while stealthed, which would automatically de-activate stealth and start the progress bar of whatever I was clicking on. Under these same circumstances since the new patch, if I click something, the game is all HO HO HO YE CANNOT GET FLASK until I de-activate stealth and then interact. End result = 30% annoy factor + standing around looking at the void star doors in stealth while I thought I was planting a bomb. Anyone else #firstworldproblem?

For defending a point, or ball carrier, or being the ball carrier yourself, yes that's a good mix of dps and survivability. I've played it and acted like a tank and done well - just don't expect to top the damage chart - and felt like I was beating on people with a feather duster.

I leveled a long time as Kinetic/tank in combat tech and changed to a more dps-oriented Balance spec when I got Theran. He has a stance called Med Watch (I think) that I keep him in and naturally Holiday is a great asset with multiples. I never sweat fighting Elites alone or even packs of two or three Strong mobs, even in Force Tech. With stims and a level advantage of 2 or 3 I have taken down champions, backed by Theran's heals. The dude loves my light/dark choices too (which I won't spoil here) and that kinda makes he feel good for some reason. It is nice to actually like the companion you're most successful with. Who wouldn't love a guy whose facial hair changes based on the hat he's currently wearing! I actually felt a little bad when he lost favor recently... Theran was very annoyed at my actions towards an Imperial scientist last night. I should have seen that coming.

This is more or less a ranged damage-over-time tree, but as a Shadow you will be dancing between 4m for melee and 10m for most of your Force attacks. Using Balance gives you a lot more mobility and makes you very hard to escape, while still dealing good (very good imo) damage and allowing you to control your targets.

Look up AstralFire's posts on Balance Shadow pvp. I find it to be a lot of fun, and definitely worth trying if you enjoy having mobility and control of a fight. If people jump on you in melee you can range them easily with snare & root abilities and pick them apart from outside their range, or if they try to kite you off you can do the reverse to stay in range yourself. Ranged casters will have you at a disadvantage if they see you first and open up from long distance, but your gap-closers are solid as Balance. Instant Force Lift is great for re-setting a fight with ranged or stopping a critical heal. As for damaging abilities, I find that I spend most of my time spamming Project and Double Strike, and keeping Force in Balance and Force Breach on cooldown at all times. These hit the hardest for me. I use Mind Crush only when the Force Strike buff procs for instant/free casts. I spend equal time in Combat and Force Techniques, depending on if I have to guard someone or not. I frequently queue with a healer, and seldom need to guard him, so I will use Force Tech in that situation... but find that the durability & self healing from Combat Tech are valuable if I'm alone with pugs or solo defending a node. I am unsure which one I value more in pvp overall.

Same thing with Force Strike procs for free & instant Mind Crushes from the Balance tree. No audible indicator that I can discern, and no visible trigger that I have seen. At least Force Strike uses a purple icon. Yellow-colored icons blend together with your technique and self-buff when glancing at your minuscule buff bar to see if your skill tree-defining proc is active or not. Really frustrating.

Use a shield if you're a PVP tank with Kinetic Ward in your build. I've done it and I scored a huge amount of medals, often the highest on either team due to the number of varying medals I qualified for. I found that not being easy to kill in WZ means you yourself have a hard time killing anyone else too, which simply means that you both stay alive long enough for someone else to come along and finish the job for one side or the other. I never felt tanky enough to defend a point against 2+ people for long anyway, so I abandoned the shield and the spec and went more balance dps, still using some Kinetic and the tank technique, but no shield and no Kinetic Ward. In PVE I can see it being more useful, but Theran heals well enough that I still prefer a focus.

That's interesting, thanks! Do you happen to recall who dropped it?

I was excited when I got it, but really I don't use it much anymore. I find that I use it only in pretty specific circumstances. A pack of 3 or so guys in range of the strike, I'll pop it off somewhere mid rotation when other things are on cooldown to improve my threat and keep things off my healer. I have Force in Balance for more effective ranged AOE, and too often I find that what I am tanking is standing at 30m shooting at me and cannot be effectively relocated to a group for maximum use of Whirling Blow.