[voidstar defender shield door]

The door is open for a short time and then closes again. I doubt there's any imbalance between either side in this, but it can be fairly random whether defenders get stuck behind the door while you plant a bomb or whether they come back nearly instantly, and it's not really something you can plan for.

 

I find it a fairly frustrating mechanic, mainly because there's no indication whatsoever about how long you have to wait, and the random nature of it. I find the system in Alderaan where you have a set amount of time spent on getting back with the speeder far preferable to the blocking doors in the other two games.

[Pvp gear and companions]

Short answer: Yes.

 

I've been using my spare Centurion and Champion commendations to gear Tharan Cedrax, whereas Nadia has been getting my old PvP gear. Not sure if Expertise does anything for companions, but overall the stats on especially Champion gear is pretty nice.

[Mods/Enhances/Hilts/Armor Questions]

From a PvE leveling viewpoint, the extra armor on Force Wielder Armoring and Hilts is mainly useless, for PvP it can be quite handy actually, since especially with Shield/Absorb/Defense doing very little (Force and Tech attacks bypass these) it's one of the few ways to improve your survivability.

 

For the rest if you are going to PvP primarily as a shadow, you are actually best off avoiding Shield/Absorption/Defense and going for DPS stats instead. You won't notice much difference in survivability, yet the DPS gains are considerable. In terms of offensive stats, Accuracy isn't very useful (Pretty much all our significant attacks have a 100% base hit rate; Double Strike and Spinning Strike can be caused to miss by opposing players having defense, but Project and TK Throw bypass defensive mechanics completely.) Out of the remaining stats, Power increases your overall damage which is fairly decent, Crit increases your crit rate (Which is less useful comparatively with the limited stats you can get at that level especially, since a lot of your DPS comes from Particle Acceleration Projects which are guaranteed to crit) and Surge increases the size of your crits.

 

Overall I don't quite remember how high stats get bolstered, but typically while bolstered you don't want to go much beyond 70% crit damage (so 20% bonus) due to diminishing returns. For the rest I'd say a mix of Power and Surge would likely work best.

[Shadow Tank]

But as a tanker... I'm sorry about them. Well, maybe I'm not correct about my review, my char is yet lvl 19 and maybe in later lvls shadows can act better in this playstyle, but until now I dont think that they can tank as well as a jedi sentinel.

 

 

At level 19 Shadows don't have any of their tanking abilities yet aside from their basic guard and taunt. At later levels they are solid tanks; Jedi Sentinels aren't tanks.

[[Analysis] The state of Kinetic Shadow ( and Darkness Assassin) PvP.]

It seems that no one understood the point.

The point is not that the shadow is not enough survival, but the fact that in pvp useless stat in Tank sets (def, shield, absorb)

Because the shield does not work on any abilities (even based on weapon dmg) as well as defiance (standard battlemaster setup with hidh level of accuracy!) for any tanks =)

Works only surv ability.

 

Both the title and the entire OP is mostly an analysis of the Shadow/Sin's weak points and their merits compared to other tank classes.

 

The issue of tank stats being worthless affects all tanks and is also heavily discussed in other threads.

[Build Idea and Theorycrafting: Fringe Shadow]

Some good points so I'll address them.

 

 

 

As a Balance Shadow, and once you wear the Rakatan Stalker set, which gives you +15% crit chance to Double Strike, every Double Strike hits for just shy of 3k (3 pieces of Columni and 1 Tionese gives my an average of 2.5k in WZs). So damage wise, it's not actually a problem losing Particle Acceleration. Harnessed Shadows is nice, and I have considered it if I went Combat Tech. The utility of this build lies in Force Pull and DoTs. If you have to run in, you can stop caps by DoTs, because you can spread em. I have enough experience in WZs to realize the 0 CD Force Tech Breach is really useful in Civil War and Voidstar, and have been key to keeping my teams in the game, and I'm not willing to lose that. Plus, having a DoT on a target pretty much ensures Force Synergy, meaning a flat 9% melee crit chance increase. I have 30% crit chance by my stats, and 35% with Smug buff, 44% with Synergy, and 59% Double Strike Crit Chance with the PvE Stalker set.

 

I can afford to wear Rakatan PvE sets at end game since Expertise has diminishing returns.

 

I can understand the liking of DoTs to prolong the fight and delay capping (I hate it when I want to cap and am on fire), and I rather liked the increased damage double strike when I was 23/0/18. Still, I don't like the tradeoff of Particle Acceleration and Force Strike. You may have a high damage Double Strike, but to me that doesn't make Particle Acceleration less of a great talent which provides really good burst, and I'm highly dubious about giving it up for Force Strike. That said in your build I'd easily shift a point from Mental Fortitude, Expertise or Nerve Wracking for the availability of Particle Acceleration when you go Combat Tech. (The 100ish HP loss would be well worth it.)

 

Also out of curiosity, as you will be running with 2p PvE for the bonus, which PvP bonus are you intending to skip? (I'm personally rather fond of the 20 second Spinning Kick cooldown)

 

That's the entire point of Force Pull. It's called the Fringe build because you stay at the back, or sides, pulling one to you at a time since Force Pull is 30m. You're objective with this is to separate 1 from the group, and if others leave the group to engage you, you're drawing them further away from objectives such as doors in Voidstar, goals in Huttball, or turrets in Civil War. If you're on Vent, Mumble, TS or any similar program with your team, you can afford to try to bait people.

 

True, but Kinetic builds obviously also have Force Pull

 

As is, I alreayd do it with a Balance Shadow using Sever Force to lock their Sorc, Speed up, Slow him and whale on him, usually forcing at least one team mate back, meaning my team has less people to deal with at the main battle zone, whilst I (1 person) have taken 1 or more person(s) out of that equation)

 

Again, this isn't really something the build does better than Kinetic builds in my opinion.

 

As a Balance Shadow, I'm already doing fine using primarily Double Strike and dealing more damage than KC builds. On Ajunta Pall, it's really just Sentinels and Scoundrels who out DPS me, so I'm pretty sure I ain't losing damage, especially when I have an almost 1/3 chance of getting a crit on my Upheaval Project with 30% crit rate, before buffs. Plus, Double Strike is pretty awesome with Adjudication, I'm more afraid of losing Twin Disciplines than Particle Acceleration.

 

While I haven't experienced it myself, I recall reading that Twin Disciplines merely increases the melee bonus damage you have by 10% (the one you see on the char sheet), and not actually buffs your melee damage by 10%. So you likely won't see that much of a difference.

 

Most of your points are pretty valid, and I'll probably state this isn't a build for people who want to run in, like KC hybrids, or full KCs, but it's basically a DPS spec, from a different angle, without the loss of survivability that requires you to charge, as a melee char, into the center our AoE loving WZs.

 

It might be a matter of perspective as well, since I'm talking from a Kinetic point of view who minors in Balance, where you from the sound of it are a Balance Shadow who is trying out Kinetic as a more heavy part of the build. I'd have to check how much damage Double Strike does in your spec compared to Project, also on a per force basis. However if you want to kill something a Force Potency + Particle Acceleration project hits very, very hard, with the only random factor being Upheaval and whether it eats the second charge of Potency. (Higher short term burst but you lose damage on the next project)

 

Personally I'd probably modify the build a little by removing points from fairly weak talents and putting them in some talents which can be situationally really useful (ie, Particle Acceleration) if I tried your build, likely something like this:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rIMokMskZZcMcRrMz.1

 

Basically a variation on the old 23/0/18 build where you can choose between higher survivability and burst damage (Combat Tech and Particle Acceleration) and a 'DoT stance' (Force Technique and Force Strike)

 

Compared to a traditional Deep Kinetic build you lose Slow Time, Harnessed Shadows and 2% damage reduction but gain Force in Balance, Force in Balance, Containment, the option to DoT and the improved Double Strike damage. Compared to a 27/0/14 build you lose Slow Time, Harnessed Shadows and 2% damage reduction for Force Strike and Containment and no cooldown Force Technique Breach.

 

Kind of curious how that will work out, though the costs of technique switching are pretty harsh these days. On a side note reading back my earlier post I noticed I might have been a little too high on the hyperbole in the first part of the posts, apoligies for that

[[Analysis] The state of Kinetic Shadow ( and Darkness Assassin) PvP.]

as full tank sin (def gear and def mods) you wont do any dmg and still die faster that PT or jugg.

 

Going as a Shadow/Sin with full tank gear is just a bad idea right now as you say. The gains you make in survivability don't really make up for the loss in damage. Luckily, in Stalker gear our damage is quite nasty compared to the other tanks.

 

i just said that for node or door guarding, nothing beats full tank juggernaut. PT coming close second.

 

I disagree there as well. The other tanks may be more durable (but again, I feel a well timed Resilience can increase your durability enormously). However the time gained by being able to start the fight on your terms most of the time (letting the opponent start the cap and sapping him wastes a lot of the attacker's time) makes us great solo defenders against small forces, whereas Resilience as well as Force Cloak to buy time until reinforcements arrive make us rather good against bigger groups as well.

[Battlemaster Vs Champions equip]

I noticed yesterday that for the BM Stalker set, the BM level Enhancement is actually lower in endurance than the Champion one which I used from the Champion Gloves/Headpiece.

 

Essentially for a Kinetic Shadow the Accuracy Enhancements which litter the BM gear are useless anyways, and you end up much better by replacing them with the aforementioned enhancement.

 

Basically the tradeoff was

 

21 Endurance

54 Accuracy

37 Critical

 

versus

 

38 Endurance

19 Critical

48 Surge

 

Despite the slightly lower level of the Champion Enhancement, it is much better overall (We have little use for Accuracy). Could easily be that for other classes and specs this way similarly it's possible to get more endurance.

[Almost full Rakata and BM gear on my sage]

As a Shadow I can't give you any specific advice, but overall I would say it's not surprising they are the class you have the most issues with. I'd guess even once you figure out how to best fight them you might still lose more often than not against similarly skilled marauders. With Annihilation Marauders having a low cooldown interrupt, low cooldown charge, healing debuff and Marauders in general having some pretty nice cooldowns, they counter 'casters' and especially low armor sages rather well.

[[Analysis] The state of Kinetic Shadow ( and Darkness Assassin) PvP.]

i admit i also switched to KC at rank 66 or smth. kinetic is strong duelist, but for group pvp i would almost prefer a guardian. no matter how strong kinetic is, it is the only tank lacking an ability to mitigate focus fire.

 

How much more do we need to mitigate focus fire than Resilience? 5 seconds of being immune against nearly everything which is particularly nasty, on only a 45 second cooldown. If properly used totally negates attempts to burst you down and wastes opponents cooldowns.

 

 

since mitigation stuff is additive, has anybody tested this?

 

against force/tech a guardian/jugg has 40% base mitigation + 6% less dmg taken due to stance, + 25% less dmg through blade ward and + 40% less dmg through warding call. so it should grant immunity or near that against force/tech. + they take much less dmg through normal attacks and 1-2% more through internal/elemental.

 

First of all this depends on the type of damage being done; Elemental and Internal damage is not mitigated by Armor. (Energy and Kinetic is) It's true Guardians and Powertechs have a slight mitigation advantage from armor (they have 45% roughly I believe, we get about 40%). However this is partially mitigated by our self healing, so I'd say the gap isn't all that significant.

 

Overall though, complaining about cooldowns is silly. You are complaining here that if Guardians stacks two three minute cooldowns, they become immune to force and tech attacks for 10 seconds. We can use a single cooldown which grants 5 seconds of immunity every 45 seconds. This is both superior uptime (20 seconds every 3 minutes), not to mention in the majority of cases (excluding hutball, where quite honestly passing is often a better idea than trying to walk the ball all the way across the line) once you activate Resilience and classes see they aren't hitting you, they will quite frequently give up and switch to another target. (And again here, we have it better than Guardians with 4 activations per 3 minutes)

 

Of course Warding Call is very nice as a cooldown, but to complain that Guardians by stacking cooldowns can become immune to tech/force makes zero sense as a Shadow.

 

I also disagree on the damage issue. I feel we have surprisingly good on demand burst for a tank (This is assuming you actually use Stalker gear, as loading up on defensive stats is just wasteful) with Force Potency, Particle Acceleration and Relics/Adrenals, especially if we get the chance to follow up with Spinning Strike, depending on health. Obviously DPS specs are going to do more, but I have no problem killing players as a tank. I'm a little on the fence with the Force Potency + Upheaval thing, since it indeed eats charges but otoh also provides even higher burst damage if that happens.

 

I don't entirely agree with mindsnap complaints either to be honest. It's indeed in a somewhat longer cooldown, but not that long. When wearing the most useful combo of PvP gear however (2 Stalker, 2 Survivor) we have a 15 yard range Mindsnap combined with a 20 second cooldown Spinning Kick. That's plenty of options for interrupting.

 

 

I don't really see that many reasons to complain right now as Shadow. The class has some issues, just like most other classes do, and hopefully they get fixed. The tanking stats issue is a general issue which plagues all tanks. I don't like it very much either that it's worthless to use tank stats in PvP, but it's not really a class issue which hits us worse than other tanks. (If anything, Vanguards/Powertechs might be hit harder by it, with their dependency on Shield procs, whereas our only impact is DB Saber Defense not returning as much force)

 

Overall though a Kinetic Shadow is a very potent character if you know what you are doing and want to win warzones. They are far from rare on Bloodworthy as well, with us frequently having about three geared shadows in warzones, and these being very useful in winning the game. (I very much agree with the above sentiment that the only situation where I would prefer a Guardian over a Shadow in a warzone would be hutball as ball carrier, and we still have plenty of skills to help our team win there without being the primary ball carrier.)

[Build Idea and Theorycrafting: Fringe Shadow]

Quite frankly I personally see very little use for this build. You have basically thrown out the majority of the things which make Kinetic Combat do a fair amount of damage (Particle Acceleration, Harnessed Shadows) as well as part of its utility. (Slow Time)

 

Basically it has the worst of both worlds when it comes to Kinetic/Balance hybrids in many cases:

 

• I don't find an 'on the fringes' build for a Shadow realistic. You still have only 10 yard range, so you are still going to be in close range. When you are this close to players, you aren't going to decide to stay 'on the fringe', if they decide to go after you, you will be right back in the middle of battle. The difference between 4 and 10 meters isn't that significant. Battles in warzones aren't exactly a narrowly concentrated pile of players with people at range circling around them, fights are raging on around the objectives usually, and staying 'on the fringe' is hard enough if you have 30 meters range. With 10 meters range, that's just not gonna happen in any effective way. We are a short ranged melee-ranged hybrid, and trying to play more as a ranged class is just not really going to work. Though looking at your talents (Adjudication and Force Strike) that's not something the spec can really do that much anyhow. You are still required to be in melee range to do any sort of significant damage.
  
• Your only incentive for dropping Combat Technique is Force Strike in this spec. You are giving up Particle Acceleration for Force Strike, which in my opinion is a horrible tradeoff. I don't think Force Strike and Combat Force Breach dots really make up for the loss of the burst damage which a Force Potency Particle Acceleration Project can do. Burst damage is what kills stuff; dots might be nice to keep people from capping points, but in general I find our increased survivability and cooldowns (Resilience) already allow us to disrupt capping long enough for reinforcements to arrive. So overall I feel you sacrifice a low of survivability (Combat Technique) for a net loss in terms of damage output.
  
• Basically you have avoided every talent for our highest generally usable burst damage skill in the Kinetic Tree. (Particle Acceleration, Bombardment) Yet you did take Upheaval. Project is far less formidable that way, still costs the same amount of Force, and generally we are Force limited. I feel you are better off focussing on our core abilities, rather than having a weak project with Force Strike and Force Technique Breach.
  
• You give up Harnessed Shadows, which is both a lot of damage at an efficient force cost (allow you to in the meantime recover some force for the next burst while keeping on the pressure) and additional survivability.
  
• You skip Slow Time, which does considerable damage, stacks Harnessed Shadows, slows opposing players and makes them do less damage. There's some builds which do this to gain Force in Balance in what I feel is a lot more useful way. The benefits of FiB and Slow Time can be debated, but I feel the 27/0/14 hybrid build is a far better way to go in my view.
  
• Having a Shield Generator and Kinetic Ward makes very little difference in PvP. There is some situational usefulness (and it's capable of ruining a Sniper's day especially) but against the most common opponents, Shield does very little due to the way defensive stats work in PvP. As a result the use of Kinetic Ward is highly debated for deep Kinetic builds anyways (I personally have it just because I don't like constantly respeccing between PvE and PvP and the other uses for the point being fairly negligible), this is hardly a strong point of the build. You might actually be better off just using a focus instead.
  
• Compared to your build, if you go this deep for Force Strike, you are better off dropping points from Nerve Wracking and putting them in Containment.
  

 

Overall I just feel you are trying to make a Shadow into something they weren't designed for, and which ignores some of the strong points of the class at low potential gain.

[Shadow Tanking - Accuracy]

Now i am level 37 Kinetic Shadow. I actually focused in PVE solo and ocasional group.

 

is it recomended for me to go with Force weilder or Resolver while leveling(until 50)?

 

This is while leveling the standard content and Heroic content, class quest.

 

Now i stack more Endurance than Willpower, but i can`t find a fight where i need to be more tanky(always end fight plenty of health). So i am wondering if going Resolve Mods coud be more beneficial for me and my actual play style.??

 

There isn't really any fight that is very hard and requires a considerable amount of Endurance to survive while leveling, so you might as well go for the extra Willpower to make stuff die faster and hold threat more easily.

 

As for the change to PA and its effects on Double Strike: Double Strike is classified by the game as a special attack, so should have 100% base accuracy as well, meaning the importance of Accuracy is pretty low.

[Arena, implement competitive PVP.]

Arena IS by a large margin the pinnacle of PVP. I will say this again like i said many times before and i will say it again, people who are against arena are the ones who are extremely bad at it. And the post above is exactly the proof needed.

People who play arena on higher rating DESERVE better gear than someone who is botting warzones. Everyone saying that it's comp based. Ok, do you want to play 3 sentinels/marauders and if you dont win then arena sucks and its comp based? There was not even 1 single good argument AGAINST arena in the last 13 pages.

 

Arena is but a glorified team deathmatch. Quite honestly, I feel it requires less skill than a properly balanced warzone map being played by two competitive teams. Arena is merely about killing the other group, whereas warzones actually require more teamwork and tactical ability to actually achieve the objectives on the map while at the same time killing people.

 

Am I against you being able to indulge in your own preferred style of PvP? Nah, I don't mind if they implement some sort of PvP which allows you to have fun. However, I am strongly against any sort of arbitrarily placing it above other forms of PvP and as a result having it become the driving force behind any balancing competition.

 

Let's not pretend that there is any other reason for Arena to be considered the pinnacle of PvP in WoW but for Blizzard making it so, and not exactly to the preference of every player, to say the least. It's the most simplistic and least interesting form of PvP there is, as far as I am concerned. As such I am far more interested in a competitive system such as ranked warzones combined with map tweaking and fixes where needed, rather than some glorified deathmatch.

[Bm Bags]

exactly 0 -21 right now. Nothing worse then working a day of pvp to get your 200/200 and only see your 15/7 day after day afer day. I have been a pretty ardant supporter of BW and SWTOR but this is getting ridiculous. Just give me a damn number to shoot for and i'll be happy, better then the randomness mess we have now.

 

To break it down to see the real shame in this equation look at this.

 

To get the 800 wz comms needed for the 200/200 bag I had to play a average of 12 wz matches a day. ( going on a 1 win every 3 games which doesnt really happen but for arguments sake i just said 1/3) I pretty much and going by a average of 100 wz comms for a win ,50 for a loss, sometimes less sometimes more so i'm just throwing a average out there.

 

So multiply 12 games to get the 200/200 x 21 bags= 252 wz matches and not 1 friggin drop. That's an awful lot of work and time invested to receive NOTHING!

 

This is a discussion about BM bags, not Champion bags. In Champion bags, the seemingly now small chance to get a token is intended to be more of a bonus, and not something which is what you rely on to gear up for. With the 15 Centurion and 7 Champion commendations you gear up pretty fast, and make continuous progress towards getting better geared. I feel the current pace is pretty well balanced and definitely not too slow. Doing dailies and weeklies and adding some commendations you will gather during the Warzones it's fairly reasonable to assume at least 4 bags bought from the vendor in addition to 20 bags from quests. This means a total of 24 bags for 168 Champion commendations a week. That's about a mainhand weapon plus accessory in a week, or alternatively 2 set pieces and half of another.

 

The problem with BM gear on the other hand is the same as Champion bags before the change. You have a 25% chance for a BM token which is used to buy gear (prices ranging from 1 for relics/belt/bracers to 2 for set items and 3 for weapons). If you get a token, great, you are much closer than before to buying an item. If you don't, the contents of those bag are for the most part useless. (Since BMs tend to wear full Champion already by then, so end up gearing companions from it) What most feel (myself included) is that BM gearing should be moved to a system which is more like the Champion bags in nature.

[Bm Bags]

Seems luck, but I really don't think it's 25% chance, there are so many examples on my server and here on the forums that have much lower drops.

 

I personally have 8/15, which is obviously way more than I should have so far. I think it might be that the droprate is indeed 25%; however such a dropchance leaves a relatively good chance for very unlucky dry streaks as well, and people who are unhappy are more likely to post on the forums than those who did have luck.

 

That said, fully in support of those saying the system is silly, and an incremental system in which you have guaranteed drops and prices proportional to those would be far preferable to the current lottery. The easiest would be to just make it a guaranteed token drop and quadruple the prices, though if that means they feel gearing is too quick (in case such unlucky streaks are a deliberate design to increase the time spent gearing) they should just adjust the prices. Anything to have less RNG anyways...

[OPINION: Battlemaster gear should be buffed.]

Disagree.

 

The less gear balance in a game, the better for competitive PvP (!= stomping undergeared newer players.) And yeah, I do have BM gear =P

[BM bag tokens]

8/15 so far, in other words I'm ridiculously lucky. I was 6/9 at some point, then nothing for two days, and then two again last night.

 

I feel the whole randomness is just silly, frustrating (I had somewhat opposite luck with the old Champion bags) and needs to be done away with. Quadruple drop chance for tokens (making each bag just give 1) and costs (so weapons would be 12) and the whole thing would be fixed IMO...

[PT or tankasin]

I'll just point out that it's not uncommon for me to stealth over to a door in void star, wait for the single guard to watch the other door from his post, cap the door and have enough survivability to protect it.

 

I do this all the time as well; defending teams tend to often:

• Have even their last defender run off to the other side if they see a lot going there, leaving that door open for stealing.
  
• They tend to be notoriously bad at defending the door opposite to the first bridge being opened. On top of that Shadows/Sins can jump the gap with Force Speed if timed correctly.
  
• In the final room again defensive opposite to the first forcefield going down is often quite lacking.
  

 

On top of that I find Kinetic Shadows to make great solo defenders for both Voidstar doors and Alderaan turrets, since you can open a fight on your terms and are durable enough to hold out for a while, allowing reinforcements to arrive (talented Resilience is very powerful in PvP). They are also quite strong 1v1, which combined with the above can fairly quickly discourage attacks in small numbers on the objective. (With big attacks, we use cooldown to interrupt and stay alive long enough for reinforcements to arrive) On the attacking side of Alderaan of course stealth is quite a nice advantage of being able to either conduct surprise attacks or attack in greater numbers than anticipated.

 

In hutball my role varries a bit. While I was originally very effective as ball carrier in the sub 50 bracket, I have found Shadows to be not quite as good as the other tanks who have charge(s) to quickly put distance between them and the opponents and can avoid obstacles that way. On the other hand we still get some rather useful tools (Force Wave, Force Pull) to ruin a ball carrier's day, can guard the ball carrier, taunt to ruin burst DPS on our carrier, and with Slow Time and our CC also do a fair bit to derail the assist train going for the carrier. As a result while I am still an occasional carrier, I've tended to spend more time defending our carrier or derailing the opponents effort to kill him, as well as delaying and sometimes killing the opposing carrier.

 

Overall I feel in the hands of a capable player the Shadow/Assassin is a very powerful and versatile class, which copies decent burst (Particle acceleration + Force Potency Projects followed up by Spinning Strike if the health is low enough will kill people quite quickly if they are at medium health) and damage potential (assuming you use DPS stats, as the defensive stats are mostly a waste) with good durability and some pretty nice utility for objective oriented players. Can't speak for a Powertech, but I am very happy with my Shadow.

[Gear question for 31-0-10 pvp]

Hey guys just a quick question. Which 2 champion survivor pieces would be best for kinetic pvp play? I want to get the 2 piece bonus but i am having a hard time deciding which 2 would be the best for pvp. Seems like you got to decide between defense/shield rating and absorption. Any suggestions?

 

For PVP, you don't really want any of those stats since they are mostly ineffective. They only work on ranged and melee attacks, but not tech and force; as a result you can really ruin a sniper's, fellow Shadow's (not all that much if you are Kinetic since Project and TK Throw are both Force abilities which fully bypass non-armor defensive stats) or Jedi Knight's day (though those I believe have a way around that too), whereas the stats don't do a whole lot against the majority of devastating attacks in PvP, including those from Operatives, Sorcerors and Bounty Hunters. Overall tank stats give a fairly low gain in survivability for a major sacrifice in damage output. As a result I personally have found DPS oriented stats to be far more effective than tank stats.

 

So if you were to follow this advice, the best thing you could really do is get two PvP Survivor pieces (since Spinning Kick cooldown reduction is very powerful) and the rest Stalker PVP pieces, while replacing the defensive mods in the Survivor pieces by DPS mods. You could follow two strategies choosing which pieces:

• Choose the pieces with the best tank stats and cannibalize those mods for use in a PvE tankset.
  
• Choose the PvP pieces with the best stats and take Survivor for the two slots with the worst Stalker itemization.
  

 

Either way, it seems best to avoid Accuracy for the most part. I'm not sure about raid environments, but in PvP it's pretty low on use. (And you get some unavoidable accuracy from earpieces and implants anyways) Accuracy is the chance you hit with certain attacks, and counteracts your opponents defensive stat. Since Project and TK Throw bypass defense, and Spinning Strike and Double Strike are classed as special attacks (with 100% base accuracy), the stat just doesn't seem to do a whole lot for the vital Kinetic attacks.

[whats up with all those OP shadows/assassins lately?]

The hybrid spec which was available before the last patch was nerfed due to Technique/Charge changes and constraints which hurt the viability.

 

On the other hand the currently most popular PvP spec (31/0/10 Kinetic) was buffed/fixed; as the tooltip promised, Slow Time now also stacks Harnessed Shadows (making it considerably easier to stack those), and Force Potency finally works. Force Potency was supposed to add 60% crit chance to force abilities, whereas Particle Acceleration Projects (which autocrit) where supposed to get bonus damage instead. (+50% critical damage) This was not working previously (Force Potency would eat charges and not change damage) but was fixed recently. The result is that our burst has gotten a bit higher and a Force Potency + Relic/Adrenal Particle Acceleration Project followed up by a Spinning Strike can cause some relatively nasty burst to unsuspecting victims.

[Improving Gear]

You could go to knotor.com to compare sets, that should give you a bit better impression of the difference.

 

Due to circumstances I've mainly done a lot of PvP and not gotten around to HM flashpoints yet, but I'd guess that given the level of the gear, Champion gear is likely better than anything before Columi gear, so you should be able to use it to obtain said gear.

 

Occasionally stat allocation on gear isn't that good (loads of accuracy come to mind which aren't always that useful), but if you have excess commendations you can buy gear with the right mods and extract those, or alternatively get them from the GTN or Ilum/Belsavis dailies.

 

Finally when it comes to implants and relics, the Rakata items from the daily commendations are quite good. (BiS if itemized properly)

[I hit Battlemaster last night! 0/5 on bags so far... Is that good?]

I'm still into the PvP. I enjoy grouping with guildies and running WZ's. We don't win every game, but we have fun.

 

But, running WZs over and over without progression (BM bag luck), it does get old... And I I just hope that I don't get burnt out. Which is ultimately what will happen.

 

Oh yeah, I fully agree on that part. I've been on the bad side of luck with the champion bags (and plenty of times with PvE drops in "that other mmo"), and it can get quite infuriating. Luck affecting competitiveness sucks, so I personally just don't understand why (aside from artificially prolonging the time to gear) they did not quadruple the droprate and costs from BM bags. In other words, every bag just giving one token, weapons costing 12 tokens, etc.

[I hit Battlemaster last night! 0/5 on bags so far... Is that good?]

thats not correct.

statistically speaking 25% is per bag, there is no higher lying mechanism that applies a 25% total of all bags droprate.

 

in the end, it just comes down to luck.

 

 

Intended as in, the droprate Bioware has put on the tokens to appear in the bags.

 

Expected number of bags, since on average that is the amount of bags it takes.

 

Actual time it takes will wildly vary, but for everybody who takes 2 months, there could be another player who got geared in 2 weeks. (Of course there's theoretic cases where with a 25% droprate nobody ever gets a single token =P )

[pvp solo = garbage]

I generally have no problems finishing the daily while solo queuing. Time spent can vary though as losing streaks do happen when you get unlucky with the groups you end up with or face a number of premades. Our Republic side on Bloodworthy tends to overall be quite competent though, which means we have a fairly good win rate against Empire pugs and premades that expect to get by on gear or being premade.

 

The hardcore premades who are used to playing with each other will pretty much always win, but those games tend to be over pretty fast then anyways.

[I hit Battlemaster last night! 0/5 on bags so far... Is that good?]

I understand #'s and the way it's supposed to work. It obviously won't be the same for everyone...

 

But is the base # 100? Are they expecting us to do 2 pointless PvP quests a day for 2 months? There's got to be a better system... no?

 

20 tokens needed to buy a full set.

 

Expected bags needed for this is 80. (25% drop)

 

16 bags per week.

 

 

So expected time to fully gear would be 5 weeks, but random luck can make you be fully geared in just over a week or take forever.