Anyone that recommends this style of play is deluding themselves. A Kinetic should spend all of its time in melee with the enemy. If there is any ratio of melee:short, it should be overwhelmingly in favor of melee since so many of your ranged abilities are worthless without first using melee. It also makes it harder for you to regain threat since, if you are at ranged, you need 130% threat compared to 110% threat to grab attention. Shadows can AoE tank in the same sense that all tanks can AoE and ST tank. In general, however, they're the worst at it. With the worst AoE threat gen of the 3 tanks, Shadows are actually the ST threat specialists. We also have the worst time surviving against multiple targets because of Kinetic Ward becoming drastically less efficient against a large number of attacks. Slow Time is not the equivalent of Enure. Battle Readiness is. Guardians can crank their health up for a short period of time; Shadows can self heal themselves and increase their self healing by a massive amount for a similar period of time. Something else to remember when comparing CDs is that all of the Guardian CDs are on a 3 min CD. Shadow CDs are either 2 minutes (Deflection, Battle Readiness) or 45 seconds (Resilience). This provides a distinct advantage.

First off, no, they don't. Warding Call, Saber Ward, Enure is *not* more than Resilience, Deflection, Battle Readiness. 3 CDs to compare to 3 CDs. If you add in Kinetic Ward, we actually have *more*. The Guardian CDs are not appreciably stronger than the Shadow CDs, but they *are* noticeably more generalized and on longer CDs. While a Guardian can burn a CD and not care what he's defending against, a Shadow has to pay attention, but, in exchange, gets to use said CDs *a lot* more often (and, in the case of Resilience, for *way* bigger benefit). The "heavy hitting strikes" you refer to don't really hit all that hard when compared to what a Shadow can throw out, especially over a long period of time. Project is a friggin' *truck*, and we use it *all the time*. The "hard-hitting" abilities that Guardians get are on CDs that makes them substantially less useful than you think. In addition, Shadows get the best internal and elemental damage resistance of tanks. Technique Mastery *on its own* provides as much resistance as Vanguards get and we get more on top of that.

First off, I recommend you read the sticky at the top. A lot of really good information is up there. Secondly, for leveling, the best at low levels is going to be Infiltration since it actually gets the tools its talents use right from the start. Once you hit your mid-20s and early 30s, Kinetic and Balance both start taking off and Infil doesn't really catch up until its 40s. Last, Shadow Tanks are just as effective as the other tanks end game. The use of light armor doesn't decrease our survivability thanks to the substantially larger armor increase from Combat Technique (as compared to what other tanks get through their tank stance). However, a lot of your performance as a Shadow Tank is going to be dependent on player skill since you have to spend more time than the other tanks do watching your buffs, keeping up with debuffs, and maintaining CDs. If you're looking for an "easy" tank, Shadow isn't it. If you are, go for Vanguard.

Once you get Situational Awareness, this goes right out the window since Infil can spam Whirling Blow to its heart's content. Balance actually has it the worst off since it doesn't get appreciably more Force than baseline over time except through DoT application, which isn't that efficient. Free Mind Crush for an extra 10 Force is decent, but it still doesn't do quite enough to get over that AoE cost hump (not to mention FiB only hitting 3 targets).

My explanation is as follows: Defense mitigates 100% of incoming damage when it occurs. Shield mitigates 20-30+% of incoming damage when it occurs, which can only take place after Defense fails. Absorb increases the contribution of your Shield rating. With a 4:2:1 ratio of need (you need 4 points of Defense to get the same percent gain benefits to the stat that you get from 2 points of Shield or 1 point of Absorb), this means that Defense is worth 25% (100% reduction / 4 point per percent), Shield is worth 15% (30% reduction / 2), and Absorb simply works to increase your contribution of Shield (so high absorb with no shield is functionally worthless). Since, per point, Defense mitigates more than Shield and higher Defense reduces the value of Shield (which is the value of Absorb is tied to), Defense takes precedence. Since Absorb value is only worthwhile with high Shield value, Shield takes the next spot. Absorb, with no other defensive value to compete with, goes last. This doesn't, however, mean you should stack only Defense. Because of diminishing returns, you want to stack all of them, but simply have more Defense than Shield and Shield than Absorb. The ratios I've found that work best are 5:4:3 and 4:3:2. This is simply the logical underpinnings of my statement. Of course, if you care more about averaging out your incoming damage rather than reducing the maximum amount of it over time, you probably want to stack in a different way. Personally, I've found that long fights mean that you can play the long odds and go for the biggest bang for your buck over time. Spike damage over short periods of time is what your CDs are there for.

No abilities have procs by default. Abilities only gain them by virtue of a talent or a buff which will describe the effect and chance in question. Examples of the given buffs that provide procs would be all 3 of the Shadow's Techniques (Combat, Shadow, and Force) which provide a chance for additional damage (and, in Combat's case, a self heal). Talents that do this are substantially more common and tend to be the ones that grant buffs instead of instantaneous effects. Force Strike (Balance), Circling Shadows (Infiltration), and Particle Acceleration (Kinetic) are all examples of this variety of proc. If you every want to know about them, just look under their tooltip.

Something to remember when dealing with the Tech/Force using nasties is that you don't always need to interrupt everything. Most of the time, an enemy will have 1-2 Force/Tech powers that are the big damage dealer and the rest are simply cake. An example of this would be the Sith Battlers on Corellia; they have 2 Force powers: lightning strike and turbulent blast (least i think that's what it's called, can't remember specifically). The lightning strike hits for barely anything: it's just the spam cast. The turbulent blast (or whatever it's called) hits like a friggin' truck though (4k at level 50) and it's cast about once every 15 seconds. So, when fighting those mobs, you let all of the lightning strikes through and stop any attempt to cast the blast. A lot of champions and tougher enemies are like this as well. They'll have some joke grade casts and some that will rip you to pieces. In general, if you see Force Storm, Project Storm, or Orbital Bombardment, those are the ones you wanna interrupt. It varies depending on the enemy however. Those enemies that are half-melee half-caster, you can generally interrupt with abandon. The pure casters are definitely ones you have to pick and choose your interrupts for.

I agree with this completely, though there is some issue with the healer companions only having 1 actual attack other than their basic (Tharan has Wounding Shots and everything else is a heal). It would be nicer if each of the companions actually had a decent spread of abilities (and a customizable toolbar for the love of jeebus) that allowed you to have fully the companion fully function in two roles rather than half-heartedly operating in one or the other. I was really let down by the differences in Nadia's two stances. A chance for a minor DoT with one and a bit of armor penetration with the other? At least with the other pure DPS companion we get it's a difference of functionality (Zenith is AoE v. ST focus). Nadia just has some minor variation in what she's slightly better at killing (the arpen isn't even that great when you consider that the bonus damage isn't affected by armor since it's internal). As he is so fond of letting me know, he's a pacifist, apparently. So, since he doesn't like shooting people, he'll just stand in the back and let you do it for him. What bothers me more than his selfishness and arrogance (which I could understand him getting over to follow you because you offer him a chance for more glory, adventure, and excitement, which he definitely craves) is his great dislike of the Force. Any mention of it in conversation is an immediate loss of affection. If you hate the Force so much, why are you following around the most Force-focused class in the game?

The failure is not in my analysis. It is in your understanding of the underlying situation. Saber Ward provides 50% defense and 25% resistance for 12 seconds on a 3 min CD. Deflection provides 50% defense on a 2 min CD (and we have higher base defense as well, so this means *even more*), and Resilience provides 100% immunity to Force/Tech on a 45 sec CD. Saber Ward is a one-stop shop for reducing incoming damage. Shadows have it split so we can either hit them both or save them for separate occasions, *and* they come substantially more often than for Knights. For burst, Saber Ward is *on par* with Deflection and *worse* than Resilience. If you want to talk about burst survival, Shadows have it amazing.

It's not as good as you might think. By sacrificing the 5% damage debuff of Slow Time for the minor self heal of Force in Balance (Focused Insight is functionally useless btw because you have no DoTs), you are actually increasing the amount of damage you are taking more than you are being healed for thereby making it *harder* for your healer. The only major heal in that set up is Harnessed Shadows and that's part of the default tank spec (31/0/10). I suggest you do a search through this forum and find one of the *many* other threads along the same lines. They come up quite often, in fact, and the answers are always the same: it's a cool concept, but it's not as survivable as just going pure Kinetic. If you really want to go for a fusion build, 23/0/18 is better.

Saber Ward is on a 3 minute CD whereas Deflection is on a 2 minute CD. In addition, we get Force Technique, which tanks can increase to a 5 sec duration on a 45 sec CD. Shadow tanks aren't suffering from any major deficits, aside from the lack of gear and poor ordering of available skills while leveling. If you have a problem with an ability to value, I suggest you actually look at everything involved in that particular power and compare holistically rather than honing in on a single value.

If won't do anything unless you're in one of the Techniques: Combat Technique, Force Technique, or Shadow Technique. You get Force Technique right out of the box at 10 (and it is your go-to stance for Balance spec as well as what you use as Infiltration until level 20), Combat Technique at 14 (and it is your go-to stance as Kinetic), and Infiltration gets Shadow Technique once they talent into it at 20 (at which point it becomes *their* go-to stance).

Actually, I did. Prolifically. I also enjoyed point out that in a vast number of other MMOs tanks that blinded stack their hitpoints without considering the situation in question and the design of the game itself are friggin' idiots. If anyone believes that hit points are a decent metric by which to judge a tank, they're following an outdated model of survivability.

I've tried running with Nadia using any gear I no longer need as well as any Shadow DPS I wouldn't otherwise use. She still doesn't appreciably increase my kill speed. Maybe it's because I've got a lot of WP stacked up as a tank, but, when I've brought her out, I've seen no appreciable increase in kill speed compared to the dramatic decrease in downtime and risk associated with having Tharan out. This may be somewhat due to my preferred kill targets however; I have a vast preference for hunting down elites and champions (random world champs = phat lewts with an exceptionally fun fight) than simply blasting away at groups of strongs and normals. In these scenarios, a DPS companions doesn't help *nearly* as much. From my perspective, the DPS comps are present to help out healers, heal comps to help out tanks, and tank comps to help out DPSers. Healers have plenty of survivability and assistance, but low damage on their own so they get the most out of DPS companions that they have the capability to keep alive. DPS has great damage but are generally very squishy, meaning they get the most out of Tank companions that can keep the heat off of them while they burn the target down asap. Tanks are incredibly hardy and hit like trucks, but they tend to get beaten in the face with regularity (and have a strong allergy to Force and Tech enemies, in general, since only talents reduce that damage) so a healer is needed to really make them shine. Of course, all of that is only opinion. I'm sure some people will claim that DPS does better with a heal companion or that healers prefer tanks. The nice thing about the companion system is that you can really choose the one that best fits your playstyle (since we get a melee dps, melee tank, ranged tank, ranged DPS, and healer; I don't count C2 because, well, yeah).

Even as a tank I would go with Tharan rather than a DPS companion thanks to the dramatic decrease in downtime. Since companions are dramatically lower contributors than players, even a DPS companion isn't going to deal appreciably more damage than a tank Shadow (considering tanks in TOR have amazing damage capabilities compared to their "traditional" performance in other MMOs). I've found that the speed at which I kill and the decrease in deaths from unexpectedly difficult fights thanks to having a heal companion greatly outweighs the increased kill speed, greater risk of death, and need to meditate regularly.

Yes. If you're using Combat Technique, you use a shield. If you're using Force Technique or Shadow Technique, you use a focus. Since which technique you should spend 99.9% of your time in is largely determined by your spec (since many of the talents in the trees require you be in the given Technique to get the benefit or augment the given Technique's Force Breach and no others), this means that Kinetic uses shields and every other spec uses foci.

The best tanking build is this one. Slow Time offers better AoE threat generation and better survivability than Force in Balance for a pittance more Force (5, to be precise). If you want to go with a Kinetic/Balance hybrid, this is probably the best you'll get since you're getting FiB as well as free instant Mind Crush in exchange for less AoE threat gen (losing Force Break's 15% additional damage to Force Breach) and no viable use for TK Throw (which means substantially less self healing; FiB's is relatively lackluster). It is definitely going to be squishier with questionable benefits in threat generation and damage. It's an option but I wouldn't claim it's an optimal one.

As you are leveling, the basic rule of play is simple: Don't use any attack except for Force Breach and Double Strike unless you have a talent for that power. If it is not an attack that you have a talent for (even if you're going to get one later), don't bother; it will cost too much and not do enough damage. As you start leveling, you'll get these various talents that do awesome things for your powers and make them useful. One of the first you'll get as a Balance Shadow is Upheaval, which drastically increases the damage of your Project; this doesn't make it something you explicitly want to spam, but it's nicer than it was before and is actually a decent Force dump. Soon after that, you get Force in Balance to spam, Force Strike to let you use Mind Crush, Twin Disciplines to get you to use Project once every 10 seconds to maintain a buff, and, lastly, Sever Force as an extra DoT. The basic attack string follows suit relatively easily when you look at these attacks: Open with FiB to place the debuff on the target, start tossing DoTs on your enemies (and reapply as needed), use Mind Crush whenever it's free and instant, and Double Strike or Saber Strike (depending on how much force you have) at all other times. Spinning Strike and your other situational and/or control powers fit in there as well without explicit need for explanation.

Yes, it does. I ran into the same problem when doing a similar mission and it didn't trigger completion until I went back to my ship and bounced back and forth between another location and the Republic Fleet.

First off, they do. Higher personal damage numbers mean faster fights and better threat. If you don't believe either of those is important, you're definitely suffering from a break from reality. Your recommendation has nothing to do with the given anecdote. More hit points do nothing to decrease your incoming damage (and, commensurately, the need to be healed). It wouldn't matter if you had 5 million hit points or 5 thousand if you were reducing all incoming damage to such an extent that the healer only needed to use a minor maintenance heal on you. Additional hit points simply extend the window that your healer can ignore you before finally needing to heal you. As to your comment concerning Willpower stacking Shadows having problems tanking Hardmodes and Operations, I can honestly tell you that I stack Willpower over Endurance (re: I use Resolve instead of the Force Wielder which I am "supposed" to use) and I have never had a single issue with anything. Since healers don't allow me to drop below half health in the first place, the 5-10% difference in hit points has no effect on my survivability. Now, if any tank were to stack Willpower *or* Endurance to the exclusion of actual damage reduction stats, this would definitely be an issue on both sides. Concerning your suggestion that a talent be added that turns Endurance into an offensive stat, I can say that I highly doubt it will ever happen, if only because it would remove any variability in design that could occur within the class. As it stands, you choose between higher resistance to instant death and threat generation. With any change that made Endurance an offensive stat the malleability of design possibly and turn tank stat choice into an HP stacking contest would be completely removed, something that, considering the *vast* plethora of mod options of vastly different combinations Bioware created is antagonistic to their design.

If it's a question of aesthetics, I think you'll be happy with either class. The developers have done an excellent job of making sure all of the abilities of the classes mesh well visually. Since Knights have a lot of saber attacks, they have a large number of fancy animations for their many saber attacks to differentiate them and make it interesting to watch. Since Shadows are intended to be hybrids, they don't have many especially complex animations (Spinning Kick and Tumult look *amazing* while still fulfilling the simple motions that the Shadow seems to espouse because of their acrobatic nature) because they complexity of appearance arises from the interaction of force and saber animations. Since I'm sure you'll be aesthetically happy with whatever choice you take, I would decide based upon playstyle. If you enjoy the way the Shadow plays, with design based upon building up layered procs set ups and static resource generation, go with that. If you prefer the more straightforward attack design of the Knight and the more active resource generation it uses, go with it instead. Both are going to be effective and look good while doing so.

Yeah, I realized that Kinetic wasn't an "special" damage type after checking my resistances after making that post, though it's not just a difference based upon alignment. Juggernauts and Marauders still deal a vast majority of their force damage as internal and Bounty Hunters and troopers both deal with large amounts of elemental damage. It's less of a Jedi/Sith difference than it is the thematic design implication of the power itself. Allowing two damage types that are functionally identical but thematically different allows the developers a lot more leeway in the design and implementation of the mirror classes. An excellent example would be Shock and Project dealing completely different damage types (as would be appropriate considering one is a random heavy object bludgeoning the target and other is evil electricity) while being mechanically identical. If the given power's mirror would make sense to deal the same damage type (such as Force Scream and Force Sweep both dealing kinetic energy) then there is no need to change the damage type. The damage types themselves are interesting in that they are separate from the Force/Tech or Melee/Ranged categories, meaning that there are some attacks that you cannot dodge or block but are perfectly capable of resisting with your armor. I'm also not entirely sure how Resistance works: is it similar to dodge insofar as you have the listed chance of completely ignoring the effect in question or is it akin to armor in that it simply reduces the damage by the given amount (or is it some mesh of the two wherein Force attacks are resisted wholly and melee/ranged attacks are resisted partially)

Calling Shadow Strike "powerful" is questionable as well. It hits barely harder than Double Strike. In a fully realized Infiltration spec, it's going to hit for less than any other attack used with the exception of Clairvoyant Strike (which replaces Double Strike). At that point, you really have to wonder if you can call it "powerful". I would consider a "positional dps class" a class that is designed to operate at a specific position and suffers noticeably when deprived of that position. The Scoundrel would be an example of this with it's substantially more often used shotgun backstab and other positional requirements. Placing any major limiter on a class (such as "stealth based" or "positional") suggests that the class places great importance on the limiter given (in the given cases, opening out of stealth and being behind the target). The Shadow doesn't place great importance on either of the provided example limiters, so I don't think it's appropriate to place them. The only limiter I *would* place on the Shadow would be "hybrid", since the class is designed to always utilitize Force and melee attacks in almost equal amounts. Anyone that comes into the class not expecting to take advantage of the hybrid nature of the class is going to be either very surprised or very disappointed.

As a Shadow, you never really get more complex saber animations than those given to you when you start the class. There are a couple other saber attacks you get, but they're largely along the same lines and nothing close to the complex saber dancing that Knights get. The reason for this is twofold: crazy saber flailing with a double bladed lightsaber wouldn't look that great (the different animations we have do an excellent job of making the limited potential non-acrobatic movements look good), and Shadows don't just use their sabers as often as Knights. As a Shadow, you're going to be using your saber roughly half the time and the rest of it flinging various pieces of the environment at your opponent (or, if you are Balance, throwing the Force itself at your target). Because of this, we don't really need a lot of complex saber animations (though I doubt people would frown on some alternate animations for Double Strike that the attack randomly chooses between).

Because it only applies to the DPS stances. 30% additional armor while using stances you never use is never useful, just like only Balance takes Force Focus (since it only augments Force Breach while in Force Technique, which only Balance uses).