True, but this relies on you entering into these phases without high reserves and those periods lasting sufficiently long that you regen completely to full. If there is 1 10 second stand-around phase every minute at the end of every minute in a 3 minute fight, you're getting 40 more Force than a Shadow without. Assuming you get .9 Force/sec benefit out of Profundity when in combat and 34 Force every 45 seconds from Blackout/Masked Assault (assuming you time the initial use intelligently so that it doesn't overlap with a stand around), you're only managing a 2.7% advantage in Force (40 Force / (150 seconds in combat * 8.9 force/sec+ 34 force/sec * (180 sec duration / 45 Blackout CD))) in a situation that vastly inflates the importance of such a talent. Shorter stand-around phases would drastically decrease the value of the additional 10 since it's not guaranteed you would be able to actually crest 100 Force without an extended period of no Force use.

Situational Awareness is actually an incredibly powerful tool because, in reducing the cost of Whirling Blow by 10, you make it substantially more spammable, allowing Infiltration to equal and potentially eclipse Balance in AoE damage capacity. Even for ST, it's an excellent choice because it reduces the CD on Battle Readiness, so that you can crank out the deeps with turbo-charged Shadow Technique 25% more. Applied force is going to be remarkably useful since the abilities in question tend to be a substantial portion of your attack string, roughly 25-33% of it, in fact, both for AoE and ST. Depending on how the math lands, it could actually be a better expenditure of your last couple of points than Technique Mastery (6% armor pen for all melee attacks compared to 6% additional damage with 3 of your 5 melee attacks). Psychokinesis could also be a good choice, though only because of the Project cost decrease since you should be using Clairvoyant Strike more than Double Strike (of course, the benefits are likely diluted by the Circling Shadows discount, so it's not definite). Vigor is generally inflated in its overall value. Since Consular Force regen doesn't change and isn't percentage based, Vigor only provides an additional 10 Force over the course of any fight in question. With Profundity and Masked Assault providing substantial amounts of Force over the course of any fight, the additional 10 Force from Vigor are largely worthless. They will only matter if you need to kill a target within 1-2 GCDs of starting a fight. Honestly, it's an entirely optional talent and not even a strong contender at that, compared to 15% additional armor or faster FoW and interrupt.

The problem is that you *will* be in a group at all times. At a minimum, you're going to have your companion with you and, if you're DPS, that means you're going to want to have your tank companion (this would be Qyzen Fess, your first companion and a true bad-***). The way TOR designed the game, you are never really ever without a teammate because once you get your first companion (anywhere between levels 6 and 10, depending on class) a teammate is never more than a single button away.

There's a couple now that you mention them but that's what I get for trying to code on a forum and with no explicit language (I also changed the code substantially from my first version because I was using separate functions for everything /facepalm). Correcting them now. baseChance would be the baseChance for the attacker to hit the defender (re: your listed chance to hit in your character information). Deflect/Parry are simply the different names for the same effects at different ranges. You parry melee attacks and deflect ranged ones.

If you're DPS, endurance should be the last thing you care about since it does nothing for your damage, and you should have a tank with you at all times (either a companion or a player). Force balance, I believe you want Crit rating and Surge after Willpower, though Alacrity might be an option if it increases the tick rate on DoTs (something I don't think I ever got a definitive answer on back in beta). You won't start seeing gear with secondary stats (re: not endurance or one of the class primaries) on it until your early-20s, but, once you see it, those will have more value than endurance.

It's not a waste of a talent point if you're doing it specifically to make it easier on your party or raid. Tanks aren't going to be dealing massive damage, so slightly better damage only translates into a threat advantage. If you can't deal damage because you're waiting for your healer to realize you're immobilized or stunned and can't get to your enemies, you're losing time. If you're able to take care of it yourself, you're improving your performance and easing the load on your healer, allowing him to conserve resources and GCDs to keeping you alive for longer. Force pull only grabs a single target, which is great for times when there is only a single straggler separated from the pack, but what if the enemies are spread out across the map and pulling 1 target in isn't good enough? Similarly, not all enemies are able to be pulled and not all movement exists to get enemies grouped up. Force Speed allows you to more easily rejoin melee when knocked away and break LoS or move out of big bad **** on the ground, all of which are common mechanisms that Bioware uses in PvE. Force Speed isn't just a PvP talent. It's a definite PvE talent as well. That was a typo. Fixed it now. Let me math this up for you as well. At level 50, tanks generally have roughly 10k health, as determined by their endurance. At best (re: end modifier, so as to multiply all other previous multipliers) Mental Fortitude is going to increase your hit points by 3%, to 10300. There are only 2 scenarios where those 300 additional hit points will be useful: long term attrition where enemies are intended to overcome the small heals provided by your healer after an extended period of time (i.e. healer can only provide 100 hps and bosses deal 150 dps) and being killed by a small number of hits in an exceptionally small period of time (re: less than the time it takes for one of the hits to be healer by your healers (generally 1-2 GCDs)). The first case isn't true because we've seen what the Ops and FPs look like in beta; your hp doesn't slowly dwindle as the fight progresses and your healer struggles to keep you alive as long as possible. The only thing that dwindles appreciably is the healer's resource bar. The second is possible, but not likely, since it would mean that healers would need to be able to continually heal the entirety of a tank's hit points using 1-2 non-CD heals, something else we've seen that isn't particularly true thanks to experience in beta (unless, of course, you're an idiot that insists on standing in bad ****, at which point I'm gonna rename you Pebkac). If you wanna talk about Force consumption and relative benefits, I had that covered in my first post of this thread. If you can't understand that, I suggest you simply end this conversation now, because it's pretty baseline stuff. Force Potency lasts 20 seconds, which is a time frame in which you should be able to get at least 3 Projects. At a minimum, you should be getting in at least 2 (and that's assuming you activate FP after your last Project rather than just before; remember Force Potency can be used outside of the GCD and doesn't trigger it). It procs per hit, not per attack. Trust me. It was determined to be that way in beta. If you haven't played and you're attempting to tell people that have that they're wrong, then there is nothing that can be done for you.

Mine was more wall-of-texty though, so it's more awesome.

You've obviously never tanked seriously in an MMO before. If you can get rid of an effect yourself without impeding your ability to do your job, you should do so to prevent your healers from using resources doing something you can do yourself. If you are slowed or immobilized, use Force Speed to save your healer the substantial resources and activation time it takes to get it off of you. Even better, you're going to notice that you can't move or are moving slower way before your healer realizes it. Save yourself the energy of yelling at him in vent and remove it yourself. On a side note, Force Speed should be used to remove snares and immobilization effects on yourself when you're in place. Force of Will should be reserved for stuns and more significant effects. The only time you should use Force of Will to get yourself out of a snare is if Force Speed is already down. There shouldn't be a "cycle" of defensive CDs. Each CD has a separate purpose. Kinetic Ward should be kept up at all times because it can be. Battle Readiness should be used after you have taken a significant amount of damage in order to bring your health down below (re: help your healer top you off). Deflection and Resilience should both be held in reserve for times when you can predict a large amount of incoming damage of the specific type. Deflection does nothing for tech and force powers because they ignore melee and ranged defense, so, if you're about to take a flamethrower to the face for 9k damage, pop Resilience and slide right through it. For a powerful survivability CD, 45 seconds is incredibly short. A long cooldown would be something akin to the Jedi Knight's Saber Ward, with its 3 minute CD. Even more amusing, Resilience lasts 5 seconds on a 45 second CD (11.1% uptime). Saber Ward only lasts 12 on a 3 minute CD (6.67% uptime). Would you argue that Saber Ward isn't good because it has such a paltry uptime ratio? Resilience is going to be incredibly useful, especially for PvE tanking because, when you can predict when massive tech/force damage is incoming, getting a 5 second window of immunity is amazingly powerful. It just requires a bit of skill to know how to use it effectively (which is pretty much how it looks like the Shadow was designed).

It's clear enough. You make 1 roll determined by dodge and chance to hit to determine whether the attack hits. You then make a second roll determined by crit and block chance to determine whether the attack was a hit, a crit, or a block. It's not really my fault if you can't interpret it when it's pretty obvious Merc understood it with no problem. If you want a clear algorithm, try this on for size. int roll1 = rand (1,100); if (roll1 < baseChance - dodgeChance) return dodge; else { int roll2 = rand(0,100); if (roll2 < blockChance) return block; else if (roll2 > (100 - critChance)) return crit; return hit; } First off, the algorithm was determined because it was found that block chance was always lower than dodge chance by a percent equal to dodge chance, and it was discovered through collecting the relevant data in beta (re: they went into combat and recorded the results). Secondly, the presumption that overwhelming degrees of block overlap overwhelming degrees of crit is secondary to the algorithm and was stated to be a presumption based on given data. (corrected a couple typos in the code)

You will be surprised how common snares, stuns, and other normally PvP mechanisms are present in TOR's PvE play. Allowing Force Speed to drop snares and immobilization mechanisms allows you to have an additional CD for those times when enemies insist on trying to keep you standing still (as well as being the Shadow equivalent of Force Leap, allowing melee Shadows to close effectively with ranged enemies when not in stealth). I don't think you realize exactly how limited Combat Technique is from a damage/threat perspective. It can only proc once per GCD and deals less damage than Saber Strike. Spending points to augment that damage by such a paltry amount is a gross misappropriation. Similarly, Double Strike and Whirling Blow are only filler; they are not the substantial threat tools I believe you think they are. In reality, Double Strike should only be used to generate Particle Acceleration so that you can use Project to guarantee Harnessed Shadows stacks. It's too expensive to spam effectively while still being able to maintain your requisite debuffs. Whirling Blow has some effectiveness for AoE damage and threat, but, once again, it's base damage is paltry. Increasing a paltry sum by such a small amount isn't a really viable expenditure. Personally, my build is going to have 2 points in Applied Force, but I'm not taking them out of Elusiveness or Mind Over Matter. I'm pulling them out Mental Fortitude because more hp does next to nothing for survivability other than prevent you from being killed in a single attack and, at 3% more Endurance, Mental Fortitude is virtually worthless *especially when it costs 3 talent points*. DBSD has an ICD of 1 second, meaning that, at its best, it will allow you to recover 12 Force over its entire 12 second duration. When default Force regen is 8 Force/sec, 12 Force over 12 seconds once every 2 minutes means virtually nothing. On another note, there is no reason you would ever want to "rotate" Kinetic Ward and Deflection. For the first part, Kinetic Ward is designed to have you keep it up at all times: it doesn't trigger the GCD, costs a pittance, and lasts 12 seconds for you to block 8 attacks. If you aren't maintaining Kinetic Ward at all times, you're doing it wrong. Deflection is completely different. It only lasts 12 seconds and requires 120 seconds to come back. Deflection is intended to be a short term augment to your standard survivability that should already be utilitizing Kinetic Ward. At best, Deflection is going to prevent a few of your Kinetic Ward charges from being taken off as you dodge attacks that you otherwise would have blocked. It's actually better for you to reserve FP exclusively for Projects instead of saving a charge for TK Throw. Math: Project's default damage is 3991. Shadows get a 25% increase in the damage of Project (Shadow's Training) and Kinetics get a further 15% from Bombardment, with a further 15% threat on top of it. Upheaval grants a 45% chance to deal 50% of the damage of the triggering Project, and any Project used by an intelligent Kinetic Shadow is going to be a critical hit because it will soon or immediately follow a Double Strike. Before Force Potency is factored in, a Kinetic Project is going to deal ~7027 damage. TK Throw's default damage is 4089. Harnessed Shadows increases its damage by 75%. Before Force Potency, a Kinetic TK Throw is going to deal ~7155 damage. (Since Kinetic is a tank spec, we're going to assume a default 10% crit chance and the standard 50% bonus damage from a critical hit (re: you've got no surge rating)) Project is already going to be a critical hit thanks to Particle Acceleration. With Force Potency, this means that critical damage buff would go from being 50% to 100%. Without Force Potency, this crit would deal ~10541 damage. With Force Potency, this crit would instead deal ~14055 damage, an increase of roughly 3514 damage. TK Throw is not guaranteed to be a critical hit and Force Potency does nothing for the self-healing, so, unless it gains more damage than Project, there is no reason to use an FP charge for TK Throw rather than Project. Factoring in default critical chance, TK Throw without FP is going to deal ~7513 damage (7155 + 7155 * .1 * .5). FP is going to increase the crit chance to 60%, giving an FP TK Throw ~9301 damage (7155 + 7155 * .6 * .5), an increase of only ~1788. In short, FP should only ever be used for Project. Project, by default, does 40% more damage and generates 60% more threat, but, when augmented by FP, the difference increases to 50% more damage and roughly 75% more threat. TK Throw is 4 ticks of damage, each of which heals for 3% of your max health. 4 ticks of 3% health equal 12% of max health. Rapid Recovery is something of a filler power. By default, the heal and damage provided by Combat Technique are rather negligible, only really increasing to impressive amounts when buffed by Battle Readiness, and, considering that most of your abilities make multiple proc attempts per GCD, the 15% increase in proc chance doesn't really translate up as much as you would think. Saber Strike hits 3 times, meaning Combat Technique, by default, has an 87.5% chance to proc when you use it. With Rapid Recovery, this only increases to 95.7% chance, a 9% improvement in proc chance for that ability. It's not a stellar improvement in performance like many of the fundamental talents of the spec (re: Bombardment, Particle Acceleration, Kinetic Ward, One with the Force) so it could be interpreted as a filler talent to some. Personally, I wouldn't think of skipping it for any of the other options, though, a lot of that has to do with the other talent options at those points just being terrible.

For PvE, Infiltration Tactics will be more useful than Shadowy Veil. Remember, unlike in PvP, you can rely on having a tank and his superior threat meters to hide behind, as well as NPC tendencies to stand still, allowing you to easily get behind your target for a Find Weakness Shadow Strike. While you could get away with only a single point in this, 2 ranks is going to make it substantially more likely you'll be able to get the proc faster (remember, the ICD on Infiltration Tactics only starts once it procs, meaning that, even with 1000 attacks per second, there will still be some amount of downtime; the additional rank helps mitigate that somewhat). Similarly, Shadowy Veil has little use in PvE when there is little chance you'll be attacked instead of a tank. Force Focus, in the Balance tree, does nothing for Infiltration because it only augments the damage caused by Force Breach while you are in Shadow Technique, which you should be in at all times once you get it. On a similar note, Infiltration doesn't have any DoTs with which to benefit from Focused Insight, making it a largely useless expenditure. Upheaval is an excellent talent for Infiltration because, once you get Circling Shadows, you will be using Project with regularity (it hits like a truck and the massive cost reduction makes it much more efficient than it normally is). For the same reason, Force Synergy is excellent (Force Breach is also considered a force attack, not a saber attack, so it will also proc Force Synergy). You will want to have both ranks in Situational Awareness since the ability to actively spam Whirling Blow for cheap is the only AoE capability the Infiltration Shadow has (the spammability of it also gives Infiltration better long term AoE damage than that of Balance). A more appropriate build would be [http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#6010cZhGRRzhMrtzZf0M.1]this[/url]. For PvE, Vigor does almost nothing because Force regen is unaffected by maximum force. All the talent does is give you an additional 10 Force for the opening volley of a fight, which means little over the course of a combat that lasts more than a minute.

Assuming a 50% block chance, 35% dodge chance, and 10% crit chance, the two rolls would look like this: 1st roll: 100% chance of occurring Dodge/Miss: 35% chance (100 * .35) Successful Hit: 65% chance (100 - Dodge) 2nd roll: 65% chance of occurring (requires a successful hit) Crit: 6.5% chance of occurring (65 * .1) Block: 32.5% chance of occurring (65 * .5) Normal: 26% chance of occurring (65 - (Crit + Block)) In addition, I believe it was found that, if there is an overflow from the sum of the block and hit chance (e.g. there is a 75% chance to block and a 35% chance to crit), block takes precedence, causing, in the parenthetical case, a 75% chance for a successful hit to become a block and only a 25% chance for it to become a critical hit. I believe it was determined by discovering that, even with a guaranteed critical hit, it was possible for an attack to be blocked.

I didn't forget this, since those values are only indicating the cost associated with using the ability. Telekinetic Throw could take 5 minutes to channel, and it would still cost 30 Force. The Force regained while using the ability is factored in at the end, when the "passive" Force regen is subtracted from the gross consumption to determine what the net loss is. You'll see everything makes perfect sense when reading the entries for the 4 overall use paradigms. When discussing resource consumption, it is important to remember that you regain Force regen while using them. Saber Strike thanks to not having a cost, functionally grants you 17.1 Force when using it. Telekinetic Throw grants you 34.2 (generating a net gain for using it, assuming it is augmented by Harnessed Shadows so that it can't be interrupted or pushed back). Kinetic Ward, however, because it doesn't have an activation time, does not have this attribute and amounts to a permanent drain of 10 Force for every cycle of use without any space taken up to allow it to regenerate.

Extensive testing in beta found that there are 2 rolls made as part of an attack attempt: the first which determines whether the attack hits, and the second which determines what kind of hit is is. You are operating under the assumption that TOR uses the same mechanics as WOW (which used a single roll, instead of 2), which it does not.

For the beta weekend, it only split damage for damage from players. This makes sense when you consider that the 25% threat reduction does nothing in PvP, so, in order for the ability to see appreciable use, it would need some additional PvP-only functionality. Project costs too much Force to be constantly spammed. Without Particle Acceleration, it deals about as much damage as Double Strike, but at almost twice the cost. However, spamming DS>Project constantly is similarly inefficient thanks to high Force costs. It is best to only use DS>Project in order to generate Harnessed Shadows stacks so that you can use Telekinetic Throw at negligible cost for similar damage and increased survivability.

For PvP, Infiltration Tactics is an unwise choice because it requires strict positioning for an unreliable benefit that takes time to generate. It's unlikely to be gotten right out of stealth, and, since PvP has lots of rapid moving, being behind someone to get in a Shadow Strike is not something you can rely on. On a similar note, more armor, even if it only increases your damage reduction by 5%, is going to be a substantial increase to your PvP survivability because you do not have a threat meter to hide behind. As such, Infiltration Tactics is less useful than Shadowy Veil for these circumstances. For PvE, on the other hand, Shadowy Veil is rather spectacularly worthless since you're almost always going to have a tank or tank companion to hide behind and you need to rely on continual damage over extended periods rather than requiring burst damage out of stealth. Because of this, the value of the two abilities switches: in PvE, you want full Infiltration Tactics rather than devoting points to additional armor.

Here's some Force consumption maths to consider. With One with the Force, default Force Regen is 10.4 Force/second regen. With Combat Technique and Double-bladed Saber Defense, you get 2 Force back with every shield, parry, or deflect once every second. Assuming a 65% chance to do so (30% Defense chance with 50% shield Chance) and 1 attack per second (multiattacks count as multiple attacks), you can expect a further ~1.3 Force/sec, for a total of 11.7 Force/sec. Based upon the use paradigm for each ability, we can determine what the average cost over time of using these abilities in such a way will be. As such, I will be defining the use paradigm of each ability in terms of how often it will be used (with explanations given in parenthesis), the percentage of your activation time will be consumed with this use paradigm (this number will deviate from reality to some extent since not all abilities have use ratios that perfectly sync with one another), and, based on the Force cost, what the average Force consumption for using such an ability in such a way will be. I will be assuming an overlap of a single GCD for debuffs in order to prevent any losses of the debuff. Since DS use exists largely to proc PA, the number of uses is designed to demonstrate the average number of uses required to get a PA proc as determined by the limit of the sum of .5^n as from 0 to infinity as n approaches infinity (which equals 2). Force Breach (maintain 18 second debuff): 1 every 16.5 seconds ; 20 Force; 9.1% activation use; -1.21 Force/sec Kinetic Ward (recast immediately when debuff falls off (every 8 shield successes or 20 seconds); with a 50% block chance (5% base, 15% shield, 15% CT, 15% KW), 36.5% of attacks will be blocked rather than dodged or hit; assuming 1 attack every GCD, 8 shield successes will take 32 seconds): 1 every 20 seconds; 10 Force; 0% activation use; -.50 Force/sec Alternate Kinetic Ward (recast on cooldown): 1 every 12 seconds; 10 Force; 0% activation time; -.83 Force/sec (Heavy) Slow Time (recast on CD): 1 every 7.5 seconds; 30 Force; 20% activation time; -4.00 Force/sec (Easy) Slow Time (maintain 15 second debuff): 1 every 13.5 seconds; 30 Force; 11.1% activation time; -2.22 Force/sec (Heavy TK) Double Strike (to trigger Particle Acceleration for Project crits for Harnessed Shadows stacks; assuming 21 second TK Throw cycle) 3 every 21 seconds (3 iterations of 2 every 6 seconds with 3 second wait after (for TK Throw)); 23 Force; 43% activation time; -6.58 Force/sec (Easy TK) Double Strike (to trigger Particle Acceleration for Project crits for Harnessed Shadows stacks; assuming 30 second TK Throw cycle) 3 every 30 seconds (3 iterations of 2 every 9 seconds with 3 second wait after (for TK Throw)); 23 Force, 30% activation time; -4.60 Force/sec (Heavy TK) Project (with Particle Acceleration to trigger Harnessed Shadows and Force Synergy; assuming 21 second TK Throw cycle): 3 every 21 seconds(3 iterations of 1 every 6 seconds with 3 second wait after (for TK Throw)); 39 Force; 21.5% activation time; -5.57 Force/sec (Easy TK) Project (with Particle Acceleration to trigger Harnessed Shadows and Force Synergy; assuming 30 second TK Throw cycle): 3 every 30 seconds(3 iterations of 1 every 9 seconds with 3 second wait after (for TK Throw)); 39 Force; 15% activation time; -3.90 Force/sec (Heavy) Telekinetic Throw (every 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows; assuming 21 second TK Throw cycle): 1 every 21 seconds; 30 Force; 14.3% activation time; 30 Force; -1.43 Force/sec (Easy) Telekinetic Throw (every 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows; assuming 30 second TK Throw cycle): 1 every 30 seconds; 30 Force; 10% activation time; 30 Force; -1.00 Force/sec To determine consumption, the appropriate use paradigms must be chosen. Slow Time will either be used on CD (higher threat, higher cost) or to maintain the debuff (lower threat, lower cost). Telekinetic Throw should be used, on average, either once every 21 seconds or once every 30 seconds (it can be used faster than this thanks to PA procs removing the Project CD, but, since I'm assuming average values, the standard recharge on Project seem appropriate to signify use of other, high priority abilities). All in all, this gives us 4 overall use paradigms (Heavy Slow Time + Heavy Telekinetic Throw; Heavy ST + Easy TK; Easy ST + Heavy TK; Easy ST + Easy TK). Kinetic Ward's 2 use paradigms are based on differing assumptions of blocks over time; the disparity between the two will be reflected in a range of net loss. Sustainability is determined by dividing the 100 starting Force by a net loss to determine how long the use paradigms could be maintained (this does not take any lack of Force at any specific time into consideration, so the number is likely to be substantially lower given the high costs of some abilities (re: Project)) Heavy/Heavy: Non-Saber Strike animation use: 107.9% (9.1 + 0 + 20 + 43 + 21.5 + 14.3) 107.9% animation time = not possible Heavy/Easy: Non-Saber Strike animation use: 84.1% (9.1 + 0 + 20 + 30 + 15 + 10) Total Consumption: 15.21-15.54 Force/sec (1.21 + (.5 or .83) + 4.0 + 4.6 + 3.9 + 1) Net Loss: 3.51 to 3.84 Force/sec Sustainability: 28.49 to 26.04 seconds Easy/Heavy: Non-Saber Strike animation use: 99% (9.1 + 0 + 11.1 + 43 + 21.5 + 14.3) Total Consumption: 17.51-17.84 Force/sec (1.21 + (.5 or .83) + 2.22 + 6.58 + 5.57 + 1.43) Net Loss: 6.14 to 6.47 Force/sec Sustainability: 16.29 to 15.46 seconds Easy/Easy: Non-Saber Strike animation use: 75.2% (9.1 + 0 + 11.1 + 30 + 15 +10) Total Consumption: 13.43-13.76 Force/sec (1.21 + (.5 or .83) + 2.22 + 4.6 + 3.9 + 1) Net Loss: 1.73 to 2.06 Force/sec Sustainability: 57.80 to 48.54 seconds Overall the conclusion to be drawn is that none of the paradigms are infinitely sustainable. Without lucky PA procs, the Heavy/Heavy paradigm is actually impossible and not even the Easy/Easy Paradigm is actually entirely sustainable for long fights. Because of this I have designed the "sustainable" paradigm, which uses the easy Slow Time use paradigm coupled with a 6 second additional wait period (for additional Saber Strikes) added to the Easy TK Throw paradigm. (Sustainable) Double Strike (to trigger Particle Acceleration for Project crits for Harnessed Shadows stacks; assuming 33 second TK Throw cycle) 3 every 36 seconds (3 iterations of 2 every 9 seconds with 6 second wait after (for TK Throw and Saber Strikes)); 23 Force, 25% activation time; -3.83 Force/sec (Sustainable) Project (with Particle Acceleration to trigger Harnessed Shadows and Force Synergy; assuming 36 second TK Throw cycle): 3 every 36 seconds(3 iterations of 1 every 9 seconds with 6 second wait after (for TK Throw and Saber Strikes)); 39 Force; 12.5% activation time; -3.25 Force/sec (Sustainable) Telekinetic Throw (every 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows; assuming 36 second TK Throw cycle): 1 every 36 seconds; 30 Force; 8.3% activation time; 30 Force; -.83 Force/sec Sustainable: Non-Saber Strike animation use: 66% (9.1 + 0 + 11.1 + 25 + 12.5 + 8.3) Total Consumption: 11.84-12.17 Force/sec (1.21 + (.5 or .83) + 2.22 + 3.83 + 3.25 + .83) Net Loss: .14 Force/sec to .47 Force/sec Sustainability: 714.3 (11.9) to 212.8 (3.55) seconds (minutes)

I haven't gotten my early access yet, but if it's anything like it was for the beta weekend that I was on for, you won't be able to Guard a target that is currently Guarding something or being Guarded by someone else. Iirc, using Guard places a debuff/buff on yourself and a buff/debuff on the target, and the Guard ability requires a target with neither debuff/buff in order to activate.